Laura's Feast - The gap year

As the streets and stores are decked out in their festive finery, and the melodies of Michael Bublé and Mariah Carey are once again ringing out, a very special time is on the horizon.
Behind thefestive atmosphere of the festive season sometimes lies a completely different reality: stress, tension, conflict...

At Nidéco, we believe that the festive season should above all be synonymous with well-being and open discussion. That's why, at this special time of year, we've decided to set the taboo subjects free with a unique initiative in collaboration with our co-creators:

"Le Festin Nidéco

Today, it's Laura, co-creator of Mixed feelings, who shares with us her way of life, far from the beaten track.

The gap year 🌞 

Here I am at last! And I'd like to talk about the pressure of the classic societal schema.

I'm a bit out of it, traveling a lot on my own as a woman. The need to get to know myself and ask myself questions to really know where I want to go are my main preoccupations.

So I don't spend my time working on my exams or my courses, I just do job after job so that I'm in and out as soon as I can. I never go to make-up exams and always make sure I'm not closing any doors for my future profession, but I've just taken a year off to go to the other side of the world and finally have the time.

Time for everything, the time we never have for all the good resolutions we make at the start of the year. Time to sleep, time to read, time to embroider, time to write, time to spend 4 days in the mountains or on a river, cut off from the outside world and alone with other adventurers in search of personal learning.

And that's taboo.

I remember announcing this gap year at Christmas last year and my grandfather asking me to remind him of my age in case a remark like "but shouldn't you already have a job?" was well-placed, but I'm only 22 and I've just decided to lead my life differently.

I remember my godmother telling me that "it would look awful on my application", or my parents sharing their concern for my career if I didn't do an internship during that year. When we call each other to catch up on things, they still ask me about the status of my applications and how I can focus my gap year for the rest of my career.

The truth, as my father confessed to me when I returned from my first solo trip at 19, which I financed on my own, is thatthey wish they'd had the courage to do this at my age, that they've followed the classic pattern imposed on them and that they're now waiting for retirement to have all this time, to feel alive at last, to discover who they are and what drives them deeply.

In retirement, physical fitness and desires are no longer the same, so for 5 weeks a year, they touch their fallen dreams. And so as not to suffer too much, they try to impose the same pattern on us.

There's no such thing as choosing life to be happy, whatever the choice, happiness can be found there. You don't have to be someone to be happy, immaterial things, memories, relationships, communicating emotions allow you to achieve happiness and personal success. "