It’s been almost two years since we have left the city life. We live in a small village with no shops (just one small village shop selling local products, only open on Saturdays) and no any other services. The closest supermarket is five kilometres away. There may not be much here, but there is a sense of community. People look out for each other, make sure that their neighbours are OK.
I do not miss the city. I don’t miss the convenience of having everything close by, I don’t miss the noise, nor the people. I definitely don’t miss having neighbours just behind the wall. With my extreme sensitivity to sounds, many are simply annoying noise to me. Here, the noises I have to deal with are passing tractors and mooing cows during the day, and the birds and our resident owls in the evenings. These are the neighbour’s noises I’m accepting with all my heart.
In this quiet something shifted. I became calmer, happier, my mind quieter. I found myself more often in my room, sitting at the desk writing down some words. I’ve been writing almost daily for a few months now and it turns out that it’s not only reading that makes me very happy, it’s writing too.
Of course I knew it before, but in the noise of my city life I’ve lost it somewhere. I was so busy with drowning out the noise of my surroundings that I didn’t have enough energy to concentrate on my writing.
They say that you can’t escape yourself, so moving will not change anything. Well, they are wrong. Moving changed me for the second time in my life.
First time was when I moved to the Netherlands. After moving away from the expectations of my family and friends, I’ve rediscovered myself. I’ve dug up my old dreams of writing and translating and started shifting my life towards them. It was such a big thing for me and it made me very happy indeed.
Ten years after deciding to move towards my dreams, I moved again. This time away from the noise of the city and the most busy part of the Netherlands. Here, in the quiet, I found myself again. I could hear my thoughts, my needs, my desires anew. I started writing again, I discovered that I like to try things out and see where they will take me, I fell in love with gardening and realised that I’m even more introvert than I previously thought.
Writing is very important to me. Reading is very important to me. But so is being close to nature and a quiet life. I don’t want a big career where I can climb the ladder of succes, I don’t need to go to clubs or eat out every week. I don’t need a huge salary. What I need is a good, slow, peaceful life, filled with things and people I love.
So I’m building this life of mine from scratch again. And I’m not in a hurry this time. I’m enjoying every step, I’m paying attention to how I feel, to what makes me happy, to the moments that give me joy. It’s not always easy, but it is definitely worth it.
xxx
Anna
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