For 8 months I now live the life of a homecomer. That is not even half of the time period I spent abroad. It was evident that there would be much change. Compared to the time before, compared to the time over there and the life right now. The life after.
Just as the new year began, it made me think. Where have I been in all of 2016? You can read up on it. From the most beautiful end of the world, through an exciting continent after the other, towards the familiar home my way has led me.
Where will I be in 2017? In my home town. In an apprenticeship. And that won’t be the last year of that kind. After many months of short-term plans, my life is put on rail tracks once again. In a blog post from 3 years ago I said it with the same words already. But back then I didn’t know about the opposite. About the life without rail tracks.
In New Zealand I didn’t have these commitments at all. Places, people lifestyles you could change just like that and of course keep the best of it. Wellington, the life in the flat and my newly won friends are most precious to me to this day.
But even these commitments had to be let go sooner or later. When you moved on, moved out or circumstances changed. The best thing about it is meeting again. Either over there or here… Some things in our lives change, but when the strongest ropes prevail, everything stays as is. Unchanged.
Every decision you make, brings a trail of change. Back then I decided to move in to a flat and I got friends for life out of it. We set out on a short weekend in the South Island with some au pairs who hadn’t ever met before then. To this day we are true friends. And Wellington got quite a number of hearty stories out of it! The au pair family I have left, alongside Wellington. But only to become friends with many more in the South Island, get into some nice work places and live in an amazing flat one more time. When I traveled with my parents and with Elvis, I got to see many places and people again, before actually moving on.
Many homecomers see all the differences between the life abroad and the life ahead directly from the start. And many have trouble fitting in again. I didn’t have a hard time to re-accustom to ‘Mum’s bosom’. There wasn’t so much of a change that wouldn’t let me live the life I had before.
And the flow was there, to see the people, to tell many times how I liked New Zealand and most of all, deciding for a career path, which you would like to walk on for a longer time.
Now I have been walking this path and come to notice that this might pretty much be the last greater decision I will have taken for some time.
Do you remember, how I longed for a regular life at the end of my time in New Zealand?
Now I have it. And now it is just this element of ever-present change, which I come to miss.
I know that for my career it is a good thing, to have a regular life. To concentrate. To live consistency. To have frames, to have rail tracks.
And you notice in my way of blogging that variety and number of the posts have ceased to some extent. Among other things, I continue the blog exactly because of this, to let you see how life changes.
This is my bog posts about the subject ‘homecoming’. Of course I have been home for a long time and I can’t seem to grasp it anymore, having traveled for such a long period. But now the meaning begins to get to me. And with these broad subjects I like it more, to report from the ‘big picture’ perspective, rather than out of the moment itself. Especially forming a conclusion like this.
But never fear, this is but an interim conclusion! Because as much less change I go through right now; there is still a chance for anything to happen.
And not for the least, you have always a say in this process yourself…
