Nellie Windmill

Katherine:

Our one year digital nomad vagabonding anniversary came and went the day before yesterday unacknowledged. This time last year we awoke to our new tabula rasa life in a BnB in Camden, London having just flown in the day before. I think a little reflection is in order.

Then

On the 31st May last year I wrote this in my notebook:

“Come Sunday evening a melancholy befalls in the realisation that I have to go to work tomorrow and the next day and the next day and so on and so forth. Well, this is officially my last Sunday of mourning the weekend for hopefully a very long time, if not forever. This week is my last week of work before I take annual leave and then move to Europe with Mike to re-evaluate and re-invent out lives. I never again want to have a job that makes me mourn the end of the weekend. I either need to have a job I love or a job that takes up as little time as possible”.

A note to the people of seaac (my previous workplace), if you are reading this: I still love you and seaac! I thought I wanted to be a social worker since before I knew what a social worker was – in fact, I even talked to Steve, our beloved leader, about all of this in my exit interview. Turns out I’d prefer to be holed up in a little studio day and night drawing and painting strange but beautiful fictional characters and designing yummy collage papers and patterns! Who knew?

Now

I’m working on the marketing side of things for A Tasty Pixel, Mike’s software development business. I’ve learnt how to use Photoshop so I can design my own collage papers and surface pattern designs and have plans to learn how to use Illustrator as well. I’ve designed over 100 of them and even had a hand in designing Mike’s new website! Hopefully Mike’s next iPhone app will do well enough so that we can hire someone to do the marketing next time and I can focus on what I love. Until then, I don’t mind this type of work. At the end of the day I have complete autonomy and that counts for so much. What I would love to do is sell my collage papers, surface pattern designs, textures and brushes online as downloadable files. I’ve pretty much got it all worked out, now I just have to find the time to do it!

Then

A couple of weeks after arriving I wrote this in my notebook:

“The world is full of wonders and we’re going out to see them. This is probably the most amazing thing we’ll do in our lives and this is the beginning. It is all ahead of us. I’m really excited about spending TIME, precious, preciuos time on art. Learning, learning, learning. The thought of learning has always grabbed my imagination with all of its connotations of possibility and the unknown”.

I also remember updating my facebook status with something like this: “I have dallied for too long: Too many paintings left unpainted”.

Now

I’m still really excited about seeing the wonders we have yet to see. Scotland is our next super exciting destination. I dream about being in a remote Scottish countryside surrounded by dramatic mountains, achingly pretty lochs and at the mercy of fierce weather.

I would still like to spend more time on art. It’s funny, for the first time in my adult life I’m neither studying nor do I have a “job” but I am busier than I have ever been. Sometimes when I think about all the things I want to do and learn I feel overwhelmed. I think it’s a pretty good problem to have. Now that I’ve found my passion it’s gained its own momentum. It’s as if it was waiting, dormant, and as soon as a shaft of light fell upon it, everything that was already there, in waiting, unfurled and is growing bigger and bigger the more light it gets.

To round off, some things I know now that I wish I knew then:

1. Put some bamboo mats and towels under your mattress or you will be re-constructing your bed in 9 months because a dirty big patch of mould is growing there.
2. Driving the entire length of France on toll-ways will cost you a small fortune, which you could use instead to buy a small island or put towards your firstborn’s university fund.
3. One month in Ireland is NOT enough time – not even close – and indeed three months in one country is not enough (unless it’s Tunisia) – slow down!

Some things I never anticipated:

1. Learning how to use Photoshop – those familiar with the mutual animosity between myself and all things computers will appreciate the enormity of this
   
2. Starting a small business and being self-employed – not something I ever envisaged for myself but now I wouldn’t want it any other way. Also, knowing a great deal about running an online business – didn’t see that coming.
3. Having a blog and meeting kindred spirits online – I used to think blogs were rather self-indulgent, pointless things and I was even quite sheepish about telling people that I had one to begin with (ditto for twitter)
   

Some things I’ve learnt:

1. How to have an argument – Mike and I live together, travel together and now work together all in a 6×3 metre space! We need to be able to resolve arguments and we’ve gotten pretty good at it.
2. I can wear a pair of socks (light use) 5 – 10 times before they start to smell
3. I don’t think I ever would have dreamt of, let alone done, any of this – the business, the design, the blog – If I had’ve just stayed in Melbourne working 9-5 Monday-Friday with 4 weeks off a year. Not a chance. There’s something about drastically changing your entire life that opens up boundaries you didn’t even know were there and lets you begin to imagine that things can be different, very very different.
   

Michael:

My mother made this comment about our experience just recently, but it’s worth repeating because I find the fact of it really remarkable: That this thing we’re doing is totally multifaceted. The travel stuff is wonderful – one of my top priorities for my life – but equally valuable is the creative side which has been really rewarding (although not quite financially rewarding, yet – we’ll get there!).

The most awesome aspect of this is Katherine’s artistic journey, and I’m loving seeing her artistic side prospering. Plus, the glee she gets from art supplies is a thing to behold.

Personally speaking, I’m loving the indie software developer lifestyle to pieces. It’s a creative outlet that suits me perfectly, and I love designing software and putting the pieces together just so – which satisfies both my creative side, and my OCD side. My mother used to joke that me, working (tapping studiously away at a keyboard), was rather similar to me taking a break – party time (tapping studiously away at a keyboard). It’s pretty much that way still, and doing this job means I basically never work, and am in fact constantly playing. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Actually, the one thing that does get better than that is having a beautiful, changing view out of the window that we can go and explore from time to time, at our leisure. When we started out, we didn’t have a clear idea of how the travel thing was all going to work, but we’ve sorted it out and found our pace. We love being in the country, fields, woods, mountains, and really enjoy hiking (although not for too long!). Cities have their appeal too, but our hearts lie in the wide open horizons, or the deep green (or preferably, orange and yellow!) of woods.

One thing I never anticipated was the people we’ve met along the way. I certainly hoped that we would make connections with people as we went, but given that we’re not exactly gregarious (I almost wrote ‘egregious’) people by nature, I wasn’t sure how successful we’d be. Don’t get me wrong, we like a good pub, maybe once a year. For a few minutes.

However, we’ve met some really interesting people and made some wonderful friends, always in unexpected ways: On the side of a volcano, in the back-alleys of an ancient Tunisian marketplace, in the car park of a little Italian town, and through my involvement with writing WordPress and iPhone software. A great adventure still to come will be spending some time living in Padua (and learning Italian!) and getting to know our wonderful new-found friends there, who I originally met via my product Loopy.

The online side of this mobile social life has been fascinating – we still have quite a number of people we’ve met online to catch up with some time: Users of software I’ve written, other bloggers, and other people who’ve come across us online (or vice versa). We’ve made some great friends who are currently cycling across Europe (actually, they’ve just bought a little red car and are heading towards, and then across, Siberia), who we discovered while doing a bit of travel research in Tunisia, and we dearly hope to meet them in person one day – then kidnap them and keep them all to ourselves, in our enclave of ‘favourite people’ that we will one day build. nothing

The last thing that I find surprising, in spite of my ever-overly-optimistic self, is just how feasible this thing has been. Okay, we had some fantastic help to begin with – some great, long house-sitting appointments that meant we went almost a whole year rent-free – but apart from the initial, mostly recoverable outlay (Nettle), we’ve generally been living on less that it would’ve cost us to live in Australia – particularly with the horrendous housing situation there lately. My blithely optimistic anticipation of this whole thing has been actually pretty spot-on. We can do this for a lot more time yet, even if this indie software thing doesn’t take off.

So, in more ways than one, becoming ‘vagabonds’ (‘technobonds’?) has been a real enabler for us to pursue the things we really want to do with our lives, travel aside. It’s taken us away from the distracting, (albeit dubious) attraction of a steady income and jobs about which we’re ambivalent, freeing us up for the more important things, while actually lowering our living expenses to make our ‘buffer’ last longer.

That’s pretty cool.

Things I am glad I now know:

1. What Katherine says is right. (Katherine’s note: this is a work in progress)
2. Taking a wrong turn or getting lost never matters – relax, go with it.
3. It’s probably not a good idea to wild-camp in a big city, and especially not a port. Just…don’t.
4. It doesn’t matter how much you don’t like marketing/PR stuff, or how much you’re too engrossed in developing a product: Do it!
5. Don’t look too closely at how your motorhome’s put together, especially the raised bed (or as I like to call it, flimsy-sleeping-platform-of-death).
6. If you run out of food, you can make pancakes with flour and water! (Although they’re not so good if you’re out of water too)

Here’s to another year of technomadding!

I’ll be turning 28 soon and I guess it’s about time I made a decision and did something one way or another. Twenty eight years ago you gave me up for adoption. I don’t know what I want, whether I want a relationship with you or what that relationship would look like but I do know that when I think about the possibility of getting a phone call or a letter one day, maybe from your daughter, my sister, to say that you’ve passed away, it makes my chest get all squeezy and tight and it becomes hard to breathe and I try not to cry as the tears well up. Or worse, getting nothing and never knowing and one day being too old and realising that you can’t be alive anymore; that I’ve quietly lived my days not thinking about it until it’s too late. So I guess that means I at least need to try. By the way, I’m writing this as the sun is setting. It’s glowing a sort of dark pink red and it’s beautiful.

I can’t say I remember for sure who stopped writing first or who moved without providing a forwarding address but I remember it being you – maybe you remember it as being me. All I know is that I wanted to write to you again; it had been a long time. I wasn’t sure if the address I had would still be yours. I had a phone number. The plan was to call, ask for you and if you still lived there to hang up and write my letter – talking on the phone was more than I could handle. I called, the number had been disconnected. Maybe you even moved because of me, because I had your address and you’d changed your mind. I feel that even if did decide I definitely wanted to find you again that I wouldn’t or shouldn’t because it seems you’ve decided you don’t want to be found and I should respect that.

This is what I will do. I am online – facebook, my blog, twitter, flickr, deviant art – I’m easy to find. You probably know how to use google, you know my name, you can find me if you want to. I figure, I’ve googled your name, my little sister’s name – she’s just old enough now to have a Myspace account – what’s to say you haven’t googled mine. Maybe you already read my blog. This line of thought has brought me to “Letters to Louise” – it’s serendipitous your name starts with an “L”; I like the alliteration.

I might not write frequently – to be honest, I don’t think of you all that much – I don’t say that to be mean (of course you understand, as I believe it’s the same for you). That is to say, we both have lives to lead and all of this is very much in the background, barely ever thought of and even when it is, rarely in any depth.

So all that’s left is to decide what to include in my letters. I have a few “sections” in mind which might change or expand as time goes on.

This is Something I Like

Smelling things. I like the smell of glue and paint and petrol and pens and flour.

This is Something I Remember About You

You gave me a strange little old book full of what you described as hilariously out-dated advice (possibly specifically for young women?) but with some little nuggets of wisdom too. You wrote in the margins, adding your own advice. One thing you suggested was to have a list – maybe 21 or 50, I don’t remember – of women I admire. I must confess I haven’t made my list but I would like one. I don’t even know that many women that well! That’s certainly something I intend to rectify and I am working on it. I worry when I think of this book that I’m not 100% sure where it is. I’m anxious to find it but alas all of my worldly possessions are in boxes on the other side of the world. I will look for it when I get back. I feel exasperation at my adolescent self for not treasuring it. Teenagers!

This is Something I Wonder

Does my little sister know about me and is she on Facebook or Myspace? This brings me to another thing I wonder – how do I spell your last name, because of course I’ve googled it but is it an a or an e and is there a double letter in there? This too is boxed up on the other side of the world.

This is Something I’m Rather Rubbish at

Fixing things – I am the anti-handyman: slightly broken things degenerate before me. I don’t think I got that from my biological father because I have a little piece of paper that says he’s a mechanic so I’m blaming this one on you.

This is Something I did Today

Glued strips of a vintage sewing pattern to the edges of a deep-edged box canvas I’ve almost finished painting – I’m very happy with the results. By the way, it’s for a blogger friend whom I admire – so there’s a woman to get my list off to a start!

P.S. What would a letter be without a “P.S.”! I have an old newspaper laid out to protect the table while I’m painting (as you can see in the photo) and there’s this journalist I just noticed who’s kind of staring at me and he has your last name or some variation of it. Isn’t that weird?

We had a whole weekend with our new friends all to ourselves in store and we couldn’t wait! We hadn’t spent a good amount of time with people our own age – or close enough – since we traveled with friends in Italy very early on in our trip. This is one of the downsides of motor-homing – whilst most travellers our age are meeting peers in youth hostels we’re hanging out in some field with retirees. Both Silvia and Andrea have lived in Padova all their lives and made very good guides as they showed us around their lovely city. We were all constantly impressed with the random wikipedia-like bits of trivia Andrea kept coming out with. Silvia told us of a famous local saying that describes Padova as the city that has “a meadow without grass, a saint without a name and a café without doors”. The tour took in each of these three things and we were baffled to find that the “meadow” is the city square which does have grassy areas, the saint’s name is Anthony and the cafe does indeed have a door. Huh.

I found Padova, in a strange way, to be a bit like our home town of Melbourne in Australia. It doesn’t look like it at all but I found that Padova didn’t seem to have any grand tourist attractions to it’s name – just like Melbourne – but what it does have is a sense of “liveability”. It’s a nice city. It has pretty parts, it has a pleasant atmosphere and there seems be a lot going on. This was interesting to me as the longer we’ve spent in Italy the more I’ve come to feel that I wouldn’t want to live here. I’ve become very aware of the general lack of space – doors opening right up onto the road in towns, the “country” still being quite populated with at least a house or two always in view. To me, this has amounted to a general sense of crowdedness. This is something I love about travel and learning about other cultures – it shines a new light on our own country and culture. Intellectually I understood that Australia has a tiny population and is massive with wide, open spaces but I didn’t understand what that felt like until I felt what a large population in a small country feels like. It may have been because of our friends’ presence but Padova felt like one of the few places in Italy where I could live – I say “I” as Mike has felt there have been plenty of places that he would be happy staying put in.

It was absolutely wonderful spending time with locals and gleaning little insights we otherwise wouldn’t have gleaned. I love my coffee, I come from a city that has a well-known and respected coffee culture but I can’t for the life of me understand Italian coffee – the espresso. “Sip” and it’s gone! Andrea shed some light on it for me when he likened it to a small gourmet chocolate – it doesn’t last long but it’s a taste sensation for as long as it does.

We had a traditional “spritzer” – a cocktail – at “spritzer o’clock” – sometime in the evening before dinner – and watched the “fighetti” – comically fashionable Italian youth – strut and generally stand around looking rich and beautiful in “The Uniform” – the wardrobe that it seems all Italians have agreed to adopt. I asked Silvia, who expressed exasperation at “The Uniform”, where she does her shopping. Her answer – she doesn’t shop! She proceeded to point out her hole-ridden Doc Martins that were The Thing to have in the 90s!

Just as Andrea finished explaining to us what “fighetti” means, a very expensive looking car that barely came up to knee-level came to a screeching halt right in front of the busy cafe and a trendy young thing strutted out in The Uniform. Everyone in the vicinity turned and stared. Andrea turned back to us, shrugged, and announced, “fighetti”. We all cracked up as the guy sauntered off nonchalantly.

We talked for a while about the band they were in in their twenties, “K”. Turns out our new friends were quite the rock stars back in the day! Later that night at their apartment we watched a concert they played at to a massive audience, Silvia on guitar and Andrea the lead singer! That night we introduced the guys to some Aussie bands – Clare Bowditch and The Cat Empire. It was fun seeing Andrea rock out to a song about our home-town “The Crowd”.

We had a wonderful home-cooked meal with a couple of Andrea and Silvia’s lovely friends and the best strawberries I’ve ever tasted with nothing but a bit of water, lemon and sugar. After dinner we went to the “Gelateria da Bepi”, a gelateria with a very unconventional array of flavours, including basil, carrot, sweet potato, pepper, tomato, rosemary, sage, celery, pumpkin and salmon!

We discussed our plans for Sunday and couldn’t pass up the opportunity of visiting Venice with locals – both Silvia and Andrea went to university there, the lucky things!

Against our better judgment we decided to do a 20km hike around San Gimignano in Tuscany. We’d been leading quite the sedentary lifestyle so were relying on our youthful vigour to pull us through. I happily anticipated a gentle pastoral stroll through a relatively flat landscape. In the end it was more the marked lack of alternative transport back to Nettle that saw us through to the end.

We started out by wandering yet another mediaeval town. My expectations were perhaps a mite high after hearing of it’s popularity and the reception I received at mentioning we were going there on Facebook. As with most major tourist attractions we’ve visited on the trip we were left wondering why this town out of all the mediaeval towns in Italy is so obscenely popular. Location, location, location – it’s within a day-trip from both Siena and Florence. As with any major tourist attraction the maxim “the act of observing changes that which is being observed” – or perhaps more to the point “tourism changes that which is toured” – was evident in San Gimignano. Luckily tourists are extremely easy creatures to be rid of – just walk in any direction they’re not going in, which is pretty much every direction bar one and then like magic you have the place to yourself. So we wandered the back streets a little bit.

It was a beautifully sunny day when we began our hike through the pastural landscape of olive groves and vineyards.

And we were feeling both youthful and vigorous

We came across an interesting, seemingly completely purposeless structure built into the ground that reminded me of something from a fantasy novel or the Amazon jungle.

As the day wore on, the sun that had originally made the day so cheerful, sapped us of our will to go on when it continued uninterrupted by shade and unrelieved by a breeze the whole day long. Like seemingly everything else in Nettle, our water bladder had fallen victim to mould, which had left us with one small bottle of water between the two of us. Of course, we could have bought another water bottle in San Gimignano but every now and then we seem to make these inexplicably stupid decisions, which in hindsight leave us questioning our mental capacities. I think we thought we’d find places to fill up along the way. I’ve definitely come to associate Italy as a place abundant in water fountains, which is great if you’re in a town and not hiking through the countryside where they don’t tend to build public facilities. After running out of water somewhere near the half-way mark of our hike we decided to walk a little bit out of our way to get to the nearest town. We asked the first person we saw for some l’acqua – a middle-aged man picking olives out the front of a property. Of course, he happily obliged. However, it still wasn’t enough water for the two of us and we decided to beef it up with some electrolytes (we didn’t bring enough water but we did bring a full first aid kit) and ration out what was left.

We noticed the following strange phenomenon and wondered if the “anti-light” would show up in a photograph or whether it was just our confused brains telling us the rays of light are dark:

Nope, not an illusion. Anti-light, baby.

We walked back to the point from which we’d diverted from the Lonely Planet directions and took the trail they described (“Buona passaggio“, from a well-wishing olive-picker we passed). Only it wasn’t the trail as it was a dead-end. So we took the only other trail that matched that description, which was also a dead end. We went back and walked along the road a bit further and came to the only other road it could have been. It didn’t match the description in the Lonely Planet guide at all but sure enough that was the one they meant. It turned out to be a short-cut to the very place we had just walked to get water. Having successfully added a few kilometres onto our hike by walking in circles we set off in the right direction for the first time in a good long while.

Stumbling and half-limping, zombie-like, we trudged the rest of the way along the decidedly un-scenic highway back to Nettle. One of our dreams for our travels in Europe is to hike the Alps. Given that we just had our asses kicked by the gentle, rolling hills of Tuscany I think we might have a bit of work to do.