Story / 21 Jan 2014 / 0 COMMENTS

Leaving Trails

I clearly remember a conversations I had with my sister about our parents and which personality traits we inherited from whom.

During this conversation we touched on our shared desire, better described as some kind of a relentlessness, to keep moving and not being able to stay in one place for too long. It’s true that, in the five years that I have lived in the UK, I must have moved at least six or seven times.

It seems like this desire to move was something that runs in our genes perhaps, a nomadic trait that we suspected came from our mother. Like us she had been constantly moving throughout her life, trying out varied lifestyles on the way. She was at one point an entrepreneur jointly running the family restaurant with our father. Then gave it all up to try her luck as a farmer in the mountains of northern Thailand, only to move into a monastery, before returning to the beach resort of Hua Hin to build not one but two houses. Not to mention that she had been an accountant and a tour guide before all this as well.

Compared to other people who tend to stay in their village all their lives, our mom did get around quite a bit. When I dug deeper into my mother’s side of the family, I noticed the same wanderlust with my grandparent who founded an entire village in the middle of the jungle after migrating there.

Thinking more about it, I do notice a slight resembles to the plot of the movie “Chocolat”, where the mother is condemned to keep moving from one place to another driven by the ‘wind from the north’. This might explain why I identify myself so much with this movie. Luckily for my studies, I managed to stay in London for a while, moving first to Archway, then Brockley, Catford, New Cross Gate, New Cross and now Hackney, but the more I try to settle down and call London my home, the stronger the desire becomes to give it all up and move again. Some might call me crazy, but I love moving, despite all of the stress, effort and time required to do so.

With every subsequent move I acquired more things, each adding a burden both physically and mentally. After the fourth or fifth move however I realised that it felt pretty good to get rid of stuff and that I don’t really need my own furniture, cookware or a big televisions set to feel happy. At one point I only had 3 boxes and a suitcase of stuff and I must say, I never felt so free.

That was when I was about to move back to Germany in October 2013, before I got a job at Technology Will Save Us here in Hackney, which prompted me to stay in London and abandon my plans of travelling and moving. I first felt thrilled to have found an amazing job and be able to settle down in London. I started to buy furniture and tried to make my new place feel homely, imagining my future life in London and the prospect of building up something of my own here.

The first three months were very exciting, I got to do amazing work, learned a hell of a lot and met incredible people at the coolest events, but my own wind of the north returned, like an unresolved issue that needed to be dealt with. Coupled with the fact that living in London with a basic salary meant that I wouldn’t be able to afford many things in particular travelling, I made the decision to leave everything behind and embrace the uncertainty of staying on the move. After all I discovered that I actually enjoy the uncertainty, for its endless possibilities of how my life and my career could turn out in the future. Whereas in the past I would have planned out how my life ought to be, I am now happy to follow the flow and try to live in the moment.

It might sound absurd, but for me there is no better way to enjoy a moment or a place than to realise that you only will have a certain amount of time left to do so. When traveling you want to try and see as many things and experiences a place has to offer, because you know you won’t be there for too long. But once you settle into a place, you become complacent and end up experiencing less. I know so many people who have lived in London who haven’t been to one of the many museums, attraction or markets because they felt that by living there that they could always go there someday, but end up not doing it at all. I am guilty of this myself, not having seen the Houses of Parliament from the inside, nor being up London Eye or venturing out to places like Scotland or Cornwall, because I became complacent.

Now that I know I will be moving away, the first thing I did, was to book a train to Scotland and working out which other places to see in the UK. Who knows when I will have a chance to do it again? I think you got my logic now. By keeping on the move, I was forced get the best out of the time I have left in a certain place, an opportunity to live in the moment and see what interesting things are out there in my surroundings.

The ability to see things that others easily overlook is such an important part of any creative person and for me to maintain and grow that ability is by travelling. I get my best ideas and inspiration not under the shower, nor lying in bed or even dreaming, but by being physically on the move, be it on a walk, commuting on the bus or zipping at 300kph on the Eurostar. I can write an entire book about this alone and I recall so many conversations with like minded designers, artists and other creative types who share this same conviction.

This is why I like the idea of movement as a defining force in my life and find it very fitting to call this blog ‘trails’, because like a defining journey, good designs, art and any kind of discoveries or creations are made not because we follow someone else’s path but decide to deviate and leave our very own trail behind. I hope that by following my wanderlust I will discover my own path and what kind of designer I want to be.

This is the start of a new journey, which I would like to share with you. Maybe someone else will learn from my experiences over the next weeks, months and years to come.