Adventure is Everywhere

As summer is coming to an end and friends have returned from their vacations with stories to share, it got me thinking about all kinds of adventures and life in general.   

The dictionary says: Adventure (noun): an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity.    

When I listen to my friends and look back at my own life, adventure really comes in all shapes, sizes, activities and destinations.  

Let me start by saying that I decided to start my blogging journey with my sketch “Adventure is Everywhere” because it was my adventure to Korea that led me to do the first sketch in this series of many, over the last 9 years.   

For those of you who don’t know me well, I want to share just a little background information.  

I came to Korea 10 years ago, to heal, rest, recover and expand my world through travel and the entire expat experience. Well, to be honest, this is the “window dressing” story I tell when people ask me about my life as an expat. The truth is, I came to Korea to figure out why my life was not working out the way I have hoped, prayed and worked towards most of my life. It turned out to be the adventure of a lifetime.  

I wanted to be a successful actress and artist all my life. Even though I am a self-taught artist, I am a thoroughly trained thespian, starting age nine, and never looking back. But at the age of 32, with all my efforts, I was further away from my dreams than ever. I just couldn’t seem to reach what I longed for my entire life. I was exhausted, frustrated, broke, still healing from a divorce and I was fed up. I needed to know if I really wanted to be an actor and artist or if it was in fact, all I knew how to be. So, I moved to the other side of the world and vowed to stop acting and creating art, even baking and knitting, which I loved doing and did almost every day of my life. I wanted to see if these things would come back to me or if I would find something new to be passionate about. In Korea I was “new”, I could do whatever I wanted and become whoever I was meant to be. As lost as I felt, I was super excited to find out who that could be. It was an experiment and permission to let go just a little bit.   

Obviously, I found my way back to art and acting. Around the end of my first year, I picked up a pencil again for the first time. And the first sketch of this collection was born.  I was having fun again. I was in a flow. I was starting to heal and find myself again. By the second year I filmed my first international short film. I was back, but I was different.  

During this time,  I was also  planning my first trip with friends, to Japan. It was exciting.  I was starting to LIVE my life and not just survive it. It dawned on me that I was on an unexpected adventure and that leaning into it would be a very wise decision and rewarding experience. This is how my  sketch  “Adventure is Everywhere” came about. She was the third sketch I did in this little series. It is also the only sketch I have ever made for myself. Some sketches are based on me, but not made for me.    

I drew the original sketch on a huge A 1 sketch paper and glued it onto a yellow cardboard that served not only as the background for the piece, but also as a much-needed pop of color for my very outdated studio apartment. I stuck her onto the wall above my bed with putty glue. Not the best game plan.  She came undone and fell on top of me during the night a couple of times scaring the life out of me. But she always went back up. She was my inspiration to keep living life in unexpected ways.  

Constantly putting her back up, smudged the pencil quite a bit and after a while I had to re-do the sketch on an A4 sketch pad and digitize her.  

She has since been upgraded to a poster print in my upgraded apartment, where she is the queen of my sunroom. My sunroom is where I love to read, drink coffee in the morning, smoothies in the afternoon and non-alcoholic beer on hot summer evenings. It’s where I slow down and connect with myself. My sunroom is a sacred space for me. And that is where we are now.  

So, back to Adventure.   

Thinking back to my childhood days on a small farm just outside the city, gravel roads with no streetlights, big trees and all the time in the world. My sisters and I – along with our friends, our cousins and the boys up the road – played mostly outside, for hours and hours. We went on treasure hunts, played next level hide-and-seek and climbed trees all day long. We played all the ball games and would spin each other upside down on the rope swing to see who could stand up the longest before falling over. We were never bored and effortlessly made up games and adventures.   

As a part-time loner, I would run to the swing in our back yard after school and swing for what felt like hours, singing the theme song of the movie, “The Never-Ending Story” over and over again. I would imagine a magical world just like that, really did exist and that I was on the brink of discovering it. My childhood memories are mostly made up of adventures that took place in our backyard.   

My teenage years were spent, riding on the back of motorcycles, sometimes with cousins, other times with the boys down the street. Playing midnight hide and seek, hiding out on rooftops, sneaking cigarettes. All night movie nights. Falling in love and getting into all kinds of teenage troubles as I fearlessly pushed the boundaries of what was possible in the world. All this happened up and down the street from my house.  

After high school, I took a year off to mourn the death of my high school boyfriend a year earlier and simply to get away from all the reminders. I lived in a little coastal town with my friend and worked in her dad’s restaurant. Saving up for short trips to big cities and nights out in small towns. This was a year filled with many travels, nights out, dancing, bonfires on the beach, funny drunken stories and long crocodile tears cried alone. 

A year later, I returned home to attend university, as a drama student. Ready to manifest my biggest dream. The stage became my playground and safe space as life became my greatest adventure. Along with the new tribe I met, we were emerging into the world on a quest to find all things wonderful, love, career, friendships, and most of all, ourselves. We escaped the hardships of life in the characters we played and the worlds we created. We bonded out and about dancing, drinking, skinny dipping and falling in and out of love, with each other, our audience members and the world. I can write books about our adventures travelling with shows, the emotional ups and downs of every performance, the drunken nights around bonfires and bar tables, illegal skinny-dipping outings, dancing our nights away and stumbling out of clubs at 8 am on mid-week mornings. Filled to the brim with life and weird and wonderful tales to tell, it feels like those 3 years were 3 lifetimes lived in the blink of an eye.  

After graduation came “the real world”. Moving from the comfort of my childhood home to the big city. Everything was new and scary but exciting. Trying to make a living as an actress filled with hopes and dreams. I was unable to find an agent and hustled my way into auditions until a director took pity on me and phoned an agent during my audition who finally signed me. Bless his beautiful soul.  That was a big learning curve for me. I was very lucky that I truly met the most amazing people who took me under their wings and taught me how to survive on my own, how to hustle, to show up for my responsibilities, to make big decisions, to trust my gut and most of all, they were there while I was becoming who I wanted to be.   

During this year, I was romantically involved with the man who would become my husband. He lived in Cape Town and after one year in Johannesburg, I decided to move, in pursuit of a big love and an even bigger dream. Two of the most exhilarating and painful adventures of my life. But I have no regrets. I gave Cape Town, acting and marriage everything I had. And there were wonderful moments of playfulness, success and fulfillment. And the most devastating moments of loss, disappointment and finally, walking away after I had given it my all. I knew it was not my time for success as an actress or as a wife. And I packed my bags again. This time I also left behind my troops, my tribe, my life lines, my treasures and my dearest friends.  We started “Why-Not-Wine-Wednesdays” as an excuse to connect on more than just weekends and fill our cups with love, laughter, support and of course booze. These people are my family.  

Hard as it was, I knew in my heart that I was meant to go to Korea. Post-divorce, in my early thirties, in a country where I knew only one person and didn’t speak the language. Unlike many other expats, I didn’t do the prep work for this trip. During my ten years as an expat, I went from smoking, drinking and searching for love and answers, to a non-smoking, sober, traveler who found a love for myself that I never had or knew was possible. There are many stories of dating, festivals, new friendships, world travels, collaborations with international artists and much, much more.  And in time I will share all of those with you, one sketch at a time.  

Looking back, I truly feel that adventure is everywhere and in everything we choose to explore. Adventure is not only in the good times and the success stories, but so often it is the hardships and disappointments that take us on our greatest adventures.  It’s in the search for and curiosity about life and the pursuit of living it to its fullest. It is in our backyards as much as it is in foreign countries. Sometimes it is all fun and French kissing and sometimes it is being lost in translation until you find your voice.  But the best thing about adventure is, it is infinite in its rich experiences and the beautiful souls you get to meet along the way.    

We all journey a unique adventure and I believe that, if we follow our hearts, adventure will await us in places and ways we can’t even dream up.    

I dedicate this post and piece of art to all the wonderful people I have met on all my adventures big and small and all those who are still to come.  But mostly, I dedicate this sketch to the girl I used to be, the one brave enough to take me on this wild and wonderful ride towards myself. 

Live, love, laugh, let go and light up the world in your own unique way.   

With love, always  

Ané