ten-to-six-blog

[ten-to-six-blog]

As the leaves fall, we greet Autumn

London does this magical thing many times a year. The sun adjusts in the day, the temperature drops, and the colours change. My most favourite time, effortlessly called Autumn. The leaves crisp up, they fall and velvety contrast against the grass, and they symbolise change. Change that the summer heat is long behind us. Change that the nights get colder, and longer and the days get foggier. Change that the world is moving into a new season, and with that, three months of the last season have been and gone. 

September and October have shown me the best and worst of myself. I have seen my highest highs so far here in London, broken down with the lowest lows I’ve had. I’m reminding myself that everyday is an adventure. I am on the hunt to find all the good that I can while I'm here. But it wasn't until last week that I learnt that, life isn't as we always seem it to be. October taught me to be stronger and smarter. I was (/am) very naive about a lot of things. I am very trusting to the wrong people. My inability to accept myself for who I am, leaves me relying on peers for self assurance and acceptance. I blossom and devote myself to the people that shower me with gold stars, but in hindsight I've noticed they were just brass stones. Almost as rusty as the autumn leaves.  I learnt that I don't need to give attention to everyone who gives it to me. I keep rewriting a summary of events, because I almost don't want to admit that they have happened. I brushed off this one event, a little out of humiliation, a little because I lost my brother a week after all this ended, but mostly because I was hurt. I was determined not to show anyone that I had let someone get to me. But to me is was something. So here's the edited summary version - 

Earlier, much much earlier this year, I met a guy, we can just call him Guy. And even in this moment I can remember exactly what I was wearing, where I was, what we were doing, absolutely everything, because I knew in that moment, the world shifted a little bit. He was a childhood friend of my best friends. They all went to school together and as he was living in London, we already had something in common. But as we are on the digital age, of course I hadn’t met him in person, just snapchat (like thats much better). Actually it goes a little further back then that. 

It was in late January, an Instagram stalk and add, followed in March by a Facebook add, all began in April with a snapchat add. April and one Guy half way across the world to drop a stone in the ocean. For three months, we talked endlessly, everyday, the ins and outs of life here and there, counting down the days until we would meet. What everyone tells you, is when it feels right, just to trust and let it all go. Run head first and enjoy the ride (and all other cliches). But in contradiction, they always emphasis to trust your gut. Trust Your Gut ladies. Your gut is your subconscious making a decision on a situation. My gut said, hold off and wait until all his travels are done, but my head (and every other sweet nothing I had been told) screamed to trust him and see what will happen. My gut actually said, “you don’t really know how loyal he is and Tomorrowland will be the end”. I told how I was feeling to my girls and they assured that I was being silly. How could someone really spend that much time talking, and waiting for me to move across the world just to chuck them out? 

So Tomorrowland happened. He went away for the weekend and met someone new. Without so much as a genuine explanation, I was sold a story as how he came here to travel and wanted to be single and see the world with his friends. I woke up to Monday, slapped in the face with reality that I wasn't worth the truth. It wasn’t all the sweet nothings he has sold me, it wasn't the plans we had made for that coming week that were just wiped clean, and it wasn't even the humiliation I had just be plastered with by his friends seeing him with someone all over his social media after seeing me there only two days before. It was that I didn't deserve the truth, to be told that he had met someone else and after making his way into my world, which I did not ask for, and convincing me to take a chance on him, which I did. I wasn't worth the truth that I just wasn't what he wanted. He had met someone new and me and my naivety was to ignore that I could see all his photos with her on Facebook. That I could see them all over snapchat. There is a difference between protecting someones feelings, and genuinely being a coward. I have yet to see where his intentions were. 

Lets be clear, I came into this year wanting it for me. I was moving to London. I had my plans and my goals and a relationship wasn’t necessarily what I searched for. For it to all fall into place the way it did with Guy was great, and who wouldn't greet that with open arms? What happened here, took me by surprise. And I guess, we can always go with the flow and see where life takes us, but like I said, my lesson is that I don't always need to give attention to those who give it to me.

He was my best lesson. As they say, people are here for a season or a reason, and as the leaves fall, we greet autumn and salute summers mess and men. 

[ten-to-six-blog]

Your words always mean the world to me. They did then just as much as they do now ❤️ (at London, United Kingdom)

[ten-to-six-blog]

A night out with these crazy cats and their danger swig! Dalston, ya did good kid 🍻 #streetfeast #dangerswig #london (at Street Feast Dalston Yard)

[ten-to-six-blog]

L I F E G O A L ✔️ Bucketlist moment. I made it. I couldn't pick a better moment for my last day on the adventure of a lifetime with my absolute main. Caitlin, you've opened my eyes and changed my world. #wetriedjumpingbutfuckedup #topdecker #egypt #cairo #pyramids #thegreatpyramidofgiza #travel #travelgram (at Great Pyramids of Giza)

[ten-to-six-blog]

Lonely Traveller

I thought that leaving for London the first time was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. But leaving the second time doesn’t even sit on the scale. Farewells are hard. Everyone has their own two cents to add to the party, “it’s not goodbye it’s see you later…”. Well to me that’s a crock of horse poo for $1. It is goodbye. It’s goodbye until there is a next time. And only so recently I’ve learnt that sometimes you don’t always get a next time. I will never get another goodbye with my brother and quite frankly that rips me into pieces that probably won’t fit back together again for a while.

Leaving Wellington this time around caught me by surprise. I can only explain it as I have been faced with the choice to move to London. I haven’t felt the same excitement of new beginnings and adventures that I only experienced two months ago. I always wanted to move to London, but this has really allowed me to chose to go back. It was only easy to sit at home and feel safe and supported by everyone that I could hold close. But you know what they say, “Life begins outside your comfort zone”. Well, let me tell you, I am out of my depth here. I’m currently at Changi airport in Singapore, tired, sore, heartbroken, damaged and fed up with crying children. Only out of envy, because if I had it my way, I’d be sitting next to my parents crying my eyes out too about everything out of my control.

Isn’t it just the funniest thing what life teaches us? In the last few months I have travelled further than I would’ve ever dreamed. I was only on the phone to a girlfriend the other night talking about what life will look like in a year. This time last year I was smitten. I was happy, fit and falling in love (well from what I thought, but look how that turned out - that’s a story for another day). This year I am travelling all over the world. I’ve been to three different airports in Asia (tick that off the list), i’m coping with new challenges no one saw coming, only to CHOSE to move back to London. All I can really think is, what the hell am I doing?

Travelling alone is teaching me how to be confident with my own company. I still don’t enjoy it, but I’m getting there. It is teaching me how to adopt new cultures, even if it’s for a few hours in transit. It is allowing me to make new friends all over the world. It’s showing me that there is so much more to the world, and that home will always be there. To my Topdeckers, if you ever read this, please know that you are the world to me. The love you have shown me over these last weeks is something I couldn’t even imagine. A story I will keep forever and share as I travel all over the world. To my girls, you are my anchor. You all keep me grounded in rough seas, and you’ve shown me that when the time comes you know when I need to lift the anchor and keep sailing. Caitlin, you are the greatest gift in my life. I’ll see you soon girl, and that I mean.

Mary Anne Radmacher once said “I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world”. And to me that is quite true. I am not the same. Coming home has allowed me to see that the other side of the world is teaching me more than being home ever will. I am not the same. Each day I am away I am growing and changing, I’m learning and I truly am living. But it is lonely. It’s moments like this, right now, on my own in Singapore, I wish I had someone. Someone who actually wants to stick it out for the long run. I wish I were travelling under different circumstances, that possibly I was at Changi airport to see Singapore with someone beside me. Maybe next time I’m back here, I’ll have that? But for now I know there are other things in store. I’ll learn to be a happy lonely traveller one day. Not today, but one day.

[ten-to-six-blog]

Old mate Mark nailed it

Mark Twain wrote, “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones that you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbour. Catch the winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” He couldn’t be more correct. I heard this quote once twice before I left for my travels. I can’t say I really thought more about it at the time. But I read it again, in a card I was recently given, and it is very accurate. The decisions I make today culture and shape my future more than I am aware. 

Venturing further than Wellington has always been a goal of mine. Well really I’m in for the Big Apple (thats November 2017), but going after the Big Smoke has been just as incredible. Travelling Europe was always something I wanted to do, but moving to London was the surprise. It all came about after my relationship ended. I had finished university and my job was soon to be redundant, so why not? I once heard that, not having a reason to stay, is a good enough reason to always go. Travelling Europe in summer would be amazing, but travelling Europe in summer with my crazy hoot of a girlfriend = PRICELESS. 

39 days, 8 countries, 63 new friends and an empty bank account later, I have the bug. Where did I go?

London > Barcelona > Nice > Monaco > Verona > Venice > Pisa > Florence > Rome > Vatican City > Athens > Mykonos > back to Athens > and back to Mykonos > Paros > Santorini > Athens again incase I missed it the first time > Cairo > Aswan > Luxor > back to Cairo > and home to London.  

The trip of a life time i’ll say. Or according to everyone on Topdeck, What a time to be alive. Old Mate Mark, ya nailed it. 

[ten-to-six-blog]

London called, but Wellington was on the other line...

There really are no words to even describe what has hit us this month. It is fair to compare it to a hideously cruel joke of a nightmare, the life I am living at the moment. 

London pushed my limits and put me through my paces. But living on the other side of the world with a death in the family completely changed me. Just to write those five letters fills my eyes with all the pain I can not write. I lost my brother this month. A little over two weeks ago. And everyday since has been a marathon for our entire family.

This was never in the list of conditions I agreed on when I said I would ever come home. Mostly, because it’s not one any of us saw coming. The shock and pain of James’s passing has rocked our family, and has left me blindsided. I feel like it’s a dream. As if I’ve just woken up from a dream of a holiday across Europe, off to Barcelona to meet Caitlin. Im living in London, meeting new people and making friends. I’m working and having the young life I worked for and its all ahead of me. And really it still is, but it’s as if there is a black smudge in the middle of my dream. Everywhere I turn my head, it clouds the picture and obscures the outcome. And as I come around to waking each morning, I realise where I am, and that I’m not dreaming. 

I don’t know where I am going from here. I know my life is in London. At least for the next year I have that. But the longer I stay in Wellington, the harder it is to leave. I am really tortured with the option to stay in safe Wellington with my family and friends. To find all the joys that make me happy and settle down my life here. Or to chose, once again to leave. It is my choice to go back to London and start life again, and to make the most of it. I know its cliche to say that James would want that for me. He was always on board for all of us to travel the world. But I just don’t know if I really can do it this time.

So after such an eventful start to get me to London, I almost feel cheated out of this year. Everyone is telling me, “everything happens for a reason” and “to keep my chin up, it will come around”, but you know, I just can’t validate that this time. I can’t see the lesson in this. I can’t understand what was supposed to come out of all of this. And maybe I won’t until I have time to really reflect. But for now, I am struggling. I’d really rather just hang up the phone altogether. 

[ten-to-six-blog]

London's sort of not Calling

It is one of the most distressing sentences to ever write, but as of June 1st, I am still in NZ. At this current moment, my passport is lost somewhere between Manila, Philippines and Auckland Airport (and that’s being hopeful).

I can’t say I’m feeling overly positive about this news. In all honesty, I’m absolutely miserable. I haven’t been more devastated to be missing out on an adventure of a lifetime. The constant stress and changing season in Wellington has left me run down, over exhausted and unwell. My splitting mood from being exhilarated and anxious to a plummeting heartbroken and dumbfounded with shock has left me worn and haggard. I’d managed to pack all my bags besides the two under my puffy eyes.

I can only result my utter shock to the prep work I had done just to move over in the first place. I had mentally prepared myself for a change of scenery across the world. I had amped myself up say my “see you soon’s”. I had worked two jobs and saved everything to fund this decision. And at 4.56am I’m in bed, wide awake, writing of an adventure that I most probably won’t have, while simultaneously holding a minuet sliver of hope that one day I’ll be in London.

Many people around me have echoed how “everything happens for a reason” and for some god-forsaken-reason I am still here and I can’t see why. One day I’m sure I’ll see the bigger picture. It’s all about perspective right? But for now, I don’t think it’s insensitive for me to say that I am terribly jealous and sick with envy that I’m not in Europe. I read a quote recently that said,

“Jealousy isn’t the core of love, but of fear. It’s the fear of what could have been”.

I’ll be sure to keep everyone in touch with what happens next. 

[ten-to-six-blog]

ten to six

Hello everyone,

I’ve been bothered to make a blog to document all of my adventures, so here’s the start of one.

I’d like to call this, day one. It’s actually the Tuesday before I’ve even left, so it’s like a pre day 5, on the countdown to London, and all the other little adventures I’ll have in between and there after.

Ten to six has come about with my move from Wellington (10) to London (6). I can’t wait to explore everything that is in store for me.

Stay tuned as London is calling 🇬🇧

Chanel x