Ah, there is nothing like a rainy day, approaching period cramps, mixed up with backpain and a full moon to get your hormones on edge and your thoughts to go into overdrive in reagrds to philosophic topics that can never be answered.
Hello, a warm welcome back to The Norway Chronicles. You are entering a space of honesty and tragedy, vulnerability and joy. Everything that serves for a good story and may eventually result in someone paying me to write, like professionally, like make ends meet, like being all grown up and able to afford my life but with a creative job doing what I love. Today, as the introduction set the mood already, is going to be delightful.
Strap yourself in, let’s take a walk.
As the heavens opened over night and we awoke in a seascape of misty mountains and white sand beaches with turquoise waters, seagulls screeching for the last scavenges of the nightly hunt and raindrops dribbling onto the roof of our home, Mister Glen Van Ben, unanimously we decided to cuddle up and snooze on. Usually we wake around 8 am and are out of the sheltering cave that is our van half an hour later. Today, as neither Marjorie nor I felt inclined to face what the weather generously offered us, she snuck in closely and we spent an additional hour just waking, snoozing and lingering in that sweet spot that is not quite awake, also not quite asleep.
Relaxation had come the day before whilst watching a lovely sun setting behind a dangerously dark blanket of such vastness of clouds that it was impossible to know if we were heading for a thunderstorm or if the wind would be strong enough to pass the blanket onto the East while we would be asleep. Thus, today, with a rainy day ahead of us, calmness kept us company. Once out, we explored the fringes of the land and found ourselves on territory quite similar to one of our favourite hikes on and around the mountain Suaineabhal in Scotland on the Isle of Lewis. Soaked upon coming back, Marjorie went straight to a deep slumber after her breakfast, and I myself to editing my next VanLog for my YouTube channel.
It came suddenly and totally unexpected. I suspect treachery from the hormones. I was set on spending at least three nights here and yet I find myself right now on the Nordkjosbotn Rasteplass about an hour away from Tromsø. If you ask me the why, I again point to the very first paragraph of this text, as well as the first sentence of this paragraph right here. Hormones and full moon. And probably the prognosis that in Vannøya it was supposed to rain for the next three days, while in and around Tromsø the sun should show its brilliant surface tomorrow. Thus, spontaneously, we went for another hike on the edge of the other side of the island, hopped on a ferry back to another island with connected streets that lead us into, through and away from Tromsø. I was thinking about staying a day and maybe experiencing some of the supposed charm of the town, but once I drove through, it was an immediate no for me and we just continued straight on the E8, direction E6, ultimate objective the Nordkapp. Probably some other stops in between, namely Hammerfest because I am in desperate need for high quality dog food.
Anyway. That is not the story of today. That is probably the luna-tic speaking through me.
You get it? Because of the full moon, luna as in moon?
Who am I kidding, playing with words with this kind of day behind me, probably not.
The actual story concerns a post on Instagram. Because what do hormonal heights and period pains, combined with free WiFi on board of a ferry equal? Exactly, throwing oneself into the internet with the sole object of forgetting the hurt through scrolling for a while. And what I found gave me food for thought all through the drive to here:
Kudos to @themindfulmotorcycle that posted this as a reel. Generally thank you for posting, specifically for posting it as a reel as my instant gratification addiction causes me to not even look at posts anymore and instantly go to the short video section.
Powerful, isn’t it?
Goal-based achievement.
Even now.
While driving I am already thinking about the next goal of attaining a blogpost before midnight to add to my collection of written excerpts that will get me closer to the next objective in achieving a paid job as a writer that is writing her own stuff. The story of my life.
The bird-eye point of view as a whole, but also the everyday mundane life I lead. If I am not productive in a way I deem productive, or that social conditioning engraved on my mind as being productive, I feel like I am not a worthy member of humanity. And deep down I know that this does absolutely make sense. Or it did, would do again, in a sort of healthy community, wouldn't it?
Seeing it from the perspective of a community in ages when there was no supermarket, hardware store and wild animals were an actual threats to the whole of your tribe, rather than the other way around, us being a threat to all the animals and nature. You had to be smart and everyone chimed in with their talents and gifts and skills, for the greater Good, the survival of the family. Nowadays though, productivity is mostly unconnected to this very purposeful goal of surviving, of providing, of community.
Most of us work in a position that resembles an unconnected wheel in a machine that is too big to even comprehend. We trade our time and our energy to earn enough to have a comfortable life with a warm shelter, electricity and food, the odd vacation or two, culture and partying on the weekend, shopping to impress someone else or mask an inner void. Raising good consumers to uphold the economy based society everything revolves around. Art and consumption is what our comfortable life is supposed to nourish, all with a work that is mostly disconnected from real connection to others or a higher Good.
A purpose.
I have struggled with that a lot. After my second burnout, I took out of the unemployment pot what I paid into it in a case of emergency. I refused to take on a job that would not in any way contribute to something that I defined as a higher purpose, a higher Good for All. A year went by until I found my job at the animal protection association in Switzerland, department livestock. The word alone makes me cringe. These are animals, alive but certainly not a stock. Anyway. This job brought me pure bliss and for a while I was able to be content with it. I had a purpose. Everyone there said so, I believed in it too. Whole-heartedly. Still do. Because I was needed there for a specific time and purpose. Then the period was over and I was called to give up all I built and give away all I had and start backpacking.
My beloved souls, you know that sending you light and love is the core of my messages, no matter in what way I am active and creative and productive. I want to be of service in some way or another with whatever I can offer and have to give. You also know that purpose is one of my favourite topics to speak about because the older I get the less I understand it. It is so tricky and yet seems to be so easy. Ungraspable, unattainable and at the same time right there in front of me. Like a milky glass door that hinders me to see it clearly. Or multiple milky glass doors. Because I believe that writing is one of the fragments of the whole that makes up my purpose. So one milky glass has gone translucent. The others are still opaque and I feel restless not being able to see through. Make sense of this life.
What I am trying to say is that I was thinking about it especially today on my drive here to this rasteplass.
Now that I am free to pursue any and all of my creative endeavours, without any pressure, except the minor itch of existential threat creeping up now and again, now that I am completely free on this adventure of exploration, discovering a country and its landscapes, now that I have leisure more than work for at least another two months straight: Where is the purpose in that? Am I allowed to give myself the purpose? Define the purpose? Make it purposeful for me and to me alone?
What does purpose mean to you?
Do you know your purpose or anything related to it?
Is it important to you?
Is it maybe similar to the question I asked you in Part 1 about what success means to you. That if it matters to you to know, it may well be the call to adventure to find out and start asking questions, again and again, every year, every month, maybe every full moon.
Maybe that is a sign for you to start today.
Happy Full Moon.
Happy Purpose Hunt.
Happy Existing Matters.
I sent you all the love in the world, and as always also, all the light.
May you get everything you need…
… and a pinch of what you want.
Nadine
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