When life gets in the way

So it’s true, my blog has taken a backseat while I’ve been travelling and I haven’t written in far longer than is acceptable if I’m expecting my writing to be taken seriously. Shame on you, Hols. That’s not to say there aren’t tons of half-written posts stashed away on my laptop which didn’t make the cut. Half of said posts are full of exclamations like ‘WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY???’, ‘THIS ISN’T FUNNY’, ‘FGS GET IT TOGETHER’. Evidently, giving in to writers' block and turning to a glass of red is way more fulfilling. If you’re reading this, this post has finally made it further than the ones left to die on my desktop and we’ve experienced a bloody miracle. 

Why everyone should live abroad

It's absolutely no secret that we all love holidaying. Whether it's skiing down the slopes in Val-d'Isère, necking flaming sambucas in Maga, or hiking up mountains in Bali, we all have our favourite holiday destinations. A holiday is that one or two weeks a year, maybe even more if you're a jammy bastard, where we leave all of our woes at home, wave goodbye to any stress or negativity that every day working life brought on us, and for once in our lives, sit back and think 'life is bloody wonderful'. As Brits abroad, we're in that airport terminal sipping pornstar martinis and jumping on that plane quicker than you can say 'más vino por favor'.

Granted, holidays are great. But living abroad isn't just an extended holiday. On holidays you don't have days where you're homesick and don't know the next time you're going to see your friends at home. On holidays you don't have to try and find somewhere to live entirely from scratch. On holidays you don't have to worry about the money you're spending because the fact of the matter is, you're on bloody holiday. Despite the struggles that you might face upping and leaving home behind, moving abroad and living in another country is, I think, the best thing anyone can ever do, and here's why...

How To Be Happy: The Next Chapter

Though it’s easy to scoff at the horribly cliché title of this blog post, I’m hoping that if my life were in book form, the next few months would prove to be the ultimate page-turner. As a literature fiend, a truly sickening book metaphor seems to be the easiest way to shout out to the world that I’m moving to Australia. Cue the dramatic ‘duh, duh, duhhhhh’.

A few months ago, I wrote a blog post that I chose not to publish. The basic tone of such post was I'm soo bored I hate my life woe is meeeee and nobody’s got time to listen to a measly excuse of a blogger waffling on about her sorrows when our lives are often hard enough to manage on their own. I was down in the dumps, unsatisfied, a grumpy grizzly, if you will. After a hefty few months of wallowing, I decided that my slightly unhinged and flat life needed a re-service. After all, do things really need to be 100% broken to warrant the need to be fixed?

In an attempt to bid farewell to the sulk, I culled everything that no longer made me happy because, let's cut to the chase here, it is completely okay to focus on your own happiness. You are allowed to travel and live where you want, spend your money on nice things or sometimes tell friends you just want a night in. To think about your own happiness doesn’t make you selfish, it encourages you to take control of your emotions. It is futile to push on believing that things will fix themselves if you just sit back and watch life pass by.