Penny for your thoughts.

'Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.'

Jack Kerouac 

I am two sides of a coin, in that one side of me desperately wants to see the world and the other is a person who aspires to owning dogs, growing vegetables and having a place to call her own. 

This juxtaposition is a constant state of inertia for me and has spearheaded most of my major life decisions. Recently a work colleague described me as a nomad and could imagine that I'll be living out of a suitcase, but then she said that she saw a side of me which seemed to really want to settle. How on earth does a nomad and a homebody become bed fellows? 

My desire to travel dominates most of my waking thoughts and has been the massive white elephant in the room when its come to the deterioration of my relationships (whether that was me wanting to travel or him). What is it about the adventure of the unknown which draws me like a moth to the flame?

Because this is the ironic thing, when I'm travelling all I really think about is setting up shop, having a dog and living a very simplistic kind of life. 

So what of the seeking?? 

2013 has been the year of home, for the first time in a long while I haven't been out of the country for extended periods, this both pleases and unnerves me all at the same time. I see the immediate future as the 'treading water years' both literally (here's hoping for surf) and metaphorically in that all being well I'll be enrolled on a university degree which will require three years of stoicism. Where I decided to do this degree does however offer up some form of travel I could do it in Birmingham or head to the coast. 

I hear you, I hear you!! The coast for a surfer if the most obvious choice but its not as simple as that. Birmingham has got under my skin, there are people here who I deeply care about and for the time being a job that I really enjoy. Imagine getting up to go to work with the same feeling of happiness you feel when you realize you have a day off. That's how much I love my job and that my friends is rare, very rare. 

When I first started working in Handsworth a rough suburb of Birmingham (UK) I'm going to be honest I was shitting it. The place has a reputation and the litter, cat calls off men and feeling very conspicuous made me very nervous. Initially I was working as a refugee youth worker there before I embarked on my current job and bit by bit I started to get more comfortable. Handsworth is a really interesting mix of all different kinds of people, the cultures rub up against each other in a shanty town kind of way and I happen to love it. I love that one minute I can pretend I'm in Jamaica and the next Iran, there are amazing Asian bakeries and not forgetting Polish and African shops. There's something vibrant and gritty about Handsworth which makes me love it despite the crime and the rubbish. 

I feel like I'm rambling so allow me to be succinct, this curiosity about either lifestyle, whether that be travel or staying is a constant question which I hypothesize might take me a lifetime to answer. Here's hoping I can try for a little of both and see where that leads me! 

  

Until next time...Stay strong and surf well 




  



Love 
Sophia