What happens after happily ever after

From as young as I can remember people were always saying to me; 'What do you want to do when you grow up', 'What are your dreams?' and 'What do you want to do in life?', I don't know why asking a child those questions will achieve absolutely anything at all. I didn't understand what being a grown up meant, hell I'm 26 and I still don't understand the meaning of life!

The thing is we change, we grow, it's completely natural to become and entirely different person to the person you thought you'd be when you were six or seven. We grow and experience life at different rates, from different perspectives and while one persons dream may be to travel the world, another person may dream of settling down and having a family. Maybe some people only dream that they could see a loved one again for even just a day or perhaps they dream that they would like to just smile even once at the reflection staring back at them in the mirror.

Dreams aren't a competition, a race, there's no bar to measure up to, we're given a very limited amount of time to live, all that time is borrowed, so whatever you dream, just begin it. Who care's if it's not perfect, at least once it's started you've taken the first steps towards achieving it.

What happens when you hit the point of happily ever after, we aren't characters that cease to be once the final page in that chapter has been turned, we go to sleep and upon us from nowhere dawns a new day. I was told that once you achieve your dreams, you can make new dreams, but actually that's not as simple as it sounds.

Two and a half years ago I quite a full time job, left a comfortable relationship, moved back in with my parents, stopped socializing with the people I had been calling friends for years and one late night after Googling 'what is the point of life' I happened across Blogger. I was familiar with blogs and had wanted to start one for some time but had no real idea on where to begin with it all, it didn't even have a name.

I just began to write, I wrote about music. I wrote a post that led to another and another until before I knew it, that seemingly irresponsible set of previous choices had led me to a life of passion, I had a new direction, I had a new boyfriend and I had a new perspective.

I happened across a piece of paper in which I had written a list of the things I wanted to achieve and was surprised that I had ticked each thing off, the final one being moving out again.

Except I felt this unnerving feeling in the back of my mind, it would be strongest at night or when I was alone and before I knew it I felt as miserable as I had when everything was placid. I had achieved my dreams, I was happy, things were 'perfect', how could it be wrong? Was I just destined to end up in a never ending cycle of tiring of life, tearing things apart and starting over?
No. You'll be relieved to hear that was not my destiny.

I just had gotten everything I could out of the job I was doing, I needed variety and I needed to be motivated and inspired.
With that I began to look for a new job, it wasn't instant, in fact it took me almost a month, I finally came to the role. Within travel I find myself venturing now and both my wanderlust heart and my motivation have received the variety they needed.

It's been a transitional phase where I've gone from high to low and back again, except now I'm starting to feel like me, more like me than I've ever felt.
As with all transitional phases things can seep into the other aspects of ones being. My blogs have suffered, I grew weary of writing posts because I had to, I wanted to write again because it was something I loved to do, the last 24 hours has been the first time this year that i've truly put my heart into what I am writing, to the thoughts that are becoming words on the screen.

Things are changing, both blogs, how I feel and what inspires me, I am merely becoming the next version of myself and while I am not sure who that person entirely is, I do feel good for making the choices I did in the past month and putting myself first for a while.

It wasn't instant but new dreams are starting to form and while I have my previous list all ticked, I am working hard to maintain the aspects that bring me true happiness.
My words to you, this Sunday would be don't worry if you don't completely know what it is your after, because you know what, just enjoy the day that's in front of you. The answers will appear when you least expect them.

For me, the things I thought I wanted at 16 are a world away from the things I actually feel passionate about now.

I don't have a point by point plan of my next chapter but I know today that is has begun and that this chapter is me, the things I'm going to do and the people I'm going to spend my time with.
It isn't what I thought or dreamed it was going to be, but you know what I actually prefer that. It's more real.

I like that I don't know exactly what's going to happen because it also means that anything is possible.

Love passionately, Travel often, Dream big, Live honestly

LOVE&PEACE

KG

A NOTE ABOUT LOVE

Spring is my favourite time of year, everything is blooming, the world is greener, prettier and more alive than the cold winter nights it has been used to. I was born in Spring and always feel more rejuvenated and inspired in those waking days, as though the long summer days to come will bring with them all my dreams, as though anything and everything is possible.

This spring in particular sees me celebrate meeting and sharing my life with my best friend for two years, a lot of our friends are getting married, engaged and starting to make lifelong commitments to each other, with my calendar full of save the dates, I began to wonder about what saying yes to someone for the rest of your life might feel like.

I'm definitely on the fence when it comes to marriage, my parents have been happily married for almost thirty years, I certainly love the idea of giving my whole self to 'the one' and in return knowing they too are giving me themselves.

I like to think that one day I might share that with someone, I definitely feel in love enough to make that commitment, but will I feel that way for the rest of my life? I'm not the same person I was five years ago, I'm not the same person I was two years ago, so how am I supposed to know that the person I am in love with now, will be the person I will be in love with in half my lifetime again? 

I'm not being incredibly insensitive here, I would ask that of him, how he knows that I am the person he will love in half his lifetime to come. People say 'you just know'. So I was led to believe that if I didn't just know, that it meant it wasn't meant to be? No. I have no idea who I'll be in twenty years time, I have no idea who I'll be in two years time, but when I think about life and sharing it, because to me, sharing my life with my best friend is important, I know that not sharing my life with that person is not an option.

I'm left with this resonating feeling, that feels like a true bond, that isn't all definitely's, just like when we first me we didn't know that we would end up here. That resonating sound is happiness, it's the knowing that I do want that person in my life and that right now yes I would make that commitment to them.

Just like that I feel as though I've become an adult. I'm willing to give half of my life to someone else. It doesn't mean I have too. 

So if you're like me and surrounded by a world of brides and weddings, it doesn't mean you're in any kind of rush, I'm a real believer that when the moment is right, life happens. That when you search for it, it becomes ever more hidden. 

So my answer yes I love my best friend with the light of the moon, I would protect him with the burning passion of a thousand suns, but that doesn't mean I have to stop living, stop breathing. For the first time in my life, I feel like a woman, I feel free and as though everything I've ever dreamed could be possible, I know in my heart right now, that though I want to share my life with him, I also don't want to give up on myself.

That's where I realized something very spectacular, that my best friend, doesn't make me feel like I'm giving up on myself, he's often the one behind me as I stare over the cliff-edge willing me to take the dive to the ocean below. When I leap and I hit the rocks, he carries me, he builds my strength up until I'm strong enough to take the leap again.

If you make someone your everything, you stand to lose it all, but if you balance it right, you can have it all.

He makes me feel like I am home, it's all very well being off round the globe, but you have to come back to somewhere. Shouldn't that somewhere feel like home?

I don't know where I will be two years from now, but I hope that he will still be part of it, sharing in my adventure and I in his.

The same goes for friendship, something that put me off marriage, was the hens. The hen party, the bridesmaids. I don't have a big group of female friends, in fact I have very few female friends. I tend to find that I get along better with guys, their girlfriends make up the majority of my female companions.

Every now and then I meet a girl and we click, it's beautiful, but we're so like-minded that she ends up back on the road and I'm lucky if I see her once a year. So I have a wonderful online connection to my closest girl friends, but they reach the farthest corners of the globe. 

I wondered 'wait, I can't get proposed to, I don't have any bridesmaids' that's a total lie, I could call upon the best girls in the world, right now bridesmaids and proposals are on my thoughts, because I only have to log on to social media to be reminded of it, but actually I feel as though I'm running towards the highest cliff top I'll ever leap from and were there a gold ring around my finger, I may be to heavy to even take the leap at all. I wasn't looking for love when I found it, when we are quiet with our words and minds, the heart can truly speak.

WANDERLUST KING

I was walking a couple of mornings ago, the cold fresh morning air cut through me like ice shards and as I watched my breath appear like dragon smoke around me, I looked up to the sky to see a perfectly formed plane cloud trail; frozen still, as if it had been imprinted perfectly in the sky at that exact moment I looked up, for the exact purpose that it would begin a thought process that would last the rest of the day.

I started to think, that perhaps the world rolled out around me as I went around my business, that perhaps the moment I left a room, that room ceased to be. Except we all know this is isn't so, because for every moment that I live and breath some one else is living and breathing the same air I do, staring at the same sky and wondering the same things as I.

I've always felt an affinity to the Earth, I grew up surrounded by rolling hills, rivers and streams that flowed freely through the land, even now I live by the ocean and find perfect peace from just staring out to the far reaches of the globe from the shore, even on the grayest of days.

I began to look at the cloud trail in the sky that had already begun to dissolve into nothing, in an hours time there would be no trace it had ever even existed, except I knew it had. 

Of course that plane wasn't flying that route for my benefit, but I had witnessed it, I considered all the people aboard that plane, where they may be travelling to, or from. Just like that, it hit me as though a shard of ice had pierced right through my heart, I wanted to be on that plane, not just that plane, any plane, a boat, hell even a train, just to feel the earth moving beneath me, to be on the road.

Wanderlust had struck. I've never been one to sit still, I move a lot, I've come to feel as though the road is my true home, Malvern the place I was born will always be where I call home, but I find with each passing year that it feels like a memory from a past life. When I tread on it's concrete it feels like I'm walking through old photographs, that's more or less what every place feels like to me. 

Home tends to be where I'm living at the moment, home is my friends, my family, the things that bring me peace, comfort and excitement.

I've had more jobs than most of the people I went to college with, I've walked more steps than I care to remember and I feel as though I've lived three lifetimes or more. People call it irresponsible, a defect for having no desire to settle down, but it's in my heart, that I couldn't be in one place for all time because each passing day is all I have, there's so much to see, to experience, to learn.

After all, the countries though separated by oceans are all joined to make one planet, the people though many strangers, are joined by life force as one community, so I see the Earth as my home, the road as my compass. The sun is my breath, the moon is my spirit.

With every day, month and year that I gather in my journal, I feel like a wine that tastes sweeter with age, I feel as though I'm getting better with age, I was so unsure of the world a few years ago, I was so scared to make any real leaps into the blue, these days it's almost a hidden driving force, I have no real plans for the future, I have an idea of the things I'd like to do, but mostly I'm just going to keep dancing to the beat of my own drum.

The way I see it, what people think of me, shouldn't bother me, it shouldn't sway me, it shouldn't stop me. I'm simply a tiny ball of energy, spinning on one hell of a ball of energy that's spinning so fast it appears still, that's spinning through the solar system, that's expanding through the universe and those things are incredibly huge, and I am incredibly tiny in comparison, but no less real.

I wanted passion, so I chased it, I wanted comfort so I chased it, I want to live, so I'm chasing it.

However you look at life, whoever you have in life, I urge you to close your eyes, clear your mind and picture living, what does it look like?

If it doesn't look like what's around you when you open your eyes, then my advice would be really open your eyes to see what's around you, maybe not immediately, but what's beyond the walls, beyond the town limits, beyond the fields, hills and oceans, what makes your heart thump, what takes your breath away, what makes your spirit happy?

LOVE & PEACE