About me. I’m Miriam and I’m in my early 40s. I live in Europe and English is my third and also working language. I love cats, staying up late (and I mean really late) and xxxx. I dislike routines, cleaning and xxxx. I’m impulsive and bad at making and sticking to plans, but great at xxxx/excel at xxxx. I’m that friend you can call with a five-minute warning to join you for a museum tour or a late night beer. Unfortunately I’m sometimes the friend who cancels plans with a five-minute warning because of my nasty migraine.
In a more serious note, animal and human rights are close to my heart and I spend a chunk of my time doing whatever I can to support these causes. I try to live my life so that I do more good than harm to nature, animals and my fellow humans – whether it’s avoiding flying and driving, not eating animal-based products, volunteering at an animal shelter, reading to elders or joining a pride march.
Disclaimer. All in all I live a very safe and privileged life full of possibilities many people can only dream of. I’m not gonna dive deep into first world guilt here, but let’s just say I’m very grateful of everything life has offered me thus far and painfully aware most people never get these kinds of opportunities. Anything and everything in this blog comes from this perspective, and I’m not so oblivious that I’d think these thoughts, ideas and tips apply to everyone.
Current status: floating through life. Like many of my fellow geriatric millennials – as I was recently referred as – I too have come to the point in my life where I’m looking back at my past decision and trying to make sense of my future goals and dreams. I’m avoiding the term middle-life crisis, but yes, I am trying to decide what it is I actually value and how that could and should be reflected in my future decisions. Basically, what do I want to spend the second half of my one precious life on. No pressure and all that!
Currently I’m neck-deep in the never-ending rat race of life. Some weeks I’m so busy that I don’t have a moment to catch my breath and clear my head. At the moment life reminds me of groundhog day where I’m just living on autopilot performing my duties one after another. We can’t espace our responsibilities, at least not without a lottery win, but still I find myself questioning that this can’t be all there is, right?
I never used to think about the future, I always thought there’s so much time to do whatever. I think many of us wake up in our 40s and 50s to realize that a big chunk of life is already behind us. And to make it worse, the older you get, the shorter every year seems to be! Not to be a downer, but somedays I feel this pit in my stomach when I realize I’ve wasted so much time doing mediocre things, XXXX. It sounds a bit ridiculous and even self-righteous when I put it down like that, but considering we only have one life, I suppose it’s a valid concern. 😀 (By the way, did you know that studies suggest that our happiness bottoms out in our 40s? Funny thing.)
Goal status: happy(er). Or maybe not so much happier, more like more content and balanced, but that didn’t make a good blog title. I want to slow down the pace and give myself the opportunity to be more present and intentional and focus on what is important – whether it’s doing more voluntary work, starting a new hobby or simply sleeping more and eating healthier. As they say, happiness is fleeting, but joy, fullfilment and a sense of purpose can and will contribute to a meaningful life, and that’s what I’m craving for. (I’m also thinking about more dramatic/drastic changes to my life, as in changing countries, but more on that later.)
The blog. As for this blog project, I’ve never had a blog, website or even a social media account (and yes, I work in tech), and to be honest never even considered having one until now. But I suppose every self-respecting millennial needs to have a blog at some point – we were the ones discovering those after all! Recently I’ve felt that it’s time to do something just for myself, have a little fun outside of work and everyday life, and this is what came of that. Who knows, maybe this will be one of the things contributing to my happy(er) life – and hopefully yours too.
-Miriam
P.S. If you have small or big happiness related hacks that have worked for you in your life, send them to me via the contact form and I’ll send you a 10% discount code to my Etsy shop. (Remember to leave your email address!)
P.P.S. If you love our furry, feathered and scaled friends, know that I donate 15 % of the webshop profit to different animal charities and shelters.