‘Twas The Week Before Christmas!

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'Twas the week before Christmas and all through the house, everything was ready, which elated my spouse! We could go on rhyming this post to ‘The Night Before Christmas’ but we think for all our sanities sake we’ll leave it there! The sentiment is relevant though - it is the week before Christmas, everything is (nearly!) ready, and the spouse is, indeed, elated.

We are at the beginning, and end, of an era, about to embark on a great adventure, a new way of life, and thankfully saying goodbye to an old way. We’ve been on a hell of a journey over the last 2 years - bought a horrendous flat (see Moving In Day Gallery!), got married, became The Love Tectonic, completed crazy DIY, released new music, became hermits, played our first gigs (amazing fun), and recently suffered real tragedy - a journey that has changed us and made us realise what we need to focus on if we are to live lives we’re proud of. We thought it was a good time to share with you some of the journey so far, give you the lowdown on our exciting big adventure and what you can expect from TLT in the months to come.

Moving In Day Gallery (Flat From Hell!!)

So… it turns out that if you really want to pursue your dreams, you need time, and lots of it. You have to pursue your goals every waking second, think of nothing else, develop laser-like focus and make sacrifices to achieve your dreams. The trouble is, once you hit the real world - jobs, bills, social lives and families - you are left with very little time, maybe a couple of hours in the evening and possibly two days at the weekend, if you’re lucky. Throw a bucketload of DIY in the mix and you can kiss your free time goodbye!

About 18 months ago we found ourselves in this exact position; both of us in full time work and living in a flat requiring so much renovation it made you want to scream!! (Screaming by the way is a great way to release, definitely recommend trying it some time, although probably not in public!). We managed to spend some of our time on making music, and we succeeded in releasing lots of new tunes and remixes that we’re really proud of - but we were juggling this with full time work and loads of DIY too (see DIY Gallery). We were so stressed and unhappy that we realised we needed to make a change; if we wanted to seriously pursue our dream of making The Love Tectonic successful, then either day-jobs or DIY - or both! - needed to be removed from the equation. We needed time. We needed to massively reduce our outgoings. And we needed to get out of full time work.

DIY Gallery

Thus, a plan was formed. We decided that in the short term, all of our energies had to be focused on renovating the flat so that we could sell it the following year; yes, we would still be working full time and yes, it would take energy away from TLT (boooooo!!), but there was no other way. It was a tough decision, resulting in us becoming near-total hermits from family and friends, and doing DIY nearly every waking second (before work, after work and all weekend!) but we knew that it had to be done to give us the eventual freedom we needed. Then, once the flat was sold, we could buy a campervan, live in that, cut our outgoings down to practically nothing and spend every waking hour on music. Ha! It was such an exciting and crazy thought, but it was such a powerful image it helped to keep us going through the really hard days.

Fast forward 18 months and the plan has paid off - thank f**k! We completed the DIY earlier this year and and sold the flat (such a relief we can’t begin to tell you! - see Finished Flat Gallery). We quit our jobs, which lifted a massive weight from our shoulders. We put all of our belongings into storage…. and now we’ve bought ourselves a sexy motorhome that we’ve named Dixie! We now have an abundance of time to work on our dreams, the one thing we’ve been missing from the start - WOOHOO!!!!

Finished Flat Gallery

The last year has been challenging for obvious reasons mentioned above, but also for different reasons. Heather lost her Dad earlier this year, which is a heartbreak she is still coming to terms with. On top of that, exactly a month to the day later, our beautiful cat Jem, whom we’d had for 14 years and had been like a funny, furry little sister to both of us, sadly died. That still doesn’t feel real. These traumas made the final few months of our plan that much more difficult - but they also gave us perspective and strengthened our resolve in changing our lives for the better. We have now changed literally every aspect of our lives - where we live, how we live, our jobs - and we can honestly say that we are happier, more centred, more determined, and more focused than we have ever been before. Stress can break you, or stress can change you, and fortunately for us, the past 2 years of stress have changed us for the better.

So what does all this mean for The Love Tectonic? Well, once the festivities of Christmas and New Year are over, we are embarking upon the adventure of a lifetime! We are hopping over to France in our beloved Dixie Van and exploring everything our incredible continent has to offer. We will be travelling all over Europe, seeing beautiful places, meeting beautiful people, taking inspiration from our incredible surroundings, and making music as we go. It is the trip of a lifetime and we feel so grateful to have the opportunity to make it. We will be writing updates here regularly, as well as posting lots of videos and pictures of our journey. We will be releasing lots of music, making many more music videos and playing lots of festivals! We are so excited!!

So here we are. Ready to go. Ready to see. Ready to be inspired. Ready to make music! We’ll be online again soon, probably OD’d on mince pies and in serious need of a detox. In the meantime, enjoy the festive season, remind your loved ones just how much you love them, and laugh A LOT (it’s essential for happy molecules).

We’ll catch up with you again in 2018

Happy Christmas people xxxx

Moving Out Day, Dixie & Fun Times

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