When life hands you lemons and you hate lemonade!

This week was to be the start of our big adventure! The one we had spent the last 2 years working towards, positioning our life around being portable, able to work from anywhere.

‍

Where we had moved out of our rental and were heading off overseas for 5 months of travel and working around Europe.

‍

Yeah nah that’s not happening anytime soon and yes I am very sad and very grateful. Grateful this global pandemic didn’t hit 3 weeks later when my family would have been in 4 different countries, grateful were able to keep renting the apartment we were due to move out of, grateful for the health and safety of my family.

‍

Turns out all our planning has meant we were more prepared than most to work from home and adapt to change. Other than the great big clanger of not being able to travel, our lives didn’t actually change much. For me already working from home, it’s been business as usual.

‍

We love where we live in Mt Vic, so much to do on our doorstep. Where I could walk my kayak 2 blocks to the ocean, until I couldn’t,  or swim daily in the ocean, until I couldn’t do that either.

‍

Here we sit in our apartment, smug in our adaptability while inexorably our world has been getting smaller and smaller.

‍

All the while the internet is screaming be productive, pivot your business, stay positive,  learn new skills, blah blah blah.  

‍

Sometimes we don’t want to be positive, or productive or pivot. We want to sulk, and stamp and shout. Then we want to do nothing. Just for a while. Just to get some head space and recharge and recuperate.

‍

Like it or not we are all on a challenging journey that we don’t actually know where to. This can be hugely disconcerting and scary.

‍

If we take the time for ourselves, we can, and will, turn that into interest, excitement and action but sometimes it’s OK to be unsettled and unproductive.

‍

Don’t be bullied by media messages or believe social media lives, we are not all making lemonade out of the lemons life has thrown at us these past few weeks.

‍

For me, I hate lemonade. I may get around to making a lemon cake (I do love cake) but not today, maybe next week. I am planning to get out my cross stitch when I can order more threads and I have an art history online course I bought a year ago that I might start soon. But not today.

‍

Today I had a walk up Mt Vic, will work for a couple of hours, then I have a book to finish and a glass of wine to enjoy and that’s enough for me.

‍

Iona

‍