A moving experience

And the subtle problem of happiness

I’d forgotten how hectic life gets when you’re moving house. I can’t think why, because everyone is always talking about how it’s one of the most stressful things you can do, and goodness knows I’ve done it enough times that I should recall very clearly how it takes over your life for a few weeks.

A view from one of my new cycling loops

I remembered that packing is a disagreeably time-consuming process, and budgeted several days to put the contents of our Sheffield flat into a pile of boxes. I wrote a detailed itinerary to ensure that the movers, and the various people helping us, were in the right places at the right times. But somehow I naively thought that once all that was over, life would continue as it always has, just with a slightly different view.

How wrong I was. My beautiful new house in Kendal is still full of boxes, and I’m constantly walking around thinking “I could just unpack those books,” then remembering that I can’t just yet, because the bookcases are full of clothes, and the clothes can’t be moved till there is a wardrobe to put them in, and I can’t order a wardrobe until a couple of other things are in place, and so everything has to stay as it is for now. I’ve been stubbing my toes a lot more than usual, and I’m not sure whether this is because I’m still calibrating my spatial awareness in this new location, or because I’m just really tired, and consequently clumsier.

Whenever anyone asks, I tell them that it’s all gone pretty well really, although it’s been unavoidably hard work, but even though there have been no major disasters, I think I’ve underestimated how hard my brain is working, on all its different levels of consciousness, to manage this transition.

Two nights ago I woke up from a nightmare about being trapped in a tiny room full of furniture and not being able to get out. And when my alarm went off this morning I was grateful to escape from a complicated dream where I was supposed to be guiding a group of middle-aged men on a bike ride in France, and they were all waiting to set off, but I kept getting delayed by small things, and getting later and later. First I couldn’t find my helmet. Then my shoes and sunglasses. Then when I eventually located the tiny tent where I had left them (someone had moved it), I found it to be so full of camping kit, dirty laundry and other assorted mess that I couldn’t find anything. Then I realised I had somehow forgotten my bra, so had to take off all my cycling kit to put one on, but that was virtually impossible in such a cramped space. Then I remembered that I had somehow forgotten to plan a route, so was going to have to busk it – and the riders were all still waiting for me… It just went on and on, and you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to work out that I clearly have a lot more anxiety around this move than I am letting on to myself.

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But by and large, I’ve been constantly happy since I arrived here, and there hasn’t been a single moment when I haven’t congratulated myself on making the right decision. It amazes me to discover that, sometimes in life, you just get what you want.

It’s hard to write about happiness. I find it much easier – as I suspect we all do – to discuss areas of my life where there is strife and tension, and to manoeuvre my way through narratives with several different viewpoints to consider and balance.

What do you even say about happiness? Once you’ve acknowledged it, any further elaboration risks coming across as smugness, or a tone-deaf flaunting of privilege. Sharing how happy you are – at least without some profession of humility – is insensitive to the vast majority of humanity who, on average, currently have far more problems than me. Perhaps no one wants to hear that someone else’s life is going well for once.

Reluctant though I am to quote the maxims of Mike Hall as though he were some kind of prophet, I do often think of something he said to me the very first time we met, on a cold winter’s night in early 2013. We were both enduring the miserable aftermath of long bike trips – his record-nudging round-the-world ride; my 18-month adventure across Asia – and he remarked that, as with any difficult period on the bike, he ultimately knew his depression wouldn’t last.

“And when you’re going through a good patch,” he told me, with a chuckle, “you know that won’t last either.”

I hadn’t thought of this before, but it immediately became a cornerstone of my own approach to long-distance cycling. Because surviving the good times is just as important as surviving the bad times. You mustn’t assume they’ll go on forever. And you mustn’t over-extend yourself, sprint for hours, or stay awake all night – because that’ll make the next bad patch even worse.

“Just enjoy it,” I began to tell myself, in those blissful moments when the coffee hit and the day warmed up – or after the sun went down and the cooler air meant riding felt pleasant again. “This is as temporary as the misery you felt at 4am [or 4pm].”

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Nothing lasts forever, and knowing this often gives my happiest moments a slight sense of vertigo. There isn’t much higher I’m likely to get from here, and so in all likelihood, the only way is down. There are all sorts of tragedies to come, minor and major, as well as the abundant and ongoing sorrows of the world in general, which are currently holding themselves at more of a distance from me, though there’s no saying when and whether they might come closer.

But with that in mind, it would feel ungrateful not to acknowledge happiness when it finds me. How fortunate I am, that today my problems are tractable; my anxieties tolerable; my health reliable; my ambitions reachable. And so, to apply the lessons I learned during my ultra-racing years, now is the time to make progress, and save some energy for when things become difficult again. As they undoubtedly will.

This is near my house :)