I must say it feels good to be home. Not quite what I was expecting.
I lived through the last month or so in Oregon with frequent pop-ups of intense longing to stay on the road mixed in with feelings of dread attached to the prospect of going back to ‘real life’ in Malta. The idea of seeing very much missed friends and family helped make going back home a little more liveable but it was nowhere near enough to tip the balance.
Coming back home in stages helped a lot. We did this epic journey from Medford to Portland to Boston, spent the day in Boston, flew from Boston to Iceland overnight (missing many hours to the time difference), spent another full day in Iceland (which was entirely awesome) and then hopped over to the UK where we spent around a week and a half zooming madly between friends and family and making up for lost sleep.
Being back in Malta was at first highly weird. Everything was totally familiar, yet I had this feeling of having been through a lot far away from this place. It felt like I had never left but I had memories that were not of here.
Things did not quite fit into place smoothly. The first day was spent nesting, unpacking and washing mountains and mountains of laundry. My car needed to be VRTd so I was busing it around Malta (which in hindsight helped me feel still a little like a tourist). There were a million and one people I wanted to see and far too much to be fit into each day. My laptop battery was dead and had only come with an Aussie plug on the charger. My phone line needed re-activation. I was feeling increasingly frustrated at not having the time or tools to do the work I had already been engaged to do, along with the (self-induced) pressure of bringing in my own money.
Two weeks in things feel tons and tons better. Systems are up and running, slowly seeing loved ones as we go and I’m kind of settling into routines around freelancing and home working. Having been a master of my own time for a good seven months I have decided to go through with my longstanding aim to be both a freelancer and increasingly location independent. So far I’m working from home on jobs from the US and Australia so things seem to be going in the right direction. My mind sometimes still needs to catch up with the fact that it is already all happening and my lovely partner Gayle has been a total godsend in helping me see the reality that things are actually very much on track, we are both exceedingly busy and that this is the time for me to explore what I truly want to focus on work wise. Which in actual fact is a big fat luxury. Sometimes minds lose track of reality it seems.
One part of Malta life which is still a little in recovery is the sourcing and preparation of food. Having been running about for two weeks with little home time meant eating from the great outdoors most of the time, enjoying yummy food prepared by the likes of The Grassyhopper, Gugar, Mark Morales, all three providing highly yummy vegetarian food around the island. Actually being home for more than an hour then points to the customary empty fridge and lack of edibles so this week we ventured out to re-stock.
Casa Natura in Sliema has always been one of our favourites when it comes to food staples, soap and supplements (Gayle has been shopping there for years and I followed suit last year). We stocked up on some hormone free, grass-fed whey protein, the all-important organic cold pressed coconut oil (which makes a great moisturiser and mild sun protector, again one of Gayle’s staples for many years), and a good stock of natural soaps among other things. I gave a Jason deodorant a try in my constant search for a good natural deodorant but I can only now vouch for its utter lack of effect in the scorching Maltese summer. The search continues.
Next stop was sourcing a mountain of veggies to fill the forlorn looking fridge but I’ll write that up in a whole separate instalment.
xxx