How I Spent 2023: 66 Days of Travel & 62 Books

Last year, I wrote to this post to summarise my first year since leaving full-time work.

It's been a year since, and I'm still goofing around. Here's what I've been up to:

1. Working at the bookstore

I've been working here for over a year now. This job is a peculiar mix of intellectual and physical. There's a lot of heavy lifting and deep squats - and everyone working here is a culture snob. The normal hierarchy of the external world does not apply in the bookstore. In here, we low-wage intellectuals look down our noses at wealthy philistines.

After last year's experiments in freelancing, I've found that a part-time job works better for me. I work 4 afternoons a week, which lends a nice rhythm to my life. Mornings are free for exercise and writing and family/pet time, and I get home early enough to cook dinner and watch movies and read every night. It's obviously sustainable. 

Why aren't there more part-time jobs anyway? I think the 16-hour work week is perfect. All the stability and social interaction of a job without the stress and unreasonable time sacrifice of full-time work. 

2. Travelling for 2 months

Another perk of working part-time is that you can travel for long periods. Since Jon and I weren't limited by annual leave days this year, we took the chance to explore the UK for 2 months. After staying in a country that long you either love it or hate it. And we decided that we love the BBC/Wetherspoons/Lidl life. 

It was also our first time housesitting and workaway-ing while travelling. Both have ruined "normal" travel for us - there isn't any point staying in hotels and going to attractions anymore. We would so much rather stay in someone's house and take the bus around small towns, or muck out the chicken coop and garden.

On a side note: we had housesitters the two times we travelled (the other trip was a normal short one to Chiang Mai) this year. Meeting them was as worldview-expanding as the travel itself.

3. Rabbit boarding & grooming

What started as a whim during one of my Artist's Way exercises has turned into an actual home business. We've been boarding rabbits for a full year and recently made it official with the Pets Hideout website and Google Maps listing. 

For most of the year we were happy to host one bunny (or bonded pair) to one room. Then the year-end peak season hit and we got flooded with enquiries. We then had to decide whether to scale up for the income or keep things small-scale to retain our unique selling point - free roam boarding. In the end we decided on the latter.

With Pets Hideout, Jon and I are proper business partners for the first time. I wasn't sure it was a good idea for partners to work together, but it has in fact been great for us - we have complementary strengths/weaknesses and our communication keeps getting better.

4. Reading books

I set out to read the "classics" this year, and wahey! I kind of did! I'm on my 62nd book of the year, which isn't too bad considering some of the books haven't been that easy to read. 

My favourite, can't-believe-it's-taken-me-so-long literary discoveries this year are: 

• Jane Austen (reading the last of her 6 novels now!)

• George Orwell (loved Wigan Pier and Down & Out, loved-hated 1984)

• Paul Theroux (Great Railway Bazaar, Riding the Iron Rooster)

• Robert Louis Stevenson (all of his travelogues)

• Evelyn Waugh (Decline & Fall, Scoop)

• D H Lawrence (Lady Chatterley's Lover)

• Franz Kafka (Metamorphosis)

• John Steinbeck (The Red Pony)

• George Gissing (New Grub Street)

• Ursula K Le Guin (Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed)

• Bram Stoker (Dracula)

I also started collecting and reselling used books on Carousell. One highlight was this flea market, which I probably won't do again, but was fun to try out.

Reflections on 2023

Life has changed quite a lot in the past couple of years. I feel I've finally moved on - after several agonising stages - from my attachment to my former career as a writer. 

Last year, I still clung to it, working as a freelance writer. This year, the writing gigs have all but dried up. A blessing in disguise - it freed me from the golden handcuffs of doing high-paying but ultimately soul-sucking writing for clients. It allowed me to enjoy writing for myself, on my blog, without thinking about SEO or whatever.

Of course my income dropped. This year I made less money than I ever did in the last decade, and that was something to deal with. But somehow it's always been enough for a pretty high standard of living (by my somewhat weird standards, admittedly). 

My relationship with money has changed in the past year. Maybe it's because 2 people in my life passed away this year, and I got sick a few times, so I've been feeling very mortal. Life is so short, and the window in which you can enjoy it is even shorter. I'm less obsessed with hoarding for the future and more willing to spend for present enjoyment.

2023 has been a 10/10 year. I'm happy.