1. Drinking a lot will make you feel like shit. Nothing beats waking up early going for a run/cycle in the early morning, while drinking too much is guaranteed to make you feel horrible the next day.
2. Everyone is insecure. Everyone has fears. Everyone feels lonely and sad a lot or a little. You are not the only one. Everyone has an inner critic that makes them feel bad about themselves. It is perfectly ok to doubt yourself, to feel sad or lonely. You are not a failure for feeling those things or a loser. You are simply human.
3. Travel is…

Flakey friends. We all have them. They do one or more of the following:

• they don’t respond to any messages on WhatsApp or Facebook or Instagram;
• or they take forever to respond, a minimum of 1 week;
• they say they will call but don’t;
• they say they will be there but don’t pitch;
• they confirm plans but at the last minute change their mind;
• they don’t answer when you call and they certainly don’t call back;
• when they do eventually respond it's often with the pretext of, “things are so hectic at the moment…”/”I am so crazy busy…”

1. Ignore and accept

Just ignore…

Why do some friendships endure and others simply fade away or blow up in your face?

Even with all these wonderfully easy methods of communication we now have, maintaining an adult friendship isn’t magically easier.

Are my friends just too busy or do they no longer care about the friendship?

I believe friendships endure for one simple reason:

Convenience.

We stay friends with people who are conveniently close by and easy to reach. The friends who live in the same city or down the road and who are keen to meet up and do things.

When things become too difficult…

My partner and I recently moved to the Netherlands. We love it. We somehow managed to immigrate during the covid pandemic. After multiple tests and canceled flights we safely landed in the Netherlands at the beginning of February.

It's not the same of course. There are a lot of things we cannot do.

We moved here to pursue Masters degrees in subjects we are both interested in. We planned for two years to move to Europe to work and study. And although covid delayed our plans, by almost a year, we managed to make it and settle down in Tilburg.

…

I gave up drinking almost two years ago. Well, excessive drinking. I wasn’t an alcoholic but like most twenty-year-olds, I drank to have fun. I got drunk almost every month. It was a part of my life. Too much a part of my life.

So I stopped drinking for a year. I did on the odd occasion have a glass of champagne or too but only the odd occasion.

I was an avid non-drinker. I avoided all alcohol and drank soft drinks when out with friends. The only exceptions I made were weddings or birthdays. …

Work is important. We need to work but how desperately do we need the job. While job searching recently I found myself looking for jobs that I thought would be great but for the wrong reasons.

A persistent thought I had when I found a ‘suitable’ job opening, was:

Imagine when I tell x,y,z…where I work.

I am embarrassed to admit those were the thoughts going through my head. I wasn’t really looking at the type of work I would be doing, only the fancy title or potential title I may one day achieve in the company. I daydreamed about…

People often comment on my relationship:

“You two are so good together”;

“You look so happy”;

“You have a special connection”;

“Your relationship looks so beautiful and amazing.”

People we know only a little, and close friends and family.

Our relationship looks amazing because it is amazing. When other people talk about their relationship being hard work, or a chore, or something that is a struggle, I cannot agree with them.

My relationship is anything but a chore or hard work. It is easy. It’s like a wonderful, peaceful, and relaxing holiday full of beauty and wonder.

It is the…

When this year started I had no idea this is where I would be. Living in Cape Town, South Africa. We planned a very different sort of life this year. And we got different. Just not the different we wanted.

We planned to move overseas. A move we had planned for over a year. And then everything happened this year and so our plans changed.

• Instead of travelling the world and immersing ourselves in a different culture, we immersed ourselves in our own unique South African culture.
• Instead of taking a flight overseas, we took a car full of all…