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An amazing Day for Marriage Equality in all 50 American States!

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I have only followed the news headlines as time has been tight and I couldn’t read more in depth. But the news look good and just as I went to bed to try and catch an early night an hour or so ago a huge firework display was visible from our bedroom window and it was far too exciting to go to sleep without embracing this truly historic moment. All day I had been too busy to really give it a second thought so I am glad that the fireworks got me back out of bed to say :

“CONGRATULATION!!” to all who for too long could not enjoy a basic right that most of us may take for granted. I hope that all the other rights that should be in place but simply are not will catch up.

There probably won’t be a better place than San Francisco this weekend.. The pride march takes place on Sunday and I hope that I can get a good view and meet some people, too!

I hear that amidst the celebrations of this amazing ruling some darker decisions about the Transatlantic Trade Agreements took place, they took place in a way that will not serve us. I think some of all this is so big that it is hard to keep up with how huge the negative implications can be. I hope that I can make time this week to read the newspaper and learn more.

Housesitting in San Francisco : View from Bernal Heights today

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View of San Francisco (Mission Street in the centre) from Bernal Heights Hill, San Francisco

We are housesitting in San Francisco. The way this works is that we got connected with a family who went to visit family on the East Coast and needed somebody (us) to look after their cat, dog, home and plants during their absence. In exchange for our reliable housesitting duties we stay here free of charge. It is a fair exchange of our time for accommodation. We added up the time that we spend caring for the pets and if you paid somebody the hours that we put in then that person could pay rent on a pretty decent place to live.

So while I regularly see the headline ‘how to travel for free & housesitting” in the same sentence on the internet it is not really ‘free’. It requires commitment and time that often can clash with other activities that you might prefer to engage in. For me for example it generally means that I can not go out and explore the city as freely as I naturally would because the dog needs attention every few hours (which is after all what we are here for pet-happiness). It isn’t our call to change the way the owner might take care of their pets nor to neglect the pets to prioritise our schedules and activities.

So I really would not say this is free. The priority is the job that the house-sitter(s) accept and that can clash with ideas and plans for the week. Accepting the care of somebody else’s pets is much like childminding. It really is responsibility and to us it is really important that we live up the promises we made and expectations placed on us.

How do you get a house-sitting job? There are more ways than signing up with http://www.trustedhousesitters.com – we haven’t signed with them and found our opportunities through other channels. Get creative if housesitting is for you (and have excellent character references and perfect manners, too)…

San Francisco Dreamers? Meeting Diamond Dave

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Yesterday I walked past Pigeon palace, a building occupied by long term, rent control enjoying tenants, who are now threatened with eviction as the city’s building and construction boom is in full throttle over drive due to the seemingly unstoppable influx in Silicone Valley employees pressing on the local market.

Really it is an issue that the entire world has some shared responsibility in. After all Silicone Valley provides the ‘toys’ that the entire world plays with on a daily if not hourly basis..

Day 3 in San Francisco 2015

suggestions on how to find more meaning in life and on journeys

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– keep a diary and look away from any screens

– learn a local skill or language

– are you bragging or are you sharing? I mean: are you just consuming the landscape, the culture or are you participating and can you feel the difference?

– What can you learn that you have not read in any guidebook and that therefor you can not tick off of a list that offers 10 stages to travel satisfaction. Is travel a supermarket to you or an opportunity to create something meaningful for yourself, those whom you meet and those at home whom you will share your experiences with..?

Surrounded by teachers in Northern Thailand

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Suddenly I find myself surrounded by teachers. (I trust you know how hard it is to find them when you are looking for a single one… now I need almost a whole hand to count the sudden influx). It never rains but it pours, right? And each one feels like a relationship of trust.

{You know the stories of how I started 3 different postgraduate degrees and ditched two because the teachers just weren’t right.. Or how I rotated through a set of driving instructors until I found THE one that fit like a glove? All the while hearing friends tell me that I am either and or fussy. Discerning guys, it’s called discerning and not paying any old ‘quack’ .. What a cool word! But I didn’t mean it as mean as quack might sound. It just was so snazzy and snappy to use.. }

Also in other news: Thanks to Nephyr from the Naga Thai Massage Center I learnt that my website is full of errors. I have a lot to learn it appears. Blushing lightly t my ignorance that I thought was knowledge of sorts.. It seems that if you study long enough and look around enough you always end up finding out just how little you know.. Yay, back to the start line, it’s like the board game: ‘Snakes and Ladders’..

Sometimes it’s the little things that make the day good..

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It’s a good day when after a seriously sleep-disrupted night I find that the market vendor left the seeds in the jackfruit. Finally! I’ve been trying to get my hands on Jackfruit seeds for way to long.

Sometimes it’s the little things that make the day good..

It was a really quiet day even if the following really doesn’t sound like it:

My teachers at Massage school distributed serious kindness, meant it and then revealed my bicycle that I had left here 2 years ago! Got to love them! I got to help translate/correct some stuff and felt way better about getting free classes after that. (yes, that’s right. No charge because that’s the style. And also the only way I could be here in the first place.)

After a week here I finally visited my favourite cafe with garden and a fish pond with giant goldfish (I mean GIANT), it is way out of budget for this journey but that’s ok. I’m here to learn and hopefully photograph. Anyhow they remembered me and I got a warm, personal, welcome. I am massively impressed, how did that happen?!

Bonus: today nobody monologued at me about angry issues nor about how they enjoy the local sex options. (yes, people do that to me, frequently ! — why??? Don’t they realise I half wrote a dissertation about the commodification of humans.. – before it got to much and I swapped subjects.)

Right now I can only say it was a quietly good day at last!

And yay, jackfruit seeds! (they can be boiled and I hear they are lovely to eat)

“ohhhhh !!!!!!! this is terrifying and exciting in equal doses! “

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Terrifying it is – incredibly. I am departing with not a lot of money. Not a lot at all.. It looks like I have money for immigration purposes but once you take into account my bills there is a lot less than zero in my life…

Jason will help while I will arrive empty handed really.. I am to some extent purposely putting myself into this position I live in the illusion that I can force myself out of my shell, to jump over the shadows of shyness and to finally crawl out of the chrysalis that I have barricaded myself behind.. Is it wing speeding time or will I flap like a fish on land… even they eventually figured it out… I just hope I am like the fish who figured it out, not like the last one before the fish who figured it out and who instead perished..

Witness me jumping into a very deep dark unknown. You will no doubt find out what happened next. (credit card power sufficient to get me home into the cradle of debt – when I put it like this then I don’t see what could be worse being away, can you?)

Last full week before departure

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I can’t exactly believe that I am really off, with so little money in my pocket and so little self belief.. But it might be what I need to prompt my confidence to finally sprout and grow. Somehow I feel like I have been so slow at growing in general, it took so long to realise so many basics of life..

Today I will start on the admin that necessarily needs to be prepared for any long journey. I also will take a trip to the charity shop and see if they would like to take all of my things off me.

I also am running behind with my studies at my Thai theory Course and need to take that more serious and not miss this opportunity to learn.

Friends in trouble & letting go of the past

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Just as I am getting ready to depart and have started my first trial packing of the smaller of 3 suitcases options I hear the news that two friends of mine really could use my support here as their new year began with seismic shifts of their life’s tectonic plates.. And everything is looking uncertain, new and possibly heartbreaking. I feel so guilty for following my life path which takes me geographically and by default also spiritually away to a far away continent.

Trial packing went reasonably well, I learnt that a large bag of my favourite clothes will not even nearly fit me anymore.. Now that is what spending a year glued to information gathering & accumulating will do to a body.. Something that has to change this year. My personal Yoga practice needs to be put firmly back on the menu of life.

I surprisingly found the resolve to pack all ill fitting, far too small, items into a bag and set it aside to bring along with me to share with my friend’s nieces in Cambodia. They will look so elegant in these clothes whereas I just look overfed and that is not a look I want to go for.. Letting go of these clothes is huge for me. Some are really beautifully tailored shirts, things I am worried I will never be able to replace (if I ever fit in them again). But I tried that approach of: leading decisions with fear, it didn’t serve me.

If I hold onto the past then how can there be space for the future? If I am very honest: my indecision to let things go has strangled me as much as my relationship. the burden that these things have placed on my life has been huge.

2015 New Year’s Resolutions

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I made 2 so far:

1 – ask to be paid for every service I provide. Do not offer anything for nothing. This is in part to get a better response from clients as well as improve my self-value.

2 – lead with optimism not fear. This relates to my financial reality, stop beginning every conversation with how precarious my financial status is, how I earned not quite 50% of what I need to cover my minimum costs. Instead be optimistic and trust that people will also want to support me if I am not presenting financial fears..

3 – get on the Yoga mat 3 times a week because it makes me feel great

4 – invest in thai language lessons in Thailand. Because going on souvenir hunts or spending money snacking on surplus snackables will probably cost almost as much as language lessons while not giving me an in-depth view of the place I am in the way language can.

5 – be courageous and create opportunities for myself, find 2 customers per week to book me for a photo shoot. It doesn’t matter if it is a big one or a casual one. But get paid. No free work for anybody, anywhere.

6 – Create more drawings of birds and sheep, people enjoyed them. I think I can sell more. Also portrait drawings. In January fill a sketchbook with practice drawings. After that suggest to people that they could buy the drawings.

7 – live in a van in California and make it work. Pay my credit cards off by October 2015.

8 – take time to myself, away from a computer, make room for reflection and stillness.

9 – work on my project “39 Ways” , on my academic plans, on the Finland project, apply for grants this year and don’t give up so easily and apply for residencies and keep trying.

10 – find a way to define myself in one sentence.