Last week, I took a big step in my life, and I moved to Bali. Technically, I was meant to move the week before, but an erupting volcano in Flores meant I had to quickly adjust my plans and I ended up delayed by a week. This was, as you can imagine, not the best start, but I ended up arriving here all fine and moving in.

I’ve moved to Bali to start the bulk of my fieldwork here. Now, I already did two weeks over in Indonesia in June and July, and if you scroll back you can find my posts from that time about what I found. That trip was much more “touristy” if we want to call it that — it was my first time in Indonesia and the point of that trip was to scout out suitable locations, adjust to life over here, and get some insight into Indonesian culture. On that trip, I travelled around three of Indonesia’s islands; on this trip I’m staying just on Bali (for now). As much as I enjoyed my time in other places, my work does specifically relate to Balinese gamelan, so that’s what I need to focus on right now. Where I am feels like a good place for this — there’s a gamelan in my homestay, and we’re right next to a temple which plays gamelan every 6am and 6pm, to denote the passing of time. It makes for a great alarm clock and to signal that the day is done, though I find I actually get woken up by the roosters first, at 4am.

Part of the rationale behind moving has also been the consolidation of my life into one medium-sized suitcase and one backpack: everything else I left behind in a storage unit. While I plan on moving back to Canberra in April, as I have some work and I do need to finish this PhD at some point; the truth is for the first time in my life I’m free to go anywhere. I have no rental contracts, no partner, and no other binding agreements. I have a work contract, which runs out in May, and my ongoing PhD study, of which this is a part but outside of a requirement of coming to Canberra a couple of times a year, there is nothing which stops me from, in fact, moving back to Bali for even longer next year, or going back to Europe and continuing my research train which I started there, or going to America and doing something similar there. I think there are so few times where one is actually completely free like this in life and I am determined to take it and own it.

It may be that I find out this lifestyle doesn’t suit me, which would suck but the good thing about this plan is that there are no fixed commitments, so I can give it up at any point (though I think 6 months is a good indicator of how something is going for me). I’ve had moments where I’ve been scared, not knowing what the future holds, but the truth is that although that fear exists, I recognise that it’s just trying to protect me from ending up destitute and alone. That’s the real fear, and one that’s easy enough to fix. But whether I move or not, those fears are still going to be there, and in fact doing something like this is one way to overcome those fears and demonstrate the true reality of my situation.

Of course, this is all helped by me in fact needing to do some fieldwork over in Bali. But I didn’t have to pack everything up for that: I could have left things in a room in Canberra and ensured this was just a short jaunt. But I took the chance on uncertainty, which is something I believe in, and I can only place my trust in my decision making abilities that I’ll figure everything out, with time.