Moving to Woodlands in 2017. Personal story. Part 2.

Me & my husband were longing for countryside life, so, here we are now –  after 10 years in city moved to woodlands in 2017, and not leaving it. We are staying here. This is our honest „moving to countryside” story & my thoughts from the house, garden and woodlands.

 Part 1 here: Planning, Motivation & Obstacles around (opens in new window)

Worries for the Two Months Alone.

I heard I’m crazy when I moved to the countryside alone at the end of February. We are talking about February in Northern Europe. The weather here isn’t very gentle at that time of the year. 

February 2017

Besides that people around me were worried about many other things (and those worries proved to be useless):

1) My relationships. Will everything be still fine with us if my husband stayed in the city for 2 more months?

I have confidence in my relationships. Moving to countryside was what we both wanted. There was nothing to fear about.  

I mean, all those relationship dramas and not being able to trust and so on... Sorry, we are not interested in that.  2 months of living mostly separately definitely can help for both sides to grow stronger together & appreciate each others presence a lot more. And it’s not that we didn’t meet those 2 moths at all. Not every week, of course, but c'mon , it's 21st century. Phone & chat exists. 

2) How will I get on with shopping & daily chores alone right from the beginning?

I don’t  drive a car and closest shops are  15km away, but there is public bus. 2km walk to the bus stop isn’t that difficult. 

There is more: visiting shop once a week by bus and knowing that you will have to carry the bags 2km on the way home helps correcting shopping habits very fast. You bring home what you really need, and that’s a blessing! Oh, strangely enough, there are people in 21st century that still think a woman can’t deal with these things alone. She can. And it is as easy as bringing wood indoors and putting it on fire every single day. When you know exactly why you are  doing something, it’s not that hard to do.

3) Won’t I feel lonely?

I was a bit worried about this myself, although I’ve never been running to crowds, friends & parties, but it had been a strong part of our city lives. I’m pretty much a loner who doesn’t seek social  contacts, but what made me worried was that I had been tortured by some episodes of depression for the past years of city life, so, yes, I wasn’t sure if I won’t step into depression being out there alone, with nobody to lift up my spirits when I’m down. And, no, I experienced no sign of depression or loneliness. I was finally with myself alone, and that’s another blessing I recognized from the beginning. Although... I realized that being in nature & with the dog every day takes away all of the feelings of loneliness. I was with nature. I wasn't alone. 

So here I was. After 10 years of city life, I just had turned 29 & moved into my husbands childhood house for the first 2 moths alone. In February, with wood fired furnace & stove, no running water & washing machine, toilet only outdoors, poor heat insulation indoors, and many other extras. The development of comfort levels in this house had stopped quite some time ago. I have to mention, it wasn’t exactly my first time experience with this kind of countryside life. I lived it exactly like that in my childhood. The difference now was that I had got used to the physical comfort levels of city life and household comfort developments that hasn’t reached this house yet.

So,   those 2 months of being alone in the old house in woodlands, I actually understood about myself a lot more than in the past few years. I proved myself that I can. I started growing seedlings indoors, planning the garden, planting a small greenhouse, I was cleaning, organizing, learning the history of people who have lived here before me & like for the first time in my life discovering the magic of cooking. The wood fired stove  - I never even imagined this was the thing to loop me into cooking (I have been far from a kitchen witch before)! And also I started dwelling in forests a lot more than ever before. The forest here is closer than a bus stop. I don’t go for walks in shops, I go into woods.

The spring this year turned out to be exceptionally cold, but it didn’t disturb me. I was amazed by seeing every single day how the seasons are changing, how birds are returning, how the first greens are sprouting out of the ground... There is some kind of hippie vibe around here, but honestly, this was the happiest spring in my life so far.  I was finally here, starting to live the life I was longing for. Working creatively, developing new ideas, discovering the world around me. My daily routines were changing naturally, together with my weight. Weight-loss wasn’t even in my mind as a part of „the new life”, but it happened, and, oh, I’m not complaining! I also re-discovered my confidence I was lacking for quite some time.

Building the first little greenhouse. April 2017

After the 2 months of me being alone & without attending any social gatherings, on May my husband moved back into his family house & to me – his wife as a person of a whole new level (that’s, of course, my inner feeling, I’m not expecting applause for it). 

May 2017. The beginnings of herb garden.

Now we clearly know that the future is real, ideas become reality and life happens with unplanned & unexpected benefits. (Negative surprises happen as well, but not in this post today, they will come to the surface later).

While such life of being alone every day without much of comfort is a usual thing for many people around here, I’m putting these 2 months in my personal unwritten list of awesome things I’ve done. Mostly because of the fact of dealing with the changes of physical comfort levels alone.

This is more or less how it all started. The beginning. From here we are both together dealing with all of it. Unwanted house inhabitants, leaking roof, first garden & acknowledgments of the work we are up to for the next 20 years are on the way in the next posts of this „Moving to Woodlands 2017” series.

You are welcome to leave your questions, ideas & worries in the comments, and I will try to answer them in the next posts.

Part 1 here: Planning, Motivation & Obstacles around (opens in new window)