Inspiration or Insanity?

Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true

After making it public that I was leaving my nice sensible life with good healthcare, a big apartment, a steady and pretty cool job and all the other perks of civilisation to move to the Icelandic countryside and work with horses, quite a few people came up to me to congratulate my decision. They found this a brave step, a motivation to think about their own choices and even used the word inspiration. Wow. I have never been called an inspiration before and feel terribly honoured by everyone's support and I'm so grateful that people would take to trouble to let me know how they feel about this. Because at least in my case, inspiration looks different from the inside.

Did I want to go? Yes.

Was I prepared to actually get what I want? Hell, no!

Ladies and gentlemen, ambivalence in its purest for, do observe the crystalline structure.

Inside, I'm not brave. Inside I'm actually hitting myself over the head with a baseball bat at 60-second intervals. I'm scared that this is a bad move in the game of life, that the costs (not talking financial here) will outweigh the benefits, that I should have made this move at 24, not at 34.

What if I can't do the job well enough, what if they don't like me, what if my body can't do physical labour for an extended period of time, what if something happens to my family and I'm too far away to be there in time, what if I actually do freeze some digits off? And so on.

I love the compliments and I'd like to keep the title of inspiration as long as possible, but please know that "brave" is the same as "putting on a brave face" as a kid. A conscious decision to squeeze your cheeks together and breathe through it. Face and cheeks aside, the rest of me is shaking with fear and I think this is normal in the face of major life changes. Humans are creatures of habit after all and if you are not scared at all, then there's a good chance you either

a) have balls of steel or

b) don't have too much to lose, if you fall on your face.

So why am I doing this again, moving to that distant, isolated place with some seriously crappy weather, seeing that it scares the bejesus out of me and doesn't feel like the smart thing to do?

I feel that I have no choice. I feel that I have to go and live this life and if I fall on my face, so be it. This is an experience I have to make, because the price of not going is too high. The price of that little voice in my head for the next 50 years asking me "what if?" and calling me a chicken.

It's feels better to try and fail than not try at all.

So here I am between a rock and a hard place, it's hard to go and impossible to stay. My apartment is mostly packed, I had a wonderful farewell do on Friday and have only two more days left at work. After that I'm off to live my dream, as they say.