Hamish Macdonald's life has taken him from Tokoroa, to Russia to crumpets. He writes about how every "yes" and "no", "stay" and "go", has shaped his life.
Listen to the story as it was told at The Watercooler storytelling night or read on.
About six months ago, I was working far too many hours for no appreciation and very little pay. I wasn't happy, so I did what I think any sane person should do and I created change. I quit my job and I decided to start a food cart selling crumpets.
At the time it didn’t seem crazy at all, it seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do. See, it was based on something: that gut feeling that I base a lot of my decisions on.
I think life lessons start early - really early. I was born in Tokoroa, but lucky for me at just two weeks old we moved. Over the next eight years we relocated to quite a few places. One of those places was the Philippines.
Mum and Dad were teachers and decided it would be a good place to teach. So they signed a two-year contract and with three little kids they moved over. It was hot, crowded and I can still remember the unique smells, but I was about six so all I really cared about was that I had my toy bear (named Bear), my toy dog (named Dog) and my Mum.
However, Mum soon realised Manila wasn't the place she wanted to raise her three kids. So, after a year we packed up and came home. Which must have been a subconscious lesson that I learnt. If something isn't working out, there is always something you can do. But in order for something to change, you have to change it.
But how about deciding what that change should be? I've always let my gut - my intuition - play a large role in the things I do. What is it, I hear you ask? What is your or my intuition?
It's a crazy muscle which reads any situation, then references it against your desires, everything that you have seen, heard, or experienced, then cross-references it against the future. It’s scary. Scary to follow and hard to understand and often it just feels like fear. That's the thing that sucks about intuition: it's stupidly bad at telling you what it is thinking.
Is it indigestion, heartburn or is it your intuition? What's it saying? That it's a good idea or a bad idea? With intuition you have to stop listening to everyone around you. You have to a focus in on yourself to find that feeling, and hopefully you won’t misinterpret what it's trying to say.
My first real decision in life was once school finished. I loved Whakatane but I could not wait to leave. I mean, it was a great place to grow up, but it was a better place to leave and I have finally come to realise it's also the best place to go back to - especially in summer time.
Because my parents were travellers and as a result I knew I would travel. I always thought that once high school ended I would be on a plane getting lost in the same jungles, sleeping on the same beaches and visiting the same ruins as my mum and dad.
The plan was to get from Thailand to Turkey over land. Our plan had a few holes. Actually it had more holes then a crumpet.
I don’t know if it was me mistaking my intuition for fear, or New Zealand's general obsession with universities, but as a middle class white kid, I told my intuition to shut up and I signed up for a four-year university course.
Once uni was out of the way, I got another chance to make a life decision. This time I listened to my gut and together with my high school sweetheart, we bought one-way tickets to Thailand. The plan was to get from Thailand to Turkey overland. Our plan had a few holes. Actually it had more holes than a crumpet. Truthfully, it wasn’t a plan; it was a sentence: “Get from Thailand to Turkey over land.”
We did do some prep work. We had a world atlas which we bought from the airport bookstore and on the stopover in Aussie, we booked our first night in Thailand. We didn't know where we were going or what we were going to do. There was no timeline, no "musts" or "must nots". Anything and everything was possible as long as it fitted with our one sentence plan.
Travelling like this is a blast and doing it with someone you love is amazing. Even though my pack was about as heavy as Amy, and her pack was probably as heavy as me, the muscle that got the biggest workout wasn't our calves, it was that weird muscle somewhere in our chests.
Everyday it was working overtime letting you know if it was a good thing to follow that strange man, ride with that laughing taxi driver, listen to that sweaty Canadian, or eat at that dodgy roadside café. Saying 'yes' can take you to amazing places. Saying 'no' might keep you alive.
We were at a bus station somewhere in Cambodia and bumped into this American guy. We were going in different directions, but he gave us the name of a guy in a small town literally a four hour dirt road detour away from where we were thinking of going. I don't think this town was in the guide book and was barely on the maps, but in that 30 minute conversation with a complete stranger, we decided to go with it. Intuition said “yeah that’s cool!”
So we meet up with his friend: a guy named Smiley. Smiley was smiley too. He ended up taking us on motorbikes further into nowhere. We ferried across rivers and hiked a day to visit a hill tribe, so remote that even Pol Pot couldn't find them. With this tribe we drank rice wine, ate god knows what, sang crazy songs and had an amazing experience.
Things are bliss when you have that churning feeling in your tummy and you understand what your intuition is saying. You go with it and it all works out. The world is bliss, but unfortunately you can't say yes to everything. You can't go along with every idea. You have to let your intuition sort the 'yeses' from the 'nos'.
Saying 'yes' can take you to amazing places. Saying 'no' might keep you alive.
When travelling across Russia, the train trips are measured in days, not hours, and the only thing you see out the windows is endless white. It can get a bit boring, but this does mean you get to know the other people in the carriage quite well.
We had sparked up conversation with three other bunkmates: a nice Russian couple (she could just speak enough English words to stumble through a conversion), plus this other Russian guy (he had taken a real liking to us) who was decked out with a gold chain, white singlet and shiny track pants. I can't remember his name, but I'll call him Ivan.
So we are all sitting on the lower bunks with everyone facing in towards a little table. Out come potatoes, giant gherkins, weird jars of pickles and a few bottles of vodka (lids opened, crushed and thrown away). So with their little English, our few words of Russian and the Vodka, we talked and drank and laughed for many hours. From what we understood, Ivan had invited us to his friend's bathhouse, which was way off the track up in the mountains. It sounded lovely but we didn't make it a sure thing.
Hours more drinking and another jar of these giant gherkins later, we're taking about jobs. The girl was a graphic designer, her boyfriend was a builder, but when it got to Ivan to tell us his job, he goes real quiet thinking about shit. He talks to the couple for a while, which was common when they didn't know what the English word was. The girl had the best English of the three of them, and eventually she says “disappear”. Ivan lights up and nods, “da, da disappear”. We are like “Sweet, you're a magician!” He then says “nyet, nyet.. people. I make people disappear.”
Granted this may have swayed our intuition, but we didn't end up going with him to the far away bathhouse. We chose to trust intuition and not go to any mountainous Russian bathhouses. At the same time we didn't eat caviar, or fire an AK-47. Did we miss out on something amazing? Or are we lucky that we didn't disappear?
Every decision you make, every "yes" and "no", "stay" and "go", will have an effect on your life. Who knows what they are. I don’t yet know the outcome of leaving my job, but if my intuition keeps up its track record, Kraken Crumpets will be amazing and not something that just disappears.
This story was originally told at The Watercooler, a monthly storytelling night held at The Basement Theatre. If you have a story to tell email thewatercoolernz@gmail.com or hit them up on Twitter or Facebook.
Illustration: Josh Drummond
This content is brought to you with funding support from New Zealand On Air.