I had so many ‘good intentions’ about getting fitter, staying fitter, eating better, keeping on track with my pilates work-out — you know the drill. And I honestly felt a tiny bit virtuous when I began exercising (inconsistently!) at the beginning of the year.

“Yes,” I waffled on to my friends as I ate mindlessly, scooped down platters of rich cheese, and happily sipped way more than the recommended two glasses of red wine, “This is really the year that I’m going to get fit again so that I have a healthy aging strategy.”

Who was I kidding? Myself — that’s for certain!

As frightening as last week’s race to the hospital was and the subsequent 5 days and 4 nights in 3-North at the Ballarat Base Hospital, it was when I was released and came home that I suddenly felt like a bucket of ice-cold water had been poured over my head. As I have pottered around the house this week in my pajamas and slippers feeling distinctly bruised and battered, I found myself literally shaking all over one night and quite tearful. The kidney stones and surgical procedure WERE frightening and painful — but what if it had been something more grim — like cancer or a heart problem?

Manifesting change is something that I have done (on and off!) all of my adult life — so I actually DO know how to implement those changes. But when my attention turned ever so sharply this week back to initiating positive changes in my life, the floodgates opened and the most amazing emails and connections began to flood into my inbox. My unconscious obviously asked for help without consulting me about it because I honestly have no idea WHY these sites and people were suddenly in my life and on my computer screen!

From links to sites that were about health and nutrition to sites that were about material and spiritual manifestation, the floodgates that had been held shut by my own state of denial simply burst open and help, information, and assistance came pouring towards me.

Now it is up to me — and I plan to be QUITE honest and update my readers with my progress along the way. As my handsome husband said on a similar topic this week, “I’m too far into that room now to go back.”

Cathy Rogers wrote, “Contrary to our expectations when we set off like snails four years ago, we feel much more creative now we are back. We had imagined that in our other-worldly Italian life, with no obligations and plenty of time on our side, we would enjoy the most creative time of our lives. We thought we would get down to personal improvement projects planned for years, our evenings filled with learning to gilt broken picture frames, reading Dante in the original, playing the piano. Instead we found nothing so unmotivating as silence and hours. Rather, humans are at their most creative when they have the least time to be.”

Honest admission, I have had moments of those same thoughts since we ‘escaped’ from our urban life in Melbourne and moved to the country for ‘the good life’ complete with a never-ending set of marvelous sunsets on our seven and one half acres.

Alongside the finish-the-next-book theme, some of my best intentions have been to put paint to canvas once again and there are a stack of stretched canvases sitting out in my studio awaiting some interaction from me. I do remember that I was actually working on several paintings at once when we lived in busy-busy Melbourne and I was writing a book during that period as well.

Is it simply what Rogers states — that some of us thrive better in bustling conditions or work more efficiently when we have a deadline? Or does that only apply to those of us who have been programmed by working in a field where a deadline was a distinct facet of the job (journalism and design in my own case).

Is the slowed-down-semi-retired state of mind not actually all that it’s cracked up to be and a great many of us need that daily and weekly set of tangible challenges to keep us on our toes?

And is the idea of rural bliss simply that for many of us who have lived cheek-to-jowl with neighbours and noise for all of our adult lives — an idea that is perfume-filled with potential but manure-filled upon closer examination?

During our two and a half years living the village life, we have had moments of great joy and extreme anxiety. We’ve seen several couples move here, start up businesses, and then move back to Melbourne for similar reasons. And just like the author of The Guardian article, they too are happier in their very urban environment without all of the pretty, rolling hills and extremely silent nights.

I suppose what I would really like is a dual-track option — a slick urban city apartment for the part-of-the-time when I crave crowds, getting everywhere on foot instead of by car, exotic food, and a culture fix.  And then we could still have the wee eco-cottage in the country for our peaceful and slower-paced primary track life.

The article that sent my brain into musing mode is at The end of our Italian dream and is certainly worth a peruse if you are contemplating changing your own lifestyle rather drastically.