Blog entry two: Hitting rock bottom.

Part of the chronicles for "Our long distance relationship, Australia to Germany"
How I came to spontaneously quit my job and
what inspired me to choose to road-trip Australia.

It might seem cliché – and in the essence of things, I suppose that it is. However, from time to time we do indeed need to hit bottom before we can begin the climb back to the surface.
For me, bottom was a time when I realised I no longer had the desire to live.
For those of you who haven’t experienced this feeling of hopelessness - It can be a sneaky little devil that creeps upon us. It doesn’t always have a name, or a direct reason for occurrence, rather it lies within a series of unfortunate events, mistreatments and cruelty, resulting in an overall sense of worthlessness.
In my life it was the relentless disrespect by those from school, in the work place and by my family which ultimately lead to my demise. The idea that their actions and their words truly did hold truth, and that I was indeed worthless.
One might think that complete despair might only have negative outcomes, although luckily for me the self-destructive path I attempted to take, actually lead to my current state of success.

How I came to spontaneously quit my job

Australia, a land of supposed prosperity and beauty – Also a land of intensive heat waves throughout the summer. At this particular time, the walls of the bank I was working in were made of glass. It had been 40-45 degrees for days and the air conditioners in most buildings had ceased to operate, due to the demand for power. My work place was one of those buildings.

With sweat beading from my upper lip and forehead, I sat quietly attending to my work, before the request was made that I attend the office to see the boss.
Despite my high sales and satisfied customer reviews, typically speaking the boss rarely had a kind word to say –– and on this particular day, he was to set another example for his hatred of me. Another ‘final’ warning , I think the fourth in a row.
It is beyond me how it is legal to keep a person’s ‘final warning’ running for almost an entirely consecutive year, but needless to say that was indeed the case for me.

“Lauren, please be seated, we have to discuss your working behaviour. As you know, you have been on a final warning for some time now and it saddens me to say, that it will remain the case for some more time now”

Me: “Why? What for?”

“Well you are too friendly and talk too much”

Me: “but I have the highest sales for the branch!”

“…And I am telling you that you are too friendly and talk too much”

At this moment that sweet combination of despair, sadness and that far too familiar sense of worthlessness retuned; that same sense of worthlessness I had spent over a year tackling in private, silently in tears – All mixed up with a sense of delusion that a non-air conditioned glass box will give anyone on a 45 degree day.

What happened next though, came as a complete shock to myself and I think to him as well!

So, without thinking I responded: “You can get fu&$%#d, I am going to the beach.”

And that’s exactly what I did.

After arriving at the beach and also after receiving a scolding from my mother about my poor decision over the phone, an overwhelming sense of joy came over me. As I sat there in my banking suit, feet in the sand and the cool ocean breeze in my hair – For the first time in years I felt free.

Days and then weeks passed – and joy turned to confusion, back to joy and eventually to boredom. And when the boredom struck, so did the overwhelming realisation that I was not only broke and jobless, but also had no direction – No ambition.

I’m not exactly sure how it came to be, but eventually I began a part-time job working on a horse stud farm, with the ambition to save and fund the beginning of my life – To start travelling.

I had been told that beginng a journey was the hardest part of any travel, and although I had keenly watched over associates facebook pages and instagrams for years and had otherwise presumed a trek of this sort was an easy feat, the true difficulty of such a mission became undoubtedly apparent as soon as it came time to choose where I should go!

I visited – Gekko, Contiki, Getaway Trekking Australia, WebJet
--- YOU NAME IT, I went there.

With the consideration of being alone, safety, cost and most importantly my desire to include some sense of real adventure outside of the tourist circle, my mission to being my new life turned out to be a never ending cycle of indecisiveness and well, fear.

This continued for months....

Until one day, I came across the photo above. A map of Australia

Nothing special and nothing crazy, just a map – with some lines drawn upon it to mark another man’s journey.
I am not sure why I took it upon myself to take a photo of that map, but what I didn’t realise at the time of taking that snap shot was that it would change my life forever.

More time passed, but I continued to return to the image of the map on my phone. Zooming in and out, assessing the path, checking what was nearby using google, until I eventually decided I might as well give it a go.

I had never really been camping before. I had never owned a four wheel drive and I had never considered the beauty of my own country. However, with fear on my shoulders and nothing left to lose, I gathered at least in Australia, if worst came to worst, I could always just fly home.

And so, after all the pain and all the suffering – many, many hours of research and a lot of hard work to save some money – I finally managed to purchase my new home on wheels – 'Tigger' - an old 1994, 1HZ Landcruiser Troopcarrier, which according to google was the best car, within my budget, that I could possibly have.

So all, it is time for me to go and have some wine to celebrate the new year!

I hope to gain some readers as I continue to share my story - If you want to know more about me, please see my #introduceyourself post from earlier at: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@laurenalexx/our-long-distance-relationship-australia-to-germany-perspectives-of-a-full-time-online-uni-student

And so, next week I will attempt to cover,
Step 2: Jumping over hurdles.

Inclusive of the hurdles I faced attempting to begin my journey, and saying goodbye to my family home for my adventure on wheels.

Happy new year all!!!

*note all pictures and content are my own *