This week's @abundance.tribe QOTW asked us to reflect on what cycles in one's life are coming to an end AND what we've learned from them...
As with all of these posts I'm happy to take free licence to interpret the question both broadly and personally to reflect on what my own personal life-cycles have been so far, which are roughly as follows.....
Personal Life-Cycles to date...
- Childhood
- The metal years - from 14 years of age
- The doll years - late teens/ early 20s
- The University years - early 20s
- The Masters and PhD years - late 20s
- The teaching years - late 20s to mid 40s
- The teaching after I quit teaching 'oops' years - mid - late 40s
- The Transitioning to Portugal year....THIS YEAR/ THIS CYCLE....
They are by no means even in terms of number of years in each cycle, and these are very much about life-circumstances, rather than anything a bit more hippy-dippy, but I'm a down to earth Zen sort of chap, I have no need for hippy -dippy, just the basic stuff of life.
Below I'm just going to briefly reflect back on one or two lessons I've learned from each phase!
Childhood
I had a pretty decent childhood, lessons learnt:
Despite the poverty (not that I knew I was poor at the time) life was just better in the 1970s!
Being allowed 1970s style freedoms as a child was great, all that freedom to explore, make mistakes, deal with other kids without adult interference, makes for a much more independent self.
And actually now I'm in Portugal I see a lot more of this going on here NOW than in the UK, which is yet another thing to like about this wonderful country!
The metal years - from 14 years of age
Drugs, sex and rock and roll are all awesome.
Friends are VERY IMPORTANT.
The doll years - late teens/ early 20s
Life on the doll is GREAT!
I spent a lot of time reading about spirituality and Buddhism and Philosophy and I think this is when I discovered Permaculture.
Taking a couple of years out to read and just learn at your own pace, strongly recommended!
The University years - early 20s
I studied American Studies and Anthropology at University - and yes, they are two of the most unemployable degrees out there.
I had an absolute blast in the first two years - being part of 'Swansea Freedom Collective' as we called it - Left/ Green/ Anarchist Eco protest type thing (some people on HIVE would have HATED it).
Then I went for my year out the in the States (paid for by the UK tax payer, back in the day), and left all that behind. It took me about 6 months to settle in by which time the year was over, did some travelling but when I got back for my fourth year most of my network was gone, because most of my friends had been doing 3 year degrees.
It was quite a sad fourth year in comparison to the first two!
Probably my most important lesson: I like being grounded in a network.
The Masters and PhD years - late 20s
Main lesson learnt: I'm not cut out to be an academic.
The teaching years - late 20s to mid 40s
16 years full time teaching: lessons learned:
Find a job your'e very good at, one at your level, then you can excel at it! You see I'd learned this from the abandoned PhD - I could have powered through and finished it but I'd have struggled to be an average academic, that's just not my preferred writing style, but teaching A-levels (16-19) and producing stuff for a general audience, now THAT I'm good at, so for the most part this was an easy job and I was top of the game.
Until 10 years in I learned that Full-time teaching grinds you down and burns you out, not helped by systems changes. I blogged about why I had to get out of teaching here on Hive....
I also learned that Side hustles can be a way out - I got out thanks to setting up my Revise Blog, with assists from Matched Betting and Crypto (naturally), although the effort almost broke me.
Oh, and I learned a lot about the importance of meditation and soft meditation (running, yoga etc) - these are VERY life enhancing, although if you're in an all-consuming job, they become more about coping!
The teaching after I quit teaching 'oops' years - mid - late 40s
Now we're into recent history: this was 2018 - 2020.
I learned that I'm quite happy living online - thanks mainly to Hive.
But I also learned that it's easy to drift into a life that's too easy - and 'dead-end' - thankfully I realised this after two years and got out, escaping to Portugal in September 2020.
The house in the UK: Emptied and now rented.
The Transitioning to Portugal year....
So this is this year, and I've come to accept that living in a new country, new life, new networks, it all takes time to adjust to, ALTHOUGH this hasn't been particularly difficult, not at all!
I'm just at the beginning of this but what I've learned so far is:
My accumulated habitual ways of acting have got ingrained, they STILL need breaking, that's easier said than done.
Although I've come here to develop some land, I'm in no rush to push this forwards - there's other work I need to prioritise on my main blog first, and crypto is also something I need to keep on top of RIGHT NOW.
So I guess I'm happy being in transitional mode for a while longer, life is pretty good all things considered.
The land: Plenty of work to do!
Actually one of things I like about these @abundance.tribe challenges is they do sometimes make me remember things I'd thought before but forgotten about - I remember when I'd just quit work and I was between houses, I was quite happy being in 'drifting mode', I'm sort of still there, and happy with it.
Although that's helped by the fact that I've got the next land-phase loaded and ready to go, whenever I choose to do so!
What a great topic for this fortnight!