Time to Embrace the Place

As the new year approaches, it's time to frame our resolutions and decide what we will do and what we will try to refrain from doing.  Resolution, I don't really like that word.  Resolving to do something, answering, determining, making a decision, a verdict for three hundred and sixty-five days seems too much pressure for me.  I tend towards the impulsive rather than the disciplined in this respect.

But I kind of had it in my mind to use this year to embrace the place, the place being Swakopmund.  A place I lived for a year and a half before, and ran away from, from the sheer misery and depression I felt here.  And now I don't have a choice, we tried, we failed, we need the money, and my fiance signed a five year contract.  And I've had enough of moving with two small children, espeically now that Ashlee is a preschool kind of routine.  Doctor's orders to Hennie, no more moves for your family (seriously, after I had a chronic back and neck spasm).

So I 'resolved' to seize the place, see only the optimal factors, enjoy the fact that we are living in a small town by the ocean, with minimal traffic and low crime, as well as a few really great friends.  I took a deep breath every morning for the first two weeks of January, I mentally embraced my new home town, the desert town by the sea.  I took the kids for walks every evening and smelt the sulphuric wind and the bright sun, and said to myself, how lucky you are, to live Mile Four, where you can take your kids for walks around the block, next to the beach.

And by the third week of January, dear reader, I gave up.  It didn't work for me at all.  The roads were muddy, the town too small, Ashlee got stomach flu, all the things that bugged me the furst time round had the exact same effect as they did before.  With all my gained life lessons, my humbling experiences, I am still me.

And so I turned my back on the sorrow and frustration of my easily and quickly failed embrace.  And did what was probably my destined path from the start, I created a bubble in my own home.  I travel to Paris, Edinburgh, New York, Johannesburg everyday with my mind.  I visit my sister, the farm, there are portholes in my little house here in Mile Four.  I watch movies and am transported to Lola land with Ashlee, or to the world of Magnon De Source with Marcel Pagnol.  I take out my recipe books and pretend to be cooking in the south of France or the Greek Isles.  I have a glass of wine and laugh with my Friends, or live vicariously through Sidney Bristow saving the USA as a CIA double agent. 

Who said only kids need imagination?  I dissent.

And thanks to the joy in my house, a few good things in this town, and the global world of the internet, and of course my super family, I am happier here this time round.  Takes a bit of work, but it works!