Who’s the NoHeels?
Hi, I’m Dianne and I’m the No Heels part of NoTiesNoHeels. As is often the case in Venus vs Mars, I look at things differently and so, from time to time, I’ll be bringing you another perspective on our adult gap year journeys.
To order or not to order?
I’m not going to be writing in chronological order as I need to be inspired to write, usually when a song, smell or taste memory comes back to me. My work career has all been about deadlines and pressure. This journey is evolving, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and it’s taken a lot longer than I expected for me to decompress.
Mum’s the Word
Being a Type A personality I’m competitive, assertive, and decisive, or as many a male colleague has said, difficult. My mother, a woman ahead of her time, kept telling me, “you’re not difficult Dianne, you just know what you want and you have standards.” I must admit, even if she wasn’t my mother, I’d love that woman. She knows how to uplift any spirit.
Journeys
My Mum and Dad often said that somewhere back in the family history there must be gypsy blood in us as we can’t stay nailed down too long. We have a great love of new places, meeting new people, tasting new foods, and finding new mountain tops to sit on, contemplating the greater meaning of life.
Pack the Suitcases
My sojourn in Africa was the longest I’d ever stayed in one place and by the time we packed the house and suitcases for our adult gap year, I was counting the sleeps to getting on the road again. I felt like my wings had finally grown back and I was ready to fly once again.
A Silver Lining to the Covid Dark Cloud
We debated long and hard about where to go and when. We were just coming out of the Covid years, flights were back on and, fortunately for me, Covid allowed a lot of people to change the way they worked, for the better.
I was one of the lucky ones who managed to navigate through the Covid lock downs and stay in business. I know others have struggled so much over these years and I hope that you have found the strength and support to reinvent yourself into something better and more flexible.
So, the first stop was to see our children (a daughter, 30 and son, 26 – in 2022), in Dubai. We hadn’t seen them for two years. What a joy to be able to hug them and catch up over coffee in their own apartments.
How We Met
My ‘man’ (Keith) is a South African veterinary surgeon, and I was a Kiwi girl, both on our overseas experiences when we met on a AutoTours trip around Europe. More of that in another post, but yes, it was about as cliché’d a meeting as one can get.
Generations
It was the late ‘80s when we met. Those good old, bad old days. We’re on the tail end of the boomer years so the world order was already starting to shift.
Having spent close to four years traveling in our mid-20’s (between work stints in London), we thought it was time to head out again. The next 30+ years of raising kids, funding education, buying homes / cars / stuff, and developing businesses were hard and left us exhausted.
We decided it was time to take stock of “what is this all about”. We needed to get our heads out of the political and social challenges South Africa was going through. The rainbow nation Nelson Mandela dreamed of was but a distant memory and we felt we needed a new perspective. To take stock, decompress and recharge for the run into the ‘autumn’ years ahead.
What Gap Were We Dealing With
We figured we had a few years before the kids settled down and so it was now or never. This was the “gap” to reconnect as a couple, explore life more holistically than we did in our ‘20s and make memories to last into our dotage.
We’d read a great book called “20 Good Summers” that really gave us perspective regarding life’s journey and how to go about making the life journey meaningful. It provided the game changing insights, so we set our goals and put a plan in motion.
Everything Good Starts with Moka Coffee
So, over a Bialetti made coffee one morning on the verandah of our home (while we still had chairs to sit on), we decided what the hell. Let’s start a blog and put our journey up there and, if nothing else, it’ll be an electronic copy of our adventures for our grand kids to read one day.
Expanding More Than the Waistline
Sitting in the same place, doing the same thing, just wasn’t going to expand us anymore. At 60+, if we didn’t extend ourselves and get out of the rut (ruts can be good or bad), we were going to move from ruts to rails and steam on in one direction (not the band), with our world getting smaller and more limited in both our thinking and our ability to relate to this new world order.
Do You Follow?
Stick with us if you want to travel this journey alongside us. It’s our journey, but we’d love to share it with you!
So come on, it’s time to clean out the wardrobe and pack #NoTiesNoHeels.
