Just Like Starting Over

At this time four years ago, we were beginning the journey documented earlier in this blog. We were 22 and 23, keen and idealistic, and pulsing with anticipation.

Christmas post-travels 2011

Over the last four years, our lives have shifted fairly drastically, then, in a way, morphed into a more circular narrative: in a sense, we are revisiting and reinventing our lives four years ago. Check it out:

In the post-van, pre-now years, we flew home and immediately engaged in the socially sanctioned things: Steff undertook a Bachelor of Science degree in Ecology, Nancy began her career as a piano tuner, both of us bought cars and dutifully paid our rent fortnightly on a charming (read: undermaintained), overpriced one-bedroom apartment in the city.

We explored our surroundings and tried to approach the space around us openly and inquisitively. We were inspired by our life with less in the van, and by the permaculture farms and homesteads we had WWOOFed at while travelling. 

We did our best to translate this model to city living, learning about our local community, DIYing as much as we could, and simplifying. Auckland is a relatively compact city, which helped us to do things like collect produce directly from farmers. We also honed some kitchen magic skills, learning to make cheese, as well as our own cleaning and personal hygiene products.

The last four years were an experimental phase, where we dabbled in so-called civilised society, trying on preconceived notions of adulthood for size.

During this period, we also observed, evaluated, and refined our ideals. We reflected with our peers and found ourselves, after a while, in a world that was in direct conflict with what we had been told it would be. A university degree would lead to guaranteed work, we had been taught, but all around us was evidence to the contrary: overqualified peers in hospitality and retail, friends in overwhelming debt with no job prospects, hordes of acquaintances abandoning their tertiary qualifications in favour of reskilling in trades. The guidance we were receiving from the Gospel According to Generation Baby Boomer seemed increasingly irrelevant to our experiences, and as a group, we began to feel an uncomfortable mélange of confusion, isolation, guilt, and failure. The markers of success for their generation seemed now to be little more than a direct path to crippling debt. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Upon introspection, we realised that we have been trained to find happiness in the things we could buy, but that only leaves us suffocating in our possessions. In any case, we can't afford all the things the billboards and bus shelters tell us we need. We can't keep up with the releases of every new iGadget. More importantly, we can't afford the white picket fence house; a lot of us never expect to be able to in our lifetimes.

The question we came to, after deliberation, was “do we even want that?” Sure, some of our friends went to uni, got corporate jobs, and now have houses and mortgages to keep. We totally respect them if that's what keeps them happy, but is it what we want to make of the one shot we get at existence? Is there another way?

In November of 2014, we decided there is. And here is where we come full circle, from one small space to the next. We are building a tiny house.

Let's flesh out this picture a little: Nancy is a piano tuner, Steff is a permaculture practitioner and educator. 

Piano wrangling at the Royal Festival Hall in London, 2014

Getting all up in the terrestrial ecology

These, we are convinced, are the best jobs in the world. We play music in a band called Tweed, and occasionally (bonus!) get paid to do it. This is the best scantily-paid hobby in the world. This is how we sound.

And this is how we look!

We try to create, rather than find, happiness. We don't always succeed, but life is a work-in-progress right up until the end, right?

We are now 25 and 26. The last four years of our lives have been a blossoming of the ideals we set out to explore in the van, a trial-and-error in pursuit of a life that fits. We found conventional consumerism and the career-centric lifestyle left us feeling a bit hollow. We're trying something new. Are we still keen, idealistic, and pulsing with anticipation? You bet. Stay tuned.

The Quest Quotient by Nancy Howie and Steff Werman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at thequestquotient2011.blogspot.com.