emabromleyBy the time I arrived at my first destination in Europe, I was exhausted! I hadn’t slept at all, the night prior to leaving Nottingham, and I can’t even begin to describe the amount of time and effort it had taken to prepare for my trip. It must have been at least three months of work. You would have thought I was leaving the country for good, and I suppose, in a way, that was how I was approaching it.
Part of my reasons for taking this trip was to be able to to expand my ideas of what was possible for my life. Which included the concept that I might not return to the UK, at least not to live. As a result, the preparation for my trip became something of a mini life audit. In fact, it turned out to be a process one that I would highly recommend.
I surmised that if there was even the slightest outside chance that I wasn’t coming back to live in the UK, and I couldn’t take more than a suitcase with me, then everything important had to be become digital.
The time it took to assess, sort, scan and backup all of my documents (work and personal), financial paperwork, five Moleskine notebooks (containing thirty years of notes), five years worth of sketchbooks, all of my videos and photos etc. to both of my two hard drives as well as a cloud storage service (which I had only recently purchased), must have taken at least a month.
This was particularly important because I only had one laptop which belonged to the university, and so when I gave up my job, I had to return my (their) laptop. Ensuring everything was transferred and safely stored in the cloud, which I could access from anywhere in the world, was paramount.
What I didn’t anticipate was how long uploading everything would take to a fully encrypted cloud storage. A full week! With files uploading all the way through the day and night!
I think this was one of the reasons I completely ran out of time at the end. In the last few hours, before I was due to leave, I found myself throwing things into drawers – all of those last minute items which l hadn’t known what to do with in the big clear out.
I had the spent the summer months going through all my possessions; giving or throwing away everything I believed that I would no longer need for my life ahead. The last two weeks were either spent working, cleaning, meeting up with friends for a final farewells, backing up my data or storing everything I wished to keep either in the loft or the smallest room in my house.
My son and I had agreed that, whilst I was gone, he would take over the running of the house which included paying all the bills. He was just about to turn 19, and as he didn’t wish to go to university, it felt like an opportune time for both of us to gain our independence. Him by staying in the UK and renting out the other rooms in the house to his friends, and me by leaving for a while. However, this led to a whole other level of sorting and storing my things (which I hadn’t anticipated). But it was important that while I was away the house would feel more like their home than mine.
I had no idea how long everything would take and admittedly underestimated the scope of the task, but I am very glad I did it. As exhausting as it was, the mini life audit was a cathartic time. It enabled me to spend some time examining the choices I had made – to say goodbye to the child raising period of my life, and move forward, safe in the knowledge that I was as prepared as I possibly could be, for the next chapter.
