Life Update: Settling down… a bit

Hello! It’s been about 4 months since I wrote a “life update”. I’d stopped moving around then. Ended up being about 18 months of travel, the last few months of it just going places because I had to be somewhere. Capped off with Istanbul where I got to meet many feline residents.

I’ve only been away once since. That was to Denmark. My cousin Karina passed away. Cancer. The outdoor service by a lake in Odense was beautiful, and the shamans were lovely people. I also decided to spend some time with my uncle in the Danish countryside.

Otherwise I’ve mostly been at my mum’s, keeping to myself in my old bedroom. Still surrounded by boxes containing what I was calling the “relics of a former life.” But I now look at them as a “new life starter kit.”

Dealing with my mum is difficult. Triggering. Being around someone who was traumatised from a young age and never got help. Too scared to go out, mostly just sits on the sofa staring into space. Someone who can only see life through a lens of threat and fear, always feeling like a victim. A parent you end up having to parent. So I mostly keep to myself in my room when I’m there. It’s very odd to be “living” there after all these years. Sometimes it almost feels like I never left.

Working through my own issues too. Seeing an existential therapist to help find purpose and meaning. It’s going well and feels a bit like coaching at times. Really look forward to the sessions.

My overall mental state is pretty good with some dips due to all the uncertainties right now. Overall I feel a sense of coming together again. A new version of me emerging. But then none of us is ever truly “done.” Always “becoming.”

I’m also getting better at finding support. Turning to friends for help. Usually terrible at that. Always in survival mode. Hyper-indendepent and hypervigilant.

Anyway, the big news…

I have a PLAN. It’s kind of simple, boring and obvious. The best ones generally are.

In July I moved into an Airbnb by Brixton Hill with the intention of finding somewhere to rent. I was immediately put off. £1800/month for a one bed. Rents have really gone up. Shrinking supply as landlords sell up. I didn’t feel comfortable paying that much. I’ve already paid a lot over the years. Easily over £100,000 over the last decade.

I was stumped. Rent or travel again? Hadn’t even processed my recent travels. Also hadn’t faced the next hurdle: work. I’d been relying on my savings as a crutch to keep moving around. Which meant I wasn’t making any lasting connections or building a life either. I had nothing to anchor me and no plan. I was simply reacting with no goal or purpose. Lost.

Which is what all this is about. Anchoring myself again. There is such a thing as too much freedom. Dizzying and confusing.

Then it all started coming together.

Over dinner a good friend made a stupendously obvious suggestion:

“Why don’t you just buy the kind of place you’re looking to rent? It’s a good time to be a cash buyer.”

I hadn’t even considered it. But yes, I could just about manage a small one bedroom flat south of the river. Brixton, Oval, Stockwell or thereabouts. Areas I knew well and close to the centre. And this would be cash. No mortgage

I’d finally have somewhere to live. A base. If I travelled again I’d have somewhere to come back to.

I’d thought about buying a few years before with a mortgage, but I was allergic to the idea of a mortgage and even buying a place. Combination of weird upbringing and some idealistic notions. Sense of worth, feeling I deserved my money, some sort of survivor’s guilt too. In any case, the obvious fact is: I need somewhere to live. Even my mum’s place is only “hers” until she dies, then it goes back to the council. As it should.

So I’m okay with it finally. I also need to dump my money. Pretending I didn’t need to work or have income again was a way of avoiding and running away from working again.

With the decision made I spurred into action. Since I was paying a lot of money to stay in an Airbnb I crammed in 22 viewings over two weeks. An estate agent remarked that they don’t even do that many.

I was getting a feel for what was out there, asking the right questions. This was training. I made a few offers but they were rejected. Too low. It seems to be almost entirely landlords settling one beds in these areas, due to the anticipated changes to capital gains tax. But they aren’t in a hurry and my status as a cash buyer doesn’t seem to be a huge motivator.

I wondered what tenants would do. Many may not have had significant rent increases while living there and would suddenly be faced with having to pay a lot more for the same kind of place. I hate this whole system.

Then I moved back to my mum’s, suddenly no longer feeling so flush with cash.

I’m impatient but also trying not to rush. If I see something I really want I can make a more reasonable offer. And once an offer is accepted I’ll breathe a sigh of relief, even though things can still go wrong after. I may take a short trip somewhere. It’ll be 2–3 months until I get into the place in a no chain situation. I’m not good at waiting, especially if I don’t have something else to focus on.

But it does give me time to figure out work. I need to work again. I need income again. I’m not set up for life unless I go live in some super cheap part of the world or drop dead in under a decade. I have virtually no pension, 14 months in the civil service isn’t going to cut it.

In a lot of ways my confidence in this area is reset almost back to before I’d ever worked. Which some may find hard to believe given the kind of work I used to do.

Small steps. I’ve started having chats and thinking about what I want to do and what I can do.

It turns out I have a “spiky profile”, something characteristic of neurodivergent people. I’m strong at relationships and analytical stuff and would make a good advisor, coach or mentor apparently. Which tracks with some of what I’ve done and enjoyed in the past. So all good!

I’ve also had an autism assessment. Something I’d been trying to get done for a long time. The provider I went with did it over a 90 minute Zoom call. It was hard to avoid masking, being on a call puts me in “work mode.” It all felt a bit tick box and rushed. After reading the FAQ on their site I saw that they refer clients with a history of complex trauma elsewhere for in-person assessments. Mine came out inconclusive. I have autistic and ADHD traits but developmental trauma makes it difficult to separate all this. Full report will be sent to me in a few weeks.

This is disappointing. I was expecting some certainty to give me a sense of belonging. I’ve already been accepted by many in the autism community. While on the road, when I really stopped masking because I knew I could just be myself. I connected with many autistic people. And then during the assessment, sharing my experiences online, I was seen and accepted by others too. The assessment almost feels like a badge I was trying to get but didn’t need.

As I said elsewhere, maybe the real autism assessment was the friends I made along the way.

I’ll slow down and regroup. It’s an important part of understanding myself better. So at some point I will have an in-person and thorough assessment. I have enough to process for now.

A lot going on all at once. Typically me.

The priority right now is the flat. I need my base. I need to feel settled. It’s been a long time. Still living out of the backpack I headed off with in December 2022.

That’s the Plan. Buy a flat. Get settled. Figure out work. Work. Travel.

That’s enough for now.

What else?

Still sticking to my routines. Running 30 km/week. Doing my workouts. Same as on the road.

Seeing friends now and then. Continuing to support the non-profit I’ve been helping since the last update. Coaching the founder, helping with funding bids and future organisation design, running a Slack community. Took me a while to realise that this is essentially the kind of work I’m looking to do, just less informal. And paid. This is only an hour or two a week.

My writing has slowed down a bit. Still have many drafts in flight but finding it hard to finish. Got a piece out about how tabletop roleplaying changed my life recently.

The gout seems to finally be under control! I’d tried to manage it without medication for six months. Stubbornly. Maybe PDA. Mixed results. Finally, as it spread to my fingers, I decided to take the uric acid reducing Allopurinol I’d been prescribed six months before. It takes a few months to really work. Been 5 weeks and think it’s already helping.

So that’s it. Things are in flight. I have bad days and good days. Most of them are good.

Oh and I did a birthday thing in a pub. Mixed up friends from my various lives. It was fun. Really thankful for all the friends I have.

Onwards!