Is this really it?
I want to tell you a story. Not about how I do what I do, but about why I do it. These are the threads that led me here.
Like most good stories it starts in childhood, where life feels simple, dreams have no limits and possibilities seem endless. I grew up in a very sheltered environment deep in the Cumbrian countryside, in a big old converted flour mill full of wooden beams, creaking floorboards and old mill machinery - a warren of hidden corners that invited play and wonder. Outside felt as much like home as inside, with gardens that blended seamlessly with the fields, rivers and woodlands that lay beyond.
The privilege of growing up in this kind of setting is not lost on me now, but at the time it felt normal to live somewhere that was like one huge playground in nature. I had parents who loved me and siblings who were my best friends. I didn't need anything outside of that. I used to love to play, make up games and use my imagination to interact with this magical world around me. I was told I was constantly making people laugh. They often can't really explain why, just that I was very funny!
As I grew up and the world outside my home filtered in, it had an inevitable effect on how I perceived life. Siblings left home to go out into this wider world for reasons I couldn’t really understand and the reality of spending more time at school than at home changed me. Rather than make people laugh to entertain them, my humour was a tool to survive this tricky new social terrain. Education itself seemed to be less about play and imagination, and more about memorising information. I don’t look back on this time negatively, I had plenty of good times growing up as well as a good deal of teenage angst to fuel my questioning mind.
Something that stayed with me during this time is a question I scrawled in one of my early songwriting notebooks. Among other snippets of lyrics about love, life and boredom was a line that simply read “is this really it?”. I don’t remember what I meant by those words at the time (maybe I was just quoting my favourite band The Strokes), but I do recall often feeling disappointed that my reality didn’t seem to meet my childhood expectations.
On reflection, as a child, I had felt a huge amount of freedom and so I imagined anything was possible, and therefore that I was meant to do something special, something big, something important. But the reality of life with its rules and boundaries felt different. It’s not that I was unhappy, but if this really was it, then I felt disillusioned.
This feeling of not so much wanting to be something special, but being meant to do something special has never left and for much of my life, I've never been able to place what that ‘it’ really is...but it is what has driven me to keep searching, questioning, evolving and changing, never feeling comfortable or satisfied with “my lot” in life.
The Grand Canyon
I wasn’t in a rush to continue my education at university after school finished, so I took a year out. I got a job at the local Center Parcs, passed my driving test and fueled by that question, “is this it?” planned the trip of a lifetime, something truly huge to discover what the wider world could offer. I saved all the money I could, booked my ticket and packed my backpack and one bright day in April my tearful and slightly worried parents dropped me off at the airport where I would fly out to L.A to meet with my friend for a two-month California road trip.
We had many plans and destinations in mind for the trip including exploring L.A, Las Vegas and taking the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco, but one non-negotiable was to visit the Grand Canyon. So we hired a car and sped off into the desert. Stopping at every drive thru burger joint we passed and getting into a few scrapes along the way (that’s a story for another time!), we were giddy with excitement by the time we had road tripped our way through Arizona to the National Park.
All of our joking and chatter was expelled in an instant as we finally caught sight of the Grand Canyon, our breath literally taken away. I can still picture it vividly now, but what has stayed with me more was the feeling of it - the vastness, the mindboggling scale of it and the power it seemed to hold over my body and mind. I'd always appreciated nature having grown up around it and I've always felt part of it rather than separate from it, but this was another level. Looking back, this may have been my taste of mindfulness. Staring into that unfathomably deep ravine or across an inconceivable distance it spans, I remember having no thoughts and not speaking for long chunks of time which felt endless. We would walk around a bit more talking and chatting and then just stop and stare some more into the impossible distance, feeling its awe inspiring majesty. My first taste of the power of nature, a taste of being truly present. A little bit of that expectation I had about life was fulfilled, but it added a deeper appreciation for nature that I hadn’t known until then. I've not since seen a natural wonder so impressive, but I've always found peace, presence, respect and inspiration in the natural world.
I had enough life experience by now, to understand that although changing the external picture and focus might help, on its own it was not enough. An inner revolution was needed. I turned to therapy, explored the pages of my past to pull together the threads and to look for the answers to my question, “is this really it?”. I learnt to be with myself, to be more present, to see my thoughts and beliefs differently and began to get clear on who I was underneath all the mental chatter. Through this inner work, I began to reconnect with my inner child - the one you met earlier in this story - and to understand that I should probably let this version of me have a say in things. This was a lightbulb moment for me and the sparks of a new way of life began to fly.
Alongside the inner work, I recongised need for action and change to my external world - the one that still didn’t meet my expectations. An overhaul of how life looked day to day was needed. I wanted to escape the 9-5 city life and spend my time in nature, not work more hours than I had free and to seek adventure and experiences that felt playful. I recognised that these were all the things I’d lost sight of as I transitioned from childhood to adulthood, but they had never really left me.
I identified that travel was something I wanted as a backdrop to forming this new life. Since that trip at age 18, I had never been on more than a week or two's holiday and I craved adventure. But I did not want to do it out of a backpack or with no security that meant simply a return to normal life when funds ran out. So, I was introduced to van life.
Vanlife Revolution
The final part of this story brings us up to date, taking place almost a decade ago around my 30th birthday, when I began another journey.
I'd been in a relationship that could easily have resulted in a very typical kind of life - house, mortgage, children, work. But as I approached this predestined future I had a growing feeling that things weren’t right. Alarm bells were ringing and that voice saying “is this it?” grew louder again. After a lot of mental turmoil and anguish, I took a big decision to end a relationship that on the surface and to my friends and family seemed to be my future.
I made a fresh start and in need of some stability took the opportunity to explore life in a new city on my own terms. But as time passed I fell into a routine that felt familiar in its discomfort, and that same question returned - “Is this it?” With nothing to distract me from it, the question grew louder until I couldn’t ignore it any longer.
Around this time I met someone else with a similar outlook on life. Someone who felt that the systems we lived within were restrictive and oppressive, and who wasn't willing to compromise for them. Travelling with a home on wheels felt like a safe but radical way to try out new ideas and approach life differently.
At first I thought vanlife was just a trend, but when I delved into it more closely, the people living it and advocating for it all seemed to be searching for similar things I was - freedom! A way to step outside of the system and rather than ask “is this really it?” begin to wonder “what else is there?”. It felt achievable at a push and potentially sustainable long term, so we set off on another journey to make this a reality, and it was one that would give what followed so much more meaning and depth.
Hours of designing, planning, ordering, building, learning new skills and greater than that - a sense of community as together with my partner and my parents we forged through this epic project together all while the Covid pandemic raged around us, at times leaving us wondering if we’d ever be able to go back out and travel the world at all.
I began to feel momentum and clarity grow as what started life as a metal box began to look not just like a home on wheels, but like a whole new way of life. More strongly than ever I felt that this was right, that life was about to get a whole lot more playful and adventurous and as this project came to life, built at the home I grew up in, the child in me smiled.
The places I've been, sights I've seen and the adventures that have ensued have been beyond all my expectations. But the true adventure has been making space for the spark of my revolution to ignite and to quietly and slowly allow it time to build day-by-day. Some days are filled with work and chores, others with travel and awe, but I have time and space to focus on what really matters to me without other demands and so it has put the power back in my own hands.
Now it's hard to imagine living a more conventional life. There are still aspirations and dreams to pursue to make life more fulfilling, but they feel achievable and meaningful when grounded in what really matters to me.
Nothing here is perfect - vanlife is not a series of Instagram moments. It's not a finished work and I am far from comfortable. I am living at the edge of my comfort zone, on the edge of a system that I have never sat comfortably within. Now, each day offers possibilities I didn't see before and that allows me to do meaningful work.
Creating some distance from the struggle, I can see how difficult it was to escape from and how I spent so long wrapped up in it. I find myself wondering if others feel the same as I did. I begin to think that this might be “it”. This might be what I want to put my energy into. Living my life with more freedom, play, creativity and helping others to change the narrative for those who also feel trapped and want to put their energy towards something meaningful for them. To help others spark their own personal revolutions.