Day 124: Any new age guru can tell you this
Suddenly, everything goes just great! Are the stars aligned or what?
1) I get a haircut appointment at Aloha Coiffure, a salon where I’ve wanted to cut my hair ever since I first saw it twelve years ago.
2) I just did a Skype interview with a journalism student from Toronto who found my blog, simply by googling "living off the sharing economy"… So I guess it was a good choice to write in English. And it's also funny since another journalist from Toronto contacted me the other day about an interview.
3) The Swedish national TV will do a reportage in my home next week! (Here's by the way an interview with me on the economy web channel EFN, in Swedish)
4) Yesterday I was surfing in the sunset.
5) A key to my apartment that has been lost for a week was found!
I could go on, there are just so many great things happening suddenly. So either it's the stars, or the prophetic fortune cookie, or perhaps this:
Passion
I now do something I feel really passionate about. It’s no wonder I find myself here in one of the best places I know in the world, surfing in the sunset or eating some amazing local cheese from the food market – I chose to be here.
But I also start to understand how working with something you really like helps you being more creative, to be better at what you do, and to inspire others who see this. I really think I do a better job now that I'm passionate about what I do, and that seems to be appreciated by people who read my blog or follow me on Facebook. I got this crazy idea to do this thing for a year and it turns out it was the right decision to follow that instinct instead of choosing a safer and more predictable path.
And most important, doing something I love help me meet other people who are passionate about the same things or share the same values. That too has been such a rewarding experience.
You can probably go into any bookshop and find hundreds of books written by new age gurus about this. I just happened to discover it for myself. Which is good, since I would never have read any of those books anyway. She said, listening to the sound of wind chimes (this is the one hanging from the window in the room where I sleep. I love the sound of it, even if it wakes me up sometimes on windy nights when the breeze from the ocean, two hundred meters away is too strong (yeah, I'm not complaining)).
Hard work
Ok, I’m not trying to come up with something original here. But it struck me when I was out running earlier today. Those hours of hill running in a rainy winter Uppsala (yes, there is one hill in Uppsala) now pays off when running up and down these rocky shores of Biarritz means pleasure not pain. Or all those hours spent in the gym weightlifting that has made my arms and shoulders stronger which helps me catch that sunset wave. Again, I'm not complaining...
And all those long days of work and late nights writing this blog, googling English grammar, and still not getting it all right. Or some of the freelance writing that I still do and that I can see the importance of, but I'm not passionate about, that pays my flight tickets, oysters and surf hair cuts. (This is the explanation why I can spend money now, when I had basically no money at all a couple of weeks ago; a good Airbnb month, and some from freelance writing.) I mean, even now that I’m on vacation I work almost full time writing this blog, doing interviews, preparing future events etc, considering that I work on weekends and holidays when people with a regular job wouldn't.
So I guess it's not some kind of magic. Even though it sometimes feel like it.