A place..A friend…A change of mindset!

Time for another blog! I have to apologise for the so very sporadic posting, but I will only ever put out a piece when I feel its truly worth reading or like this one, quite funny.

It wouldn’t be right if I didn’t incorporate some piece of writing into my blog since I am a self confessed book geek. Anais Nin once said ‘We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are’. Although I feel no elaboration is needed, I will say that within twenty-four hours a trip to Brussels went from being yet another stressful thing in my head to somewhere that will forever sit happily in my heart and it was all due to a change in my way of thinking. So here goes the story…

Last month I finally accepted my retirement and shared it with friends, family and beyond. The response and love that came back to me was truly overwhelming, it really makes me appreciate being apart of the footballing community. I thought it would be best to pack away all my football stuff; medals, jerseys, programs, pictures and the likes. The process of putting over 10 years of my life into boxes and placing them in the attic actually made me quite emotional and mentally drained. I had also compiled a list of New Years resolutions that all revolved around becoming more productive with work; I wanted to become busy, more efficient and really just find some kind of new path. Initially it seemed a great idea but mid January I hit a wall, all I seemed to be doing was working and getting a few hours of sleep in between. As I stood staring into my bedroom mirror, I realised how much of an emotionally over tired wreck I had become. It took one message to my best friend Dani and like always she came up with an answer….A holiday (don’t ask me how or why but she decided on Belgium, Brussels in particular)!

I have to tell you a bit about Dani and our friendship so you can really understand the dynamics of this experience. We really are the complete opposite, Im always on time and she is never on time. I am an early riser and she literally has sloth like qualities (I have never met anyone who can nap like her). Dani is confident, stylish and can dance…and well honestly, Im the opposite. If we were an enterprise, I would most definitely be the brains and she would be the beauty…Im sure you get the picture! One thing is for sure, whenever we are together there is an abundance of laughter, randomness and weird happenings.

So back to the holiday. It’s a Monday evening, we are sat in Dublin airport waiting to board the plane. It’s the first time I really get a chance to research Brussels. I ask Dani the obvious questions; how are we getting from the airport to the hotel, what are we doing tomorrow and so on. Every question is answered with ‘I don’t know, I didn’t think about it’. Now let me explain something; for over 10 years my travels involved routine, itineraries, procedures, and plans as all my travel revolved around my sport. My body and mind totally wired this way, I didn’t know travelling any other way. Hearing those words ‘I don’t know, I didn’t think about it’ made me feel unbelievably anxious beyond belief. As we sat on the plane, my leg anxiously tapping due to the fact that I was travelling without a plan or any idea of what the hell was to come. I glanced at Dani, who was the epitome of calmness and simply just shrugged her shoulders (which made me even more stressed!).

We landed in Brussels around 10pm and after pulling our luggage around the small airport we eventually found (with a help of a fellow traveller) a bus to take us to the centre of Brussels. My anxiety levels began to slowly rise, and yet when I looked at Dani she was calm and relaxed. The bus came to a stop at a (closed) train station in south Brussels, we decided it was best to grab a taxi, as the resident drunks were unable to help us. My stress level again increased when our taxi driver had obviously mistaken the journey to our hotel for the Monaco Grand Prix, the only time he slowed down was to give us what you would call a tour of the red light district…five times, before eventually dropping us off at our destination. We were greeted by one very ‘unique’ hotel manager, who led us down a dark hallway to his office/bedroom and informed us that we would have no electricity the following day for several hours. The hotel made quite the change from the usual ones I was used to experiencing. At this point I was exhausted and thankfully fell into a deep sleep in apparently ‘the best room’ in the hotel, which had lovely plastic furniture, peeling wallpaper and strange ornaments.

The next morning, Dani informed me she had ‘done some research’ (her words) and decided that we would do a bike tour of city. So off we went, all bright eyed and bushy tailed in search of Grand Place to take our bike tour. We waited half an hour and no one turned up, I insisted we go and ask the tourist office, to which the guy informed us that bike tours only run in summer months. He even pointed out the big red notice on their website…the one Dani had ’ done some research’ on. We stood in the middle of Grand Place laughing at how stupid we must have looked, and this was exactly how the rest of our week in Belgium went. At this stage I kind of just embraced the ‘whatever’ attitude and tried to let go of my stress and structured way of thinking. We then decided to spend some time wandering, now I have no sense of direction whatsoever and well Dani just has no sense…no Im joking, she is literally like a walking Google Maps, so off we went in search of nothing and everything at the same time. This lack of planning led us to some of the most beautiful places and gave us some pretty crazy encounters. We stood on a rooftop overlooking the city below. We ventured to lesser known parts of the city and seen decorated alleyways, skate parks and wonderful street art. We travelled to Leuven, a small town outside Brussels filled with amazing architecture and great beer. We ended up in Bruges eating unbelievable desserts and followed the beautiful canals for hours. We wandered through parks, enjoying the crisp January sun. We sat in a cocktail bar drinking with some students until late; dancing to a mixture of music you would hear in a cheap Spanish restaurant and Trey songs (bizarre and lovely all at once). We got stuck on the underground train, apparently some children had wandered off down a tunnel, so we ended travelling to the same train station about four times as neither of us thought to read a map! We sat in a bar called Dolores’s, chatting with three people; one french who spoke only french , one Moroccan who spoke Spanish and about four words in English to which all revolved around sex! And a Belgian tram driver would spoke mostly Dutch and some English. I’m not sure what exactly the conversation was about but we did laugh a lot and also learnt that we are always welcome to sleep on the Moroccan woman’s sofa. Im pretty sure I have left some other bits out (both on purpose and by mistake!), but it was truly hard to remember everything when each hour was filled with something random, laughable and totally unplanned. By then end of the week and for the first time in quite a while I realised I felt no tension, no stress. My shoulders relaxed and my mind settled. For once I wasn’t focussed on work or my schedule, I was simply enjoying that exact moment.

As I sat in the departure lounge staring out the window towards the sheets of snow hitting the runway, I wondered if the flight would depart. I had been in this worryingly snowy situation many times before but this occasion was different; I honestly didn’t care, not a single part of me worried or felt anxious that the plan could suddenly go out the window. Honestly I probably would have decided against leaving Dublin if someone had of told me that the trip would have been like this, but then again I would have missed out on everything I gained, I would not have discovered places in the most random ways, I would not have experienced certain encounters in the most bizarre circumstances. One thing that is for sure, I will never plan, I will never pre determine…I will simply just go because the art of living in is those random, sometimes scary yet bizarre experiences and not so much in the planned ones! And if you take anything out of this blog its just that; work and plan as much as required but live as much as you can, and do it while you can.
Seana x