Who Dares Wins

Counting the Small wins.

As I enter my last week of the camping challenge, I find myself reflecting on the daily, hourly, minute wins. There are challenges where I either win small or learn big. Life for us has taken on a slower pace as time seems to have expanded. It contracts at home. It has taken 2 weeks though to get to this point. My confidence in mine and my offspring’s abilities have grown. We survive and through that we thrive. As my eldest put it so eloquently – we are like cockroaches.

I would recommend everyone at a crossroads of their lives to plan an extended sabbatical. The value it brings is so much more than the financial. It is time, irreplaceable, non-refundable, and limited.

24 hours a day in the fresh air is a long time. We sleep better and we wake refreshed. My morning routine has been left behind in the UK. I don’t need it. It’s physical camping so I don’t need to lift weights, run miles and in fact getting battered by the surf at the Atlantic coast is equivalent of a HIIT workout. That will do.

Here is a list of the small wins which have made a difference to our confidence levels. The discomfort and the limited resources that have helped our creativity and built our humour and patience.

1.      Finding the 5th fork in the depths of the van so we can all eat together rather than in rounds.

2.      Finding a communal shower that has hot (not tepid/cold) water, the plughole is stranger hair free, and you find you have remembered to bring your towel AND you haven’t dropped your underwear on the long walk from the tent. Several wins there.

3.      Nectarines. Soft juicy and a full meal.

4.      Finding the only parking spot in town and that spot being a shady spot.

5.      Completing not only the couch to 5k Challenge but also the lying flat (with a rock under your left hip) to upright challenge ( in less than 9 minutes.)

6.      Finding fellow lone travellers who have left SOs behind to give their children adventures while the SOs work. Camping is a nuclear family business it seems but this year I have met a teacher taking his kids adventuring while his wife works and a woman and her three young people who is doing the same while her husband works. Two in 10 years of doing this alone.

7.      Listening in to the different languages and letting it play like music in your head chat without the need to tune in or engage.

8.      Driving through villages which we are convinced were the film sets for Joanne Harris’ film adaptation of Chocolat.

9.      No hoovering

10.  Little washing up – see (1), Little washing – camping style is minimal. Trunks and costumes rule. No mirrors here either. Several wins again.

11.  My Van, solid, reliable and with a new radio.

We count the wins together, fist bumping when we find a beautiful, deserted beach or see shooting stars or insta worthy sunsets. An attitude of optimism and enough – ness. The joy in small natural things, shared, in the kindness of strangers in the expansion of time. A concentration of what matters in the end.

If you are a woman going through change and would like to join one of my courses starting in September, please get in touch. I have an I person Money Grows with Trees walking and Money Coaching group and an in person Personal Finance Matters group for women who are widowed, divorced or caring for partners with dementia.

Julia Shepherd DipPFS is a Financial Educator, Coach and Mentor excited to guide women towards a more adventurous and generous life. Maximising your trips around the sun, whatever your income.