Hello 2019; Goodbye 2018

At this time of year I’m reflecting on the year that has just closed and setting goals for the year ahead.  We find ourselves at a cross-roads again, waiting to see what will come next for us. Although we’ve been here before, and we know that it does work out eventually it is challenging to sit with the uncertainty now.  A friend reminded me in a New Year tweet that every year has its good things happen and bad things happen, even when our social media bubble leads us to believe that everyone else lives in a world where only good things happen.

We continue to live purposefully, focused on family and friends, love and laughter, good health and fitness and meaningful work.  We’ve made sure we spend time with those we love, including a family holiday with Moira’s children and their partners in Rarotonga to celebrate a significant birthday. Not to mention – moving to Christchurch to be closer to Ross’ family.  

We’ve also made excellent progress on our health goals, as we both feel fitter and more toner than ever before in our lives.  We spend a lot of time in NZ’s beautiful outdoors which is good for our mental health as well as our physical health.  We love to explore places, both familiar and unfamiliar,.  Since a third of New Zealand is in National Park, tramping boots or an off-road bicycle are great assets when it comes to exploring.

It’s the third of our priorities -interesting and worthwhile work which has delivered challenges in 2018. Various people with better knowledge of recruitment than me tell me that it is quite common for the job search to take a year.  I really hope not.  In the meantime, I’m learning a lot through the process and using the time to reflect and refine my CV and career goals and to think about preparing for the next stage of my worklife.

I’ve had two important coping mechanisms.  One is exploring New Zealand purposefully – as one friend put it – behaving like a tourist in our own land.  We do find ourselves approaching the task of exploring seriously – planning a schedule, doing a major walk or cycle ride every day unless the weather is truly awful, digesting what we have seen and recording our impressions in photographs and words.  In 2018 we’ve explored the Coromandel by bicycle, toured Northland, and then spent 6 weeks mostly on cycle trails as we made our way south from Auckland en-route to Christchurch.  In the South Island we’ve chased the sunshine all the way to Southland to walk the Humpridge Track and then all the way to the northernmost point of the South Island at Farewell Spit to learn about the wildlife there.  Google Maps captured where we’ve been and it shows how much of New Zealand we visited during 2018.

My other coping mechanism is to spend time on creative pursuits.  This year it has mostly been knitting, although I hope to get back to blogging about our travels and creating photo books to help us digest all that we have seen and learnt about our natural environment and history.

We expect 2019 to continue our journey of focusing on love and laughter.  Hopefully with the addition of an interesting job for Moira early in 2019.  And just as much exploring and creativity as possible.

Living a better life

Our determination to live better dates back to around the time my mother died.  During the reflective time after her death, a friend asked whether I had unresolved dreams for things to do with my mother which we hadn’t been able to achieve. Although the answer to that question was no, Ross and I identified that we had many unrealised aspirations to do things together.  We set about changing that, particularly in relation to travel - to see family and to explore places – in conjunction with work trips and just for pleasure.

By 2011 our aspirations had evolved further: we wanted to be able to respond to the interesting opportunities that were being presented to us, we wanted more love, laughter and adventures in our days – to spend more time with family and friends, more time in the sunshine being active and we wanted to do good work.  We wanted to be open to adventures, either at home in NZ’s great outdoors or overseas if opportunities presented themselves.  The plan was not to have a plan.

It took some months to divest ourselves of the financial responsibilities of the old life that tied us to corporate jobs and salaries and to achieve a financial position that allowed us to take up work that was worthwhile, interesting, and challenging, but not necessarily well-paid.   We down-sized from our large family home appropriate for raising a family, to a mobile home suitable both for adventures and also as a base in shaky Christchurch where we worked on documenting the impact of the earthquakes in photographs.   

Opportunities to work overseas opened up for me, providing consultancy services to improve research and information services in developing parliaments.  The short-term assignments in Myanmar developed into a longer contract so that Ross joined me there in 2013 where we fell in love with the gentle people and the beauty of the landscapes and temples.   It was an extraordinary opportunity to work in the Myanmar Parliament just at the time when democracy was being established and the people could choose their leadership for the first time in 50 years.

When my contract in Myanmar ended in 2016, the next adventure beckoned us to live in Yorkshire for 6 months helping to run a B&B on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.  We loved both the work and the opportunity to walk or cycle almost every day exploring the glorious landscapes of the Dales.  

By the end of 2016 it was time to head home to New Zealand.  While I was sorting out what came next for work we began our South Island Odyssey  through the south of the South Island, cycling every NZ Cycle Trail and walking the Rakiura Track in Stewart Island. 

What came next for work, was a role in Auckland, which allowed us to explore a region that we didn’t know well.  We particularly loved the coast and the estuaries, as well as the volcanoes and the forests, so we spent our weekends and holidays exploring.  

Now that the time has come for us to leave Auckland, we are undertaking a North Island Odyssey, with the intention of cycling most of the NZ Cycle Trails in the North Island and walking another of the Great Walks - Lake Waikaremoana.