Osiris' new office is in Bali and has no doors or windows.
Waking up with an alarm announcing another day full of subway rides, email exchanges and shopping for photo shoots, meetings, the occasional run to the supermarket, maybe a gym session, and another Netflix session to 'relax'. ..
My day-to-day routine repeated itself almost intact and I was exhausted by the weekend. That was my life. A painless structure but also far from passions, heartbeats and increasingly friendly to sadness, when questioning my level of happiness.
Now, I write these lines to you barefoot in the living room –without walls or glass– surrounded by rice paddies from my home in Bali. My computer is my office and I no longer have a subway to get around. I do it by motorcycle and my meetings are in English, Spanish, French and even Indonesian. I keep visiting the gym at dawn, to start a new day full of surprises.
It all started three years ago, when I decided to take a backpack and go away for three weeks. Visiting the island of the gods alone awakened in me what I had been looking for without knowing it for many years. I understood that the world belonged to me, that it was spinning nonstop and that I had to spin with it and go through it. So I started traveling.
I stopped editing my collaborations from my living room in Madrid to do it from a train in Laos, a hotel in Vietnam, the island of Gili Air or many corners of Thailand. Go and come. Three months in Asia, and as many others in Spain... Until I decided to vary the pace, and put a little more weight on my Balinese scale. I always end up coming back here. And this is where I want to be now.
Changing directions (and life) is not an easy task. You have to let go of moorings, overcome fears and fight. But traveling makes you see that many people have ventured. During my travels, I met many people who had left everything years ago to start again in the other point of the world.
This is Rose's new life on Gili Air.
WHEN THE CRUSH COMES
One of the people who inspired me the most in my 'change' was without a doubt Rose, a 34-year-old Dutch woman who left her country six years ago to settle on the island of Gili Air. Rose was making a living campaigning for the government when her exhaustion and lack of motivation led her on a journey through Southeast Asia.
And there the crush occurred: stepping on the small island of Gili Air awakened in her an unstoppable will to stay diving and resting in the place, and her return to her house only served to sell, pack belongings and say goodbye to her previous way of life.
And that sounds familiar to me: I have all my things in a storage room in Madrid, and I'm not too worried about knowing when I'll see them again. Because traveling and jumping into the void makes you let go of those material values that turn out to be nothing more than chains that bind you to a place.
Andrea Torres, her son, Matías, and her husband, Alejandro, understood this as soon as they decided to leave Colombia more than two years ago. Alejandro worked too much in his architecture studio and Andrea suffered when she saw that her husband did not enjoy her experiences and she missed the best chapters of her little one's life.
Alejandro no longer misses the best chapters in the life of his son Matías.
So, after some talks, they both decided to go for it: they sold their car, their belongings, and put their apartment up for rent. travel around Asia and experience new cultures with your baby. Bali welcomed them for more than six months and Alejandro found an exciting architecture project on the island that allowed them to continue traveling quietly through India, Sri Lanka and some part of Indonesia.
They now live in Sitges, and Andrea is actively involved in the Pure Clean Earth project. When I ask her for advice for anyone who is about to take the leap, her words echo those of Álvaro, a 40-year-old man from Granada living in Singapore, whose fate he changed on a trip to Sri Lanka 11 years ago: "I was going to take a tour of Asia before arriving in Spain, since at that time I lived near my parents and my family in Australia... and I never arrived in Spain."
BRAVE TIPS
From one of the coffee shops that this coffee expert now manages (yes, it's a job), Álvaro answers my question by telling me that the advice he would give would be "Don't wait. There is never a right time to change your life. You just have to do it, without waiting. It's as easy as buying a flight and going."
Andrea joins her reflection to his: "Do not ask anything of life. If you don't ask her for anything, she gives you opportunities. Be patient, open your mind to new experiences and everything will be fine". The advice my friend gives me is already like a mantra that I personally apply to my new stage in Bali, where I am setting up my own brand of eco-sustainable products and developing projects nutritional.
Osiris has created its own brand of eco-sustainable products
The other day, my friend Rose, from Gili, reminded me of Andrea's mantra when I shared my concern for advancing my projects: "Osiris, don't make plans for months or years. Live in the present. Life is never predictable and we'll never know what will happen tomorrow. I know what I'm saying."
And it is that Rose, whose routine has been changing for years with the tides, the mood of the sea and the sun and the vagaries of the earth, she suffered the earthquake that happened in Lombok a few months ago. The hotel that she had been building and taking care of for six years was devastated by the disaster.
Today, Rose and her boy are setting up CINLOC, a new home for themselves and for the guests who will come to visit it, and their current situation only emphasizes that home is where you want to be. Patience and presence in the 'now' are always the key and fears are always present, but you have to fight to keep them at bay.
After talking and collecting the main ideas that my protagonists gave me, I find a common denominator in our choice of life: that of feeling free. Each one of us decided one day to go in search of geographical freedom, a change of habits that would give us wings and a thirst for new adventures to advance and risk... Or rather to live with more strength.