It’s getting hotter each day now. The island shows busy beaches and more and more cars and holiday makers arrive every day. Pumping beats coming from the boats at sea, people wearing less clothes and sweaty sunburnt skin. This all means summer has started on Ibiza. The time already has arrived where you’d better plan your activities in the early morning or in the evening. Better not to hurry the rest of the day if work has to be done or you need to go somewhere. Take your time. Tranquilo. Yes, life is getting more slow. There’s not much than surrender to it. The earth is dry. It won’t rain for months. Our fourth summer on Ibiza, we know moreless what to expect, right?

Crazy..?

Yes, we pretty know how life goes in summer on Ibiza. Yet, this summer will be a little bit different.

Last year in August AJ, Dorus nephew from New Zealand, came to visit us and lived with us for three months. This summer I will experience since many years how it will be to live on my own again. My beloved man will be away for a couple of months. He goes on a sweaty bike adventure, biking all the way from Spain to Amsterdam. His dad, who lives in New Zealand, will visit family in the Netherlands in September and of course Dorus wants to see his dad. As he wants to make it a “green and eco responsable” trip Dorus prefers to travel by bike instead of an easy, but polluting, voyage of 2,5 hours by plane..Yes, I admire him for that, but wow you must be quite crazy too to start a journey like that or not? Well, crazy he is.. He wishes to cross the Mediterranean by sailboat and to continue his journey from Dénia (in the mainland Spain) to Amsterdam on his bike. I was invited to be his company on this trip, but decided he would do much better on his own 😉 It will be an adventure that’s for sure, and it would be very exciting, but also hard to travel such a huge distance by mountainbike. One way will take him 3 weeks. A friend of ours had done the same. By plane it only takes 2,5 hours.. Imagine!

Alone time..

So it means we will be by ourselves for that period of time. I immediately invited some family to come over for one week as soon as the plan was serious. On the one hand I’m confident I’ll be totally okay. On the other hand I already feel the missing part. The longer you’re together with someone you love, the more you realize that life without him/her is unthinkable. The thought of it already hurts a bit…Together life is more beautiful, at least for me it is (and I know for Dorus too). However, we are born alone and we’ll die alone. That is certain.  So come on, only two months! After that he will return. I feel a mix of pure excitement (for him, for his experience) and also fear, because he must stay safe and come back home alive please!

I lived alone for quite some years before we got together. I have learned to be alone and to appreciate my own company. Almost all of my friends were in relationships, my solitude wasn’t always wanted.  Yet, I didn’t feel I was suffering from it (maybe sometimes a tiny bit) and I had a deep faith (still don’t know where that was coming from) one day I would meet my soulmate, so living on my own would be just temporarily. And it happened, totally unexpected. The longer we’re together, the more I love this man and don’t want it to stop.

Good intentions

Last week I found just a perfect spot to sit down for some contemplation (or perhaps meditation when I have the patience..) and start the day. It’s close to home and just magical. I thought it could be a wonderful place to go to in the mornings when Dorus is on his adventure. I can send out good intentions for both of us. It’s a place looking out over the Mediterranean Sea where I’ll go to, to wonder and even to pray (it’s not the place on the picture..)

Writing night owl 

So for God’s sake what am I going to do those summer months while he is away?? What do you think? I’m on Ibiza, so let’s partyyy and get drunk…Hahaa sorry, but that won’t be it. In these “slow summer months” I plan to write a lot, to work on a book, a novel. That’s the idea. I started writing earlier this year, but haven’t worked on it for months. I noticed you really need to be super focused and super dedicated to write a novel and to be by yourself. Only you, nobody around. Preferably writing at night works well for me. That means these summer months there’s more chance I will come closer to my goal. I need to prevent to change in a night owl too much though and not forget to cook dinner. Still I’m not sure yet if I can write a whole book. I’m having a lot of doubts and big chance I will delete the pages I have written so far and start anew. Who knows?! There’s only one way to find out and that’s by doing it. Anyway, this summer we both hope to realize one of our dreams: a bike ride from Spain to Amsterdam and back and writing a first manuscript for a book. Let’s see how it all goes 🙂

Have a beautiful summer wherever you are, whatever you do!

With Love,

Eva

“I am a desert woman and I am proud of that. I want you to wander as free as the wind that shapes the dunes. And, if I have to, I will accept the fact that you have become a part of the clouds, and the animals, and the water of the desert.”

From “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho