Any Which Way You Please

Life is an adventure, at least that’s what we’re told. I like to think it is. I like to think that every moment is part of your journey and that everything you do that makes you a little uncomfortable is good for you. I think those things can be anything you want them to be. I don’t sniff at public speaking but speaking foreign languages freaks me out. I’m not scared of flying but I hate driving. I’m a home-bird really but I moved 3145 miles from my home to the Middle East. I want to talk about the last one today.

Of all places, what on earth are you doing there?

Here’s the thing about Amman, it’s not beautiful, it’s hard to live in, it doesn’t excel in making it easy to move your life here. I get asked all the time why I came. The thing about Jordan is it’s beautiful, and culturally rich in all the best ways, and being here gives me chance to live in a region that looks nothing like Europe. It also means I get to live somewhere I’m almost certain I won’t settle, meaning if I want to be here for a substantial period of time, now is a good a time as any.

Whenever I meet new people they always want to know what I’m doing here. Not everyone is as accepting as each other. Not everyone gets that I just moved out here to work and I took that job because it means I can be here and get paid. You want to know why I’m really here? Because I can be. Because why not. Because I had a career/life/love life gap and I wanted to leave my home country for a bit. Because I kind of wanted to travel but also money exists and it’s not financially viable for me to go roaming across the globe for months at a time. Because I can figure the rest out later.

Own your adventure, it is after all, yours.

I love to travel and I love to push myself but ultimately I like stability. I needed a change of scenery but I also need routine and space and a home to come back to after a while. I can go about 4 weeks without them but I am always ready to come home after that. I know this works for me because I was excited to come back, and I had been sad to leave. I felt the same way about Brussels when I made it my home. I have never felt like that about going travelling.

So maybe I’m just not built like that. People go travelling for months on a whim all the time. My version of that is just to move country because I fancy it. I get to have my adventure, my way. Most days are mundane and you couldn’t get me to swap them for anything. Before this I was considering (read as: will always be longing for) a move to London. I would have considered that just as exciting, and filled with just as much possibility.

And I wonder how many people don’t do things, don’t go out and see things because we’re sold that ‘adventure’ and ‘travel’ are only one thing. The version of that thing is the one that may as well replace the word ‘travel’ in people’s Instagram bios with the word ‘money’ and 'an ability to withstand financial instability'. The version spent on beaches, flying to a new place every 5 days, the one lived out of a backpack. There are a million reasons why this doesn’t work for everyone, one being that some people just don’t think that sounds like fun.

I am one of those ‘some people’. I love stable adult life, actually. I love going to yoga and cooking and learning new languages in my own time and reading on my sofa. I like coffee with my Amman friends and Skype chats with my UK/Belgium/everywhere else friends. I like laughing with my work colleagues and going on weekend trips to new places. I am very sedate. I don’t take as much happiness from having seen places as I do from the memories I have from being there; I thought Petra was beautiful but I’d be more excited to tell you about the things we laughed at in the car on the way back.

The grass might be greener, but that’s probably because its parents pay its rent.

I also love transparency. Especially when it comes to money. Primarily because I think when it comes to travel we don’t give enough transparency, in the age where everyone and their dog seems to be a travel blogger it’s hard to work out exactly how everyone affords to go where. Comparison can be the thief of joy but sometimes a good helping of ‘that’s why they’re making it look so easy’ is good for everyone. I’m not here for the idea that ‘anyone can do it’ when the people who ‘do it’ more often than not came from very advantageous circumstances.

So let’s talk about it. I worked from the age of 15. I worked a lot and my parents never made me pay rent. I saved money enough to go on trips. I asked only for cash gifts for birthdays and Christmases because that was most useful for me - I have family able to give them to me. Most recently my birthday present was the money for my flights to come home for graduation. I lived with my parents for a year and a half after I finished uni. I have savings because I worked and got a student loan and maintenance grants and somewhere in that there was money to put in an ISA. I’m currently using through those to pay for a trip to New York next year and Berlin this December. I’m managing to put a little money away from my job here. I’m careful with my money and I try and leave myself with enough. I could be better but I’m good enough to know that I’m not about to be broke.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I’m not thinking about how to improve my financial situation and trying to balance that with my desire to go and enjoy my life. Even thinking about enjoying myself at the expense of my financial security is a luxury not everybody has, that comes from having been largely financially stable for most of my life. But you know, still the kind of stable where I have to think about it all the time and I can't imagine ever really having a lot of money.

I would feel more successful, I think, if I understood how everyone else got to be where they were. Maybe that's bitter. Maybe it's more that 'I just worked hard' rarely means that. In a country of unpaid internships and private school alumni that make up 40% of the highest paid professions (and only 7% of the population) you are allowed to say 'I shouldn't compare myself to you because you had a leg up, I am proud of what I have made for myself and I will keep trying'. You are allowed to be angry at people who think a level playing field exists.

Maybe that comment about having your parents pay your rent made you uncomfortable. I really don’t care. I want the people who have struggled to know that you’re allowed to do what is financially viable for you and still be proud of it. I hate that it’s so easy to deceive each other when it comes to social media, I hate that we leave so many people feeling like they’re not trying hard enough because there seems to be so much reward and good fortune to go around and they don’t have any of it.

I would rather say these uncomfortable truths than leave anyone thinking that I have everything I do just because of sheer hard work alone.

I could never leave the country again and still have everything I needed.

I rarely envy people who get paid to travel the world, but mostly I worry about the pressure and the self-critique having all that shoved in our faces creates.

Because when we prioritise where we’ve been instead of what we do then we just put all our efforts in the wrong place. There’s not much point filling your instagram with pictures if you never stand up for what you believe in or you tolerate people who incessantly demean and hurt you. Seeing every beach in South East Asia won’t make up for any of that.

Those things don't make good Instagram posts though. Before I came here my adventure was building a stable and honest life back home, with people who genuinely loved me. Mission accomplished, I hope so anyway, but that is harder than getting on a plane and leaving everything behind, having something worth coming home to is what I’m really proud of.

Travel might broaden your mind and let you have amazing experiences but your relationships and general happiness won't endure because you saw the Grand Canyon one time.

I hope you don’t want to travel because you think you’re boring if you don’t. I hope you push yourself only to enjoyable levels. I hope you are happy in your now and your bucket list is an assortment of easy, medium and hard; of short term and long term; of new recipes and new continents. I hope you make everything an adventure they way you want to and you know that that’s allowed to be messy and difficult and real.

I've been reading these recently which are relevant and good:
You don't need an extreme bucket list to find happiness
Confessions Of A 30-Year-Old with 2 Degrees, No Job, and No Boyfriend
You Were Not Born Scared

This Girl Can't - and She Doesn't Care

About three months ago I became one of those people who did yoga. I'm not going to try and downplay it, I absolutely love it. 

Just because I've found that I love it doesn't mean I'm any good at it though. In fact I love it precisely because I’m not good at it, because it doesn’t matter so I don’t care. Which means I get to have at least 3 hours a week where I don’t care if what I’m doing is perfect. More if I do classes at home. The only other time I’m not worried about building a life I love and achieving all my dreams is when I’m sleeping - and then I seem to spend most of that time cheating on my dream-partner or trying to stop myself being murdered by zombies.

My legs are long. When you're trying to put them behind your head that's a huge advantage, I spend a whole lot of time with my thighs right up in my face and nothing will help you appreciate the abilities your body more than having it all wrapped around you. When it works with me just the way I ask it too I love it and this is only enhanced when I do yoga videos in my room in only my underwear. Something that definitely helped me get used to myself, I can’t hide from myself and I no longer want to.

Sometimes though, the long legs are less of an advantage. Trying to reach my toes is a real challenge and one I can’t imagine ever overcoming. There's just so much thigh until you get to my feet and I struggle to see how I'm going to make my upper-body long enough to reach over it.

I can't even roll up the mat properly at the end of the class without having the re-roll it a couple of times. I tried to roll it whilst I was walking out of class and nearly fell over it.

I have no balance and yoga is really big on balance. The only thing I find harder than standing upright on one leg is standing on both of them. That isn't even a joke, one leg is about half an inch shorter so standing equally on both feet is actually very uncomfortable. My spine isn’t straight. Yoga loves straight lines and my body doesn't have any. I might never do a headstand or the splits.

I will probably never make a yoga instructor or even a half-decent Instagram poser, that's what I'm saying.

I don't have to be good at it because I haven't dedicated my life to being good at it. I do plenty of things I'm not good at. I go running and I'm not spectacular at that either. I learn languages even though I find that incredibly difficult. I swing between child-like excitement at learning new things and a very adult amount of swearing when I get something wrong.

If I was going to write a book about being in Jordan I would call it Jamal Waheed, because just when I thought I’d mastered the numbers in Arabic and used them to identify a singular camel on the side of the road, the whole car started laughing at me. The word for ‘1’ is wahad. Waheed means lonely. Close, but not my intention to comment on the emotional state of camels. There is no better story that demonstrates the ways in which I find Arabic an absolute and completely impossible challenge. Guess who still tries to speak it every day.

I am not perfect, nothing I do, is perfect. I am not one of those people who excels at everything they try, I don't find that success just comes to me without even trying. I don't learn languages easily, my muscles don't contort themselves easily, I don't even find writing comes to me without being a challenge. I would advocate more people admitting when they find things hard and doing things they're not that great at and continuing to do them anyway.

Our encouragement (especially sports, especially women) to try things always stems from the idea that we might be great at them - from success stories against the odds. But what if our drive to try new things was actually that we never need to be good at them, that paying the money for the class means you can go and be as damn well good at them, or not, as you want to be. You can keep going, not even getting any better if you don't want to train at home, and just enjoy it. Just do you for an hour. You can learn languages your whole life and never be quite fluent. You can just do stuff without having to be perfect at doing it. Which sounds pretty good to me.