When the next adventure is home

Finding inspiration in being still

Isobel Raya
Aug 24, 2017 · 3 min read
Monkeys strolling in Angkor Wat, Siem Reap. Photo credit: Jonathan Dumont

I’ve just come back to Switzerland with my family from a temporary assignment in Bangkok. It was an exhilarating experience — both personally and professionally. I saw my husband and I come together, somehow manage to pack our lives into our little ‘cave’ (French nomenclature for our basement storage unit), organize childcare for our daughter, arrange temporary housing in Bangkok, find a subletter for our apartment and even shuttle our cat to and fro between Switzerland and Bangkok and back. It was at times stressful and in other moments it felt just right.

I oscillated between worrying about whether this temporary home would have any negative impacts on our young daughter to whether this would set back any progress my husband had made on establishing his business abroad. In the end, we had probably one of the most fulfilling and exciting adventures we had so far as a family (including the extended visit from my mom and a good friend of my husband’s).

We traipsed around parts of Thailand — Chiangmai, Ayutthaya, Ratchaburi, visited family in both the Philippines and Australia, and were struck by awe and wonder in Siem Reap. Cambodia was by far our favourite place even though we had just gotten a little taste, more like a sliver of what life would be like in a place where it felt like time literally stood still. It felt like nostalgia, melancholy and happiness all rolled into one.

And my daughter blossomed in her international pre-school class where creativity and play knew no bounds. My husband was able to build the prototype he needed for his business and to make some concrete decisions on how he could actually make being an independent IT consultant work — no matter where we lived. As for me, I thrived in my new (albeit temporary) work environment and found inspiration from my colleagues — feeling truly connected to my work and what we were doing to transform children’s lives globally.

But now we’re back. We’re back to the daily grind.

No more special assignment for me and my husband’s back to the drawing board, having learned what he needs to have in place so that he could have a truly portable business. And our daughter has been slowly but surely adjusting to a new setting — half her time in family daycare and the other half in a newly opened pre-school in our neighbourhood and more time with her Dad.

I feel like both my husband and daughter are adjusting and able to fully soak in what is now our reality.

I myself feel stuck in limbo. I was dangled the carrot of challenge, change and inspiration. And now I just have what’s left of that carrot — the dirt and soil of my regular job, and one where I have to wait in order to move up. So I find myself trying. Trying to figure out how to keep the energy I had from my assignment but also temper it down as I know it’s not the same. How does one really find inspiration in their own version of the mundane?

As someone raised by tiger parents, finding motivation and one’s raison d’être in simply just being is more agonizing than you can imagine. Especially when you’ve prided yourself on always striving for the #1 spot. But when that spot means learning to be still, I know that I have to find my inspiration elsewhere.

In the meantime, I’m choosing to relish the special time my daughter and I share during story time before she goes to bed or the morning meditations my husband and I have more or less committed to since we’ve come home.

And I’m hoping that eureka! moment will come to life sooner rather than later.

Mushroom growing amidst the ruins, Siem Reap. Photo credit: Jonathan Dumont

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Isobel Raya

Written by

Filipino-Canadian on a Swiss adventure trying to balance motherhood, her career and affect social change.

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