#194: Up in the air
I’m up in the air.
My life is up in the air.
I’m sitting at 36,000ft to write this. It’s the perfect metaphor for where I currently am in my life.
I’m between countries, caught between worlds. Up, in the air.
I’ve left London, our last permanent home. Left Stoke, where we’ve been for 6 months living with parents.
Now, it’s Lisbon for 6 weeks. Then, who knows?
In London, I began to feel irritable and frustrated. I became bitter and judgemental. I bemoaned the noise, the busy-ness and the frenzy. When I’m back I wonder about the life I could have have had there? The 2 bed new build flat in the suburbs and the morning commute listening to a podcast. Perhaps I’d cycle, although I’d be a bit nervous…
In Stoke, I feel nostalgic and confused. I feel restless and lack stimulation. I want to love it, I want to feel at home. I desperately wish I could settle there. Yet I feel torn away to somewhere else. For years that somewhere else was London, now I don’t know where it is…
My possessions, which consist mainly of second hand books, an eclectic mix of art and many bottles of champagne stay in a storage container. Waiting to furnish somewhere, but with nowhere to go.
The last time I travelled and hit the escape button I was suppressing panic attacks on the flight to Bali. An anxiety was hammering within me.
That feeling has stayed with me over the years. The memory of wanting to get away and figure it all out, and feeling so lost sitting there. When the lights went out in the cabin I felt no different, I could have been anywhere. No matter where I travelled to, I’d have been lost. No matter what I found. The constant searching and the crisis within was keeping me perpetually lost. The destination was meaningless. The journey was internal, not external.
This time, I feel very different. Sitting here flying through the air, with my life up in the air, I feel a sense of peace and rightness. I feel like I am in the right place. I’m where I’m meant to be.
I don’t know how I’ll feel when I land. I don’t know if my feet will ground to the Lisboa floors. Or my body will rest and relax there. I don’t know. I’ll find out.
I write this, not just to descry my own up-in-the-airness. I also notice the collective jumble of life I see around me.
I see people virtually up in the air, or caught leaving their old life and stepping into their unknown new life.
I see the confusion of hybrid working.
I see a battle between competing priorities. The new found priority of a life more centred around wellbeing or family and the lingering priority of work, career, epitomised by time spent in the office.
I see tectonic plates shifting, vibrating and clashing. Old dogma around work, success and money versus new beliefs that question accepted ways of life.
I feel the accumulation of two years worth of change gurgling in my life and I see it all around. It’s like a natural disaster. COVID was a tsunami. Now we’re seeing what’s left in the wreckage and what’s changed. We’re clearing away the mess of its devastation.
What I thought my life was, has been swept away by the waves. I’ve opened the doors and let the water in. Now I’m working out what’s left, what I miss and what I care about after the flood.
I’m privileged to say that the confusion created for me are all brilliant problems to have. Yet, confusing they remain.
I know where I’m going for now, yet not for long.
Perhaps that’s been the lesson to take away from the last two years. To live in the moment, to listen to what’s here now and plan life less. Think less.
I feel like a piece of paper falling down from a great height. Swaying. Swaying in the sky. Swooping from one place to another as I fall. I don’t know where I’ll land.
And that’s ok.
That’s ok.
What I'm writing
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Who am I?
Writer, founder, husband, always tanned.
Wannabe poet, imposter, taboo buster.
Thinker, philosopher, not a drinker
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shoulder chipped Stokie
champagne hippie
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