Home is not a place. Home is a feeling.

“We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive”.  

Thich Nhat Hanh

This life is not new to me. I’ve spent most of my years in Australia living out of a backpack or the boot of my car. The first five or six years were incredibly exciting. Like an addiction, I started searching for a greater, bigger adventure. I had no idea how to stop. I knew that life had to have some meaning, so I thought I had better try to save the world.  I went searching for meaning in incredibly remote, under resourced communities with very little support. Those of you who read my blog from the start will have followed as I came to the realisation that the mission I had set myself was a futile one. I had isolated myself from real life and I was frightened that I wouldn’t be able to find my way back. I think, looking back, it was obvious that my mental health was suffering. It was time to make a different decision.  

From a remote clinic deep in the heart of Kakadu, I did something I had not done for many years. I made a commitment. I packed myself up and headed off to the sheep farming capital of country Victoria.

I rented a quaint white weather board cottage with wisteria blooming over the gate post and a huge tree in the back yard perfect for whiling away sunny days in the hammock. I worked in a small but busy emergency department, and I went back to university. What I wanted was some nurturing.  What I got was a job I didn’t know I needed, seasons, cold weather and sunny days, warm fires, hearty meals with red wine, camping, company, and a good dose of hiking country to sort out the noise in my head.

What I also got, in abundance, was the best, honest, laugh until my sides ache friends that a girl could ask for. 

I had lost my confidence somewhere along the line and I couldn’t have chosen a better place, or better people to rebuild it with.  

With my newfound confidence came the inevitable drive to explore new horizons. I had stayed for 2 years. It was the longest shot at normality that I’d had so far but somehow, I knew it wasn’t the place for me. I decided that it was time for a new challenge.

I packed what I could in my beloved Bertha and drove north for seven days until I hit the tropics of Far North Queensland. I had decided to step away from nursing and took a job as a Remote Clinical Educator in Cairns. The job involved travelling Australia, teaching emergency and trauma skills to remote area nurses. I had been volunteering for the same organisation for a few years and I loved it. It was the birth of Anna v3.0: Successful Corporate Anna. I cut my hair, changed my wardrobe and rented a stylish beach front apartment.

I spent a fortune creating this new life. I had lived in cheap, brown, broken nursing accommodation and worn a version of pyjamas to work for most of my adult life. This was how I thought it should be, living like a grown-up.

It wasn’t a completely stupid idea.  Except that maybe it was. Start with a demanding work schedule, throw in a huge dose of imposter syndrome, add a pinch of failure, hold off on the support and what you’ve got was a recipe for disaster. As with all of life’s little lesson though, what it taught me was, that this version of me, was not me. It was time to look elsewhere.  

But where? The answer came unexpectantly. As I fumble my way through this bizarre and unexpected life of mine, I repeatedly keep circling back to the obscure belief that maybe everything does, in fact, happen for a reason.  Somewhere, amid this madness, for reasons unbeknown, I had begun studying for a second post graduate qualification in remote health. To achieve this qualification, I was required to complete a clinical placement which was to take me back to the place that I had become most afraid of.  

It was a five-hour drive that took me deep into the vast and empty central desert.
A five-hour drive down the endless dusty, rusty, hot and corrugated road with no end. A five-hour drive that ended at a rundown clinic, in a desolate community, in the middle of nothing.  
It was a five-hour drive that cemented the belief that this was probably how I would finish my life. Crazy, unsure and alone in the middle of nowhere.  

I was a tightly knitted ball of anxiety, the only thing pulling me forward was the knowledge that this was finite. I do my two weeks and I am out. Funny thing was, I loved it. Not only did I love it, but I thrived. I began to see some hope. A tiny spark that maybe I could make a difference and I think, I think for the first time in my life, I felt capable. I knew what I had to do next.  

I gave my car away and sold the innards of my beautiful beach front apartment. I stripped my life of the bad bits that left me lost and I walked away from Anna v3.0.  

I am currently working two jobs. I am without a home and everything I own sits in the corner of somebody else’s bedroom. But right now? I feel like I am in the best place I have ever been. Maybe I will tell you about it sometime?  

“Home is not where you were born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease”.

  Naguib Mahifouz