Prior warning, this is a long and winding post that is going to take you down a number of paths. Hang in there friends and remember to be kind.

 My recent trip to Bali was a complete spur of the moment trip, organised in less than 2 weeks.

 When I say organised I mean I had the thought on a Friday, booked flights the Saturday and a villa in Ubud on Sunday and that’s it. I had no idea what I was going to do for the 10 days but I knew that I just had to be there. I had to be in this spiritual place to do some healing, some self-reflection and realisation.

It sounds so cliché and so Eat Pray Love, and yes I was reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s book at the time. I had read the book at its original height of popularity, but I was drawn to it again. I felt I was at a crossroads in my life and I could take some inspiration from her journey and her words, or maybe just feel that I wasn’t alone and someone else had felt like this before and come out the other side.

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My Journal Entry from my first day in Ubud

April 10th

Most trips I take have a lot more thought put into them and me being the planner that I’m am, I research, organise, plan, do up an itinerary, know what I want to see and activities I want to partake in and then I’m off…you could say I’m not super spontaneous. I don’t like to leave things to chance, which is not how I’ve always been.

When I first started travelling properly in 2002 I never had a plan. I was passing through Rome at one point,  struck up a friendship with a waitress, who then offered me a job if I could just find my way back there in 2 months when they needed me. Sure!

I went and lived and worked there for 4 months over the summer, making awesome friends and having the best time exploring Rome on my days off. When the season was over I took off to Greece for a week, because, why not?!

The next summer after having lived and worked in Surrey, England for 8 months, I decided I needed to be back in Europe, specifically the Mediterranean for the summer. I packed my bags, flew to Lisbon and made my way along the coast of Portugal, Spain and France by train never booking any accommodation and just figuring it out the moment I arrived. I decided day by day, never knowing or caring how long I was staying in each place…..I was so carefree, had no expectations, no worries and just a world of possibilities in front of me.

On this same trip, I met a bunch of Aussies and Kiwis who were making their way around Europe on the infamous Van Tour. Having bought dilapidated old vans in England, they had decked them out so they were liveable or at the very least could get the crew from one campsite to the next. They were making their way around Europe from Calais in France across the top of Spain, into Portugal (where we all met in Lagos) and following the south coast back through Spain into France, Italy across to Greece and back up the guts of Europe to Amsterdam and back to England.

I hit it off with them so well that I stayed in touch, met up with them at the top of Italy and hitched a ride the rest of the way, on their tour all the way back to London.

This sort of stuff was so thrilling and exciting to me I never gave anything a second thought. If someone suggested it, offered it, thought it, I was IN, 200%, every time. No planning or researching, I just went with it and most of the time it worked out. A few missed planes here, a few bad hangovers there (dam cheap Greek red wine), once rocking up to the completely wrong airport altogether, and a shit tonne of epic good memories and friends I still have to this day, all because I thought what the heck…

What the hell happened!!!

I fell into a job that became a career for starters.

I don’t do things by halves and am generally not shit at anything I put my mind to. Toot, Toot. I quickly realised I had a bit of a knack for this whole banking and finance malarkey. And stuck at it for 12 years.

I also met a boy and bought a house, one I kicked to the curb after 4 years the other I’ve recently renovated much to the disgust of my bank account…

Having a full-time career and a house leaves you no option but to be organised and become a planner. When can I take my annual leave? Where can I go and how much can I see in two weeks? Do I have enough money for bills, loan repayments and holidays? What sacrifices do I have to make?

To make sure I was still travelling ( and I don’t mean proper travelling, I mean 2 weeks here on holidays,  maybe 4 weeks there at a stretch) I had to become that person and it worked.

It saw me go on some amazing adventures with friends and family and see such epic places like the Great Wall of China, Petra, Jerusalem, the Northern Lights in Iceland and meeting my goddaughter Lenia in Germany. All planned to a tee!

Now let me go back to February this year. I’d just spent an awesome 4 days in Perth visiting with one of my best mates. I came back to work on Tuesday looking forward to telling my team all about my mini-break. Not to be!

I was promptly advised at 10 am that my role had been made redundant by the company I was working for and I was given some loose timeframes. Two weeks of “consultation” and an opportunity to provide feedback (Hmmm do you really want honest feedback from me! Probs not!) two weeks to apply for another position or accept a redundancy payout, and then two weeks of selection and appointing into new roles, if that’s the way I wanted to go…

Without making this post about that, the entire 6 weeks was a nightmare!!

The past 2.5 years at this organisation had been horrible. The culture went from one of feeling like a big family to one of paranoia, backstabbing, people being moved for no apparent reason and people fearing for their jobs constantly.

I had been having many thoughts about leaving and considering what my actual passions and aspirations were for some time. What did I want my life to look like and how was I going to achieve it because I was certainly not happy at that place. It was killing me and my spirit. Every morning that I sat on the tram dreaming of being anywhere but there, was becoming a cruel kind of torture. (note. MY team were amazing and one of the best teams I had the pleasure of leading and being a part of) But how was it all going to happen for me?

Having these thoughts and knowing that in 6 weeks I could be living a different life or potentially starting to live the life I had been fantasising about scared the shit out of me, surprisingly.

You’d think it would be an easy decision. Take a redundancy package, see you later job, hello new life. Nup!

There was copious tears, to-ing and fro-ing about what to do. I have a house and a mortgage and this job and these people (the good ones!) were all I’ve known for 12 years

Who am I, thinking I can just up and leave, have no job, no steady income, no bloody idea what I’m meant to be doing in 6 weeks and be okay with it.

It was full-blown panic stations, pros and cons up on the whiteboard, friends saying LEAVE, family saying STAY, applying for any and all jobs, even the ones that I was well overqualified for, because how could I not have a job, and of course plenty of sleepless nights.

But how COULD I stay? After the horrible treatment I’d received and watched others be put through, no job is worth that. This was an opportunity to put all my goals and dreams into action, how could I live with myself if I let it pass me by. If I stayed and was still working there instead of at least giving this a shot I would end up HATING myself.

All risks weighed up, and with a bit of guts and what the hell attitude,  I told my boss to show me the money and show me the door! I was outta there…..see you later career that had become a job and an income only, see you later sad trips on the tram dreaming of better days, see you later scheduled annual leave…I’m done!

And that brings me to where I am now. Sitting at my little dining table in my private villa, overlooking my own private pool in Ubud, Bali, where I’ll spend the next 10 days

I took a calculated risk leaving my job but threw caution to the wind coming here to Bali. I needed to get away, put everything behind me, be on my own, doing whatever pleases me, when it pleases me and most importantly consolidate all of my thoughts from the past few years, especially the last few weeks and start making some of those dreams realities.

What did I do today? I woke up and chilled the eff out in my villa!

I ate breakfast, hung up my clothes, did a few videos and took some photos. I then made my way into Ubud centre without having any idea where anything was or what I was even going to do.

I stumbled across the Palace, weaved my way through Ubud Market, which can I say was great because there was almost zero hassle from the vendors, unlike Kuta and Seminyak, and I stopped and had a lazy lunch. I came across the Sacred Monkey Forrest and meandered my way around there for 90 odd minutes, both thoroughly enjoying myself and thoroughly shitting myself…those little bastards are grabby!!

On my way out I got bailed up, “you need massage lady?” You know what I bloody do, here take my money and sort out these shoulders that have been carrying all of my stress and tension for the past 7 weeks. Oh my god, I don’t think I could’ve been more relaxed if I tried..just what I needed

I walked all the way through Ubud centre and just kept going all the way down to The Bridges and then decided I couldn’t be arsed battling the hill to my villa so got a taxi the rest of the way. Spent the afternoon in my pool, drinking a Binny (Bintang) and maxing the relaxing.

I wandered down the local Warung (restaurant) for dinner and spent a whopping $6 on a huge plate of Nasi Goreng and garden salad (hopefully I don’t shit myself forgot to pack my Gastrostop tablets) and I can honestly say that was such a bloody good day and I am so ready for bed.

Wonder what I’m going to do tomorrow?? Can’t wait to find out…

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That first day in Ubud was the start of a very healing week for me. I looked at my life, I spent time thinking about the last few years and all the feelings I had about different aspects of my life, not only what had happened at work, but friendships and relationships.

I went deep and analysed who I had become as a person, how different people and different encounters had affected me and turned me into something I didn’t really like. I had become angry, bitter, paranoid, thinking everyone was out to get me and bring me down. I had been rejected and bullied so many times and my personality picked apart and by people that I thought cared about me, that my self-worth was rock bottom. I was defensive and fearful that people were not being honest or sincere with me and I had allowed others to devalue me, to pick me apart and to change my personality.

I met people in Ubud that were so unbelievably nice to me. A stranger, they’d just met. They wanted to know me, they wanted to know who I was and spend time with me. They called me brave, strong, an inspiration, descriptions of myself that I hadn’t heard in a while.

I needed that 10 days to find myself again. To rediscover my strengths, my capabilities, my resilience. All the awesome shit I possessed and embodied when I travelled on my own and only had myself to rely on. All those people that had tried to break me and made me feel negatively toward myself are in fact the weak people, I came to realise. They don’t know any other way to behave, as a respectful adult, than to make others feel like shit. They chip away at you slowly, comment by comment, action by shitty action. They want others to feel as shitty as they do. It’s a reflection on them and in fact, has nothing to do with me. I let them do it for a while, but no more.

Everything happens for a reason, right?! I found myself in the spiritual centre of Bali, re-evaluating everything about myself, my core, my passions, who I want to be as a person, as a friend, as a family member and as a decent human being. I found the strength to start exploring these emotions and thoughts. I found the strength to cut myself some slack, I’m human after all and not perfect, I make mistakes like everyone. I found the strength to forgive the people that picked me apart and tried to break me, they’re not taking up any more space in my head. I need to live a happy and positive life and be rid of these negative thoughts and emotions, once and for all.

Most people are scared to be alone, to explore who they are, why they behave the way they do. Everyone is walking their own path in their own time, but it’s an exercise that everyone should explore. It can be confronting and scary but it’s so worth it. The real challenge then comes once you acknowledge all these behaviours, patterns and feelings, to then change them to become the best version of yourself and live a positive, fulfilling life

I realised a lot about myself in Ubud, I was there when I needed to be, to start down a new path, where I needed to be to start exploring my real passions, where I needed to be to start living a new life.

Even with all the self-reflection and work I started to do on myself in Bali and am continuing to do, posting this scares the shit out of me. It’s my deepest inner thoughts, good, bad, ugly and empowering laid bare for the world to see and to judge me on, BUT it’s part of the process…..

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