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FELICE NAVIDAD!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Well it's been an adventure here in Cleary world. Spain was a place of great beauty, poverty, dodgy food, amazing beaches, fantastic vistas, and the landscape for quite an emotional 10 days. There were highs and lows, logistical headaches on a daily basis, wow moments, amazing and also sometimes testing times with our lovely friends, sangria, sunshine and freezing cold nights. Our friend Stuart was a connoisseur of the area, having lived out there for more than ten years, and showed us a good time. We hung out on our own some days, with just a couple of our friends on others, with the whole gang on other days. At most, there were 9 adults, 7 kiddlets, one bump, and one teen. Quite a lot of different needs, wants and moods to accommodate but we all managed to come home smiling with lots of really great memories :-)
We saw some really pretty sights....including lots of gorgeous flora and vegetation, cacti, orange trees....
We stayed in a house just a few hundred yards from a beautiful sandy beach...
We visited Tarifa, the unofficial windsurfing capital of Europe
One of several local bars....
Trafalgar Point, just a mile or so along our little stretch of beach, and the site of the famous Battle of Trafalgar...
Surfer paradise....
Up in the mountains, we were treated to the spactacle of viewing more than 400 vultures being fed carcas meat by a ranger friend of Stuart's. Mental sight! This photo is zoomed in but we were actually several hundred feet away - thank goodness!
And we chilled out in some nice cafes :-)
Oh there is so much more to show, but I'm impatient and want to just get this blog baby out there and my internet is slow at uploading pictures tonight!
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Well Christmas and New year taught me a lot of stuff. In the run up to Christmas I decided to let go of a lot of stuff that felt too much. I decided I would do my best and leave it at that. After initially having my usual meltdown over not having enough hand-made gifts for everyone I shrugged my shoulders and said ah well. There was so much to do in the run up to Christmas and I didn't even send all the cards I wrote. Some people got extra special stuff cos they really needed it at that moment and others didn't get so much as a card. If you were one of those people who didn't get a card this year - I love you, I meant to, I just ran out of steam..... you know I love you!!!!
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It felt really good to hang back from blogging for a while. I was trying to do too much and mentally there wasn't enough room in my head to cope! I wish I could say that I have used the time really productively, but you know what? Actually I have just been chilling out, re-calibrating, enjoying not being stupid-ass busy. I sat down to work on my book while I was away and decided that I should really use my time to re-charge my batteries instead. Christmas and New Year were full-on and really fun and enjoyable, but zapped a lot of my brainpower and energy. So now, I am taking the New Year slowly, in my own time, on my terms, wherever I can. This is not an easy thing in this fast-paced world, and not valued as an end in it's own right but one thing that Spain taught me is that chilling out shouldn't necessarily be a luxury but something to fight for in our every day. Making time to relax is going to be high on our agenda this year. Down with stress and working so hard that your head and whole body aches!
Taking things slowly, savouring them, thinking things over carefully, and enjoying a better quality of life in terms of richer experiences and friendships are what 2012 are all about for me :-)
Bring it on!!!
Peace and love
Xx Motherfunker xX
Oh man, have you got things right! I completely hear you sista'. I have also recently discovered a more relaxing pace in my life since the growing season ended. What I realize is that this is probably a lot more 'normal' than we think. Somewhere along the way women, men, children, all people were suddenly expected to be superpeople without a moment of spare time. Not cool in my books. I now think that productivity REQUIRES space to come to be. And banging your head against the wall repeatedly is just silliness. I look forward to anything your quiet self comes up with over the next while. Until then, enjoy the space.
ReplyDeleteYay for things unfolding slowly! :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you had a good time in spain and came home again, I was kind of worried you would fall so madly in love with it that I would get a call saying you were never coming back here. Which I would be 100% behind, but so incredibly jealous at the same time.
ReplyDeleteA wonderful blog post again my lovely. x
Happy New Year to you all x Glad you all had a lovely time in Espana. Your blog post actually just has made me worse for missing all that we had last year in Spain for those wonderful 8 months. More determined to get back to warmer climates :-)
ReplyDeleteSpain was fab but wouldn't live there myself, think I'd get homesick in no time! I love to travel but haven't been anywhere abroad yet that felt like it could be home - maybe just haven't found that magic place yet! Or maybe we are destined to be rolling stones..... :-)
ReplyDeleteI haven't found that magical place yet either but hope that will happen very soon because I'm tired of being a rolling stone right now. Not sure I would live in Spain permanently but I would certainly choose Spain during the winter over the Fens during the winter! Each to their own eh!? x
ReplyDeleteWinter in the fens is kinda grim..... i hear ya!
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