One way mirror

Sometime last summer, I broke the news to a few friends and described this thing I was about to do as “something that will start with a one way flight to Thailand, and end up somewhere around Japan, next summer”. This is all the context I was able to provide. I didn’t have a specific reason, project or goal. I didn’t have a “why”. I just felt like doing it.

There are some things that I knew before leaving, that I was able to confirm, or reinforce, as I travelled.

One of the few things I knew for sure is that I didn’t like what I was doing anymore. I didn’t like what my life was looking like, and where it was heading to. I couldn’t keep going the same way and needed a break, or a reset. It’s a feeling that can’t really be fixed with a two-week holiday, and it’s the best “because” I had, back then.

There are millions of different ways to address this feeling, but the only solution I could think of was to just go somewhere else. I knew that I wanted to travel to Asia for an extended period of time. If you asked me at any point in the past years, this is probably the answer I would have given you. I’ve been here in the past, and have always had this itch for a while. I therefore had a few expectations, but didn’t expect to see so many things great landscapes and meet so many great people.

I also knew how fortunate I was to be able to afford leaving everything behind and travel for a year, but really felt guilty about it, at the very beginning of my trip. I felt like I didn’t deserve it, or that I needed a better excuse or justification for doing such a thing. I learned to deal with this feeling, and slowly understood that I didn’t need to justify what I was doing, to anyone.

There are some other things I knew I didn’t know.

I didn’t know what it would be like to be away from home for such a long time. With most of my previous travels never lasting for more than two or three weeks, I was throwing myself into something completely different. It’s something that I didn’t know, but was curious to explore.

The way I now see it is that time matters more than distance, when it comes to leaving your comfort zone. Where you go almost doesn’t really matter as much as the amount of time you actually spend somewhere. I could enjoy spending a week anywhere on the other side of the world, but would probably feel a bigger change if I just spent a month in a different neighbourhood in my own city.

I wasn’t sure if I could manage to do it with so few possessions, and learned that it’s actually much easier than I thought. I’ve been back for about a week and still haven’t opened any of the storage boxes I closed before leaving. I now see everything that I didn’t carry with me as a nice-to-have, more than something essential. As a result, I’ll probably start decluttering my place for the second time very soon. The first time I seriously did it was two years ago, when I roughly halved my belongings before moving into this apartment. I feel like I could do that again.

And there are some other things I just didn’t know.

I didn’t know I missed writing. There’s a parallel universe in which I would have gone on this trip without sharing anything, with anyone. One year off the radar, just on my own. There’s also another parallel universe where I create travel videos to share my experience (I was very close to start a youtube channel, at some point. Maybe a story for another time), but it just didn’t feel right. Other social media platforms didn’t feel right either. So I decided to use this opportunity to get back to writing. I say get back, because it’s something I used to do much more often, a long time ago. Until I started writing these newsletters to you, I didn’t know I missed writing.

I didn’t know I missed learning. It’s something I only got to learn in the second half of my trip, when I started learning korean, then japanese, on my own. It felt like reactivating a part of my brain that got deactivated a long time ago. I realised that I haven’t been actively learning anything for years. I got to learn few things while doing my job, but this never felt like actively learning something. Learning is now the single thing that has a fixed block of time, on my mostly empty calendar.

I didn’t know how to be kind to myself anymore. By default, I’ve fallen back to material and physical possessions, when it came to treating myself. I got myself a few nice things here and there over the past few years, but they were just not it. After some time, they stopped having the effect I thought they would have. I found out that being kind to myself means allowing myself to slow down. From here, everything else falls into place and starts making sense. This time off is the best gift I’ve ever given to myself.

In some way, this whole year has been nothing but a one way mirror, in disguise. At first, you start by spending your entire time just focusing on and looking at the outside world through a window, and what you see is just really nice. But once your eyes get used to what’s outside, and when you let your mind drift a little, you sometimes end up catching your own reflection.

What do I see when I catch my own reflection? I see someone in a healthier mental state than the same time last year. I see someone a little more in touch with his emotions. I see someone comfortable with not having found all the answers he wanted. I see someone a little more optimistic about life, in general. I see someone who knows a little more about himself.

The last thing I know is that there are many other learnings that I’ll only get much later, and the good thing is that I’m not in a rush. I’ll get them whenever the time is right, after the right events and the right conversations with the right people. I can’t really plan for any of these things, but I know they will happen.

At last, I would like to thank each and everyone of you for letting me slide into your inbox, and for visiting this small corner of the internet to read these newsletters. It’s been a pleasure sharing my thoughts with you, and it probably helped me more than you think it did.

- Fred

(If you have a minute to spare, I would love to get your feedback on what you’re taking away from what you’ve read. Feel free to do it in the comments, privately by email, or in person one of these days. Just hit me up for a coffee ☕️)