Life Beyond the Wall

Hello to anyone who has found themselves on my ‘Life Beyond the Wall’ blog – an inspired title based on the attempt to combine my name with something witty. Something that says ‘ this is what this blog is about’. Could the title have been better? Certainly. Does that mean I don’t feel it is an accurate representation of what I’d like this blog to be? Not necessarily. In both the literal meaning of Wall being my surname, and the metaphorical version of the walls being heavily curated around myself, I hope this blog will allow to dive beyond those walls and into life as I see it through my own eyes.

As a 24 year old woman in a strange interlude between finishing university and moving to Australia to pursue a career, I find myself at an unexpectedly overwhelming and emotional time in my life where I am constantly questioning what it is that makes me, me. And seemingly more of a worry – who is it I want to be? I am at a crossroads of who I have been and who I am about to be, and although this could be said for every new day as a human, being in a literal waiting period makes this feel all the more obvious.

Being a woman in your 20s can be intense and confusing at the best of times, with a plethora of media suggesting how that should look for all of us, shoved in our faces through our phones, our films, Netflix series’, and even forwarded on by peers or better yet, well-meaning family members. All this media contains the secrets and hot-tips to what we should all be up to in our 20s to stay slim, save money, eat well, avoid social media, live in the moment, try new things, be single, find a partner, shave our heads… the options are limitless. The fact that the options are limitless is maybe the exact reason my head feels so full I have turned to the wonders of blogging.

So why don’t we start with a bit about me. What words do I feel best reflect me as I am right now? Even as I think about what I am going to write next, I am slightly hesitant based on the clashes of how I really feel with how I feel I come across. It is staggering that we are so in tune to the opinions of others and what they think of us, that we will go to such lengths to even deny our own opinions of ourselves, despite being the only ones that live in our own minds day to day and know the intention behind everything we do.

To kick things off, I am a deeply ‘feeling’ person. I am ruled by my heart, which often clashes with my ambitious and action-oriented mind. I dive into love deeply. I can be swept away by grief. I love nothing more than the smell of the outside air and the wondrous sunrises/sunsets that paint the skies each day. I feel a huge affinity for animals, and there is nothing that can bring tears to my eyes more than an innocent, panicked creature coming into contact with a massive, obnoxious car. I am a vet, which is a career choice driven by this love for animals as well as the need to achieve and challenge myself (I went to an all-girls grammar school, can you tell?). I am a netballer, a painter, writer, runner, triathlete (tenuous), daughter, sister, girlfriend, perfectionist, and most of all, I am literally just a girl. As you may have guessed by now, I am also a waffler….

I was once told by a good friend/mentor that really we are all just ants on a floating rock and therefore effectively the life we lead is pretty insignificant, but what makes it significant is the fellow ants we surround ourselves with. When you think about life this way, it doesn’t even really matter what makes me ‘me’, because what has really transformed my life so far is the people. It is the people who make me excited to face the day, make me laugh until my face hurts, write me letters that make tears roll down my face, bring me cups of tea, send pictures of waterfalls or just something that made them think of me, and ultimately make me feel just about every emotion i could ever imagine being lucky enough to feel. It is these people and the experiences I’ve had because of them which have led me to start writing about my life, because I want to remember every bit of it.

In this blog, I hope to cover some of my life so far with a few travel journals previously scribbled in a notes app, and reflect on some other topics that have recently occupied my thoughts.

To those reading, I hope you find something you enjoy, and even if there are no readers, I hope this can provide me with a documented outlook for me to look back on while I marvel at the life I’ve led.