Pink Hair, Don't Care

With my Indonesian Travel Post now finally out of the way, it feels like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. The tears have been shed, the healing process is in full swing and the hard part is over. Now I can start this blog fresh once again - with no old stories from my past still left to share, only the future stories await and that, my friends, is an extremely exciting feeling. 

So, with ridiculously bright pink hair in support of Breast Cancer Awareness month (and quite stupidly a white dress now stained pink on the shoulders) I tap out this post to you.

I don't really have one specific thing to share with you today, no insanely incredible culinary creation or raving book review, sadly no new travel post either which leaves me feeling rather forlorn what with my never ending itchy set of feet that just can't stay planted in one place... but I wanted to post something anyway to start letting the Indonesian post slowly fade away into the ruins of Bohemian Muses. 

Everyone handles breakups in their own way and granted for some time I let it really effect my usually optimistic and bubbly personality. I couldn't (and still can't) believe the lies spread and the harsh extent people will go to in order to get attention and bring you down. I turned to copious amounts of booze and bars and boys to get me through the heartache. It was my first time truly being single in a very long time and so I made a pact with myself to not get involved in something serious (ever) again. That was just my bitter dramatic state coming out... of course I knew one day I would put my heart back out there but for the beginning stages of the breakup I was just reveling in the freedom that comes with being single. I've never learnt so much about myself as I have through the past 4 months and I wouldn't take it back for the world - but I can now safely say that I no longer feel the need to glug a bottle of vino back each night and destroy my organs. In actual fact, the last two weeks or so I have hardly touched alcohol and have been thoroughly enjoying chai teas and healthy vibes. This morning I even woke up at the crack of dawn, rolled out my yoga mat and did an absolutely gorgeous hatha yoga session in my little flat. 

I've been really figuring out who my real friends are, especially with the majority of my best friends being scattered around the world. It's been a challenge to cope without them here through this but at the same time I feel that it was actually a blessing in disguise because certain people that are reasonably new in my life really stepped up to the plate and have proven to be genuine friends to me. So for that I am forever grateful. 

Another fabulous thing about my new start in life is that it has reopened a thousand doors for me. Alexander Graham Bell once said, 'When one door closes, another opens.' 

At first, I was so caught up with the shock and pain of the door I was planning my entire life around being slammed in my face that I didn't see the sparkling opportunities that had just surfaced all around me. 

I am a traveler. Everyone by now knows this to be true... and now that I don't need to save every penny I earn on a wedding and a house and all those things that seem to pop up afterwards like children and pets - I can focus solely on my one true love in life. My 'thing.' My reason for breathing.

Travel.

Some people don't understand why others love to travel so much. Some people are so content to just stay in one place, settle down, get married, have children and grandchildren and grow old in the comforts of a home they've built up over the years... and there is nothing wrong with choosing that way of life... but that way of life will never be for me. Ever. 

I cannot put into words of my own why I love travel as much as I do when someone else far more inspiring has already summed it up perfectly... Robert Louis Stevenson, a Scottish travel writer among other things, said:

"For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move."

I really don't know if anyone else is as taken by those words as me, but I find them earth-shatteringly beautiful. The great affair IS to move! To see! To be! To wonder! To get lost and find yourself in the strangest and most unexpected of places!

Life is just bloody beautiful and I plan on making the absolute most out of it! So with my new pink hair and stitched up heart, I go out into the world and seek new adventure and live out my dreams, making them become reality.... and I share that with all my old friends that have stuck by me and new friends that have been so kind... and I say farewell to those people who turned out to be less than the kind of people I need or want in my life. Never be sad by losing someone who lets you go by choice. They were never worth your time in the beginning anyway. Move on and find 'your' people... the ones that matter and don't mind, like Dr. Seuss would say. 

That said, once again, I find myself back in the little coastal town of Knysna and daydreaming out the window each and every day of that next flight. 

I just came back from Southeast Asia which satisfied my travel bug to a certain extent but it definitely wasn't enough. So, here I am, planning away for my next trip all over again... and this one is going to change my life completely.

I have been researching flat out for days how to travel around the world cheaply and have found so many incredible ideas from Wwoofing to Couch Surfing, the joys of Ryanair in Europe and staying in Ashrams in India for as little as R 50.00 (£2.50) a day including meals. Traveling really is not that expensive if you know how to do it. There are literally countless ways to enjoy everything that this world has to offer and so, very soon, once I have gathered just enough together to afford my main flights and a bit of extra spending cash - I am taking a journey down a scary new path in life... a path filled with one way tickets and getting my hands dirty, sleeping on rickety old beds and experiencing new cultures and flavors and landscapes that are so stunning they leave you riddled with goosebumps and make tears form in your eyes because of the beauty.  

 "The world is a book and those that don't travel read only one page."

- St. Augustine