It has been amazing. There are so many people and places to thank for making it such a special experience. Here are just a few of them.
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Japan: The price we paid, the memories we made
Any bold move, big change or great adventure requires a sacrifice of some kind. This is true in business, life and travel. It’s simple economics – every choice you make has an opportunity cost. Every dollar you spend on a plane ticket is a dollar you can’t spend somewhere else. And the bigger the challenge, the greater the risk… but of course the bigger the reward can be.
Today I found myself sat pondering what we have missed by taking a leap, packing up and moving to Japan for six months.
Kyoto cafes 7 – Amuca
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):
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!
Yojiya – my kind of shop
When you think about a shop selling cosmetics and toiletries what comes to mind? Something clean and white? Or perhaps slick and black? Or the bright busy interior of a drugstore? Well this is what my kind of beauty shop looks like…
Kinkakuji
A little piece of history
Just a few minutes’ spin of the bicycle wheel from our little place here in Kyoto stands a World Heritage Site, “a place of exceptional and universal value; a cultural heritage site worthy of preservation for the benefit of mankind”.
This astonishing city actually has 17 sites deemed this magnificent. Today I wanted to share Nijo Castle with you.
Hiroshima remembered
The A-bomb Dome – this was a trade hall when the bomb was dropped almost directly above it, and it was one of the few buildings left standing after the blast
We took ourselves on a little trip West last week. Our first stop was Hiroshima, the city where, on this day back in 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped. Since that horrific day Hiroshima has become a beacon for peace, and is home to a museum that hit me harder than almost any other place I have ever visited.