It’s been a while….
I have been bust with many things over the past few months, not the least with the launch of the Down Under and Beyond podcast. I am very happy with the results of the first 9 episodes. Over these first installments I have felt my way through, just trying to find my groove and set a firm direction. I actually think that it will continue to be a work in progress as find new and better ways to present the content. The content itself is evolving as I find new people and stories that inspire.
I continue to contemplate more focus on learning and applying my cross cultural skills. With every client I come away with a new perspective, however small it may be. I know that I am always the one that is facilitating each session, but I try to communicate to the participants that they also provide me with additional learning as I listen to their stories, their fears and hopes for the new adventures they are undertaking in their new life as an expat.
That moment of leaving…
I don’t know about anyone else, but if I have spent any time at all in a place while I am travelling, I get this strange, almost whimsical feeling just before I am about to leave. I find myself in a quiet mood and think about what I have just experienced and what if any effect it has had on me. Have I learned anything, what do I particularly want to remember, what do I want to repeat, or for that matter not repeat if I get to return? What if I never get to return?What then. Have I done enough to be content with the experience?
I guess as an expatriate, there was also the day I left Australia to live overseas. I certainly remember thinking of it then as just as an extended holiday. Would I have felt differently if I had known that 12 years later that I would still be “away”.
There is in every leaving some degree of something left behind, and for some I can see how that something, however intangible, can be hard to let go of. If it is your home you are leaving, then it may also be the longing to have it stay the same, so that when you return, it will be like a warm blanket of security you can always rely on. Rarely, however, is this the case. The knowledge of this fact may also produce anxiety.
So there then becomes a struggle between the feeling of leaving, and the anticipation of “arriving” at your new destination. I would argue that one side is not exclusive of the other. They both come with positive and negative emotions.
GlobalWonderer 