2017

My Lalalab order arrived in a flash! I was inspired by this Emily Quinton’s video to print a few photos to remind me of the year gone by. It had been ages since I had printed anything… 2017 came with its lot of good news, successes and stressful moments, money worries and little adventures abroad.

Let’s recap.

From looking for jobs to finding one… it took me a few months of absolute despair. I had been sending applications for what seemed like years. Even when I worked in a supermarket, when I was at uni, when I worked the odd jobs here and there and applied to loads of positions, I never found anything. I have been through a few episodes of depression during my years at uni but it was nothing like being unemployed. It has seriously been a nightmare. It didn’t help that I had other family stuff going on. I complained, I was tired, exhausted even and had low self-esteem. Most of all I was angry and struggled a lot.

Fortunately, my hunting efforts paid off in April when I got a job at a bailiff’s office. I was so happy and excited… but I soon discovered it wasn’t very well paid and the boss was a bit crazy.

I got a contract though so I put off looking for another job for at least a year. I wanted to save up a bit of money and looking back, I was actually scared to look for the job I really wanted. Lawyer internships often start in the fall in Belgium so I had planned to apply again in March 2018.

At the end of the summer, a miracle happened. I got a call from a lawyer who was looking for an intern. He had seen the resume I had sent months earlier and where I had written that I spoke English and that I loved blogging. He wanted me to come for an interview. After a week of intense stress – I didn’t want my boss to know I wanted to leave until I was sure I was hired and I also was very scared to miss this wonderful opportunity – I got the internship!

The bailiff wasn’t happy about my resignation. I had a two-week notice but paid my way out of it in order to start my new venture as soon as I could!

My big adventure had finally started and I was delighted. However, it was not all bursts of sunshine and rainbows. Finally getting that job was the end of a long and painful process: uni, exams, crappy jobs, applying for jobs, being rejected, interviews, … But it was also the beginning of another process. Building that kind of career comes with its pros but also its cons: the pay is lower than what I got from being unemployed, at least one working day a week is insane (I thought I had “lost” my car in the street the other day… I had walked past it three times without seeing it…), I sometimes work long hours, I need to study again (not as much as uni though) for the bar exams, many court hearings I go to don’t go exactly as planned, etc.

However the pros are amazing: I’ll arrive late at the office tomorrow morning because I stayed there too late yesterday night, the members of the firm that hired me are super helpful and available, they are getting used to my panic attacks (they’re getting calls from me asking them about where my car is parked when I’m 20km away from the office…), they encourage me and get me working on interesting cases.. The possibilities for growth are insane. I’m so lucky to have got where I wanted to land which is on the doorstep of my future. I always loved the image “all the doors are open for me, I can choose whatever I want to do, I have the keys”.

However, despite the cons, I wouldn’t change it for the world. I never took the easy ride anyway. I’m not sure I would enjoy it…

I had a great summer. Even if we didn’t go on a week-long holiday, the bf and I enjoyed our weekends and went to Versailles and Oxford. We were so lucky that the weather was hot and sunny. It truly felt like proper holidays to us.

Our furry baby Gaston has been a pure joy. He is the funniest but also the angriest cat on the block. He is always happy to play with the bouncing balls we throw at him in the evenings. Then he quickly becomes a monster when he attacks us for no reason…. okay, I probably try to hug him when he doesn’t want to…

We didn’t travel very far but still quite often. We saw Paris in January, I went to London in March (and I met Jim Chapman!!) with my Finnish bestie. We visited Oxford in May, then Versailles in June (I’ll probably write a post about it soon). We went to the New Forest and didn’t see any pigs running around in the streets in October and finally, we stayed three days in Paris between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

We’ve decided to take it easy in 2018. We’re off to Finland in May and apart from that, we have no plans. I put up the photos in a chronological order above the mantel in our bedroom. I love having a peek at them in the morning… It’s a great way to remember happy moments!