Backpacking Solo

Walking into the unknown…

I´m excited about the world; the unknown; and the limitless options I have right now, in this moment, as I hold the world in the palm of my hands. I sit here browsing voluntary opportunities in Granada, Spain – one of my many destinations. My body tingles as I feel the adventure, my mind races. A month from now anything could happen…

I could find myself on a farm in the Sierra Nevada looking after the horses, and riding them in my spare time; I could find myself wondering the capital of Madrid, sitting on some grass, and watching the world go by; I could find myself on an interesting road trip down the coast listening to The Forrest Gump soundtrack, and drinking decaffeinated coffee; or I could even find myself staying longer in Catalonia, exploring the endless hiking trails; or who knows what else.

Why not? Anything is possible right now. My motto is “think BIG, and always keep an open mind”. Opportunities are all around us, we just have to take them when they come. People say I´m lucky, I just say I´m prepared. When I feel myself saying no to an opportunity, I say yes!

Inspirational writing…

I read a quote today on some traveller´s blog post,

“One life. Just one. Why aren’t we all running like we are on fire towards our wildest dreams?”

Sometimes we lose ourselves and stray from the most fundamental thing in life. We focus so much on routine and time races by – our most important commodity. I have strived all my life for adventure, and now, at this very moment in time, I am living the life I want. I´m living for the here and now, for this very moment in time, not in the past, nor the future. As the past cannot be changed, and the future is only changed by the here and now. People spend so much time building the future in their heads, they lose a sense of what truly defines the future, the present.

Why I travel…

Travel is an adventure, it´s something you feel inside, it´s not something which can be bought. Trying to explain this to people has always been difficult for me, another quote from the same blog post sums it up pretty nicely.

“Why do birds migrate? They can’t explain why, they just do. They’re overcome with an urge to go a certain way and they get where they need to go because of it.“

When I talk to people about travelling, all I ever hear are excuses about why they can´t travel. To all those people, stop making excuses and start planning for the life you want, don´t give up, if you really, truly want anything in this world, you will get it.

Re-aligning one´s self…

I´ve been reading an interesting book recently as I rummaged through Vivien´s book shelf. It´s called “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships”. I´ve started to become interested lately in self-help books, so naturally I picked it off the shelf. After an hour of reading I was amazed! For me, the book is great as it´s helped me communicate my feelings with people when they´ve upset me, and it´s even managed to help me unlock some deep emotions and understand how to handle them to make positive changes in my life. It´s changing my life for the better, and anything that does this is a real bonus.

My second family…

The people I´m staying with are the most wonderful people I´ve ever met. I consider them as my own family, and will definitely be back here to see them again. On a very good note, my mum is coming to stay for a week. It´s the first time she´s been abroad since she was 18, as such, it´s going to be a great week for us, and I can´t wait to see her – it´s been 6 months!

Work hard, play harder…

I´ve been working at the farm mostly. I spend most of my days painting in the sun with my top off – working on my super tan of course! I am hopefully going to make a visit to Port Aventura which is 30 minutes away – how could I possibly resist, the weather is heating up, it now averages 24c and the BBQ has been getting hammered, what´s more perfect than a BBQ and a beer on a beautiful sunny day in paradise.

Moving south where the sun shines harder…

I have started making plans for early June, I have made contact with some people in Granada, and they have accepted me. There are many other places to stay around Granada, so I can see myself spending a few months there in the Summer – can´t wait!

Until next time guys, peace and love, Jonathan x

p.s – I upload new photos quite regular, and sometimes a new video, don´t forget to check my twitter for regular updates!

Location…

I´m sitting here in a small home office just off the beach in Miami Platja, Spain; It´s thundering and lightening outside; the internet has cut off; I´m tired; I´m drinking rum and coke; drum and bass is playing loud; I´ve just consumed a whole chocolate bunny proving I still have a strong chocolate addiction; and I´ve had a day of ups and downs emotionally.

Not another typical blog post…

I personally think – although other people such as my mum would disagree – that my blog posts are becoming a bit monotonous. I´m going to keep changing the way I write. I like change, what can I say. Today, I´m going to write a very personal blog post. I´ve chosen to share it with you because I am open, I always have been, and I always will be.

Happiness…

From reading previous posts, you may think that I live everyday in total happiness, this is simply not true. What is true is that I am having what people commonly say as “the time of my life”, but that doesn´t necessarily mean I´m having a great time everyday – I have bad times, but without bad times, I would never truly appreciate the good times. When I have bad times I feel like I can´t think clearly; I feel numb of emotion; I don´t really feel like doing anything; or talking to anyone, slight depression perhaps, but not strong enough to control me because I always see when I´m falling, and I always do something about it – something positive. I´m writing this post not for sympathy but for answers. Does everyone feel like this from time to time? What´s the difference between depression and having a “down day”? My inner happiness seems to be on a roller coaster, unstable to be more precise.

Self-observation…

I´ve thought about what could be contributing to such unstability, and can only think of a mixture of health problems, and other people´s happiness around me. I have a back injury at the moment which I´ve had for nearly 6 weeks. It´s on the upper left side of my back where I´m experiencing numbness – sometimes combined with pain. I stopped physical work 3 weeks ago, after 2 weeks it was feeling a bit better, and then I lifted something again last week causing the numbness to come back. I´ve been the doctor who wasn´t very helpful, and I´ve researched the hell out of it on Google – probably not wise giving the amount of terrible advice/information floating around on the Internet. I´ve been doing scapular wall slides, and started training my back with light weights along with abdominal exercises. I´m really hoping I fully recover as it´s on my mind all the time, probably the primary cause of unhappiness.

The secondary cause I think is the people around me. I believe being around happy people, or no people at all, really helps maintain stability of happiness. At the moment, there is pain all around me, both physical, and emotional pain. I am always there for people who suffer emotional pain, even if I can´t relate personally to their problems, I always try to give sensible advice. At the moment, with my own injury I am restricted from helping the people suffering physical pain – this frustrates me, but I know I need to be in good health before I can help others. I´ve also noticed I´ve started to become a bit of a hypercondriact. I am worrying about health problems too much – thinking the worst at all times. I´m positively acting on my health problems, and soon when I´m recovered I will be able to help others more actively. Let´s hope my health problems aren´t as bad as I think and I have a speedy recovery.

The things I miss and the things I don´t miss…

I´ve been travelling for 5 months now; and I´ve experienced a lot of different lifestyles, personalities, and emotions. All these things have contributed to this list of things I miss and don´t miss about my life back at home.

Things I miss

• My mother – my friend, the fun times we always have together.
• My bro Jay, and stealing all his things
• Partying very hard to drum and bass/dubstep/progressive house
• Making DJ mixes in my room on my turntables
• My job as a Web Developer
• My cute little cat Miow
• Going fishing with my friend Kerwin
• Random conversations with my friend Chris
• Playing sport
• Fish and chips with curry sauce

Things I don´t miss

• Stress – something which started happening too often
• The routine of a 9-5 job.
• Having too many material possessions.
• Spending too much time on the computer – something I´m doing right now

Experiences while travelling…

Travelling gives you a big opportunity to try new things, here is a list of things I´ve been lucky enough to experience on my travels through France and Spain.

• Tasting traditional French and Spanish food from excellent cooks
• The ability to speak basic French but not understand the people
• Skiing in the snowy peaks of Saint-Lary
• Horse riding in the foothills of the Pyrenees
• Back to basic living in a straw bale house
• Listen to traditional/new French and Spanish music
• Watching F.C Barcelona beat Valencia 5-1
• Hiking in the rocky mountains of Sierra de Llaberia
• Meeting lots of new people all the time, hate some, love some
• Gaining the focus to write some lyrics for music, and write various rhymes.

Going to bed…

I hope everyone is doing okay in life, and that you are all striving for internal happiness. Until next time, peace and love, Jonathan x

Leaving the city…

My trip to Barcelona was random, and very cool, it was a shame to leave but staying in the city simply costs too much money. I bordered the train to my next destination and left the city behind. I headed towards the rocky mountains of Sierra de Llaberia stopping at l´hospitalet de l´enfant. As I stood there just off the platform I wondered what the next journey would bring. After waiting a little while I was picked up by Hen in a very cool 4×4. He informed me that the guy I met in Barcelona (Anton) had rang and was on his way too – I guess he took my advice seriously afterall. After Anton arrived, we headed towards the small village of Pratdip to stay the night with Hen´s family before heading up to the mountains come morning. Meeting the kids that night was an eye opener in that it made me feel sorry for the kids I know of today – the kids who sit in front of computers all day playing games – as they enthusiastically showed me various stories, paintings, and inventions they had created in their personal sketch books.

Finding the dream…

As the sun rose that morning, we made our way up the windy roads deep into the mountains of Sierra de Llaberia to Hen´s house which stood proudly as a local hiking attraction called Mas del Ramer. Upon arrival I was astounded at the pure beauty of both the house and the surrounding area, I could really see where Hen was coming from when he said he´d found his dream, and he sure had worked hard to achieve it.

I´ll never make a stone mason…

We started work the next day on re-building a stone wall which had fallen many years back. The work was really fun, interesting, and pretty physical as we lifted huge boulders throughout the day, I knew I had a weakness in my back so I made sure I lifted everything properly, or so I thought…When the next morning arrived I noticed numbness in my upper left back, shit, not good, anyway we will get to the update on that later.

But maybe a gardner or cook…

After I noticed my injury, Hen let me do some less strenuous work which led me to pruning the various olive/almond trees which grow on the terraces surrounding the house. I really appreciated his relaxed attitude towards work as he just let me get on with the job and be creative. This led me to really getting stuck in to things such as gardening – a first for me, we worked as a team and cleared a beautiful area by the swimming pool which will end up being such a tranquil spot to relax in the summer when it´s finished. I also began cooking every evening, and was confident in trying some new things, I made some great meals, so I´m told! Nobody died anyway!

Hiking the rocky mountains…

While being completely surrounded by hiking trails it was natural for me to seek adventure. I started and completed many hikes, some taking up to 6 hours. It really satisfied my adventurous mind, and will be definitely something I will be doing more often when I return to England. Hiking the mountains gave me the chance to see some of the spectacular views of the surrounding villages and coastline which were more than worth the sweat and tiredness which I often succumbed.

Scary seclution…

On many occasions I was left in the house alone for a few days. The seclution of the place had me flapping at times as my mind started playing tricks on me during the night, often thinking I heard someone outside or seen someone in the window, all a ridiculous fear of course! – created in my head from the numerous scary films and documentaries I´ve seen in my life.

Opportunities taken…

I was lucky to experience a two day stay in the nearby city of Tarragona – well known for it´s Roman heritage and ruins. I was also invited to a few get togethers where I got to taste the delights of Catalan food – primarily these spring onion looking vegetables which were wrapped in newspaper – the name loses me but they were very yummy indeed.

A long journey to my next journey…

Overall, I really enjoyed the place, and it´s definitely somewhere I could spend a large portion of my time working and living, it´s a real natural place for me to be. After three weeks and a discussion about my injury, Hen managed to put me in touch with a local family in need of a website for their renovated stone house at the foothills of the mountains. It was a much needed opportunity for me to take a break from physical work in hope that my back could heal. I thanked Hen for his help, packed my backpack and headed on a long hike to my next placement, from there began my next journey which I will update you on real soon.

Until next time people, love as always, Jonathan x