Daph and Ern’s Adventures Finding Yourself on the Road

         Have you ever thought “I need to get away”? Have you had those days, those moments, when everything seems mundane and pointless?          I have.          Do you immerse yourself in social media and crappy reality TV to escape the drudgery, but in the process get caught up in the envy of not having the life everyone else seems to be living? Do you hate your job, a job you once loved? Is your life boring, but you avoid going out and doing something interesting because you can’t be bothered? The housework is never ending, the kids don’t pull their weight …          That was me.          I was at the pinnacle of my prime (according to the rules of society). I was happily married to the man of my dreams, owned my own house, and had a great career. My children were all grown up and doing well for themselves. Everything was peachy. Why then did I have an overwhelming feeling that something was missing?          Is this all there is? What more is there to achieve? Do I now spend the next half of my life just plodding along with the rat race until I die? What’s the point?          What is the point?          My husband and I would wake up in the mornings and immediately delve into deep and meaningful conversations about what’s wrong with the world today, how “the good old days” were much simpler, how the youth of today are lost, etc. You know the kind of conversation. We’ve all had them. Just whinging about the general state of affairs, and how we could do a better job if we ran the world. Wanting to change the world for the better comes from a place of well-meaning. But moaning about what’s wrong with the world doesn’t fix it. I now know that complaining about something just charges the battery of negativity and this is not the best way to start your day. Getting out of the wrong side of bed never ends well. You’re bound to step on a foot-crippling piece of Lego.          One morning, following our synopsis of “Wrong Town”, we were discussing how we’d love to just run away. How cool would it be to have a campervan and go “off-grid” to get away from it all? I don’t recall how we got onto the subject. The Universe probably downloaded the idea to disrupt the stream of negativity … “Hey, you two!! Stop whinging. Word up, there’s some awesome shit in this world too. How about Volkswagen Kombi’s for a start? Cute as bloody buttons. Get yourself one!” There just happened to be a cute 1976 Volkswagen Kombi in a luscious green colour for sale not far from where we lived. It looked perfect for us. We love all things retro. And who doesn’t love a Kombi? Before you know it, we were going to take a look, falling in love with it, and buying it before the week was through. It was a little burst of excitement in an otherwise routine life, a flash of hope, a lift of spirits. Retail therapy on a grander scale. Who knew it was going to lead to a journey of self-discovery and a whole new understanding of life?          We brainstormed wild and wonderful ideas of what else we could do to earn a crust. We dreamed of opening an organic café-come-boarding house. We would call it The Brown Cardigan and Comfy Slippers, a visual nod to Ern, the cranky old sixty-something we will meet shortly. Do you dream like this? Do you let yourself be taken away by your imagination? Why does it have to stay a dream? What’s needed to make your dreams a reality? Just a little bit of action towards it. That’s all. The seed was planted for doing ‘the lap’ of Australia in the Kombi to look for the perfect place to open such a venture.          This was really going to mix things up. There’s no mundane in quitting your job to travel the countryside in a beat-up vintage vehicle. It was scary and exciting all at the same time. I thought a change in career and lifestyle would be the answer I was looking for, to give more meaning to my life. In hindsight, I would have ended up in exactly the same mind space; same shit, different life … if it wasn’t for my awakening. And it was all thanks to Daph and Ern.          So, who are Daph and Ern? They’re our alter egos. A cranky old couple that we would morph into to experience the world through the eyes of judgement and frustration, with a humorous twist. I started a blog, originally designed to entertain friends and family with our tales of hardship on the road, hoping to add a little bit of laughter to their boredom whilst scrolling through social media. Daph and Ern cooped up in a campervan was sure to be hilarious. But it also ended up being a massive period of growth. There were big lessons to be learned by observing our own behaviour from the perspective of a third party. I wanted to share them to help everyone to live their best life.          This book is a collection of “Daph & Ern’s Adventures”, with a dissection of our blog into life-lessons to learn. Add a dash of Quantum Physics and Spirituality to bind it all together, and “Voila”! Our journey leads to eight small changes you can make in your life that can make big changes in the world. It’s an easy experiment in how individual happiness can have collective consequences. Hopefully you will come out the other side slightly more enlightened and with a new lust for life. Or, if nothing else, you might just have a few chuckles at our antics.  Either way, it’s not a heavy read. Just a happy little something to read on the toilet while passing time.