To settle without settling

Whilst my friends back home buy houses, upgrade their careers, adopt dogs, and make me incredibly proud of their mature life choices, and how grown up they all seem, I can’t help but feel like those are very high expectations to fill and fit into when I eventually get back.

Of course if I look at the past year it’s safe to say that my happiest choice was to go against society’s expectations, and prioritise my own expectation. In its own way this pushed me to a level of growth that the pre travel version of Kat would never have reached. However, especially when little reminders of my age come to tease me… I still find myself challenged by this big societal expectation and looming question of “when will you settle? ” and it comes with a shadow of doubt… “do you (as Katrina, not as a rule abiding citizen) actually want to settle? ”

And after many a frustrating moment of wondering when this will naturally click and when the urge to fit in and settle will drive me forward, I have finally come to a peaceful answer to this!

I will not settle!!

Don’t panic Ma… that’s not to say I will be a forever nomad.. (Not unless I want to…) But my next conscious improvement for life is to just not settle!

Because… The more I travel, the more I am haunted by the very word “settle”. Firstly because it is a cultural expectation and it currently feels so unnatural for me to fit into any status of normal. But at this point it’s also just a big scary word with so many overwhelming implications and connotations.

Isn’t it ironic that the word to settle (down) is also linked to the word to settle (a child) meaning calm down or to settle for. ..as in, make do…possibly make the most of a situation, as if it wasn’t what you wanted. And that, I have realised, is my worst fear! Here comes happy hippie again… But… I feel like life is such a gift! And in having this gift for my enjoyment, I’m duty bound to keep making choices that make me feel alive, that make me happy and don’t just settle me! I don’t want to “make do”.

This is not to say that a married, dog adopting, career growing, house buying life is not a happy one- it could be, and most often is… freaking incredible … as long as you’re not settling! As long as we know… It’s not the only choice out there! As long as we are not fitting into an expectation that is just societal and not personal. As long as it doesn’t just happen, because at this age… You should! I don’t want to settle… I don’t want life to pass me by in a pattern of routine. I don’t want things to just happen to me. I don’t want to settle for what has been laid out for me. In a sense… I want to settle… Up… Not down! I want every next step of my life to be an upgrade from this. As dreamy as it sounds… I want to take advantage of the fact that I live in a world spoilt by choices. Especially as a woman, I’m spoilt to have so many more options than my mother, grandmother and women who have come before have had. So if I’m going to fit into a more normal expectation of what is to come… I better be settling up!

So as much as every time I am asked what’s your next step? I feel the need to imply that at some point I will settle somewhere, I will fit into some expectation of growing up and going forward, I feel equally responsible to be sure that I will not be settling, but choosing! And that if the world were to keep offering me options of alternative happiness, that I will consider them cautiously instead of giving into a path or expectation or the most dreaded settling! So this is my point exactly. I might come home and rebuild my career… I might even invest in property, I might fall in love and chose to share my life. But from now on, after all these blessed moments of waking up in places I have chosen to be in and spending time with people that inspire me, and realising that a life like this is just a choice away I will not settle! I will just keep making choices that will make me happy, I will grow up but I will need to do this my way… consciously…mindfully… And most likely abnormally! After all this movement, these incredible highs, these expectations that are so unmatched from my previous “Katrina before travel life” I find it so hard to be sure that I want to chose that life and I am determined to remind myself that in this there is still choice. I might settle down, but I refuse to settle. I should fit into expectations… but they better be my own!

And now my fear?

This is all a beautiful action plan designed from a rather optimistic travel perspective. Will it last? Will I be able to go back home without caving into pressures of settling? Will I need to justify my choice to be alone rather than settle? Will I need to validate why I spend more money on travel than on building my future? Will I need to explain why hiking boots, a passport and street food excite me more than anything else? Will I fall into an expectation trap or will I be allowed to chose it?