New Year, New You: Time To Make YOUR Dreams Come True?

“Time and Tide Wait for No Man”: Geoffrey Chaucer

New Year marks an exciting milestone, symbolising new opportunities and new beginnings.

It’s a time to take stock, reflect on the past and look at enhancing our lives through making changes for the better. These changes can span areas such as lifestyle, health, work, and relationships.

Our Time for Life Correspondent, Sharon Cain, shares the journey of how she and Photographer, Steve Hare, moved forward from the past - and made time to have a blast at the joint age of 130!

Why We’re BIG fans of Life Plans

Knowing what you want from your life – whether outside work or, even more importantly, if you’re retired – is a great starting point.

Sadly, we hear time and again of people who count down the days to finishing work but have no idea of how they will spend their ‘golden years’ once they’ve bid their colleague’s farewell.

A life plan does not have to be a mammoth document. It can be written on a piece of paper on which you can prioritize your goals to enable you to follow your passion and dreams.

Having time frames also helps your plan to become more realistic and achievable.

Don’t Give Up At The First Hurdle

Our plans back in Autumn 2019 were to buy a second-hand motorhome and travel extensively in Europe.

The experiences we have encountered since then could not be made up – and fortunately we’re still here to tell the tale.

We’ve been robbed in our motorhome and made homeless through Covid – renting our house out just two weeks before the global pandemic.

We’ve driven through Europe to the UK in lockdown, had to rent a house and then move out again after three months as it was up for sale and a buyer was found.

The formative experience saw us seizing the day, exploring new countries, making mistakes - and learning fascinating new things along the way.

Hot on the heels of Covid, the advent of Brexit and the complex travel restrictions it imposed, as highlighted in our previous article brought bigger challenges.

We were faced with the choice of ditching it all and return home to live out our retirement – or working around it to find a solution.

We opted for the latter in a heartbeat – embarking on a nine-month mega road trip which, to avoid fines and/or deportation due to overstaying our welcome - has taken us into out of our comfort zone and into the unknown.

Looking Outwards

To date Albania has, more than any other country we’ve ventured to so far on our road trip, tested our nerves and made us grateful for the benefits, standard of living and freedoms we enjoy as British citizens.

The country’s troubled past included it being an isolated communist state from 1945 to 1992 – widely known as a dark period where citizens were renowned for spying upon their fellow residents and reporting them to the government.

We had to purchase insurance for our motorhome from a man in a shack at the Albanian border because we were unable to get cover for the county on our insurance policy.
We experienced the most harrowing and chaotic driving ever – and were apprehensive if our insurance document was worth the paper it was written on.

The poverty of the country was distressing to see – as was the sad and dejected look in people’s eyes. We were given first hand insights into the past and present by a man who’d experience the communist regime and its successors.

Although it made for troubled listening and still haunts us, we felt it was important to understand how tough life is in a country beset with reports of corruption and where wages are pitifully low.

Precious New Friendships

Of all the eclectic countries and new cultures, we’ve eagerly, and respectfully, explored on our life plan journey, the new friendships we’ve forged along the way are the treasures that will remain in our hearts forever.

The hospitality and generosity of people - who we originally met ‘online’ through our motorhome and traveller’s community and then spent time with in real life - is something I give thanks for every day.

Linking up with our like-minded community and sharing information and tips as we travel on our respective journeys keeps us energised and motivated.

The million-dollar question now is – will we return home as originally planned in June 2023 or will we keep rolling down the long and winding road – wherever that may be?
Only time will tell. In the meantime, we’ll continue to make the most of each precious day while we can.

The ancient Roman philosopher Seneca famously said: “It’s not that we have little time, but more that we waste a good deal of it.”

What will you do with your time in 2023 to make it a year packed with new experiences and magical memories?