End of an era

I wrote most of this on my way to the airport, to leave Belfast, and generally Northern Ireland, for the foreseeable future. It has been my home for close to 6 years, and it’s going to feel very strange to leave it all behind. I have made many great friends from being there, I have enjoyed exploring the landscape, and I have learnt a lot about myself as an individual throughout good times, less good times, and frankly some very challenging times.

As excited as I am about the next chapter of life, the travels and the fun times ahead – I am also quite emotional to be leaving Ireland behind.

If you read the last post you might be wondering if I managed to submit my PhD corrections… Well, almost. I sent them through to the professor who was my internal examiner for the viva, but unfortunately I didn’t do so with enough time for her to check through them, then to print, bind and actually submit before my flight home. But on the plus slide I have had several wonderful friends offer help with this part. As long as they collect the PhDone! Bag for me, it will all be OK! It is a slight shame that I didn’t get to submit it myself, but what can you do? Life doesn’t always work out as you’d hope, in fact my life seems to be full of not expected twists and turns. For instance, when I was applying for my undergraduate degree, I initially applied for medicine. At the time I was very upset to not get into medicine, but now I see it as a blessing in disguise as I do not believe I would have been happy as a medical doctor. I was offered several other courses at other universities and ended up really enjoying the one I settled on. Then after that course I was applying for PhD positions. Again, I was not expecting to end up in Belfast, I applied to QUB more as a back up plan, but then didn’t get offered any other positions. The position I was offered was not the one I initially applied for, and when I accepted I was expecting to be finished 2 years ago… But hey, then I would not have explored so much of the island of Ireland. But between these lies a very important, unexpected situation that I found myself in, this amazing, long term relationship with Alex. We met at 6th form college, but at the time we both had other partners. We just happened to both be back from university and looking for people to hang out with at the same time. Neither of us were looking for a relationship, but we both really enjoyed each others company, and here we are nearly 7 years later, still very happy together and about to explore the world, well a large section of Asia anyway.

My point is, although life can throw unexpected obstacles at you, you can still manage to enjoy the ride. It may feel like the worst thing at the time, but I do believe these things have a way of working themselves out in the end. Sometimes we all need help remembering this, and I have found Yoga with Adriene on YouTube to be very helpful in enabling me to put things into perspective better and enjoy more of life’s surprises. I do my own yoga practice as well, but often like to stick on a lesson, and she is my go to – so go check out her channel, she has something for everyone. I am not in any way affiliated with her (although I would love to be one day). I just feel she spreads a great message and enjoy her way of doing so. I think the world needs more hope, kindness and love.

I have decided already that I need to come back to Ireland for a few things that I never got around to doing. Despite having lots of adventures here there are some areas I never managed to explore. Below is my map of Ireland with stars showing the places I have visited. It might have a few places missing, but in general most are saved. But some of the places I still have the pleasure to look forward to include the Gobbins cliff path, Ring of Kerry (when not too foggy to see past the end of the van), Waterford and Wexford area, an array of castles all over the island but I will not list them all individually, more of the Glens of Antrim, as well as specific areas in Sligo and Donegal and any of the surrounding islands. I have a long list but that’s the main ones. Another obvious reason to return is to have the craic with some of the amazing friends I made that will still be there (for anyone who is not familiar, this is Irish slang for generally having good times).

I am happy to have spent time exploring this beautiful land mass and to have called it home for a fairly big portion of my life, despite it being extremely challenging at times. These challenges have contributed to who I am and how I deal with things now. I do not claim to understand all the politics and intricacies of the place. But it is a fantastic, beautiful place to spend time and for the most part people are very warm, welcoming, friendly and great fun to be around. I would absolutely recommend Ireland as a place to have adventures, see amazing places, swot up on history, and have a great time. Although, my suggestion would be to always bring a rain coat… The weather can change so quickly, and the forecast can be just plain wrong a lot. But for me, I loved it even when it was raining a lot of the time – any excuse to get outside, particularly near the end of my PhD. I feel the struggle with the PhD has lead me to consciously go and explore the area I was in more, as this was something I really enjoyed and helped me to deal with the stress that was PhD life.

My flight back to England was earlier this week. Since I have been back, I have met up with some great friends and been slack-lining (seen below) and explored their local area that they have just moved to which is beautiful and right beside a river with beautiful wildlife (see above). I have been home at my parents for a day and been spoiled with delicious food including home made scones with clotted cream and strawberries 🙂 I do love my daddies cooking!