Freeconomy Blog
Fri
11 Jan
The crossing of a mental threshold....
Last night I was asked the fairly regular question of how long it now was until my impending pilgrimage. As per usual I donned a rather confused face, made a simple calculation seem difficult and worked out it was two and a half weeks.
And just then it suddenly hit me - I have just over two weeks to train, get the volunteer team ready to take over this website and to spend time with my very precious friends here in Bristol.
And with that came some very sudden emotions. Sadness about leaving - definitely and overwhelmingly. Anxiety about not seeing some of them or possibly all of them ever again - I'd be dishonest if I said no. Stress about not getting everything done - not yet. Fear about the external and internal journey's ahead - not at all.
Such emotions though are focused only on the past and future and so after an hours contemplation I decided to ground myself on the here and now and give myself to it, otherwise they can paralyse you and you don't give your energy and love to the little time you have left.
Just on an aside, I started off the week by going to the first Kingston Local Freeconomy Group meeting in London - it was a great evening and something I am more than happy to do in other parts of the country whilst on my pilgrimage. If any other local group is interested please email me at saoirse@justfortheloveofit.org, it would be great to meet other freeconomists on my way.
After that it was off to the hills of the South Downs Path between Brighton and Lewes, walking beautiful rolling hills, breathing lots of fresh air, and most importantly, a long way away from my laptop. With a tight Russian wind coming in off the south coast however it was one of those occasions when you use every piece of material in your backpack to keep the night chill off. Good training both physically and mentally, though I don't think it'll prepare me for what the Russian winter has in store. Although for that I'm not sure anything can .
Which explains why I haven't responded to lots of your emails yet. I thank you all so much for your words of encouragement and especially for translating my piece into over twenty languages for me. Your response reinforces my belief that humanity is essentially very kind and helpful once given the chance. I will do my best to respond to all of you but please bear with me.
Training hots up next week, more miles, more extreme conditions and from that hopefully more resolve.
