This little place – Amuca – is tucked away on Kamidachiuri, just West of Karasuma-dori. I go for the arched windows, big table, tiny handmade goods and great coffee, but the lovely owners also sell donuts, have racks of magazines and like to chat.
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Packing up and moving on
Six months.
180 days.
Half a year.
It seemed like such a long time back then.
Now it is hard to believe our Japan adventure is nearly over.
As we pack up our things, empty our flat, fold up our memories and tuck away our plans, we head out, hand in hand, for a new adventure.
What I’m looking forward to
It’s hard to imagine I’ll be touching down in London a week today. While I run around soaking up the last days in Kyoto, I can’t helping thinking of some of the things I am looking forward to when I get back (in no particular order):
Sand dunes in Japan?
How I strategise these days
Next to the river,
on a bench,
staring up at the sky,
eagles wheeling overhead,
gentle breeze blowing
and the lazy sound of a saxophone drifting past.
This is where I hold my strategy meetings these days.
Who says you need to be in an office?
It’s not where you are that counts, it’s what you are thinking…
A life-threatening allergy forced me to do what I love – Carrie Schmitt’s story
Today’s shared story comes from Carrie Schmitt in Seattle, USA, who shares how a life-threatening allergy forced her to do what she loves.
I didn’t do what I loved until I was forced. It was a matter of survival, at least emotionally. In 2009, I developed a life-threatening allergy to heat. It. Was. Devastating. I couldn’t leave my home for 4 months because of the extreme heat and humidity in Ohio.
Gone were spending leisurely days at the pool with my children or tinkering in my beloved garden, which gave me a joy so pure and connected to the rythmn of life that I didn’t know how I could survive without it.
Also, gone were the mundane errands, such as shopping and carpooling. Suddenly, for the first time since college, I had time for myself. I was often left home alone while my husband and kids went about their summer lives.
Thinking that my life was over (at least an outdoor, physically active life that I loved) is what finally pushed me to pursue a dream I had long ignored — to become an artist. I distinctly remembered thinking to myself, “Well, if my life is over, I might as well do what I want and paint.”
I picked up a paintbrush, experimented and began taking online art classes. Slowly, I felt alive and excited again. I had a reason to wake up early in the morning — to paint flowers instead of plant them.
This act of desperation—forcing myself to do what I love and have always loved which is to create—was the first of many gifts that my dreadful heat allergy has given me. Strangely, my dis-ease realigned my life in ways that made my dreams start coming true.
Today, my family and I reside in a more temperate climate in our farmhouse on a wet and wild mountain in Washington — another long ago abandoned childhood dream come true for me thanks to my heat allergy.
I have my own detached studio at our home and am an artist who recently launched my first professional website, which became a transformative moment for me when I realized that I was actually working and living as an artist!
I’ve noticed throughout my life that when you don’t follow your authentic path and do what you love, the universe gives you signs. Signs I ignored for so long that the universe finally screamed at me to sit down and paint.
I’m in a state of bliss because I finally listened. My wish for you is that you find the strength to listen to your soul’s deepest whispers too and don’t wait until you think your life is over to follow your dreams.
[Images courtesy of Carrie Schmitt. Find out more about Carrie on her website or connect on Facebook and Pinterest]
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See here for more inspiring *shared stories or to submit your own!
Schedule, what schedule?
Nijo Castle – an inspiring way to start the day
Here in Japan I don’t really have a schedule. The days are wide open, and each morning I sit down and work out how to spend the precious hours of the day ahead. Now we are more than half way through our adventure this time is feeling even more precious, and more than ever I am conscious about the choices I am making about how I spend my time.
The other day I had a Skype call scheduled for 11am and back at home I would normally have spent the hours before it catching up on emails etc. But instead we spent an impromptu hour after breakfast exploring a 500-year old castle – and guess what? I came back in time for the Skype call, very awake and already inspired before our conversation had even begun.
As a meticulous planner in the past, I am slowly trying to let go of the reins a little… not completely but enough to let my instinct guide my day, and reveal new ways of travelling through it…
How do you spend your time these days?
How organised are you?
Arriving in Tokyo back in March without much of a plan
I like to think of myself as a very organised person. I love lists, notebooks, getting things in order. But that is only one part of my personality. Another part – the bohemian wandering part – has no interest whatsoever in being organised. And that is probably how I came to write in my journal, whilst sat on a plane to Japan at the beginning of this six month trip, that “I have never felt quite so unprepared for a trip in my life as I do for this one.”
The long cycle
Cycling is a brilliant way to travel – you see so much more than when you are in a car. It’s like you are IN the scenery. We had a brilliant time cycling 70km across seven huge bridges over the Seto Inland Sea, breathing in fresh salty air as we pedalled high above the sparkling seas.
Naughty, naughty
I led him astray.
He was supposed to be at school, learning some more grammar and having a kanji test.
But I pursuaded my man to skyve off for the day and we escaped to the beach.
Of course I wouldn’t generally advocate truancy… but it was all the more deliciously fun because we shouldn’t have been there!
My kind of Monday…