In 2015 I ripped the above headline out of a travel brochure. It felt like what I wanted to do at the time, create my own adventure, create my own life, one that aligned closer to who I am, who I want to be, which over the years I had become separated & fenced off from being.
That headline highlighted a significant distinction to me between the two things offered in the brochure – one where the tour is organized for you, predetermined by someone else, & one where you actually figured out for yourself where you wanted to go, what you wanted to experience too, & organized your own adventure around that. BIG DIFFERENCE.
In April 2017, I was prompted by Jessica Swift’s ‘Campfire’ group to write a brief ‘snapshot’ of where I felt my life was at, at that time. I wrote ‘ I’m looking to transform my life into something more ME, like my mother did for herself ’. My mother had died in Nov 2016, & because she had time to reflect on what had been her life, viewed from the fact it was coming to an end for her, she pointed out to us all that there’s no knowing how much time we have to live our life, so please make time for what’s most important to YOU. Nothing else really matters.
After her funeral, it really hit me how long I had postponed living the creative life I longed for. I’d got stuck in living an habitual way of life, not actually living one, but keeping myself in a kind of safety mode, watching others live theirs, & I’d just sit there WISHING for the life I wanted. At the time I simply wasn’t able to step up & face the challenge of changing things, especially the confronting nature of it, having spent so much time & effort putting it off!
The only way I found to reality slap myself into DOING something about it, at the time, was to ask myself this question – ‘ If I was diagnosed with a terminal illness today, what would I regret NOT doing?’
I could think of 2 things immediately. #1, walk the Camino de Santiago, the French pilgrim route, in Spain – the whole thing, 800 plus kilometres. I knew that walk would put me totally out of my comfort zone, & with luck, kick my ass hard enough to help me change my life. #2, was to prioritize creativity in my life – & make it the #1 thing I spent my time doing on a daily basis.
It’s now Dec 2019. I walked 1000km of the Camino de Santiago over 7 weeks in 2018, & it did kick my ass, totally changing me & my life, enabling me to step up – when I got home – & choose not to go back to full time employment, but instead enrol in the Advanced Diploma of Creativity & Art, by distance delivery, & begin making creativity the priority of my life. MAGIC.
I held my solo exhibition in June 2019, also starting this blog & Instagram (vickywalford.kiwi.nz) on my newly created online artist website Currently I work part time in the evenings, & spend my day creating / making, keeping the promise I made to make creativity the #1 thing I do everyday for the rest of my life.
Folks – that’s 5 years accumulated intentional action that has only NOW resulted in me actually living my own adventure!!
There was no plan to achieve it in 5 years, nor any predetermined ‘how to’ involved, I just let it evolve from taking a single step each day, paying attention to just that day. Seems I learnt a lot from that Camino walk for 7 weeks!
Forget next week, or next year, just put one foot in front of the other each day, & enjoy the daily journey, for despite the hard work of walking the Camino de Santiago, when I did ‘get there’, I felt so excited – at first – but then there was a lot of sadness that the journey was finished. And surprisingly, I couldn’t wait to get home & start my new life journey. Seems I had accidentally discovered the daily stepping is where the actual magic of my life is! If I attend to the little daily choices, those big things just naturally evolve & take care of themselves :o)
Vicky xxx
