XVIII | To Have It All

 

14/07/24

It's been more than two years since I left New Zealand. I have very rare phases where I get quite homesick, such as when a big birthday occurs, or when a I'm missing a good friends wedding. There was only one time over a year ago where I genuinely considered moving back. Other than the odd time here and there, I never dive in to thinking about New Zealand too much. But ever since I passed the two year mark, I can't stop thinking about all the things that I miss. I suppose two years is a fairly long time to be away from loved ones and the places that I miss. I've caught up with a few friends from NZ in the last few weeks too, I can say for certain that seeing them and reminiscing on old times has hit a spot somewhere. Even before then though, it’s been playing on my mind a lot. Is this just a phase, or is there something I need to do?

The thing is, I never left New Zealand because I hated New Zealand. I left New Zealand because I hated myself. Drama queen right? I was drowning in my weaknesses. But somewhere along the way in the last two years, I learned that I needed to tame my weaknesses. Seeing more of the world, doing more difficult things, getting out of comfort zones. I discovered that those are keys to achieving that. Could that same growth have occurred had I never left? Maybe. But for years I've always believed that to change one or two things in your life - you may need to change almost everything. Two years ago I had just gotten out of a relationship, had no career ties. Other than the thoughts of family and friends - there was nothing to hold me back. I used to think that I should have moved to the UK maybe five years earlier, but in reality I couldn't have left at a better time. Perhaps the key to actually having the guts to leave was indeed because I felt that I was nothing and had nothing to lose. I was young enough to make silly mistakes, but old enough to not make worse ones. I can't imagine my 20 year-old self lasting five minutes over here! Anyway... I digress...

At the end of the day, New Zealand is always home. That is where nearly all of my history lies. I left a lot behind, and would go back today if I could. But on the other hand, I'm happy in England too. I've made good friends and ties in the time that I've been here. I've fallen in love with some places on this side of the world too. Not to mention that there's still so much I haven't seen over here yet. I'm actually going to Dublin, Ireland in several days for a couple of nights by myself. Then I'll be meeting my good friend Pita and his mates in Amsterdam, Netherlands where we will be there for four nights. I haven't left England in a good while, so I'm very much looking forward to this. And that's the thing...

Somewhere along the line of recent times, I truly realised that I can't have it all. I can't be everywhere at once. Living in Alton working a shit waged, monotonous job simply isn't going to cut it anymore - I'm talking as if it ever did. For a good while I've been pressing myself on where I will go next and what I can do, I may have expressed ideas in past blogs - but nothing ever came to fruition. Not through a lack of trying, rather from lack of certainty. The problem is, there's too much that I'd want to do! I feel like I've changed a fair amount in the last few years, but my indecisiveness remains as strong as ever. Sometimes I can’t help but think that I need to step back to move forward. 

For the last two months I've been trying to study courses on computer coding, like web development and such. I say try because I was "trying" to put time in to it, but I never made it a top priority despite it being something I genuinely wanted to learn. I've struggled to find balance in my life with my increased workload at my job, as well as being social, keeping on top of my fitness, on top of trying to make decent time to study. I can make excuses like the one I just made. Ultimately it’s my discipline that has let me down. I've always had fairly shit discipline with most things in life, I think going for a run is about the only thing I don't think twice about doing these days. If I'm tired, I'll do it. If I'm sore, I'll do it. Apparently if most of my body feels like it's on fire thanks to summer time eczema, I'll run a 10km with all that too. But because I’m disciplined with that, and almost addicted to it - it comes at the expense of something else. After realising how poorly disciplined I am in general, I decided to work on this quite recently. Planning things ahead, eliminating distractions, reminding myself of what I truly want. Speaking of what I truly want, I almost feel like this holiday will play a deciding factor in a certain area of my life...

*

20/07/24

How I’ve missed solo trips across Europe. Dublin didn’t disappoint me, I definitely would like to come back one day. I arrived in the late afternoon on a Thursday. Originally I had planned to wander around the city and have a couple of pints on my own in different pubs, the idea was to be refreshed and go all out on Friday. But thankfully that plan of mine was thwarted. I started off at a pub called Temple Bar. The atmosphere there was awesome, it was the perfect place to have my first pint of an Irish Guinness - a very good expensive pint of Guinness (€9!?!). The place was packed, and everyone was very involved with watching the live band play. I didn’t realise before I went there how much of a big attraction this pub was, it’s a recommendation on all the “things to do in Dublin” websites. It looks incredible from the outside too, with themes of flowers, fairy lights, lamps - all against the brick walls. It stood out amongst the rest, no doubt about that.

I hopped across a couple of more pubs, sipping more Guinness and watching the world go by. I couldn’t believe how much was going on for a Thursday night. Lots of acts were on, plenty of people getting shit-faced. After a few pubs I was thankful to no longer be drinking by myself. As I was sipping on a Guinness, leaning against a pub wall outside - this bloke, probably a few years older than me stands next to me just after he’d been served. I hadn’t really had enough Dutch courage to talk to strangers yet, but I kept thinking that I should try and talk to this dude. I enjoy a drink on my own, but better memories come from meeting people and seeing what unfolds. As I was thinking on it, he ended up talking to me anyway which was cool. Norman is Irish and was visiting Dublin from Australia, where’s he’s been living for the last 12 years. He was waiting on his cousin who he hasn’t seen in that long. I ended up pub crawling with Norman and Connor after they invited me to join them. Connor left after around 11pm-ish, then Norman and I carried on visiting the busiest pubs. We hung out with more strangers as the night went on. I kept getting attention from shit-faced Irish rugby fans as I was wearing an All Blacks jersey, which I purposely wore to attract that kind of attention. It was always funny, they claim to have a tonne of respect for New Zealand rugby, but were also telling me to go fuck myself!

As it hit about 1:00am I was pretty tired and knew that I was getting closer to my alcohol limit. I’ve been getting more and more skilled at gauging when to slow down or to stop in my drinking since I’ve lived in the UK. Much to their disappointment, I left Norman and these two absolutely plastered Irish lads we had met to it.

The next day was full of exploring. It was rubbish weather unfortunately, but it didn’t stop me from enjoying myself. As far as cities go, Dublin is a pretty tolerable and compact one. I’m not much of a city person, so this is me saying that it is good. It’s not somewhere like London where it can feel quite suffocating. I thought about doing a tour of some kind, but I’ve never really been the type of person who’s in to that - unless it’s about something I’m really interested in. I could have seen how Guinness was made, but honestly - couldn’t give a shit. Would rather just drink it! I’ve always just followed my nose and aimed to surprise myself on solo trips, and this one was no different.

After a day of exploring, it was time to get back on the grog and see what will unfold again. I was hopping between pubs for quite some time by myself for a good few hours or so. It was nice though, watching the nightlife of Dublin on a Friday night. I sat at the bar in this one pub for a while, I thought about going back to the hostel several times before the lovely bar staff kept giving me the "do I want another Guinness?" look. I may have given the "Yes" look seven times while I was on my own. Eventually I started talking to these two American blokes, they must have been in their early forties. And thus, my solo drinking period excitingly came to an end. They were cool dudes, another American guy came and sat with us later in the evening too. They all kept shouting me drinks which was ideal, and kind of them. They were really funny and kind, but there’s this line with a couple of them where they tend to be quite funny and charismatic but also possess serious alpha male-like traits - which I find pretty funny in a different way. Like in a “get over yourself” way. Overall they were a good time, two of them were actually flying to Amsterdam around the same time as me. We're all hoping to randomly run in to each other while we are there, that’d be pretty cool! I purposely said not to take each others contact details, to create potential shock value. I ended up getting back to my hostel at 2:30am, a bloody good shift. I was the only one in my room too, which was very ideal. 

On the Saturday I mostly just went to a couple of cafe's and waited around for my flight to Amsterdam. I enjoy finding a good café almost as much as I enjoy finding a good pub. The weather was quite miserable, and I had seen and done what I wanted to do. Not to mention I was half hanging! 

Dublin was great. It’s funny with cities, I’m not the type of cat who likes to check out shops, restaurants, and tours so I’m kind of limiting myself from not being interested in that kind of thing. It's different if it's somewhere like Rome, but in my eyes Dublin is just another modern city. But I really enjoyed the night life there. There’s just such a good pub and drinking culture. There’s this good energy there that makes it special, I was happy to be apart of it and even just watch it all. I had a great time meeting quality Irish lads and fellow tourists. I’d love to come back on a lads trip one day or something. 

*

27/07/24

 Amsterdam truly is a very different place. There's all kinds of live sex shows, then more shockingly there's the infamous Red-light District. You walk through them, and there's half-naked sex workers behind windowed doors trying to egg you on in to spending some money on them. The city is heavy on its marijuana usage too, while there are still certain laws surrounding where it can be consumed - but it's not completely illegal. There are tonnes of rivers throughout the city, with a lot of boats carrying tourists through them. I cannot stress how many people are on bicycles in this city too, not to mention that you see them parked up everywhere. It's a very scenic city, but also quite dirty - beyond that of the obvious reasons. I loved my time there though, I'd definitely be willing to go back one day. This NZ lads trip was a good one.

I met up with the boys; Pita, Elliot, and Jacob at roughly 10:00pm on Saturday night. Pita's one of my best friends, I've known him for nearly ten years at this point. But I've only met Jacob once before back in June, and I had never met Elliot prior to this trip. Pita, Elliot, and I got on the lash straight away, while Jacob was out and about doing his own thing. We rolled through several bars before eventually hitting the clubs much later in the night. Somewhere along the way we met these two girls from Finland who were the same age as us, they joined our crew for the rest of the night. All of a sudden I have a desire to go to Finland, if you know me well and know what I'm like - I'm sure you know why I now want to go Finland. The Boys and I didn't get back to our hotel until about 9:00am, a fairly decent shift if I say so myself.

Our hotel room was absolutely boiling, I woke up and got out of bed at 10:30am. I've been talking to this girl back in the UK who suggested I take a train to a city called Haarlem, as it's supposedly quite a nice area. I thought bugger it, the lads won't be up for another several hours at least - I'll go and do some solo exploring. Haarlem was a more mellow version of Amsterdam. It had lots of cool little cafe's and shops. Some cool buildings, what I presume are cathedrals too. I just explored for a while, trying to scope out where the best place was to have a coffee along the main river. When I did, I found somewhere to sit along the river and just watched the world go by. I was here for about two hours before I remembered that I was operating from 1.5hrs of sleep, also baring in mind I had very little sleeps in Ireland too. I went back to the hotel and got a couple more hours of sleep in.

Later that day Pita, Elliot, and I did some exploring, and naturally got back on the lash while Jacob did his own thing once again. We went to a few places before ending up at Susie's Saloon where we spent a lot of time at. This pub was heavily themed with Rugby Seven's merchandise and memorabilia from across the world which was interesting to see. There was this one charismatic bloke who took a shine to us and had shown us around the pub, he then took us to another bar that opened up until very early hours of the morning. I can't remember for the life of me what this one was called, but it was fun. The owner(?) kept giving the boys and I free shots of spirits, which we will never complain about. It was another fairly late night. Jacob texted us with a photo of himself saying he lost his wallet, so he must have had a good night. We got home to a fairly intoxicated Jacob who then told us he had lost his phone too. He lost his wallet, THEN lost his phone - all in the space of very little time, and he was just outside the hotel when all of this happened. We all felt sorry for him, even though it was very likely his fault. But you have to laugh at how he consecutively had these belongings stolen from him at one spot.

We've got a pretty good theme going here. Pita, Elliot, and I got back on the lash. But this time Jacob didn't come out at all, because well - he wasn't doing too flash for obvious reasons. I remember Elliot (who's a Brit living in NZ) laughing at how British I've become, because if there's no plan at no matter what time of day - I will say "pint?" or "pub?". Besides that we did some more exploring in different parts of Amsterdam. The further away you get from the red light district area, the more scenic it gets - funnily enough. We ended up back at Susie's and that other place again. Although, this time we met this older kiwi bloke in this other place. I won't go in to too much details, but we all thought he was a prick and he had well overstayed his welcome with having beers with us. He was more of a dick to Elliot for being English, and even with Pita and I being kiwis - everything this guy knew and did in New Zealand was always better, supposedly. Once we had left that bar and called it a night, he was still trying to hang around us after saying his good-bye. This had led to Pita looking straight in to this blokes eyes, straight faced and all, telling him to "Fuck off". The bloke then biked off with his tails between his legs. Fair play to him, if a big Tongan man told me to fuck off, I'd give him my wallet and jump in to the nearest urine-filled river. At that point I was fairly intoxicated and was more on the emotional side of the drink. I kept telling Pita that the guy didn't deserve that. But the following day I concluded that he was a dick to all of us, and he did deserve it - which says something if I believe that.

Our final full day in Amsterdam was a good one. The three of us did plan on doing more exploring, however I think by this point we were all pretty shagged and were happy at having some chilled beers across the afternoon. We had seen what we had really wanted to anyway, so we weren't that bothered about missing out on a couple of things. Along with Jacob this time, we finished the evening at a coffee shop and had several more beers before having an "early" one. This night was fun, Pita and I in particular were laughing our asses off.

We all went to the airport in the morning. The boys were heading to Manchester, while I was heading to London. They’re all heading back to New Zealand within the next week or so too. We all said our goodbyes, not knowing when I’d see them again - but we are already talking about the next lads trip. I walked away from their gate quite upset, I never like goodbyes but this one hit me a bit. One of my best mates just left in Pita, I made another friend in Elliot - a really cool guy, and it bothers me how it's going to be a while before strengthening that friendship. I told him in the first 24-hours of knowing him that he’s the brother. And Jacob, I didn't spend as much time with him on this trip compared to the others. But he's just so funny, and such a liability. It's times like this that make you realise what's truly important. The following day back in England I tested positive for Covid again. I thought that this was great, I had felt a bit rough for a day or so already, and just thought all the beer and shit food was getting to me. But it was just Covid! How good?! It isn't good to be fair, I'm currently sweating my bollocks off and freezing at the same time. Can barely walk up the road without heavily breathing too. Could have done without it!

I have a vision of what I want in life, it's as clear as ever now. Patience and discipline will be the keys, but so long as I believe in my efforts and think of all the things that I desire - I know I'll get there. My goals are strong enough, I just need to put action towards them. I said at the beginning of this entry that I realised that I can’t have it all. But following this trip, I now realise that I have to do my best to get close to it. There are two worlds in my life, I want to make them in to one as best as I can. 

Take that final sentence how you will.