Should I stay or should I go?

Posted on June 19, 2018June 18, 2018 by Leontien Reedijk

Image by tookapic on Pixabay

My (R)evolution, part 6.

Living the dream ain’t always easy, I tell you. Even in times of peace, there were things in our tropical island life that we’d jokingly complain about. The amount of curious questions we repeatedly have to answer, is one of them. (I dedicated a separate page to these FAQ’s on my website, in case you’re getting curious now too).

One of the questions asked many times is: “Are you here for good?”

“No” has always been my honest and wholehearted answer. “But I have no idea when I will leave.”

Before, when asked what could be a reason for me to leave this little island off the coast of Nicaragua—a country now on the verge of another revolution—I’d would sum up this short list:

Continue reading “Should I stay or should I go?” →

Living Your Dream isn’t Brave.

Posted on April 8, 2018 by Leontien Reedijk

Living your dream isn't brave.

For the last 10 years, I have been living my dream, by myself, in a strange land far from everything that is (or was) familiar.

People see that and they think they would never be able to do it themselves, so they tell me I’m brave.

But I don’t really deserve a medal. Living your dream isn’t brave.

To me, brave people are those who risk their own lives or freedom for the sake of others. The people who overcome tremendous difficulty in life and can still find a smile in their hearts. The people who suffer deeply, but don’t give up hope.

Those are the brave ones, and I’m not of their calibre.

All I have done is get sacked from a job, pack a bag, and take off travelling, leaving the demands of modern society behind for some adventure and freedom. How brave is that?

So no, living your dream isn’t brave. I’m not brave. It’s that I have been able to let go of most of my fears.

Many of us are full of fears of all shapes and sizes: fear of losing our jobs, partners, money, or health; fear of losing face, of rejection, of abandonment; fear of gaining weight, not being pretty or good enough.

We fear failure in every way.

But when the fears subside, life begins. Continue reading “Living Your Dream isn’t Brave.” →

Eulogy for Pumpkins

Posted on November 19, 2017November 19, 2017 by Leontien Reedijk

(This blog-post is not part of the series on Pumpkins’ life. That series will be continued soon!)

Pumpkins has disappeared.

He’s gone. Disappeared. Just like that. We went to bed like normal one night, and the next morning he wasn’t there when I woke up. Normally when I get out of bed, he will be sitting on my deck or pop up from underneath, but this time he didn’t.

I went about my morning as normal, thinking he would walk in a little later, that he had just fallen asleep in a cozy spot and hadn’t realised it was morning. After a night of prowling, he usually sleeps his deepest sleep in the mornings, on the doormat or on my lap. So maybe he was just zonked out somewhere else.

But he never walked in that day, heading for his food bowl, as he normally would.

I spent the day hoping that he would pop up in the evening, that maybe he had been wandering off too far in the night and decided to hide out somewhere safe during the day before he would walk back under the protection of the darkness at night.

I hadn’t woken up during the night from screeching cat fights or barking dogs in combination with cat screams, which could indicate that he got in trouble. None of my neighbours had heard anything alarming either. So I didn’t think he was lying somewhere half-crippled and bleeding from a dog-attack, the way we first found him, several years ago. Or maybe I was just hoping he wasn’t.

Continue reading “Eulogy for Pumpkins” →