I'm selling my house.

This I know from experience will be a big change.

People keep asking me will I miss this house. I look around me tonight and think about it. I notice the features, the space I created, the colours, and the light. It is early evening and it is still an hour before sunset in the first week of summer. My house has many windows and the view is everywhere I look. The gumtrees are home to birds and possums in the branches. Across the rough grass on the edge of the golf course native wildlife scampers to settle into burrows for the night. It is quiet and still. Will I miss it? Yes. I will miss the moments of stillness, the sunrises over the sea and the expanse of green, and the sunsets over Table Cape. What I will miss most though are my neighbours. I created this space I've called home for the past five years and I can create another with just as much positive energy. It is the people I will miss. Relationships are what matter to me. This little community in this particular street, this is what I will miss.

A place to be mindful or drink a glass of wine on my deck looking towards the sea across the greens

I walk into the rooms in my house and I notice. I do it all the time I frame pictures in my mind. Not in the sense of putting a timber and glass frame around a picture but framing a photograph in my mind. I take photos all the time. I see the world in photographs and compositions. One thing, two, a cluster, a pattern of shape and colour. A photographer I'm not. A visual person I am. A visual intuit that's me. I see. I feel.

Driftwood rope and shells strung from the window created with love

I wander through my house taking photographs with my mobile. I want to capture the visual memories again. A picture, a candle, a cluster of driftwood hanging threaded by rope - a creative piece put together by my daughter as a teenager. Shells, rocks, sea glass and more driftwood are scattered on windowsills steps and shelves; by the bed, the couch, the table, inside and out. Scattering of beach treasure deposited throughout my house as pockets are emptied and sand is shaken from my shoes.

Every day more rocks shells and sea glass are deposited on the stairs - the beachcombing treaure is everywhere

My house is a beach house disguised as a house. The advertising board draws would be buyers inside with promises of "holidays at home" or a "weekender feeling every working day". Yes, this is the energy in my house, and yes I will miss it. I will miss it until I have another house. Or holiday house. Or little cottage with a verandah on a grassy slope falling away to the sea. This has been my vision for as long as I have visualised a house. A little cottage with a verandah on a grassy slope falling away to the sea.

Even as I write the description I can see it. I can feel how it feels to sit on the verandah watching the sun set. So this cottage I visualise, well I suppose it must face towards the west. I look for this cottage with the verandah every time I travel. I thought it might be in Wales. I thought it might be in New South Wales on the South Coast. I thought it might be in Cornwall. I thought it might be in Scotland. I thought it might be in Daylesford Victoria (it would have to be on a lake there though). I thought it might be in Sicily. I think it might be in Tasmania. It is somewhere on a coastline where I can see weather, where I can feel wind, where it most definitely rains. I see myself writing sitting on this verandah attached to this cottage on a grassy slope, I can visualise walking down the bank towards the sea.

My beach where I spend hours walking and sitting watching the weather patterns changing

Will I miss this house I'm in now? No and yes. This house has been a place to wrap around me during the difficult days and a place to grow and strengthen and learn to let go. This house is a 'one house', a number one, a house of new beginnings. My last house was a 'seven house', and while I know little of numerology I read somewhere that a 'seven house, was a house for spiritual growth and nurturing. I certainly grew and became stronger in that house - I had to. Before that was a 'five' and I don't recall what that meant although all three houses have been centres of big changes in my life. Love, loss, despair and joy, I have loved all three houses and created a sanctuary of sorts in each of them. They all felt like beach houses, and none more so than this one.

I am excited about where to next. I have no real plan. A gypsy at heart I feel ready to store my belongings and see what presents. Change is coming. (Almost like "Winter is coming" bring on Season 6 of GOT) I talk about being a Change Agent, I write about change, I believe in taking risks and having adventures. In my experience of life, wonderful things happen when we slip off the coat of our comfortable selves. It doesn't have to be a leap of faith, just a step. I have work and ideas and opportunities I want to follow through on. So do most of us. Like most people though I need a little push at times. I'm not task oriented, I'm an ideas and vision person. I use a model of practice that is a 'solution focussed' approach to help people I work with take that first step and then keep walking in the right direction towards the dreamed of changes. I use the same strategies on myself along with some mindfulness meditation and yoga (not as often as I would hope to I might add). It all takes practice and positive encouragement.

The beach is a beautiful place to walk barefoot or meditate be mindful and sometimes even practice yoga

So back to this house and how I feel about leaving. I've spent a little time lately thinking about how I came to be here. The changes that happened five years ago. I've spent some time coming to this decision to leave five years further on. That thinking is done. Reflecting and letting go. Something else that takes practice. Now is the time for releasing this house and visualising the next space to be created, the next beach house, or a cottage with a verandah on a grassy slope falling away to the sea...

What are you wanting to change? What stops you? I ask myself these two questions often. I also tell myself anything is possible.

Karen x

New Year Changes