X | Cold Hearted Winter

5/2/23

I’ll tell you one thing for free - gowertravels has been too broke to travel, and will be for some time!

Honestly, 2023 has been pretty rough on me so far! This isn’t going to be a depressing post or anything, but I probably will bitch about the way my January went a little bit later in this writing. I think the luck I had from my first six months in this country definitely ran out by the end of 2022. But let’s start off with talking about December 2022, because that was a pretty cool month for the most part.

I came to this country with barely any warm clothes, as I arrived in the UK in the summer and wanted to bring over the lightest possible luggage I could. December started off pretty cold sure, but nothing that crazy. But out of nowhere, after the first week of the month on a Saturday morning I woke up to WhatsApp texts from the Barnstaple Rugby group asking if the game was still on. I wondered why the heck wouldn’t it be on? I opened the curtains of my bedroom, looked out the window and saw that everything was under snow, and it was literally raining snow. Should have brought more bloody warm clothes. Now, I’ve been to a couple of mountains back in New Zealand and played in the snow on them in the past during the seasons, but I’ve never been in snow like this before where it is just outside my doorstep. Barbrook was whited out, even if the rugby was on there was no way I could leave my area. I’m always gutted if I can’t play rugby, but I didn’t mind so much on this day. As you may have seen on my main Instagram account, I posted photos of some of the areas I walked in. In the morning I walked along the Barbrook river, all the trees and rocks were covered in white while the snow was still falling in the air. Later on I walked up to the Barbrook moor. Everything was white out there, all the land you could see out far was just covered. I’d never seen anything like it. I had a blast taking lots of shots with my camera that I never seem to take out enough. The best part about this area is how it’s just so empty, it was so quiet and peaceful. No other person was around, there were sheep roaming about, there were beautiful horses, and I even spotted one deer briefly before it quickly made a run for it. That was an awesome day to remember, it was just so dream-like.

I spent Christmas with my family over in Alton. It was a cool day, spent with good company. I enjoyed watching my younger cousins enthusiasm for Christmas. It was like watching my younger sisters struggle to contain their excitement over the day for many years. I stopped giving a toss about Christmas a long time ago, but these kids remind me of how I used to feel about it which warms the heart a bit. I’ll tell you what though, I couldn’t believe I was wearing fucking jeans at Christmas time. Normally I’m hardly wearing a shirt and getting sunburnt. Having a Winter Christmas was certainly strange compared to the Summer ones I’m used to, but at least you still drink lots of alcohol and eat lots of good food. I spent a few days over with the family before I took off back to Devon. This holiday period felt a bit strange to me, I enjoyed it but for the first time since I’d been over here I really started to miss New Zealand. I’d almost go as far as saying that I was homesick. The holiday period and the summer over there were always some of my favourite times, and to be missing out on catching up with family and old friends at the beach upset me a little. I got over this pretty quickly after learning about the on-going shit weather and floods they’ve been getting for their summer. If I was going to miss any summer of New Zealand's, I definitely wanted to miss out on this one by the sounds of it!

Up until the end of the year nearly everything looked as though it was falling into place for me. I felt secure with work, I was down to one part-time job that was said to turn into full-time after the new year. I was relatively fit and slowly gaining weight for rugby, even though I was struggling to crack the side for a few weeks, the frustration did raise my determination. I never really had to play for spots in a rugby team before, so while it was frustrating to not get many opportunities - I did enjoy the challenge it put in front of me. 

Then once 2023 hit, it all started to go pretty downhill for me. Not in a depressing kind of way, but it hasn’t been fun I’ll say that much! As of this writing, after being told that I would likely have full-time work, I’ve only worked one day since Christmas Eve. Taking messages from each week saying things along the lines of “diaries are looking pretty thin this week, hopefully next week”. I didn’t mind the first week, but after a month of this I’m pretty disappointed. Expecting to go from part-time to full-time, and to actually go from part-time to nothing is a bit of a stitch-up. There weren’t any promises, but I did put my faith into words that were said. Unfortunately for me that faith backfired. During this time of not earning any money, in the first week of January my car decided to try and drain me of the little amount of money I had left. Engine troubles that needed immediate fixing, followed by other alerts that needed looking at. I kind of got sick of taking my car into the mechanics, so now it has a bright orange light glowing at me. Much better than the initial flashing red one… not ideal when you’re already struggling in the pocket and expecting little to add to that. To top it all off, in the second week of January I suffered my second concussion in less than two seasons from playing rugby. Copped a nice shoulder (or elbow, I can’t remember…) straight into the side of my face. This led to not being allowed to work (not that there was any anyway…) and drive for two weeks, as well as being stood down from rugby for three weeks at the least. The three weeks is up now, and I don’t think I'm even ready for a rugby return yet. Headaches are triggered from just running let alone being hit by someone. I hope this is the last of my concussions, because I do fear that anymore will raise questions on whether to hang up the boots or not. Head injuries are pretty scary for potential long term damage and I can’t afford to lose more brain cells.

So that’s been me recently, I even had my eftpos card eaten by an ATM the other day to truly symbolize how my year is going so far, on the bright side there's nothing on it. Honestly, all of this has been pretty tough on me. It was hard for me to stay positive for a while there. I spent a lot of time questioning the decisions I had made and what I should do from here. It was a very tough pill to swallow, and I absolutely hate that I had to resort to this, but I ended up having to start receiving money from government benefits. I kept bitching to myself “I didn’t move to the other fucking side of the world just to struggle like this!”. Which yeah, I didn’t - but that is my current situation that I just had to accept. I struggled to get out of bed and be motivated for anything for a good couple of weeks before eventually accepting what is my reality. I’m actually starting a new job at the beginning of March, a job that I’m actually looking forward to as well. It’s different from any work I’ve done in the past. I found it through a Tinder date of all things too, believe it or not. I swear I find jobs through anything but job sites. After feeling like I’m almost at rock-bottom in a certain way, I’m looking forward to bringing myself back up financially, physically and mentally.