Off I go. 

I’ve thought about this moment for a really long time. A time where I would feel fine moving forward on my own. Fine, is the key term there; not amazing, not “thriving” just fine. 

As the wave of expectance for my imperfections turns to white water, I feel the most in and out of my body that I ever have. I sigh with such weight but I move with more solidarity then ever have before. 

I’m here, I’m doing it, I’m living. While my 15 year old self would be perplexed to see where I am in this very moment. The “mundane” of suburban life still haunting me, I am a walking contradiction. 

Still not wanting to be a basic model human ticking boxes and placing roots in the soil I was grown in. I pine for nothing more than some stability. Stability of mind, purpose, joy. 

Will I ever not search for perfection, will I ever accept that I can’t be good at everything I do. Will I ever not look at another project or career without crippling envy — will I ever grace myself with forgiveness for feeling envy. 

Most of the past 3 years I’ve felt as though my mind and my physicality were stitched together with fairy floss instead of cotton. I’ve not seen myself in reflections, rather a girl trying to be whatever it is my mind has decided for that day. 

“You’re always doing something new” “you are such a fickle person” “I can never keep up with what you’re up to”. Sentences that have been replayed to me over the years so often that it feels as though the people saying them are npc’s. 

Will I ever learn the discipline of staying on task?

Doesn’t that require understanding as to what it is you enjoy doing? 

Some times I think my joy button is broken. 

Next week I fly to Copenhagen, I applied for a course and I was granted a scholarship. Never in my life did I think I would be picked from a world wide pool of candidates to receive a place in such a course. 

The excitement I felt when applying, the importance I put on writing the best application I could, swiftly dissolved the minute my acceptance email was delivered to my account. 

The prestige of what I’d just achieved became “easy” and “meaningless”. Why? Because how on earth could this hold any weight if they’d decided to give it to me…..

They must just be throwing these scholarships away. Giving them to whoever was silly enough to apply. 

Why didn’t I find something more niche? A place to learn that was so remote, so off the map and sort after that it didn’t even exist.

Much like when I find an amazing piece at an op shop that just isn’t in my wheel house, maybe just maybe this course is the same. A place for incredible learning and opportunity, but maybe not a place I want to go. 

Why the fuck don’t I do the things I want to do?! 

I’ve literally not even touched half of them with a ten foot pole.

I want to buy my apartment, maybe live in it for a bit. But mainly just to have a safe hold asset, that’s just mine. 

I want to learn to farm, be outside and get grubby. 

I want to have time to make and paint and draw, just like I did my entire life growing up. I spent 90% of my childhood alone, in my room, playing music, painting, sewing, drawing, cutting my hair and creating. 

I’m going to Copenhagen a week from today. I fly into my old home, London, then pop over the arguably the “coolest” part of Europe. I’ll be attending MAD academy, a space built to facilitate the learning of hospitality professionals in leadership and sustainability. 

After pouring over a piece of writing more than I ever have in my entire life, I put forward an application for a scholarship and received just that. 

So much or a year of staying still and going slowly. 

MAD academy will host us for an intensive week of learning and growing as professionals within our industry, crazy hey. 

I’m flying to Copenhagen tomorrow. Off to Europe for a month long trip of doing well, whatever the hell it is I feel like doing on the day. 

No, no, I do have some plans. 

Firstly to Copenhagen to attend MAD academy to partake in their environmental and suitability course. I worked my ass off over the summer, with a wee bit of help of course, to write an application.

They did. 

So a week in Copenhagen it is, filled with bike riding, rye bread breakfasts and intensive learning. 

I’ll head to France soon after, a country I never envisioned myself falling so deeply in love with. A week or so in the country side with an old friend will hopefully give me enough fuel to jump a push bike and peddle my way as far around the country as possible for the next few weeks. 

Well this is the base line plan, what will actually happen is a total mystery. 

There is only one certainty with this trip, there will be food and plenty of it.

I’m no writer, but hey, here we are.