Back

Pausing | Day 80 of my 2023 Journal

Cecilie Conrad·Mar 21, 2023· 2 minutes

We just spent 24 hours in a village I don’t even know the name of.

It is sometimes emotionally complicated to stop. I remember someone said: “Vacation is doing something you are not usually doing.” Now we do not do vacations, but sometimes we do pause.

And it is confronting.

When we paused in the unnamed village near Bologne, the weather changed for the much better, and our van was parked right next to a piece of grass with flowers. We spend the day enjoying the sun while working a bit, answering emails, writing stuff, organizing the van, repairing stuff, and studying.

But first, we had to ask ourselves what to do when we were not busy sightseeing. The change was somewhat emotionally overwhelming. There are so many things to do in this category of “normal little things” it seems overwhelming to begin with. Nails to cut. Yoga to do. Things to fix. Books to read. Music to play.

We did enjoy our van and the simple life in and around it, accomplished 3 percent of the many little things, and went for a walk in the afternoon. The second-hand shop could have had some T-shirts we needed, but it did not, and it did not matter. The church was beautiful, the sunset alike, and the water living animal, I don’t know the name of in English, was exciting and made us smile. Any walk is a good walk.

Negotiating what to do next, cooking dinner, calling friends, and doing some more work. We feel we could use 25 days like this, but we know we can not do it.

We have to see what is around the next corner. We can not sit still. We can only pause briefly.

pausing-article

Love and light

Cecilie-Underskrift-300x133

Cecilie Conrad

# 80 of my 2023 writing challenge - Read them all here

Copenhagen is a city by the water. We sailed the canals together with my soul-friend Tamiko and her partner on a big raft. Spending a day on the wate…Read more
Some days are overloaded with to-do. If we lean back and trust the process, they might unfold beautifully. When we sat around the porridge and berrie…Read more
A friend of mine told me about a Shakespeare open-air play in one of the central parks - The Tempest, a play I had never heard about. It was funny, m…Read more
I sometimes tell myself this: If I do what is hard (make my way through the narrow path of doing what I find right despite all systems around me), my…Read more
If I were ever to move back to my hometown, I would not choose the new areas. I would stick to be me. And hope to find some of the wild lives, some o…Read more
When my first child was a little one, I was a single mom with half an education, a tight budget, a small apartment, and a good life. We had a lot of …Read more
When we let go of the ideas of how “it is supposed to be,” we are left in a peaceful place. When we learn to live with less, happy if we have “it all…Read more
When I started this challenge 148 days ago, I planned to share a photo daily, along with a snippet of text related to the day before—a simple travel-…Read more
Wuau, it has been a roller coaster! Gaming might be the most potent example of the importance of Deschooling in my entire journey as an unschooling m…Read more