back to the beginning

new beginnings. polaroid sx-70, impossible px 70 film

I met Michael Atavar when I did his creativity workshop at The School of Life earlier this year.

One of the cards I pulled from his card deck contained the words: back to the beginning.

This phrase really stuck with me and it feels like this is what is happening now.

In just under a week, (eek!) the movers are coming to pack all our stuff into boxes, and we will be leaving the UK after living here for six years.

We are going back to NZ via a few holiday places (hello, Italy, Vancouver, Seattle, NW USA!) and the DO Lectures, USA. Attending the DO lectures in April changed me and I want for Nic to experience it too. Plus there are conversations to be had and scheming to be done with fellow DO’ers.

There are dreams and plans we have been making for such a long time that it feels like it’s time to stop dreaming and start DO’ing. The DO lectures, the people I have met and made friends with here, the interactions, the conversations, the inspiration. All of it has been leading up to this.
It feels right. And it feels like it’s time.

So, we are going back to the beginning, taking everything we have learned.

It is my intention to never work in an office again, unless it is one of my own choosing. I want to find a piece of land, by the sea, big enough for a wee cottage (or some other small dwelling) and room for a garden. I want for there to be hens, and a pig (or two), a milking goat, a vegetable garden that feeds us.

I want to go back to the beginning…

• continuing to make my own bread, learning to make cheese, churning my own butter
• cold smoking and hot smoking food
• home curing and pickling
• learning how to weld and make things from recycled materials
• learn from my parents and in-laws – they’ve been gardening successfully for years
• read books that make me feel like this might just be possible. books like DO grow
• re-purposing my clothing
• making fabric dyes from natural ingredients
• learning how to live with less, being part of a community
• find ways of working with people who are DO’ers, change makers, radical thinkers, passionate, enthusiastic, inquisitive

Sometimes, even to me, this sounds like a one-way ticket to crazy town.

How can I, a woman who has very little experience with this kind of lifestyle, give up a nicely paying job for a crack at self-sufficiency and changing the world around me?

How do I know it will work?

Well, I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.
Because I’ll never know unless I try it.

Allow your dreams to shape you, push you, and scare you.
An excellent film by DO attendee @camstewart