On a journey...

Perspective. Good to have sometimes, especially when life is hard work. Not because my life is horrible in any definition of the word, but just because I still feel like I am walking on that bridge between two places and seasons, and am not settled into this new yet. Perspective. As I was walking this morning I passed a green house situated on the corner of two intersecting roads. It caught my attention because it looked a little bit like how I feel at the moment. One side was nicely painted (probably a recent paint job) while the other side was flaking off and looked worn. It was an interesting sight. And it made me stop and ponder. I realised that in some ways I have it all together; I have the basics to live and seem capable of facing life head-on. Yet in other ways I feel so flaky and uncertain. Unsure of how to do life in Norway. Unsure of how things function and how I am meant to be now I’m back in my own culture which has become so foreign, yet at the same time is so fami...

The sky was clear and there was no rain in sight. Confirmation that today was the day to mow the lawn, which had had ample opportunity to grow having been well-watered by rainy days. I put on my trainers and went into the garage telling myself:   “You can do this, it’s not that hard.” I dug out the lawnmower and tried to figure out how it worked. I got a little way there, but after figuring out how to start it (I hadn’t actually started it yet) I realised I had no idea how to turn it off. Now I realise it is very simple to stop it, you simply stop holding in the handle that keeps it on, but I didn’t know that then. Suddenly the simple, normal task of lawn-mowing grew into a bit of a mountain, and I decided it would have to be put on hold until I could make sure it would be a safe endeavor. Stepping back inside I quickly sent a text message to my brother requesting his assistance, and a little later he popped by and helped me do a test run on starting and stopping the mower....

Th ere seems to be an endless amount of boxes to be unpacked here in my new home. Living abroad in various locations has helped the amount of stuff being kept from reaching insurmountable amounts (due to baggage limits), yet still I find I’ve managed to accumulate just a few things from those seasons of my life as well. And now is time to really unpack and find space. I’ve found photo albums from years back   in the pre-digital days, when we’d develop the photos and have the excitement of seeing how they turned out after the obligatory couple of days of “waiting for them to be ready” at the photo shop (as in a physical shop rather than a picture editing computer programme). And as I’m finding these things I am being reminded of stories. So many stories which I’d forgotten, but that hadn’t vanished. They were safely stored away in memory ready to be unpacked by a photo or something familiar. Stories. What to do with stories? I’d love to write a book some day; a way of putti...

Debrief has been completed, final newsletter has been sent out, and thank yous to supporters have been posted. I am moving into my apartment and starting a new job in a few days. It feels like I am definitely coming to the end of this stage of transition and stepping into a new season in life. It’s strange and surreal. The pile of things yet to pack and boxes ready to be moved are a good visual of how the next few days and weeks feel a little bit like a mountain ready to be faced and conquered. Yet I can finally see the end of it. I signed my rental contract yesterday and am ready to make my apartment a home for the next while. Tomorrow will be a busy day packing, but a good day in anticipation of finally being able to unpack and actually have a kitchen, lounge, and bedroom as my living space and be able to create a space for my belongings (which would have been much more numerous had I not been living abroad for so long). The weeks that have passed have been quite emotion...