After I returned from the US I felt like a failure. There was just a big hole in my life where work used to be. I remember watching a movie in the middle of the day thinking: ‘I should be at work’. Memories of hotel rooms in Shanghai and sky bars in Las Vegas. ‘Customer Experience Associate Manager’? I thought I was just explaining to people how to use their iPad.
I was lonely during those beautiful summer nights, wanting to go to the beach, but no one to go with. I tried to fill the void by hanging out with strangers, realizing even more how hollow and empty my life was. My friends used to be my family, but were they really my friends? These new people I met seemed to like me for who I was, not for the education I had, the company I worked for, or the club I was a member of.
What I wanted was love. But no one impressed, entertained or interested me. Many guys showed me their interest over the past few years, but none of them seemed to be up to par. I don’t care about what you look like, or what car you drive. But I need a man that is spiritually and emotionally my equal. I know that’s a lot to ask, but I am willing to wait.
Every day I write in my diary and at the end of every month I save it somewhere, for me to read later on in time. So, every once in a while, I look back at the same day or month a few years back and it’s funny to see how my life evolved over the years. How I flow with the current of the cosmos.
Five years ago I lived with my old friend from University. But I wrote ‘I feel like a homeless person’, because I didn’t feel at home in her house and was wondering the streets looking for something to do. Longing for a place of my own.
In 2020 we were in the middle of the Covid lock down. I talk about solitary confinement and how being locked up felt like a prison sentence. I looked back on my life, thinking all I had left was memories. No sign of hope for the future.
Three years ago I had met ‘the group’, the house parties left me broke and exhausted, but I had nothing better to do, since I was unemployed. I read about how I was wondering who my friends truly were. People come and go, story of my life. Especially when you have moved around as much as I had.
We fast forward one year, it’s March 2022. I started looking towards the future. How I would graduate from Howie the Harp. And still wanted to write down my story. But on the other hand, I started to believe I was meant to live a stray life, sleeping on strangers’ couches. This was the beginning of the end I think, looking backwards.
And finally, last year. I read about how confused I was. Wondering about God’s bigger plan for me. Deep down inside I knew what my dreams were, but I just didn’t know how to get there. ‘I’m feeling depressed’, I wrote.
And now look at where I am. I have moved away from the chaos. And there is hope for the future. I still need some closure from the past. But I am determined to keep chasing my dreams and keep surfing life. I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t know what the future holds, but I am hopeful. And some days, just for small moments in time, I can even say I’m happy. Well, how about that.
Who says there’s just one way to live? Earn a living, raise a family and live happily ever after, right? But what if you face a break-up, you’re in a dead-end job and you lose the roof over your head? What’s left? Or will you finally have the time and space to find out who you truly are?
If you would’ve asked me twelve years ago who I was, I would have answered: I’m 29 and I work for a large corporate. I live in Amsterdam with my boyfriend. In my free time I love sports and socializing with my friends. Oh, and I have been to fifty countries.
But I learned I’m not my job, nor my relationship. Losing everything was a hard, but effective way to let go of who I was and become who I might be.
Recently I went on a retreat at the Recovery College and some of the younger girls there reminded me of myself a decade ago. Not ready to give up the job I had worked so hard for all my life. Or not able to get over a relationship I grew up in. After eight years in a relationship, I didn’t know who I was anymore. Our lives were so intertwined. And after eight years at a large corporate I found it so hard to let go, I walked into my senior director’s office crying, saying I just didn’t want to do the job anymore. And she said: “It’s just a job”. But even though she was right, it didn’t feel like just a job at the time, it was my life. At least I thought it was.
After this tremendous loss, I mourned and grieved and misbehaved, to a point where the whole wall came falling down. But maybe it was necessary to face some truths about myself:
I now realize that all my (adult) life, I have been running. I thought I was running towards something; my dreams, a country, a company. But I have been running away; away from relationships and away from places that reminded me of those relationships. It’s time to stop running. It’s time to slow down and grow some roots. Running away from something is exhausting, especially when you have been doing it for over twenty years. And I am tired now. Every time something didn’t work out (the relationship, the job, or just life in general), I would leave and start over somewhere else.
But: “You can go the whole world over, every city has its dawn, but everybody living has one place where he was born”.
This is my life. Not tomorrow, not in five or ten years from now, all I have is today. And today was a fine Saturday.
I graduated high school almost 24 years ago. Time sure flies. What if I was to give a commencement speech to the class of 2000, with the wisdom I have now? What would my advice be?
Keep on chasing your dreams. It will leave you with great experiences. And in the end, that’s the only thing you will remember. But know when to slow down, otherwise you will miss the flicks on the head and before you know it the whole wall will come falling down. Time is a non renewable resource, so spend it wisely. You can do anything, but you can’t do everything. No need to compare yourself to others, you are never gonna be the best version of yourself if you’re being a copy cat. Practice self-compassion as if it were a way of life, don’t be too hard on yourself and others for that matter. You’re simply not gonna win all the time, you’re gonna lose some. You gotta get over the bad times. And remember, stop trying so hard, create space for coincidence.
I’m a nomad: ‘a person who does not stay long in the same place, a wanderer’. But lately I ask myself, where will I finally take root?
When I think about the next few years, as in: wandering around some more, being unemployed and single, I want to jump off a cliff and we don’t even have cliffs in the Netherlands. Game over. At least, that’s what it feels like. The only thought that makes it bearable is that there are larger forces at stake. I, my little self, can’t change my situation. It’s up to the Universe.
S U R R E N D E R
Lessons learned: trying to find Leonardo by finding a house and a job is like ‘trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum’* [Wear Sunscreen]. Stop looking for Leonardo, actually, stop looking for anything at all. I have been looking for all the wrong things in all the wrong places over the past decade anyways.
And I keep running into walls. No flicks on the head or bricks in the face, just one wall after another. There must be something I don’t see. The job is not the point, the house is not the point. So what is the point then?
‘The rest of my life’ is just really far away in the future it seems. I keep wondering if I’m doing something wrong. I said goodbye to an eight year relationship at 29. I quit my career in International Business after ten years at age 35. And I moved in with my parents at 40, an age where one usually is supposed to have their ducks in a row.
It’s not the end goal that counts, but the journey, they say. The Quest, I call it. Maybe the point of living is not having it all and then starting your life. But trying to get there is the Life. Life is the road to making your dreams come true.
This is the question that started my .com almost ten years ago. I was devastated by troubled parents, broken relationships and just diagnoses with Bipolar I Disorder. So I found myself a life coach to guide me through the mess called my life. She introduced me to a concept called the Vision Quest, which inspired me to go on my own quest, a Quest to ‘The rest of my life’.
A journey that took me from Holland to the end of the world, that made me move continents and landed me a job at Nike’s WHQ. But I was trying too hard and looked in all the wrong places. I wanted to ‘find my Leonardo’, but Surfing Lifeis about creating space for coincidence and letting people come to you, I learned on my Quest.
Now that I’m back on home soil I realize my dreams have come true and I have a sense of magic, what if I dream up something else, can I have that too? Just figure out what you want, and let it then become part of the flow. That’s what Surfing Life is all about.
The Surf of Life 