Wanderlust: Expat Life & Style in Thailand December 2014 / January 2015 | Page 12

Style

The Retro
Shack
Text: Ayan Humbert-Droz
Photos: Shannon Frandsen

“Without leaps
of imagination
or dreaming, we lose
the excitement
of possibilities.
Dreaming, after all,
is a form of planning.” —
Gloria Steinem
It was New Year’s Eve 2011
and I was absolutely determined
to make a positive change
in my life. With my insides
in constant upheaval, always
grumbling and churning,
the mission for 2012 was to figure
out the whole “inner peace” thing.
A packed schedule, over-thinking,
and possibly a mid-thirties life
crisis—or an excess of caffeine
and sugar in my diet—were
leaving me feeling drained
and not the least bit peaceful.
Something had to be done.
At the time, my husband
and I lived a life full of opportunity
in beautiful Switzerland.
It was the kind of existence that
might appear to some as eternal
bliss, and yet we were both
unhappy. We were too busy with
our high-flying careers to take
care of ourselves let alone each
other. The constant pressure
made us feel like anxious, strung
up chickens on the production line,
as though at any given moment
some marauding carnivore might
appear to devour us. We were
trapped by our worldly and selfinflicted obligations including
but not limited to: a mortgage,
too many bills, fancy cars,
and a cellar full of finely aging wine
and homemade jams. What’s worse,
we had stopped dreaming because
we didn’t think we deserved to—
12 WANDERLUST

didn’t we already have enough?
Why wasn’t it enough? We felt