Could my dream life turn to nightmare?

23 July 2024

I get that my nomadic lifestyle wouldn’t suit, or even be of interest to, most women my age. I understand that my dream life might even be their worst nightmare. Being a single, self-employed editor without borders has suited me perfectly since I jettisoned my settled life in 2010; however, my 72nd birthday is just over the horizon. For the past year, I’ve felt I’m moving into a new phase of life, with new challenges. How to process these and not lose courage? I don’t want to be lying awake at night in unfamiliar beds, tossing and turning and sweating the small stuff.

Being nomadic has always posed logistical challenges. My close friends, old and new, are scattered far and wide. My dentist is in Hungary; my ophthalmologist and orthopaedist are in Borneo. My accountant is in Australia. My savings are in a fixed-deposit account in Malaysia. My most precious belongings are in my home town in Australia. I have stuff stashed in friends’ homes in New York, Sarajevo, Sydney and Budapest. I now rent an apartment riverside in Kuching, Sarawak, for the books and textiles and kilim rugs and artefacts and other possessions that have attached themselves to me since 2022 despite my itchy feet, but I’m not a Malaysian resident or entitled by law to call that place home.

This is my peripatetic life when it’s going smoothly, which it hasn’t always done. There have been health, financial and emotional crises along the way, but up to now I’ve had the inner resources – the vitality and resilience – to withstand the buffeting and resume my course. Looking ahead into my senior years, though, I can expect that conditions will be rougher and I’m feeling vulnerable.

It seems I’m at the latest in a series of turning points.

My memoir Skinful is about how in our journey through life we inevitably reach points when we must examine where we have come from, where we are at and where we want to be. At these potentially life-changing times, we have the opportunity to make a new path to a different future.

My first such change of direction was when I left home in regional Australia at age 18 and moved to Sydney to study at university. I had determined on this course for my life and had set a goal during my last year of high school to win a scholarship that could set me on a path different from the one my family could provide.

The second time I changed direction was when I left my career in publishing in Sydney at age 34 and moved, on a seeming whim, to Hong Kong. There, I started to work freelance as an editor. Self-employment appealed to me because it offered, through the different types of published materials I worked on, a broader understanding of the community where I had made my new home. Nearly four decades later, I still prefer to work on a wide variety of materials.

Seven years after I moved to Asia, I returned to Australia. That turning point would set my course for the next 17 years.

The fourth turning point was in 2010, when I began to live in the world as a long-term traveller – what was just starting to be called a digital nomad. I was 57, equipped to work remotely for my clients in Australia and Asia, and single. I also had a drinking problem that had been threatening for two decades to undermine everything I had worked so hard to achieve. One motivation in becoming nomadic was to force myself to face a fundamental fact: I could no longer use alcohol safely.

Just over a year later, I finally stood at that pivotal turning point. Did I have the courage to face, head-on and unmedicated, whatever life presented to me? Could I sit with feeling scratchy or anxious or fearful and not want to numb myself? I would have to find out the answer one day at a time.

It is now 13 years since I took the first step towards sobriety and began to make a path to a future that didn’t include alcohol.

COVID interrupted my travelling life for two years. I spent that interlude back in my home town, reunited with my former life, my family and friends, and my possessions. It gave me the stability to finish writing my memoir and to fulfil a lifelong dream to have a book published, but it wasn’t a turning point.

When country borders started to reopen in 2022, the year I turned 70, I resumed my life as an editor without borders and, now, author. I returned to spending months at a time in Kuching, New York, Budapest, Sarajevo and other places where I felt at home. Again, I was on familiar ground; it wasn’t a new phase of life.

The next turning point was a little longer in coming and its impact was unexpected.

My sixties had been the best years of my life. I was sober, mostly healthy and very fit. By the time a fall put an end to my running career at 68, I had run 5 marathons and 48 half-marathons. I had trekked and walked in some of the world’s wild places. My work as a freelance editor provided a steady income, and I had sent my own book out into the world. I was spending time in fascinating places. I enjoyed the freedom and independence that came with being single and rarely felt lonely. I had developed a passion for taking photographs.

When I turned 71, it felt like the start of a countdown in a way that 70 hadn’t. The ticking of the clock had now become more audible. I had never intended to spend the whole of my life alone. In my sixties, I still felt young. While I’d explored some relationship possibilities, I hadn’t felt that time was running out; I just wanted to experience intimacy with someone companionable. Had I left it too late to find a loving partner?

The universe stepped in and offered me what I thought I had wanted. It seemed it wasn’t too late – if I wanted to change my whole life.

For five months I pondered this question: Did I want a different life from the one I had created for myself?

It became clear to me that the glue that might hold together, through their seventies and beyond, two people who had known each other for half a century only as friends was too weak. It wasn’t enough to want to want what was available; the wanting needed to come from my toes. It wouldn’t have been fair to either of us otherwise.

There would, it seems, be no irresistible next life provided on a platter by a sentimental, romantic universe.

Which has positioned me as a single woman for probably the remainder of my life.

How do I feel about that? And is the lifestyle I’ve become most comfortable with sustainable?

This is possibly the last chance I will have to shape my future. The paths I’ve made for myself up to now have created a life I couldn’t even have imagined at 18. I have dreamed big for a small-town grrrl. I don’t even regret the years of struggling with my personal demons before I understood that I needed to change myself and not just my situation, and that I could do that. I do regret having harmed or hurt people along the way. My chickens have inevitably come home to roost and I am now the person I created from the raw material of my childhood, and my life is the fruit of my own doing. The responsibility rests solely with me.

All too often, I forget that the world I live in exists only in the space between my ears. It is only as I perceive it. I cannot change the world. I cannot change another person. I cannot prevent life happening to me. My only power lies in how I process stuff. It’s amazing how differently I experience things around me if I venture out in a bad mood and process everything I encounter through that mindset. I’m always going to encounter stupid or annoying or vacuous people, squealing children, feral e-scooter riders, baristas who refuse to heat milk to a temperature beyond lukewarm … There are potential irritants everywhere. On any day when I venture out into the world in a negative frame of mind – whether it’s because I feel vulnerable or anxious or fearful or misunderstood or lonely – the chances are much higher that I will overreact to a situation and make it worse.

By contrast, when my mindset is positive, I’m better able to counter frustrations with humour or acceptance, or simply to remove myself from a situation that isn’t to my liking without having a meltdown about it.

So, how am I going to process the probability that the coming years will be more challenging on many fronts than anything I’ve experienced to date, purely because I’m getting older and am still on my own? How can I equip myself to explore what is likely to be the final phase of my life with interest, humour and grace?

Stay tuned.

For more travel tales, please see “SKINFUL: A Memoir of Addiction” (Golden Grrrl Books edition, 2024) available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the usual platforms.