Why I'm Grateful For Moving Away.

                                              Why I'm Grateful For Moving Away

*Welcome back to another blog! As always everything that I say is authentic and comes from my own personal opinions, therefore, if you do not like what you are reading then I suggest that you do not read any further.*

So getting down to business. It's been a long while since I wrote one of these, however, I felt nothing in my personal life was worth sharing as I felt my life was becoming pretty stagnant at the beginning of the year. 

I'm someone that loves challenging myself and I felt that my life was turning older than it should have been at 23 years old. All my life consisted of was working during the week, going to the gym and relaxing on the weekends talking to my friends back in the UK. 

I've always been pro-Spain but recently, every time that I would go back to the UK on visits, I felt more and more unattached to the country that I was living in. I felt that I had experienced all that the country could offer me socially, romantically and professionally. 

To some people moving to somewhere like Spain where life is generally more calm and more relaxing sounds ideal. So why do I sound like I'm moaning? The truth is that the first four years were fantastic. I was always out socialising. I moved to Alicante and Murcia on my own at the tender age of 19 & 21. Additionally, the opportunities I took to grow as a teacher have made me a more grounded and confident person. But unfortunately for someone like me, I need change. 

I maximised all of my professional opportunities, I grew bored of listening to reggaeton and drinking wine, and I got sick of the same simple-minded people. So as time went on and on my heart distanced itself and become recluded. For someone who is a fairly extroverted person, this is not good. 

I'm someone that loves meeting new people, learning things from them and actively listening to them. So when you turn into a shell of the person you know that you are, you become stagnant. And believe me, becoming this does nothing for your self-esteem. 

Slowly I put more and more energy into my life back home, without physically being there. I would speak to only guys back home in England, I put all of my energy into my friends again back here and my visits became more and more regular. I felt that every time I left the UK a part of my heart would linger there until it got to the point last December where I felt physically sad to be leaving. 

So I and my family made a conscious decision to sell up and move home. But selling properties in Spain is slower than they are in the UK, therefore we knew eventually we would end up here but ''when'' remained the question. 

I felt a weight had lifted and I spent the first two months of the year investing my efforts in my erotic writing with my best friend. (On Facetime) shall I add. We created 5 books and we have picked up over 21,000 readers in one book alone. It was beyond what we expected and although we are inactive at the moment, I have plans to put a lot of focus back into this as we could potentially earn money from our side hobby. Therefore I am really glad that I invested in something as challenging as this because when you push yourself out of your comfort zone you can achieve amazing results.

Then all of a sudden in March we had an offer on our house and everything went crazy. I truly believe in the power of the universe and when you manifest something, it sends a vibration out and always comes back in abundance. But we had a lot of stress to deal with as there was a legal problem with someone in our house, due to a dodgy builder. We lived for five weeks with the ''IF'' and its one word that I hate. 

I remember changing my mentality 2 years ago thanks to Angie my tarot reader. She told me to stop using the word ''IF'' and replace it with the word ''WILL'' and since adopting this attitude, things come to me as I place my affirmation to the universe. So as the positive person I try to be, I manifested that we would get away with this problem. (Minus the negative times, because there were a few) and what happened? We got away with this problem (which was incredibly slim) without even a fine! 

The sequence of moving was super strange too. So we had the lingering ''IF'' but I had already planned a trip back to the UK, so I packed my suitcase as if I was moving home, JUST IN CASE, as our supposedly moving date was meant to be the 31st of March. I also signed a power of attorney on Thursday that I booked my flight to come home and by the following Tuesday we had received the news that it was going ahead. By some miracle, we had survived all the stress that it put us through and now five weeks later I am living back here for good. 

I'm not going to lie and say the past five weeks haven't been stressful, because they have. I was so tense last week that my massage therapist had literally clicked every body part as I was super rigid. Living in suitcases, trying to work from different family members' homes and alternating between London and Brighton has been intense (Although I am very grateful to my family as they have been amazing) and my social life has also gone 360 degrees too. But the light at the end of the tunnel is near, as I am finally in my own home and it feels so fricking good to be writing this in my big comfy bed surrounded by my candles. 

Life recently has also been sensory overload as I navigate my adult life in a country that feels like it goes 100000 miles per hour. Although I grew up here till I was 18, I haven't actually had my adult life here so this month has been a learning curve (In a good way) It kinda feels like I was in a coma for the past five years because I walk around as if I have never left because life around me is familiar, but also super foreign too. I suppose it takes a while to adapt and the culture shock I expected, is definitely not as bad as I thought it would be. 

At the end of the day though, I will never regret living abroad. I truly believe the girl that left here, was unconfident and doubtful has come back a brave, ballsy ass-bitch. 

I don't think I give myself enough credit for what I had actually done. I moved my whole ass self to another country at probably the weirdest age to go. I had to learn a new culture, a new language (although that still isn't fantastic), I had to make brand new friends, I worked hard to become the business teacher that I am now and many more things that I did. So I should hold my head high and say that if I could throw myself in the deep end, where I was expected to drown and managed to swim to the shore, I CAN do anything. 

Living in a culture where materialistic items mean nothing, has been eye-opening and there are certain cultural aspects from Spanish people that I adopted, which I will 100% keep with me. I have lived five years of peace with no dramas and now living back here I expect to do the same. I will continue to distance myself from anybody that does not provide me with positive energy. I will continue to not care about what car somebody drives as the way they are as a person is way more important. I will continue to do the little things I did in Spain as self-care and self-love. I will wear heels in a supermarket if I want to, not confine myself to wearing trainers like everyone else here and the list goes on and on. 

Living aboard has changed my life, and this is only the beginning of it all. I will grab all of the amazing work opportunities I can get here, I will go on holiday when I want to and I will continue to try make positive changes to improve my life. 

Thereby, if you're reading this right now and debating whether to go abroad or not my advise is to GO. See the world and explore it. 

Erin x

All I was doing was working, talking to my friends back in the UK and 

I felt pretty stagnant