Hi my dear friends, There hasn't been much activity from me here lately. To be completely honest: there has hardly been any activity from me since last year around this time. Yeah, the odd post. The excuses as to why I haven't been very active. Some feeling of wanting to share parts of our lives. Like before. When it didn't feel like before. This had nothing to do with you, or Hive... But everything with me.

Why?
OK then
you got me
I'll tell you.

My head up my a&$

Have you ever seen Tom & Jerry? If you haven't, you're missing a big piece of culture (any culture), and your parents didn't love you.

Just kidding.
But seriously though, anyone I know, between the age of 1 and 100, has seen Tom & Jerry.

Do you recall the times when either of them had this little angel and little devil on their shoulders, telling them the pros and cons of blowing the other one up, or smashing them into a frying pan, or having them run into the wall?

OK, in retrospect: those episodes were quite violent, and maybe your parents actually did love you by not letting you watch them...

In all seriousness though: it didn't matter how young you were...

you knew right? That it was just animation, that this wouldn't happen in real life. Just harmless fun by two creatures who couldn't live with or without each other.

But that's not what I want to write about. Just think of those little devils and angels, and there we are.
Every time I wanted to do something constructive with my frustrations, and thought: Let's write something. And my angel would say: "Yeah!!! Well done! You've made the right choice! Let's DO this!"
And my devil would whisper: "Leave it till later. You're not in a hurry. Hive is not going anywhere. No one is going anywhere."
So, the little devil won it most of the time. My little procrastinator.
He won.

I've had moments of clarity where I would know exactly what to do and how to do it, but I'd leave it until I didn't want to do it anymore. With pretty much everything these last few months.
My internet connection is absolute SHITE, as the Irish would say it. So I'd think to myself: YESSSS. Now I finally have time to read this book. Or listen to this audio. Well, let's say I have a few books that I started in, and a few audios I got through for 10%.

I basically had my head up my butt for these last 10 months.
For most of the things outside of myself, that is.

Where was I, what did I do?

I've worked on myself.

Until now, it didn't feel like it. But that's exactly what I've done.
I've been soul-searching, deep-diving, examining, testing, reacting, and dreaming... And just now, before I wrote dreaming, I wrote something else. But I erased it. I made it up. And it is some hell of a name for a business idea I've had recently. SO keeping it offline for now hehehe.

See? I KNEW it was the time to come back now. I knew it would give me more than I had ever asked for. Hive tends to do those things and I took it for granted for so long that I lost track of some things. It's not a bad thing.
It was something I needed to do. This diving deep within.

I've been through pretty much all stages of mourning, while I didn't have a clue what I was mourning. Now I know. It's me. My old me.

My new me is still very much the same as the old me. The times have changed. I had to adapt to these new times. Like so many others. And like so many others: I made it so far.

From the Twilight zone

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These months have been tough, for some this is an understatement.
For me they've just been tough. For others a disaster. I'm lucky.

And although at times, it didn't feel that way. I still count myself lucky.
It's got nothing to do with a virus. I'm not afraid of that. But the craziness I've experienced on a daily basis, the mass amount of media hysteria, propaganda, fear mongering, etc. was deafening. Annoying at times, frustrating at others.
I've never turned on the TV. I didn't need to. There's no escaping the madness. So I had to shut myself off...
Shield myself off.
Whenever I turn my computer on, there it is.
So after a while, my slow internet connection became a blessing. I kept it off.
I've lost a few little online jobs I had because of it but that's OK. Nothing major.

To the Dream realm

Funny, because today I read the @ecotrain Question of the week from a few weeks ago. And it's about dreams. So this is my confirmation that I'm on the right track.

A few weeks ago, I had the weirdest, and at the same time, most reassuring, dream I've ever had. It was also one of the most vivid dreams I have experienced.

I was back in the Netherlands, in my city. I was just there. In the city center. Not far from where I used to live with my eldest daughter the first three years of her life, and where I used to volunteer at the local soccer club. All of a sudden a good friend, who I haven't seen in about 25 years, started hunting me down the streets of the place. I knew the area quite well so was running through all kinds of alleys, while he was throwing knives, bombs, and grenades at me. The whole shebang. With a bang.
I KNOW, right?!? Crazy!
Anyway, it was all quite scary really. I've never seen my friend that angry. Ever! I don't think I've even really seen him angry in real life! So this was freaking me out.

Somehow I managed to escape through a little alley, and suddenly I was in Mexico. Acapulco to be precise. Two friends (who I know through Steemfest in Lisbon) were showing me around the area where they lived, and it felt so nice and calm instantly. They welcomed me to the area, took their time to show me the best places, and in the evening Jeff Berwick threw me a welcome party. 😃 That's when I woke up...
The weird thing was, I only remembered what happened in the first part, the rest was somewhere in the back of my mind but I couldn't piece the pieces together.

Until later that day when those same friends posted on their Facebook that they'd just arrived in Acapulco, and that it was so lovely and calm...
Well, slap me around and call me Daisy!

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I made a decision right there and then. We're going to Mexico.

After Steemfest 2019 in Thailand, I'd made the decision to bring us to Cambodia where a friend of mine lives. He had already offered to help me get on my feet there, so it was the most logical choice to make. Since the immigration laws in the country are quite relaxed, I figured it would be a great home base to travel around Asia from. Well, we all know what happened and all of a sudden this is not an option at the moment. So I decided on Mexico because it's one of the few countries where things are still quite open, and reasonably normal. I know the media has made it seem like the country has been hit quite hard with all of the Covid shit, but according to them - so has Ireland, and I don't really see any of it. I see over 100 people each week, in one of the hardest hit counties in Ireland, and so far I've met no one that had the virus, or knows anyone who has. And that's quite something seen the fact that in my town 1 in every 11 people seems to have tested positive...

So...Mexico here we go!

At first, the kids weren't as enthusiastic about the idea of moving to Mexico as I was. My eldest daughter wants to stay here until we've settled there.
My second eldest was not happy with the idea at all. The boys? Well, I can pretty much drag them anywhere and they'll always love it.
But then we started to do some research of the country, checked out different places, the possibilities there, the options we have, and slowly all of them became more excited about it. Now it seems like it's all we ever talk about.

So there, that's where I've been, and what I've been up to these last few months. We're looking to have everything done by March and moved there by then. To be continued...