Well, since last week’s big announcement things have been full steam ahead for Matt and I. It has been a busy week as we’ve been packing things up and moving to the new house slowly. Do you remember the last time you moved? I always forget how tedious moving is. There are so many little things that need to be done, like turning off the internet and having it hooked up at the new place, individually wrapping up your plates and glassware and changing your address with every company in the world!
Moving house gives you great perspective though, doesn’t it? All of a sudden you really see the things outside your window that you’d gotten used to seeing for so long. When we were living in London we dreamed of stepping off the plane in Brisbane again and driving through our city, seeing our hometown again for the first time. It felt just as good as we imagined it would too.
We arrived back in Brisbane on a Tuesday in September 2012 and seeing as I was on a leave of absence from my job, I was getting ready to start work again so we knew we had an income and could find a place to live. By Friday I had arranged to inspect an apartment, we saw it at 3pm in the afternoon and signed the lease shortly after, moving in on Saturday. That’s my A-Type personality for you, getting down to business! Getting things DONE.
Living here has been amazing. We didn’t buy a car for 5 1/2 months, so living somewhere so central meant we could walk everywhere and, trust me, we wanted to. It was great to have the space to stretch out again, walk down to the corner store or a local cafe or restaurant. We spent those first 6 months of being home just rediscovering Brisbane again. Do you know that feeling? When you come home again after a long time and everything is awesome, you notice everything around you and absolute love it. Yea, that was us.
It’s only a small space, a little one bedroom one bathroom apartment, but it has amazing views of Brisbane city. We’ve sat on the balcony for hours watching the sunset and the sky turn from blue to bright orange. Living here has been the perfect place to plot LGB world domination and dream big. It has been incredibly inspiring and given us access to the heart of Brisbane and many opportunities.
To be honest, it would be really easy to stay here for another year and another one after that. But I guess sometimes you just know when it’s time to make a change.
Looking forward, I can’t wait to start unpacking and setting up in the new house. We have so much space to spread out and I can finally do some proper gardening each day, one of my favourite past times along with writing and drawing. That said, we move in next Sunday and fly out to Hong Kong and China on Wednesday, so I’d say the place will be pretty messy. Maybe the personal post for that week will come to you from the airport? There’s no better feeling than just before you go on holidays, right? When you’re sitting in the airport like a little kid on Christmas day just waiting to get stuck into the excitement of it all.
The new house, LGB HQ, is a peaceful space. You guys would love it, I’m sure. Our street backs onto national forest on either side, so you feel like you’re nestled in the middle of the Australian bush with big gum trees towering overhead. I’m not the kind of person who enjoys nature in the sense of long hikes and that kind of things, but I really do love nature. I love to be surrounded by plants and trees, native animals and natural scents. I love to put my hands in the earth and dig it up, smell the water from the hose hitting the ground. It’s incredibly grounding, centring and peaceful and I’ve missed it a lot.
Instead of waking up to the dull sounds of the highway, we’ll be waking up to the stillness of the forest every day. I cannot wait.
Change is a good thing because it gives you so much perspective and clarity. You can appreciate all the good points of your old situation and feel the excitement and anticipation of the new situation. Thinking ahead to the next 12 months, 2 years and beyond, it’s hard to imagine where we’re going to end up. I try to imagine the places we’ll see and how LGB will grow, but it’s hard to picture everything precisely. It’s more of a feeling, a buzzing in my body that tells me it’s going to be really, really great.
Not having any strict plans is exciting too as I used to dread the predictability of each year, knowing when certain work events were coming up like planning the Christmas party again etc. That kind of mindless monotony used to destroy me inside, it was like I could really feel the years of my life slipping away to a corporate world and social expectations. Whenever someone would say, “so, where are we having the Christmas party this year,” I would just think, ‘Come on, this cannot be it. There has GOT to be more to life than this.’
The second you stop living your life the way you think you’re supposed to and start living it the way you want to, everything changes. I really do mean everything, from your mental health right through to your physical health. Everything. Changes. (For the better, of course).
There’s absolutely no way of knowing what these next 12 months will bring Matt and I, but I’ve never felt happier than I do right now. Each day is full of the things we love and from next Friday, when Matt walks out of his building for the last time, every single day will be spent exactly how we want to spend it.
A few people have told us how lucky we are, but it isn’t luck at all. We’ve made every decision that has led us here and the wonderful thing about that is it means anybody else can do it too. If you want to live a life of travel and writing and photography, you can do it. Don’t get me wrong, we’re extremely grateful the way everything has come together for us and the opportunities we receive, but we’ve put in a lot of hard work and taken risks to get here. You can too. Remember, anything is possible.
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