In case you missed it, read PART I here
B ack in May of this year, my husband Raghunath (aka Rags or even just R, to me), and I took a 3.5-week belated honeymoon in South America. Here, it was largely just the three of us – him, me and the great Patagonian outdoors. Time slowed down, I slept well, and most notably, I poo’ed every single day (TMI? But reality check: it’s the best barometer I have for my state of mind).
Something about spending 80% of our waking hours outdoors and connected to nature, realising what a tiny dot I was amidst the granite ‘towers’ of Torres del Paine and how freeing it felt to not have a phone or internet connection made life feel truly rich again.
These few weeks were not just the happiest I have felt in a long time – they were different to feeling just happy. I was happy, but more so it was the most joy I had felt for as long as I could remember. Something about spending 80% of our waking hours outdoors and connected to nature, realizing what a tiny dot I was amidst the granite ‘towers’ of Torres del Paine and how freeing it felt to not have a phone or internet connection made life feel truly rich again. Conversations with one of our hiking guides, Alejandro, in my broken Spanish were more real than many of the catch up brunches I’d had with friends in London. Life was distilled down to simply living in the moment, in being present. Even my biggest daily gripe – the quest for a morning coffee that didn’t taste like sludge – had its benefits it turns out. It led my husband and I wanting to use coffee as the medium through which we plan to create communities (more to come on this!).
The emotional come-down after returning to grey London after nearly a month in Argentina and Chile was precipitous. I told myself it was just the post-holiday blues and that life would be back to normal soon. Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. Even though I didn’t know what to call it, the change in me felt like a fundamental shift; there was no turning back. Weekdays felt never-ending and I filled my weekends with every extracurricular activity I was remotely interested in (music, barre, and design workshops to name a few), job applications and coffee meet-ups with people from different industries just to see what might satiate this burning desire of wanting more. None of it truly appealed to me though – different industry, same problem set. I felt ready for a new challenge, but I didn’t know what.
That was the hardest part for me. Most of 2019 had been spent exploring different jobs, different companies, and even different industries and I had to reconcile with the fact that I was no closer to doing or even knowing what exactly I wanted. How was I, a 33 year old woman with a college degree and 12 years of work experience, this confused about what I wanted out of life? I’ve had life coaches and therapists help me through various stages of my career and personal life, but I felt alone in this search. Why did it feel like I was going around in circles and how could I begin the process to transition? Most pressingly though, what exactly was I transitioning to?
Continued in… PART III