I’m taking the free & creative Barefoot Lifestyle to the next level
Ending five nomadic years and moving on to a next phase.
Several years ago I wrote an article for a magazine on how to extend that holiday feeling after the summer. My attention turned to a song on the radio: ‘It’s the year of summer, the year of summer is here.’
This question hit me: can I actually create a less stressful life, a life that ‘I don’t need a vacation from’? A life that isn’t a rat race? It was the first ignited spark towards (what turned out to be) a 5 year nomad journey. That might seem grand and compelling, but to me it was actually the opposite: embracing The Simple Life fully. A reset. In these years I let go of so much that I didn’t need anymore, literally and figuratively. Ultimately I found ‘home’ within myself so deeply. I learned a lot about surrendering, I learned to trust life and daring to ‘not know’ upfront how the journey will unfold and what each next step would look like. For me that took a lot of courage and this certainly wasn’t always easy, to say the least. But in the end: we find knowledge in the knowing, but wisdom is rooted in ‘not knowing’.
“This question hit me: can I actually create a less stressful life, a life that ‘I don’t need a vacation from’?”
Finally living my Pinterest dream boards for real
In the last five years I’ve lived in Bali, Ibiza and several temporary places in The Netherlands like a small wooden house, a beach apartment near the sea and a forest studio. In these years I’ve had the freedom to travel to Sweden many times to work on projects with a creative collective of wise wild women. It was truly a wild ride. Often times I’ve had the feeling that finally I’m living my tropical Pinterest dream boards for real, and there were also times I found it hard and wanted to push it towards having my own house again, with my own furniture and the stuff that I do still own from my storage box. But life didn’t allow me (yet). Intuitively I knew there were some pieces of the puzzle missing before I was able to move into the next phase, but boy oh boy, sometimes that was hard to surrender to.
In Sweden when I was working on creative projects
A typical Dutch former warehouse with an inspiring home studio to run my creative company from
“I’m now moving into a former warehouse with an inspiring home studio to run my creative company from and my flower-artist man living right next door.”
The next steps of the journey forward became clear
Now finally, after exactly five years, all pieces of that puzzle have fallen into place and the next steps of the journey forward became clear (yeah!). On the exact same day I flew to Bali five years ago to break free from the rat-race and all the patterns of our society that I felt then stuck in, I’m now moving into a former warehouse with an inspiring home studio to run my creative company from and my flower-artist man living right next door. Ready to continue a free, creative and connected Barefoot Lifestyle, but now in a cosy city with my own space again. In other words: I’m taking my quest to the next level, how can I keep a truly nourished life in the midst of ‘busy’ city life and many new projects? The world is so fast-paced right now, so how dó we connect back to that inner place of relaxation even in the midst of it? That eye of the storm. Finding more of the connected, slow and simple life, even within the intensity and speed of modern daily life.
It’s all about the quality of life. Cause it’s never about what you do, but always about how you do it!