“Just me, just here, just now…there’s nothing lazy about getting to know oneself. It’s the most real work there is”

This true tale begins in the late winter of 2013. I’d just started a new job. A job that I would end up spending five years in before I’d finally quit to make my journey to Bhutan on a bicycle. Without this tent-living experience I doubt I’d have lasted so long in that job.

You might say that this tent living experience was something of a warm-up for the later journey to Bhutan, because I learnt a lot that would prove useful – not just in a practical sense, but also, and more importantly, about who I was and what I was capable of.

Inklings of a dissatisfied life…

It was a curious-looking hill. Only about 500 metres high, but that hill peered at me through the office window in the new job. I’d not sat for such a long time in view of such a beauty like this before. Not from a window that was set to be a permanent fixture of my life.

I would be transfixed – gazing at that hill for anything from a few seconds up to an hour. That hill could drown out the hum of the fluorescent lights, clear my eyes of a numbing screen, and sometimes bring a special sparkle to my mind.

Yet much of the time my mind was already up in the hill, waiting for lunchtime to come so my body could join it and all the others hills that rolled around it. This wasn’t a good sign for the job I’d just begun….

(of course, it’s essential for happiness to be in the here and now, and when we can’t be in the present it’s a pretty good indication of something not being okay about the present.)

The interview I’d given for the job had been awful. That wasn’t on purpose (at least not that I was conscious of), but I should have paid attention to that. Well, I had paid attention to my interview performance, and assumed I wouldn’t get it. No great loss, life rolls on…Yet my track record as an early career researcher had carried me through, and they’d offered me the job. I was gutted.

Just head south…

The excitement I used to feel writing research papers about happiness had begun its waning before I began this job. It turned out that researching happiness was just a job, and the opportunity to find happiness was no greater than in other places. I sometimes think it lessened my chances of happiness, because it brought to awareness just how far I was from living in line with what the research indicated to me was important for a happy life.

I would think about all that I’d given up for this dull office. In the months, leading up to the job I’d done something that (with hindsight given my journeying since) had the hope of bringing far more happiness to myself and the world than my research papers ever would…my first long-distance bicycle tour…

My only goal had been to head south. My last job had been in Manchester – a temporary postdoctoral research position – and I’d packed what I could on my bicycle at the start of the previous autumn and left. By heading south, I was hoping for a little warmth to see me through the winter, and then who knows where after that. Maybe east, or even further south. Only time and courage would tell…

The stetch and the glimpse

I’d spent 3 months on my bicycle. And like most journeys on a bicycle that span over many miles and many days, I had stretched beyond myself. I’d camped in a tent for the first time in my life, meandered my way through a whole country and a half, and had seen how simple life could be – eat, sleep, ride…and occasionally do some work on a farm to meet my minimal needs – I felt empowered.

I had been given a glimpse of a way of being in the world that was simple and humble. By November I’d reached Marseille in France and, as I was making my way by boat over to Corsica, I admitted to myself that I might as well give this job I’d been offered in Scotland a chance. I had an opportunity to develop my research that many would jump at the chance for. I braced myself…

The moment I decided to commit to the job in Scotland, a sense that something had been left unfinished began its gnawing. And each day that gnawing heightened. And that hill peering through the window in the new office, whilst a solace, also seemed to be symbolic of what I’d given up.

“Come and camp in us” they whispered

I don’t know where the idea to camp long term in that hill, and the surrounding ones, came from or when, but the best way I can describe it is like hearing a tiny whisper from those hills that got louder and louder as the weeks rolled on. The louder the whisper got the more it dampened the regret of the incomplete cycling journey previous.

“When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found”

It didn’t take long – about three months – before I couldn’t resist turning the idea into a living reality. It seemed like an adventure that would help get me back into the present and appreciate where I was.

I was minimal enough in my possessions to be able to squeeze most of my things in a shared office without too many raised eyebrows (at least no-one raised them in my presence). Then it was me in the office by day and up in the hills by night. Simple. I just did it. It was that easy to step into a different realm of living.

The mornings up in the hills were always the best. The birds twittering above in the tree I’d chosen to sleep below that night – sometimes it was oak, often pine. If my tent door was open, I might see a couple of deer pass by close to my tent. I even got to see a red squirrel every now and then on my daily commute, which I regularly lengthened, to the office.

It was so tranquil up in the hills and I would bring that state into the office most mornings. I’d arrive earlier than most with my large backpack, and I’d dry out whatever needed drying before others got in, draping my tent other chairs and opening the windows to make sure there was minimal pong. I’d have taken a shower at the gym, appreciating the hot water on my body, and be ready to start my work greeting my colleagues with a calm smile as they arrived to begin their days. 

Weekends were also a curious time. I wasn’t tied to being at work and I’d just take myself to some other patch of grass on another hill or maybe a mountain. It was in this way that I found a deeper connection to Scotland. I came to love these lands.

Unconventional, surreal, and close to happy

Like most challenging things it’s the beginning that’s the toughest – taking that first step amidst so many unknowns. Yet, I love Irvin Yalom’s words on this: “anxiety is a part of existence, and no individual who continues to grow and create will ever be free of it”.

Maybe it was the freedom that I loved the most. Or perhaps it was the joy I found from embracing an unconventional, yet enriching life. Back then I was beginning to recognise that for me to get a decent touch on happiness I’d have to take unconventional measures… 

Often it was hard to believe I was living this way. On some days it felt too unreal – like it wasn’t me doing this and the sort of thing I’d expect to read about someone doing. But no, this was my life. Odd. I sometime wish I’d written and shared more about my time in the hills. I wrote one blog post directly about it. I didn’t even journal for my own sake back then. And I was simultaneously exploring life with no phone, so there were no photos to share either. But it did happen…maybe I was alive in a way that didn’t need sharing. And had I shared more then it would have completely changed the experience.

And the struggles were deep

Yet, there were many daily challenges too. There were rainy days, deeply cold and dark days, lonely days…days when I had to sit with myself – I gave myself no easy escape from the messiness of being human. Sometimes anxious, sometimes sad. But I learnt that once I’d sat with the struggle enough a smile would come, and I would touch a deeper joy and happiness. It was the getting to know myself a lot better that I valued the most from this.

“When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape”

Sometimes I’d arrive at work a bit haggard from a rough night from rain and wind or my own worries, but I felt alive and connected. My mood was sometimes caught up with the weather, and beyond that with the natural world (I suspect that explains the residual sadness I can sometimes feel).  

The biggest personal difficulty by far was my fear of getting caught. I’d worry about what people would think if they knew what I as up to and I was always scared people would suspect and ask questions. This was a fear that would pervade my time in the hills and never went away throughout my time exploring this. I sneaked about pretending I was just a regular researcher.

Yet, no-one ever did ask questions. No-one paid that much attention nor cared as much as I worried they might. Plus, it was a time that brought some of my finest research publications and so if anyone had figured it out, why question my methods. Most of my closer colleagues came to know what I was up to in the end, and my living situation drew the odd wry smile and secret wink from time to time. Yet still I worried that someone might let something slip to someone who wouldn’t approve and want to make trouble.

It eventually came to an end, before going on too long

There was never any ambition in it. At first, I just wanted to do it for a month and see where it went. After that month I realised there was more to explore in this way of living. I kept up with the tent life until December in that first year before taking temporary accommodation to see out most of the winter. I then went back to the hills until the following winter. During that second winter I didn’t even bother to rent a flat and I couch-surfed with friends instead.

Occasionally I’d overnight in the office and that had its moments – especially when the office cleaners arrived very early in the mornings and I’d hear the doors opening and closing, and their hoovering noise got closer and closer to me, before realising I had to get myself up and looking lively for when they reached my office.

It wouldn’t have been cool if I was caught out, but then what was wrong with what I was up to? If anything, I thought what I was doing was quite ethical – using space efficiently, lower resource use etc etc. I used to boggle my mind thinking about all the unused building space in this world. And anyway, all I was doing was challenging social norms and I think norms are worth challenging on a regular basis. That’s how we’ll find better ways of being in this world.

It went on a bit too long though. In that second year, I had some struggles in a relationship and the isolation from living such a life became intense. Whilst my social life flourished in some respects, because I was a bit freer, I’d sometimes need to curtail social arrangements because I wanted to make the journey up into the hills before dark and didn’t want to be overly reliant on others (with hindsight I was not reliant enough).

As much as I think it is important to be able to sit with struggle, it got to be a habit. Being alone in my struggle has been my go to way of coping, when in fact getting supporting from others would probably be a whole lot more nourishing.

Plus, being the first and last to leave the office became an emotional drain. I’d think about people going home to their comforts and being able to lounge around in a warm home. I began to miss that.

In the third-year things tailed off, and I went back to a more conventional life. I appreciate the opportunity to have lived this way. It brought a deeper gratitude for life’s simpler pleasures and showed me that I was more capable of boundary pushing adventures than I first thought.

I do miss it. And I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately. Especially with some relationship difficulties I’ve got going on that I want to run away from. And then having just started a new office-based job and there are some friendly hills not too far away…

Haha, no. It was nice to have stretched myself to explore deeper once upon a time but escaping to the hills on my own won’t be the solution to this one. There is the sitting with the self, and that’s relatively easy…my main work these days is learning to sit with the other and all the fireworks that come between…

************** Thank you for reading this article.

If you’d like to read similar articles about living a simpler life then go here.

And if you’d like to get deeper into happiness with me then consider getting my book A Journey For Happiness: The Man Who cycled to Bhutan – order here.