Running Away to Neverland!

Goedendag! Hello Steemiters! I wasn’t going to write about myself, I didn’t think there was anything interesting to say. However, Steemit has made me realise that everyone has a story that’s worth hearing and it’s fascinating to see the voice that our global community has.

So...

This is me with my favourite hair!

My name is Gemma and until recently my life has been fairly monotonous. I’ve never been a fan of change and had been avoiding it fairly well! After school I went to sixth form college, then had various jobs in town before finding work with Boots in 2004. I was employed as an operations assistant for 6 years before transferring into the Pharmacy department where I trained as a dispenser and worked for a further 6 years. I never really questioned anything. Life just was what it was.

In April of this year, my husband and I started to look at whether we could afford to rent our own place anywhere (we’ve always lived in house shares). As a joke, a friend in the Netherlands started sending us links to properties in The Hague… They were the same price range we had been looking at in England and an awful lot nicer so we started giving it some actual thought! My husband earns money streaming Elite, so as long as he’s got a good internet connection it doesn’t matter where he is. I on the other hand, would need a new job. I couldn’t transfer profession because I don’t speak Dutch. However, due to a lot of international businesses being based in Holland there are jobs advertising for English only speakers, so we decided if I could find work there then we’d move over.

Then...in May, we started having some serious problems with our housemates. We needed to move out and quickly. Our Netherland friend completely rescued us. His name is Podz (he features in my usual blog posts quite a lot!) and we only actually met him a few months ago through Twitch, the platform that my husband streams through. Podz offered us his spare room. My husband moved out at the end of May, I worked my months notice and moved out at the beginning of July.

And that’s pretty much where we’re up to. Finding work has been much more difficult than I thought it would be. There is international work being advertised but it turns out that speaking only English and not having any office experience doesn’t really get you anywhere…

But! As much as the financial situation isn’t ideal, this has been the best thing I have ever done. Living out a suitcase for a month really puts into perspective how little you actually need! And with all the extra time I’ve had, you start to remember what you enjoy doing! Learning, reading, drawing, writing! I’ve not drawn anything since I was about 14! And it’s fun! I think I reached a point, probably like a lot of other people, during my teenage years where you start worrying about other people’s opinions. And you end up so concerned with what people will think of the end product that you lose the enjoyment you used to get from simply doing.

I intend to use this time to challenge myself. To explore and discover and learn and create. I hope Steemit will encourage me through the tougher days and that we can grow and journey together :)

The beautiful Den Haag :)