All packed up

Following my recent ponderings on the meaning of home, I can now report that I have fully moved out of mine. Last weekend I (with the help of two buff removalists and my friend Alex) moved all of my belongings (apart from a few boxes and suitcases) into a little storage unit.

Here is the new 'home' for all my stuff! After a swift game of tetris it looked like this:

Amazing. With my boxes thoroughly labeled and anything breakable safely stowed on top, I popped a padlock on the door and that's it until January 2015. I paid for a full year up front and I'm now officially the littlest hobo. I'm staying in a friend's spare room for a couple of weeks and then I'll be housesitting for my friend Ky who is going overseas for the month of December.

My first task post-move was the unenviable one of cleaning the old apartment. Three evenings in a row scrubbing away left it spick and span in time to receive my full deposit back. All I will say is that cleaning venetian blinds is the ninth circle of hell.

Farewell Harrow Road. 

Now I feel a little displaced and I'm finding it most disconcerting that things aren't where I expect them to be. Everything's taking me twice as long and I'm realising that I've packed some things away that it would be really handy to have access to right now. I guess this is going to take some getting used to!

I'm glad I've got the opportunity for a 'phased' approach to downsizing though, otherwise it might have felt like too much of a shock.

Only 19 days left at work! Can't quite believe it.

Patience

Somehow time speeds up as the departure date draws near...

Home

Much of the last few weeks has been taken up with packing my belongings into cardboard boxes and labelling them clearly for storage. 'KITCHEN: baking stuff, casserole dish, teapots'; 'KITCHEN: glassware'; 'BOOKS: arts and crafts, exhibition catalogues'; 'BOOKS: theatre and poetry', 'BOOKS: film criticism, Calvin & Hobbes'... and so on and so forth.

Next Saturday at 8am removalists will bring their van and take my worldly possessions to a storage unit in Camperdown, where they will reside at least until early January 2015. This transition towards ever-decreasing circles of belongings, combined with the gradual stripping of my rented flat of the elements which make it feel 'mine' has inevitably led to a great deal of introspection.

I have thoroughly enjoyed living on my own for the last 18 months, having my own place and making it a home. Over the years I've assembled a range of fabulous furniture, vintage pieces, kitsch crap and gorgeous homewares that make it feel as though my personality shines through my rooms. I love having people over to dinner, afternoon tea, drinks or general chit chat and welcoming them into my space, sharing my home. Which poses the question: what is 'home'? And how much do we define ourselves through our belongings?

As I find myself further down the track of reducing my day-to-day existence to that which can fit into a single backpack, I'm applying closer scrutiny to the 'stuff' which I deem important enough to pay for over a year's worth of storage. When I get back, will I still want this around me as much as I do now? Will I even remember it exists?

As someone who has already successfully uprooted my life and moved to another hemisphere, I feel I have a knack for feeling 'at home' wherever I am. In a way, as long as I have a bicycle, a library, a place where I can get good coffee and a bunch of fab people I can drink, eat and laugh with, I can consider a place 'home'. Even within a city the act of changing suburbs can feel like starting afresh, as you get to know a new place and your new haunts.

Unlike some people, who insist on going back to the same place for their annual summer holidays, I feel the need to shake my life up like this on a regular basis. I fear becoming stale and stuck in a rut. When I was a kid I'd get bored every now and then and completely move my bedroom furniture around. As an adult I'll move house to a new suburb or city. And ever so often (every 6 or 7 years it seems), the impulse is stronger. I've never understood the meaning of the word 'homesick'.

For the next year, like the proverbial snail, I shall carry my 'home' in this:

... a 50-litre bag. I shall be welcomed into the homes of others, I shall make my home wherever I land. I shall probably feel displaced, I shall wonder where 'home' truly is.

Perhaps 'home' is a state of mind. I know I feel at home in the house of every close friend and family member. Wherever I am right now is home. But I still have a tendency to build a nest when I settle somewhere. Let's see if I can make a temporary existence on the road feel like 'home'.

The route

Today I bought my first couple of flight tickets, so I thought I'd share with you my planned route for this adventure of mine. Despite being an exemplary project manager (future potential employers, take note!) I don't want to schedule the shit out of my year, but instead plan to lock in a few key tent poles around which I shall hang loose chunks of time where I can be more spontaneous and follow my nose.

This rather childish-looking spidery drawing is my attempt at capturing my route, which can be translated as:

- 9 Jan 2014: Fly Sydney-Vanouver

- Mid-Jan: head to Seattle

- Then Portland, Oregon and Salem, Oregon

- End-Jan: San Francisco

- Feb: Road trip to LA

- Late-Feb: mooch about in LA and surrounds

- 6 March: Fly LA-Austin

- 7-16 March: SXSW festival

- Then 6-8 weeks of Texas and The South (Dallas, Memphis, Little Rock, Tennessee, St Louis, Jackson, Alabama, etc etc, end up in New Orleans)

- Mid-May: Mexico

- Late-May: Lima, Peru, Machu Picchu

- 8-10 weeks in Bolivia and Argentina, (maybe Chile), planning to do some volunteer work in Bolivia, then travel to Buenos Aires

- Late-July: Fly Buenos Aires-Frankfurt

- Hang out in Heidelberg

- August: Geneva, Rome/Barcelona

- Mid Aug-mid-Oct: Corfu (with a trip to mainland Greece in late-September)

- 20 Oct: Isle of Skye

- Nov-Dec UK

- Jan 2015: Fly home to Sydney

Epic, huh?

I have to confirm some of my other big flights in the next few days so it's time to make some decisions about how long I think I want to spend in various places, but as you can see it's still leaving a lot to decide while on the road. It will be expensive to change my flight out of the US and my flight to Europe, so I should try to confirm those now, but around that I can pretty much be flexible.

I've been booking the flights through a friend of a friend called Freya, who works at STA, and she's been amazing. A seasoned traveller herself, her advice has been extremely useful every step of the way. I think she'll be living the trip vicariously through me when I'm on the road!

Visas

One of the many benefits of having two passports is that I can pick and choose which one to use when entering a country, sometimes giving me the ability to avoid visa applications and entry fees, where one country has a more favourable relationship than the other. (Plus, when travelling between Australia and the EU I can always choose the shortest queue, which is kind of cool.)

The US allows me to enter with a 'visa waiver' arrangement on either of my passports, but this would only allow me 90 days in the country. My plans for the US currently entail at least 4 months of travelling, so I have applied for a proper visa which would allow me up to 6 months in the country. Today I spent most of the morning at the American consulate waiting for an interview to confirm my visa. The whole process is quite daunting and extremely bureaucratic, perhaps necessarily so. The security at the consulate is understandably tight, but I had thoroughly read their preparatory web pages so knew what to take and what to leave behind.

Framed photos of Barack Obama and Joe Biden smiled at me from the foyer. Part of my research had been to watch some youtube videos of the US Ambassador to Australia, John Berry, who seems like a thoroughly nice chap. Once inside, what I wasn't prepared for was a 3-hour wait for my 5-minute interview! With no phone (we'd had to check them in) I used the time to make some lists of things I need to do before I leave.

The interview was perfunctory and stern. 'Where will you be staying?' 'How are you paying for this trip?' 'Are you coming back to the same job?' etc. Interestingly, the differences between my two citizenships came into play here. When offered the chance to use my Australian passport for a 1-year visa or my UK passport for a 10-year visa you can guess which one I chose! As long as I remember to always travel on my British passport in the US, I now have a multiple-entry tourist visa which is valid until 2023.

Next up, I need to research the visa requirements of the various South American countries I will be visiting.

Beginnings

Hello.

I'm Carmel. This is my new blog, 'Carmel on the road', because I'm (yes, you guessed it) heading out onto the road.

This is the obligatory welcome post (well, apart from sharing this inspiring piece of Tennyson), to explain what has brought me to this place, to this moment, where I’ve felt the urge to start this record. It’s an exciting time; plans are afoot and I am looking forward to sharing them all with you. But first, a little pre-amble.

The pre-amble
Since I was 13 I’ve always been gainfully employed. It started with a paper-round; early mornings before school in snowy Yorkshire. Then aged 16 I got a Saturday job in a local newsagent where my shift started at 6am. Sometimes I'd go out to my favourite mod club, 'Brighton Beach' on a Friday night, catch the night bus home after it finished at 4am, grab some peanut butter on toast and head straight to work! I've always fitted my life around my jobs, learning to cat-nap and micro-sleep to refuel on energy. I worked all the way through university, first as a waitress and then as a bookseller. Studying for a literature degree was light on scheduled classes, heavy on reading, giving me the freedom to work almost full-time, fitting my uni work into the small hours. Upon graduating I ran an author events program at a bookshop, before finally moving to London (‘the big smoke’) to seek my fortune.

Fortune never came, of course, but a career in arts administration did, initially in arthouse film exhibition. Working up through the ranks of the British Film Institute I eventually found myself in a senior role at the London Film Festival in my mid-twenties. I worked inhuman hours, forged solid friendships with some incredible people, had a blast at the Cannes Film Festival, developed an ardent passion for the moving image.

Soon I wanted adventure, so took a phone interview for the equivalent role on the other side of the world. Moving to Sydney, Australia for work in 2006 didn’t feel like a risk: I had a job, even if I didn’t have anywhere to live or know a single person. I subsequently took a few stepping stones in the Sydney cultural scene and now work in the performing arts. Seven years since emigrating I have some mindbogglingly brilliant friends, a wonderful Australian adoptive family and official citizenship of the Lucky Country.

So, you'd think I'd have grown roots, right? But actually, I'm out of sorts. I feel like I'm at a crossroads. I love living here but there's a pervasive restlessness that I can't shake. A feeling that there's more out there in this great big world to be discovered. That I've always taken the route which is most secure, never taken risks or been really courageous and that this has held me back. Also, perhaps crucially, that I've allowed my working life to dominate, at the expense of personal and creative growth.

All this is a rather wishy-washy way of saying that I need to make some big changes. And what better way to do this than a complete upheaval. I feel that it's time to close my eyes and jump. Do something that absolutely terrifies me. Shake things up a bit. Have an awfully big adventure.

The current situation
This week I quit my job. Yes, you heard that right, after being employed continuously in one way or another since I was 13 years old, I handed my notice in with no job to go to. As of 20 December 2013 I shall voluntarily join the ranks of the unemployed. Am I crazy? Definitely. And what am I going to do? I shall become a thirtysomething backpacker. A gap year gal. I'm putting the contents of my lovely little flat into a Camperdown storage container and reducing my life to a 50-litre backpack. And you know what? This Cath Kidston-loving, GHD-using, vintage furniture-owning, frock-wearing girl is pretty bloody excited about it.

So that's the background. If you're interested in finding out more about my plans and following my adventures then bookmark this blog, subscribe to the RSS feed, follow me on facebook, twitter, whatever. Feel free to give me your 2c worth too. I'd love to have your travel advice, feedback, encouragement and even ridicule (I can already guess who'll be accepting that invitation!). I know I'm taking a huge risk by doing this, but that's what I need right now and I'd love you to come on this journey with me (metaphorically, you understand: going out onto the road on my own is kind of the whole point).

So here we go. It’s a beginning. Let’s see where it takes us.