Good, Good Life: A Reminder.
I'm turning 35 in less than a week. Ten years ago, I wrote a post on my old Wordpress site about the best year of my life and the wisdom I collected. No better time than now to take back my optimism.
Some context and shout-outs: After hanging up my backpack at the end of 2018 and settling in for an “inevitably” less nomadic life (or so I thought), I stupidly deleted my old travel blog — thinking I had no further use for it — without backing up any of my posts…and regretted doing so ever since. Four years later, my miracle-working, shaman wizard friend Troy Backus (seas of endless gratitude for you!) casually mentioned the existence of a non-profit organisation called the Wayback Machine: an archive of just about every webpage that has ever existed. Things were kinda crumbling in my little world and I needed a pick-me-up, so I tentatively — hardly daring to believe I might be so lucky — went searching for my once-beloved Wordpress site.
Astonishingly, all but seven of my old posts (about 75 in total) had been preserved in their most basic form. (My images sadly didn’t withstand the test of time and web rot. But hey, we can’t have it all at once.) I spent the next two days joystakingly copying down every last remaining word and getting back inside my retro-headspace. With some hesitance, I’ll admit, thinking I might read stuff that made me cringe…to my complete surprise, I discovered nothing but life lessons and a tone of experience-emboldened, carefree optimism and genuine humour I really needed to hear at that time. I honestly cried and laughed myself onto the floor multiple times, in awe of how wildly well-placed these little synchronicities from the Universe can be, and how blessed I was to have my own wisdom gifted back to me like a reverse time capsule.
Moral of the story, kids: Write your thoughts down as often as possible; back them up frequently. You never know when they might come in handy — or when you might be able to turn them into a quick ‘n’ cheeky Substack post while labouring over a much bigger book serialisation (and taking about as long as the polar ice caps took to form). While this post is mostly for me — during something of a numb, pessimistic, adrenal fatigue-y episode that calls for a refresher of just how wonderful life can be — I’m sharing now in hope that maybe there is something in here you’ll find wonderful too. Enjoy! Thoughts and comments, as always, are welcome.
GOOD, GOOD LIFE.
(December 31st, 2014.)
So…here we go. The post I’ve been meaning to write for months. Settle in — it’s going to be a monster of a thing.
The best year of my life. Where to begin?
I’ve mentioned in the past that I find it harder to write about the good stuff in my life than the bad. The things that make me blissfully happy as opposed to angry. Anger is easy — it doesn’t often demand much intelligence, or insight, or self-control. That said, there’s still a lot of pressure to overwrite all the negative that’s happened over the course of the past twelve months (especially at this time of year) with words alone.
You’ll have to trust me on this: there have been many, many, many moments throughout 2014 in which I’ve felt so happy I could have burst out laughing out of context, or let salty tears of joy mingle with my smile.
So let’s get the shred of negative out of the way now, before I get carried away. 2014 did get off to a shitty start, indeed. You might remember my endless whining about Hanoi (okay, perhaps it was brief in my blog posts, but it seemed endless in my head) — the grey, cold, wet1, hostile city in Vietnam in which I never got any sleep (due to the house being practically shook by the noise of my eccentric, boisterous artist housemates), and the only good thing that happened there was learning to ride a scooter in the utterly mental Hanoian traffic — hot damn, that was fun, although quite possibly life-threatening.
Caving to my flight response, I booked a plane ticket back home in May to fling my melancholic self at my family again; but not before paying another visit to one of my favourite places in the world: Kailash Akhara2 in northeastern Thailand. The place I go to reset, where everything that was bad and scary and saddening is made suddenly okay again.
A few days after arriving, I met someone3.
He was not a likely-looking person who would, in mere weeks, completely change the way I think about nearly everything — though I don’t really know what such a person would look like. He had wild, blonde hair full of ringlets and one of the softest pairs of eyes I’ve ever seen, and wore a near-permanent goofy grin. We got to talking a few minutes after he arrived, and didn’t really stop until 1am the following day. Well, shit, we didn’t really stop talking for weeks. I hadn’t encountered someone in quite a long time with whom I could talk to like that.
I resisted his influence at first. I circled the property early each morning and at sundown, past the worm shed and fruit gardens and chicken coops and clay houses and the lake, mulling things over, agonising, wondering why this person had come into my life and was making me face up to yet more emotional stuff after just escaping from months of stupid emotional stuff. I lay awake some nights, calming myself with music, shifting out into the night air and staring up at the moon on occasion.
So emotively indulgent, it all was. I could practically hear the violin sounds wafting over the meditation huts.
In the end, I decided to stop being such a baby about it, accept what was being shown to me, and go with the flow. I was at a yoga retreat, after all. And with that, the rest of my year seemed to unfurl before me, like the damn Nile with its smooth straights and exhilarating, terrifying, tit-hardening rapids.
All I had to do was grab my paddle, steel myself against the oncoming waves, hold the fuck on, try not to drown, and laugh like hell when I came out the other side unscathed.
Which I did. Oh my god, how I laughed like hell this year. Saved myself from drowning a few times, too, for that matter.
Throughout this mad whitewater rafting ride (because I still refuse to use the phrase “rollercoaster”4), I picked up some valuable lessons. Most were ones I’d learned before, mind you, but had never been explained or demonstrated to me in a way that stuck. One or two, however, truly caught me by surprise, and changed the way I view and react to people, and to life.
Twelve lessons learned (willingly or not) over the course of twelve months; a synopsis of the year I finally, after years upon years of trying, gained the power of self-respect, and stopped being such a flappable stresshead all the time.
I hope these truth nuggets might help you out as much as they did me.
Lesson one: The reactions of other people have got nothing to do with me.
This, right here, is one of the big ones — quite possibly the biggest. I had never, ever considered this before, and the force of learning it damn near caused my brains to blow out my ears.
Think of the last thing someone said that rubbed you the wrong way…what were your thoughts? Something along the lines of “What did I do wrong?” Well, I can guarantee you that in almost every single case, the answer will be nothing. Truthfully.
The reactions of other people have got nothing to do with me, or you.
If, by chance, you did do something that directly offended another human being, know that it’s likely been taken the wrong way because of something else that’s happened in that person’s life. It may have nothing to do with what they’re actually heating up about. How other people choose to respond to you is their prerogative, and their problem. Don’t make it yours, too.
(But, y’know, don’t go around acting like a twat for no good reason, either).
Lesson two: There is beauty in imperfection.
I’ve heard variations of this one before. “No one’s perfect”, “You’re brilliant just the way you are”, “Learn to embrace what you have”, etc. etc. That’s all well and good to say, but to mean it is something else entirely. To not only accept, but be okay with, the fact there are things about yourself that will probably never improve or go away, requires self-confidence, and no short supply of it.
My self-esteem was as crap as it’s ever been at the beginning of the year. But in late April, I parted ways from my curly-haired American friend/unintentional mentor with a token5 around my neck that reminds me of imperfect beauty, about finding little quirks and details that people you meet, at first glance, might be trying to hide from you. Looking at it, holding it fills me with the courage I need to stop caring about the criticisms of people who don’t bother to seek those details out.
To quote Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting,
“People call those imperfections. But no, that’s the good stuff.”
Lesson three: Say yes, ask questions later.
In June, I was offered a job in Africa, leading overland tours from Nairobi to Cape Town6. When I first received the news, I screamed out loud with excitement. I WAS GOING TO AFRICAAAAA! But then, I read the rest of the email, and realised they wanted me in Kenya by the end of the month, giving me a whole nine days to buy my plane tickets and all the equipment I needed, pack up my life at home, say goodbye to everyone, and go.
My heart sank. I spent the first day or two after that thinking I’d have to turn down the offer, fearing it would prove too expensive, too sudden, too this and that. My parents were more opportunistic: they simply said, “Don’t be silly. You’re going.” And when I protested, they deflected all my excuses with, “Well, even if it doesn’t work out…you can always come back, and you’ll still have had an incredible life experience.”
Of course, they were right, and so my parents and I spent the following week running around like headless chooks trying to get everything done in time. (And we bloody well did, by the skin of our teeth.) But if I’d walked away from the opportunity, I’d have missed out on what was, hands down, the most rewarding experience of my entire life.
If you’re presented with a chance to do something spectacular, something mad and daring — and your first reaction is to jump around, squeal, tell the world, hug yourself, cry with mirth, whatever — you’re probably meant to go through with it.
Even if it’s terrifying, even if everything goes tits-up afterwards…it was all worth it in the end.
Lesson four: Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.
I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a little kid. I would probably call myself a writer if someone asked me what I did for a living. Yet, aside from blog posts (with, ahem, modest-sized audiences) and the odd freelance piece, I haven’t written a full-length story since I was in my teens. (My ultimate goal is publishing at least one novel.) (2025 update: still is!)
What’s the difference between now and then?
In my early teenage years, I was a big fish in a small pond — or, you know, a halfway-talented writer in a rural Northern Territorian community — and never short of compliments about how I was going places. There was never a doubt in my mind I couldn’t achieve my goals, so I constantly took steps towards them.
Then, I “grew up” and moved to the city…and realised there are rather a lot of talented people out there. To quote Danny DeVito in Big Fish, “This here’s the ocean, and you’re drowning.” But (in contrast to the main character who responds to this sentiment with a polite and actionable fuck you) rather than reading more, learning from others more talented than me, making the most of my cultured new world…I pushed my big dream aside, convinced I’d never make the cut.
This year, however, I finally said fuck you to all my insecurities of the past. Rather than criticising myself, I thought of ways to make the “impossible” work for me. I thought of something that tends to motivate me — literally, food — and incorporated eating into my writing habits (of all things).
Now, I don’t get breakfast until I’ve written 500 words, and I’m making more progress than ever. I write better and quicker the more I write — and now, I’m more sure I’ll have a book of my own on the shelves one day.
It just takes selective ignorance of those who tell you you can’t, and thinking creatively about how you can.
Lesson five: Getting fired really, really sucks…but it’s not as bad as I might have feared.
October 15th, 2014: a date I won’t forget any time soon.
We had just pulled up at a shopping centre in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and I was buying groceries for an overnight train trip. My (overland truck) passengers were about, asking questions regarding what they would need for the trip, where the ATMs and toilets were, and so on. Out of the blue, I got a phone call from our head office. They were pulling me from the tour — despite having said they wouldn’t a mere week and a half before — and I had two days to get everyone to Victoria Falls and hand over to another Tour Leader. They were letting me go…in the middle of Africa…with two days’ notice.
That sucked. Having to get through the next two days like nothing was amiss sucked even harder, especially when I also managed to drop my camera from the top bunk of the train and permanently damage it.
I had some days of moping, sure…but then, I shrugged. I still had my memories — an overwhelming majority of them good; I still had my time in Africa; and I still had another ginormous life experience to check off the list.
Now I’m back home: I realise being fired isn’t necessarily the black mark on your record you expect it to be. It goes against every bit of capitalist ideology I had drilled into me; and yet, people still wanted to hire me. It’s not the end of the world.
(2025 update: I then went on to get fired/let go…three, four? more times at the beginning of 2019. It cut me to my core — and yet still, I continued to be hired! I survived the shame and the anguish and the what-the-fuck-am-I-going-to-do-now-and-what-am-I-even-worth-ness. I just got on with it and kind of forgot about it, and — with the help of my dear, frankly honest friend Abi — eventually realised this was the Universe’s cryptically generous way of redirecting me away from industries and businesses and full-time jobs7 that, honestly, would have wrecked me.
Her words: “Good. You’re shit at hospitality anyway, and that’s great!” And, to quote Don Draper from Mad Men (in much lighter context): “It will shock you how much it never happened.”)
Lesson six: Don’t ever, EVER ask someone for directions to the nearest ATM.
To do so sends a blaring signal that you have no idea where you are in a foreign country, and there’s a chance you might be followed, elaborately tricked, and robbed of your bank card (like I was in Cape Town the day before my flight out). Just refuse help and spend the extra time looking around with false confidence, or simply move to another building.
Lesson seven: Don’t ever, EVER drink banana wine that’s been left to ferment in a boiling hot locker for three weeks.
You will get drunk five times quicker than usual. You will get queasy. You will take refuge in the back of a dusty, sweltering truck and get well acquainted with the floor. You will be discovered by people you don’t want to be discovered by. They will assume you’re a drunkard. You will lose respect.
It’s not worth trying to make the most of the whole two bucks you spent on a six-pack in rural Rwanda.
Lesson eight: Give everyone a chance.
If you’ve got a question, ask everyone within earshot. The most unlikely people will be able to generate the answers. For example, I met a reggae cafe owner in Chitimba, Malawi, who turned out to be practically a scholar on English history and Shakespeare. You never can tell if you don’t ask.
If you meet someone you have a reason for disliking, let them speak their piece. I begrudgingly shared a parting beer with the Tour Leader who took my job, and he actually provided some useful advice for continuing to work on the road, even offered to contact some of his international hospitality friends for me.
If you’ve had a run-in with someone, give the relationship another shot. The Tour Leader on my training trip was often grumpy and frequently took things out on me. I had a hard time liking him, yet persisted. (What choice did I have?) It turned out, he was cracking down on me in an attempt to bring out the “tough biscuits” he suspected I was already made of. So…even if it meant I had to tolerate a little extra anger, at least I finally knew where he was coming from.
Lesson nine: But know that not everyone will like you in the end.
Unfortunately, I got on the wrong side of one of my passengers — and no matter how many times I tried to repair the damage, she wouldn’t have a bar of it. I got called lots of things I’d never been called before — selfish, immature, careless — and she, after recruiting a few more passengers to her cause, saw to it that I ultimately lost the coolest job I ever had.
You can’t please everyone in life. What works for one person will not work for the next — and some people are simply determined to take you down. There’s not always a whole lot you can do about it.
Remember lesson one, and try and put it out of your mind. A handful of nay-sayers are rarely worth the effort.
Lesson ten: Don’t assume, for it makes an ass out of u and me.
I got this handy little saying from another one of my passengers; she’d been through hell and back before coming to Africa, and still proved to be one of the wisest, strongest, and kindest characters I ever had the good fortune to meet.
This one is pretty self-explanatory: pass judgment without certainty or evidence, and you’re an idiot. I made assumptions about locations, facilities, and passenger preferences many, many times while on tour, and always looked like a tosser when proven wrong.
Lesson eleven: For every one asshole who just wants to shit all over everything — know there are nine more people who will help you clean up their mess.
As lesson six implied, some jackass and his cronies from Cape Town decided to nick my bank card in broad daylight, in the middle of a packed shopping mall, and speed off in a parked car outside the building before I could catch them. (And yes: I did indeed chase them when I realised what they had done — probably in my best interests that I didn’t catch them.) I pleaded with the security guard to help me out, but he stared blankly and did nothing. (As another Cape Towner pointed out later, he’s probably not paid enough to put his life in danger for every gullible tourist. Fair, I suppose.)
Alerted by my shouts and copious swearing, a whole swarm of people immediately rushed to my aid. They comforted me, lent me their phones so I could contact my bank, bought me lunch, and even provided spare cash to get to the airport the following day (as I had just blown all mine on gifts for my family). All people I had never met before, mind — yet, they sensed someone in trouble and rushed to help. With their swift support, I cancelled my card and lost nothing except my pride.
Always trust in the goodness of people. Have the heart to help someone else when your turn comes. And take solace in the fact that the douchemops who did you wrong will probably contract syphilis or something.
Lesson twelve: The ability to back yourself is the best gift you can ever give — to you and others.
All that said: You are the best support you will ever receive. Do whatever it takes to achieve self-respect, and you can count on yourself in any situation life throws at you.
I want to take this chance to thank everyone who helped make 2014 such a rollicking good time. (Hopefully you all know who you are.)
Because I will never forget crossing into African soil for the first time, steeling my nerves on a scooter in Vietnam and northeast Thailand, mud wrestling in Phong Nha (Vietnam), hurling buckets of water from the back of a ute during Songkran, every fucking perfect African sunrise and sunset, being thrown pants-less into the Nile, jumping off Victoria Falls bridge (twice), and exploring the perks of newly single life.
Sneaking into an empty amusement park, eating sadza and playing bao with dried maize kernels, frantically patching up passengers who injured themselves seeing the gorillas (though not at the hands of the gorillas!), pike-diving off a dhow in Zanzibar, falling backwards off chairs, falling backwards off rocks, falling backwards off boats, nearly drowning in the Nile (four times), and nearly drowning in a rock pool.
Losing countless pairs of thongs (flip-flops, for all you non-Aussies), stealing someone’s glasses and a plastic moustache, smashing my tailbone and ripping my jeans at a friend’s Christmas party, spotting zebras grazing by Nairobi airport at 3am (my first fucking hour in Africa!), successfully bribing a Tanzanian police officer with my charm and feminine wiles, and bribing another Tanzanian police officer with a carrot8.
Not catching malaria, being mouth-kissed by a giraffe9, being stung by a bee on my face while scootering down a highway at 80kmph, hurtling down a treacherous hill on the back of a bicycle during a race, eating fried fish and drinking cold ones on the edge of Lake Victoria, learning to ride a horse, petting a giant tortoise, and cringing during Cards Against Humanity with my passengers.
Pitching countless tents, building fires (and promptly watching them die), stargazing into eternity (usually while peeing outside in the middle of the night), accidentally peeing outside beneath a hornet’s nest and having to bolt back to the truck while collecting acacia thorns in my feet, sing-song calls of “Jambo jambo!”, “Asante sana!”, “Hakuna matata!”, and “Aaaaah zabenyaaaaa!” The seemingly endless laughter, the tears, and the triumphs.
And more. So, so much more.
To (kinda) quote Ted Mosby from How I Met Your Mother:
This was the year I got fired. The year I got robbed. The year I fell out with people I trusted. The year I barely slept and was battered by the elements. The year I failed at being an English teacher in Vietnam and a Tour Leader in Africa. The year I unwittingly crossed the crazy Canadian lady with tattoos and cold, black shark eyes.
And dammit, if it wasn’t the best year of my life. Because if any one of those things hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have gone to Africa. I wouldn’t have met the curly-haired man from Maryland. I wouldn’t have come out the other side as the most self-assured, tough, determined, and laidback person I am now.
Top that, 2015.
I’m not kidding when I say it rained for a month straight; there was fungus on my clothes and everything, because nothing ever dried out.
A yoga/permaculture retreat in northeastern Thailand (the Isaan region, which to my understanding only gets about 1% of the country’s tourism — and sadly, mostly the sexual variety — and is both underrated and staggeringly beautiful/peaceful, though difficult to navigate without understanding Thai). As far as I know, this gorgeous sanctuary no longer exists, otherwise I would link to it. (Just Ecosia’d it — yeeaahh, links to the retreat centre are broken, and the last Instagram post was from 2014, the year I was there last.)
Ian, if by slim chance you ever read this…thank you for everything :)
One of my pet peeve words/phrases…anyone else?
On our last night together, he gifted me an opal necklace; the stone was/is exquisite and dreamy and shimmery on the front, with rough patches and little craters on the back. To some, the stone might have been considered a write-off for its imperfections; however, in its gifting to me (complete with a statement of, “I bought this for you before I met you,” and a description of a vision he had in which he was presenting the necklace to a dark-haired woman he met on his travels) it represented uncompromisable beauty because of its imperfections. He had a whole spiel attached to this statement, which, honestly, I think I was too stunned to fully take in at the time and have since forgotten. But gratefully, the key point stuck and I am reminded of it every time I see or wear the stone.
In what can only be described as an accidental banana peel slip into an alternate reality, I received a response to a cold email I sent out months before that, honestly, can’t have said much more other than, “Hi, I’m Lauren and I like to travel lots! Please give me a job!” Miraculously, I was offered a Skype interview and, soon after, the role — despite the fact I was only 24, had never travelled to these countries, and never worked a role like it before (haven’t since, either). Odds were completely stacked against me getting it; and somehow, through…beginner’s luck? sheer naivety and unearned confidence?, I was on a plane to Nairobi nine days later. Proof that God gets drunk sometimes.
I am not made for full-time work. I never have been, and have always known that to be the case since I was a kid. And yet, there were times I tried going against this knowing (thanks to societal conditioning and capitalist masochism, I guess), and the Universe always kicked me hard and reminded me. It’s actually comical how lightning-fast I got ejected from these roles once I tried to force myself into them. Another post for another day :)
I’m actually not joking. Ask me about it sometime. Possibly my finest moment.
Also not joking.
2013-2014 were my travel years and when we first connected! Damn, I'm proud of that version of myself, too. She overcame a lot! Heartbreak, malaria, lost passports, being pickpocketed, nearly missing a coup in Bangkok...sometimes I worry that I've lost my courage muscle but then I remember that part of me still exists. We're like little Russian doll versions of ourselves, nothing is ever lost.
Thank you for writing and re-sharing this!
P.S. Did the Vagabundo Magazine ever get archived? I've tried looking for it before and can't find it. I'd like to re-read some of those pieces, too! Maybe I'll try the Wayback thingie!