Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Hi, welcome to The Pulse. I hope you're doing well. My name is Julie, I'm your host, and today in this episode I would like to talk to you about taking a vacation from home. I wanted to talk because for the first time I will take a vacation and stay home. When I mean home, in my case it might be a bit specific because I could consider home to be where my parents are, as I am from France, but living in Germany, but I could also be home where I am living, my apartment, my place, which is then Germany. So two different countries, and sometimes it's very difficult to feel, okay, where is my home? In my case, it's even worse, because worse in a way, because my parents moved. So my actual home where I grew up is not there anymore. They actually moved completely into a different region. So when I go home, it's still for me in a way a new place. I don't have my friends nearby. I have my family, of course, or some of my family. So there is a bit of a difficulty when it comes to the word of home. But in this case here, I want to talk about being home in my apartment. And this is something that has never been easy. First of all, as an expat, as someone that loves to travel, as someone that loves to spend time with people. When it comes to holiday, I've always felt like I had to be away. And I know I'm lucky to be able to have that opportunity to always go abroad. Abroad meaning sometimes friends, just my parents' house. But I've always been able to travel away during my holiday. And I've spent, for example, last year, my holiday, I went to see my uncle. I went to see some friends. I went to see my parents. I went to see my brothers. and many more things. And the year before, I went to see my best friend in Brazil. So I got all those opportunities to, in a way, travel or go away during my holiday and to see my friends. And it's also definitely the time to do that because a lot of my friends are not living with me in Stuttgart, but they are living all over the world. I have friends in Hong Kong, in Canada, in Brazil, in New Zealand, in France, in the UK, and many more places. And I say hi to all of them, but they're not living really in Stuttgart. Or at least I have a few in Stuttgart. And even in Germany, I only have a few and they are very scattered. So it's always the reason why I have taken the opportunity during my vacations to go away and to go see them or to go see family, friends or to travel by myself somewhere. And it's very difficult for me to stay home during a holiday because it feels... almost like a waste of opportunity. But this year, I will have for the first time a true vacation time where I will be home. So my family is coming for a couple of days, celebrating Christmas in my home. That's the first time. But I will also have a few days by myself, fully at home. And I think it's a great opportunity for me to learn something new and to learn how can I use this time in a way that feels meaningful to me. So if you are someone that is a bit like me and travel often or go away often during your holiday, I would definitely hope that if you have the opportunity one day, you use it for a bit of learning of how does this feel to look at holiday in a very different way. So I've created a bit of a to-do list. Again, another to-do list, as I've talked about in the previous episodes. But here I have tried to plan how can I make... My time at home being on one end, allowing me to remove some of my old to-dos that are still heavy on my shoulders. And I've talked about it in a previous episode. But also how can I make almost my home stay being a mini vacation and a mini holiday. So I'm happy to share in the future how this went in the future episodes. But I wanted to talk ahead about the feeling that I'm a bit scared, that I will be a bit depressed to be home. Also, because it's going to be dark in the middle of winter, it's going to be between Christmas and New Year's. So a bit of a difficult timing, I feel. But at the same time, I'm looking forward to exploring something different and to exploring holiday in a different way. And also to really, truly slow down. I very often slow down when I'm... on holiday in other places but still I want to experience I want to view things I want to spend time and being with my friends and being I'm very extrovert on holiday I would like to say but I have those moments where I need to be a bit introvert to be within my home in my environment and I'm hoping that I will set up I use the time in that way and that will help me create a form of calmness so I'm This is the first time, this is an experience. If you have already experienced it, let me know how you're using it. I would love to hear how does this time at home is being used whenever you do a home vacation. And yeah, I think that's it. But as I wanted to say, I know that I've been lucky to be able to go away every single vacation. So this new experience is again bringing me out of my comfort zone, but in a great way. So. I've started the year with the weekly challenge and some strong topics and I guess I will end also with another weekly challenge which will be staying at home for a vacation and I'm looking forward to this new experience to using the time wisely for me to slow down to use the opportunity also to start to tackle topics that have been pending for so long and I'd always felt I could do this later and I don't want to spend my... holiday, my vacation on. And I'm looking forward also to exploring my home in a different way, in a vacation way, because when we live there, when we live in one place, I think we very often struggle to view it also as a place to experience. And it becomes a bit of routine. I've seen it before where I only go to visit some places in the home where I live only when friends and families are coming to visit so for once I will do some of the museums I will go to some of the places that I would love to explore but I've never got to explore yet in the three years almost three years that I've been living here and yeah I wish you a very nice day and I talk to you soon bye