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Archive for the ‘Life Balance’ Category

Career Break? Yes Please!

Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Blogging, Change, Expat Life, Life Balance, Light Bulb Moments, Travel, tagged blogging, burnout, career break, Career Break Secrets, Career Break Secrets Travel Show, career change, global nomad, Jeff Jung, laid off, Random Nomads, serial wanderer, The Displaced Nation, travel, travel writing, unemployed on May 17, 2012 | 6 Comments »

I’ve been a big fan of The Displaced Nation for quite some time now. How could I not, with a tagline of ‘A Land of Plenty for the Global Voyager,’ promising advice, opinions and yarns? One of my favorite features on the site is the interview series called Random Nomads. The questions posed aren’t your average ’where [...]

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To Show That They Existed

Posted in Expat Life, Family & Friends, Holidays, Identity, Life Balance, Light Bulb Moments, tagged collective memory, existence, expat life, Expatriate Archive Centre, expats, family, friends, hospital, illness, leave your footprint, legacy, love, making the world a better place, memories, mortality, Mother's Day, parents, remembrance, rootlessness on May 13, 2012 | 14 Comments »

Everyone wants to know, deep within, that their time on earth meant something to others. That their being here mattered. They mattered. It is human nature to want to leave your footprint on the world for others that come after you to see. For some, it is through their betterment of the immediate world around them. Think Mother [...]

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Multitasking Overload

Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Blogging, Change, Emotional Resilience, Exercise & Sports, Expat Life, Family & Friends, Food and Drink, Life Balance, Third Culture Kids (TCKs), Writing, tagged children, college visits, competing demands, emotional resilience, exercise, expats, fitness, health, parents, sandwich generation, sleep, TCKs, Telegraph, university search, writing on April 20, 2012 | 16 Comments »

A few days ago I wrote of the challenges many of us face being sandwiched between generations. Just like everyone else, we expats do our best to care for, raise and guide our TCK children to adulthood(and beyond) while also staying connected to and supporting our aging parents. We just sometimes have a few wrenches thrown in due to our lack [...]

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Sandwich Generation, Expat-style

Posted in Blogging, Change, Expat Life, Expat Transitions & Change, Family & Friends, Holidays, Life Balance, Light Bulb Moments, Third Culture Kids (TCKs), Travel, tagged children, elderly, expats, needs, parenting from afar, parents, sandwich generation on April 14, 2012 | 6 Comments »

Recently I caught up with a couple expat friends, enjoying koffie while sharing the latest on comings and goings. Spring is in the air, along with blooming trees, blossoming flowers and plants, and the necessary but dreaded pollen. Students are getting antsy, ready to break free of their daily grind (oh, if they only knew!) of classes, course [...]

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Spring Cleaning? Grab Your Bucket

Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Blogging, Change, Expat Life, Life Balance, Writing, tagged bucket, columnist, Expat Focus, monthly column, priorities, spring cleaning, writing on March 28, 2012 | 10 Comments »

Lately there’s been a fair amount of change going on behind the scenes here at Adventures in Expat Land, and it dawned on me that I ought to share some of it with you. Like you, I lead a fairly busy life. One that’s full of family, work projects, friends, activities and interests. Add to [...]

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Alice Update: A New Charity Helping Others

Posted in Blogging, Doing What I Can to Help, Global Issues, Life Balance, tagged Alice Pyne, Alice's Escapes, bone cancer, bone marrow donorship, Bucket List, Cumbria, Luke Tillen, terminally ill, THHN, War Horse on March 18, 2012 | 8 Comments »

Adventurers who’ve been following along for quite some time will recall the story of Alice Pyne, the English teen with terminal bone cancer who is inspiring others with her story and her Bucket List. [For newer readers, if you're interested you can have a look at series to date - A Teen's Bucket List, Teen Bucket List Update, [...]

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Please Don’t Tell My Mother

Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Blogging, Expat Life, Family & Friends, Life Balance, United States, tagged ACC Tournament, basketball, conversation, dinner, eat together, family, Tar Heels, University of North Carolina on March 10, 2012 | 8 Comments »

I did something last night that was bad. Very, very bad. I knew it was wrong at the time, yet I still went ahead and did it anyway. What is it that has me feeling so uneasy, so guilty, so… naughty? Husband, Daughter and I brought her laptop to the dinner table last night and [...]

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IWD Theme Confusion

Posted in Blogging, Change, Doing What I Can to Help, Global Issues, Life Balance, tagged disease, education, illness, International Women's Day, poverty, theme confusion, underemployment, unemployment, United Nations, violence against women on March 8, 2012 | 4 Comments »

Today is International Women’s Day. It’s an officially recognized day (March 8th) trumpeting the economic, political and social achievements of women. When I went to check to see what the actual theme is for 2012, little did I know what I was getting into. Confusion abounds. Here I was thinking that whoever the original group was [...]

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Daylight, a Reindeer and a Pack of Dogs

Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Albert Heijn, Life Balance, Light Bulb Moments, tagged busy, daylight, dogs, health threats, hopeful, laughter, meetings, overwhelmed, pleasure, problems, reindeer, Rudolph, signs, smile on January 14, 2012 | 10 Comments »

Some days you wake up and just ‘know’ that they’re going to be tough. You know the kind I mean. You didn’t sleep well the night before and you’ve got a busy day planned with back-to-back meetings, errands and appointments. You’re worried about a couple friends facing serious health threats and/or dealing with difficult issues. You’re out of milk [...]

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An Unexpected Change in Plans

Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Expat Life, Family & Friends, Holidays, Life Balance, Light Bulb Moments, Netherlands, United States, Writing, tagged brain surgery, brain tumor, Carolina pines, chemotherapy, Christmas, family, friendship, loved ones, planting a seed, radiation, writing on December 24, 2011 | 19 Comments »

  It’s Christmas Eve day. The aroma of my Jamie Oliver-inspired gravy wafts gently throughout rooms regaled in ornaments, decorations, pine boughs and tiny lights. Another half hour and I’ll start lighting some candles. Carols are playing softly in the background while Daughter and Husband work diligently on a holiday puzzle. But this is not the [...]

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Balancing the Holiday Scales

Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Albert Heijn, Culture & Customs, Expat Life, Family & Friends, Holidays, Life Balance, Netherlands, tagged appreciation, celebration, Christmas, Christmas tree, decorations, family, friends, holidays, New Year's, ornaments, rituals on December 22, 2011 | 6 Comments »

    It’s been a fairly typical ten days for Yours Truly’s family here in Nederland in the run-up to Christmas and New Year’s. By that I mean lots going on: some of it getting done, some on its way to completion and woefully behind on a fair bit as well. Given that Christmas comes on the [...]

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On Marriage I Go With Brad Pitt

Posted in Guest Posts, Life Balance, tagged Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Gry Tina Tinde, LGBT, marriage rights, same-sex marriage, UNHCR, writing on October 19, 2011 | 10 Comments »

Today I’m excited to share that we have another guest post by the multi-talented Gry Tina Tinde. (Many of you will recall Tina’s first guest post, the wild and wacky adventures of A Ski Instructor to Die For.) Tina has spent a lifetime working around the globe for the betterment of the human condition. With [...]

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Feel a Change Comin’ On

Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Expat Life, Family & Friends, Life Balance, Light Bulb Moments, Travel, tagged Bob Dylan, college, different countries, different time zones, empty nest, expat life, global parenting, parenting from afar, university, writing on October 17, 2011 | 10 Comments »

I’ve had the lyrics from that Bob Dylan song swirling around in my head these past few days. Have you ever felt that change is in the air? I don’t mean piddly little stuff. I’m talking about momentous change. The kind of feeling like you’re standing on a precipice: nothing but open air in front of you and rocks [...]

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Steve Jobs Truly ‘Got It’

Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Change, Life Balance, Light Bulb Moments, tagged Apple, genius, inspirational, Ipad, Iphone, Ipod, Macintosh, Steve Jobs, technological innovation, visionary, writing on October 6, 2011 | 4 Comments »

When you think of people in the past decades who have deeply influenced the world with their innovations, inventions, inspiration and sheer presence, the list isn’t all that long. Steve Jobs had incredible vision. He definitely saw things as they could be, and far beyond that. People know that he co-founded Apple, and brought the world the Apple [...]

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Broken Shards

Posted in Life Balance, Light Bulb Moments, tagged Alaska, memories, Pentagon, September 11, writing on September 13, 2011 | 19 Comments »

Yesterday it finally happened. Something I’d worried about for years, but knew would eventually come to pass. I accidentally dropped my beloved mug on our hard tile floor in the hallway, and it smashed into pieces. Lots of people have favorite mugs for coffee or tea. Nothing new there. The reason that this one was my [...]

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Pondering a Life in Balance

Posted in Expat Life, Family & Friends, Life Balance, Light Bulb Moments, Netherlands, What I Love/Miss, tagged balance, canals, Netherlands, sea, sky, The Hague, water, woodland on August 6, 2011 | 21 Comments »

This morning as I took Oli for a long walk, I was deep in thought. An old friend had seen the recent New York Times article I’d shared on Facebook (The Dutch Way: Bicycles and Fresh Bread); he had popped up out of the blue to ask a few questions. At first I thought they were [...]

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Twenty Three Days

Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Expat Life, Family & Friends, Holidays, Life Balance, Light Bulb Moments, Travel, United States, tagged adult, child, college, grow up, mature, rite of passage, university on August 2, 2011 | 23 Comments »

  Twenty three days. Twenty three short days. That’s the amount of time left until Son reports to university and begins his college career. He won’t be living at home and commuting to school. Nor will he be moving out into his own place to attend college nearby. He’s not even moving across the country. [...]

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Halfway Through 2011

Posted in Change, Holidays, Life Balance, tagged 2011, accountability, midyear, New Year's Resolutions on July 31, 2011 | 12 Comments »

  It’s the end of July, which means summer is more than halfway over (gasp!). More importantly, at least for purposes of this post, it means that we’re more than halfway through 2011. If we go by months, we have only 5/12 of the year remaining. Damn. Dag. As I think about 2011 and what this year has brought, I’ve found myself [...]

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Back Home?

Posted in Change, Expat Life, Family & Friends, Life Balance, Repatriation, United States, tagged home, Repatriation, United States on July 26, 2011 | 12 Comments »

    This year I’m not going back. I was going to type ‘ back home’ but stopped short. Yes, the United States is my ‘home’ country. I’m lucky in that I’m able to state that clearly, without hemming or hawing or asking several qualifying questions. I’ve come to learn that for some, it isn’t [...]

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Emotional Resilience in Expat Life: Part V (of V!)

Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Change, Emotional Resilience, Expat Life, Expat Transitions & Change, Family & Friends, Life Balance, Writing, tagged awareness, communication, David Pollock & Ruth Van Reken, emotional resilience, expat life, FACTORS, family, optimism, rituals, something bigger than ourselves, transitions on July 19, 2011 | 8 Comments »

  Whew. Finally. This is it. The last in the five-part series I’ve written on Emotional Resilience in Expat Life: FACTORS for the Emotionally Resilient Expat. I laid the foundation in Parts I through III by covering a range of key concepts: identity development, emotional resilience, transition phases, change model, emotional & social intelligence and [...]

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