{"id":216893904,"date":"2012-10-01T01:06:50","date_gmt":"2012-09-30T12:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/?p=216893904"},"modified":"2012-10-01T01:09:58","modified_gmt":"2012-09-30T12:09:58","slug":"another-look-at-another-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/?p=216893904","title":{"rendered":"Another look at another life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flicking through my emails this morning, I came across one alerting me to a comment on my last post from my fellow blogger\u00a0Ian McKenzie<\/a>\u00a0saying:<\/p>\n

\n

‘You have definitely come a long way from that flat, \u201ca mere drunken banker\u2019s stagger from Canary Wharf.\u201d It looks great.’<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The words struck a chord and, searching back, I was stunned to learn that Ian was quoting from a post I wrote back in 2004 entitled ‘A step towards another life’.\u00a0I wrote back to Ian to say how touched I am that he continues to read and staggered he could recall a post that I wrote eight years ago. Rereading that post\u00a0brought me up short, for I had forgotten how deeply embedded the wish for what we know have was within me back then.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"DCP<\/p>\n

Canary Wharf from Mudchute Farm<\/p>\n

\n

We live in London, a mere drunken banker\u2019s stagger from Canary Wharf and the new financial heart of London. We are lucky enough to have a ground floor flat with a small south-facing garden\u2026 As a child, I grew up in a home where in the back garden, my Dad grew a fair proportion of the vegetables we ate. Although this was done partly by choice, it also helped to supplement the far from stellar incomes of a self-employed engineer and nurse\u2026 Although I don\u2019t remember playing a very active part in the actual market gardening, I do remember being captivated by John Seymour\u2019s seminal book, The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency<\/a>. Seymour\u2019s plain economic yet evocative prose made the backbreaking and often thankless life of a smallholder seem simple, achievable but most of all, enviable.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"LLtunnel\"<\/p>\n

Limehouse Link tunnel – part of my 50 mile daily commute in London<\/p>\n

\n

I have long held the desire to have a less frenetic and immediate life, hoping instead to \u2018downshift\u2019, as it is now called. Recently, SWMBO and I have discussed a variety of ways in which we can bring this about \u2013 ultimately, to find a way in which can spend far less time in traditional work environment – nine to five, stressful work, long commute, little family time – enabling us to spend more time together working in, around and maybe from the home. Over the years and months, various bouts of online research and reading have brought us to the point where we are now seriously looking at a number of ways in which we can make this idea a reality, whether at home or abroad.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"100<\/p>\n

Leaving London for New Zealand<\/p>\n

\n

Although I am by nature a serendipitous optimist, I am no wearer of rose tinted specs and I am realistic enough to know that a corporate salary will be a necessary evil for a while yet if we are to affect such a change.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Eight years later, we have moved 18,000 kms to the other side of the world, I have traded a corporate salary for a public servant’s payslip and the family have swapped a small inner city flat in London for a house on four acres of land in rural New Zealand.<\/p>\n

Our lives have changed in extraordinary ways: we have challenged our own notions of who we are, slowly and steadily\u00a0reversed\u00a0circumstances we once thought would crush us, visited places of stunning beauty and\u00a0met wonderful people some of whom have become our closest friends.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In doing so, we have confounded those who confidently predicted failure, shed a good deal of the baggage of our past, trusted the leading we felt and committed to an unknown future with a determination we never knew we had.\u00a0Though there was I time when I would have scoffed at the thought, we are certain we were called to live here and that we are meant to be where we are for however long He will have us here.\u00a0God has truly blessed and humbled us – we strive to hold it all with open hands so we may share that blessing with others.<\/p>\n

The full post from 2004<\/a>\u00a0– thank you Ian for reminding me I wrote it!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flicking through my emails this morning, I came across one alerting me to a comment on my last post from my fellow blogger\u00a0Ian McKenzie\u00a0saying: ‘You have definitely come a long way from that flat, \u201ca mere drunken banker\u2019s stagger from Canary Wharf.\u201d It looks great.’ The words struck a chord and, searching back, I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,15,259,672,25],"tags":[702,703,760,261],"class_list":["post-216893904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-faith","category-family-friends","category-farm-2","category-life","tag-blogging-2","tag-downshifting","tag-emigration","tag-immigration"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216893904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=216893904"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216893904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216893908,"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216893904\/revisions\/216893908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=216893904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=216893904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bignoseduglyguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=216893904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}