Today was a cold, hurricane-force, wet day in Malta. I sat most of the morning decked in treble sweater layers at my laptop. There are no useful solutions to providing ambient room temperatures here. I tried to ignore the rattling, crashes and bangs as hassiras (cane blinds) and flower pots were destroyed by the wind. [...]
Archive for the ‘Work-life balance’ Category
How the best of your past anchors your future
Posted in Malta, Musings, Work-life balance, tagged Janus king of Rome, Malta, new year on 12 January 2009 | 1 Comment »
Time to stock take and stock make
Posted in Living Home, Musings, Work-life balance, tagged chicken stock, frugal meals, making stock, stock taking on 9 January 2009 | Leave a Comment »
It’s the time of year when we all navel gaze and dig deep. It’s winter. There’s little on the horizon by way of holidays, warm weather or good news, and we’re probably trying to make sense of our goals for the coming year. We yearn to make 2009 work out better than 2008. We plan [...]
No resolve for New Year resolutions
Posted in Musings, Work-life balance on 2 January 2009 | 1 Comment »
I have a dismal record of keeping my New Year’s resolutions. I revisited my 2008 list, drafted in an email to myself last January 13th, and I’ve managed to do part of only one in what seemed like a fairly reasonable list. That part of a resolution was to start a blog and keep at it. I only [...]
Why Do-it-yourself is better than employment
Posted in Musings, Work-life balance, tagged cleaning lady, DIY, do-it-yourself, home office, Malta, self employment, working at home on 30 December 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I have only one employee. My cleaning lady. My ‘lady who does’. It comes hard to let her go, to put it euphemistically, at this time of year and just after I’ve given her a Christmas box. But I won’t be taken for a ride. What this is all about though, is not whether corners are cleaned and [...]
Made unemployed by Christmas
Posted in Musings, Work-life balance, tagged Christmas, Penelope Trunk, self employment on 28 December 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Although this will sound Scrooge-like, I have to admit I don’t particularly like the Christmas holiday period. If it lasted a mere day or so, then I could probably come to love it. But from my perspective as a micro business and self employed, Christmas and its trappings hurt my turnover for a good quarter of [...]
The five ‘C’s of downshifting your job
Posted in Work-life balance, tagged downshifters, downshifting, IT recruitment Malta on 18 November 2008 | Leave a Comment »
My husband is a director of a recruitment firm which places IT professionals in jobs in Malta. People have been contacting him in droves from abroad. They are mainly mid-career, seasoned professionals, working in places as diverse as Milan and California. As we sit in our 250 year old farmhouse, in the centre of a large village on [...]
Europe’s mobile working splits families asunder
Posted in Work-life balance, tagged DACH countries, Europe's mobile labour, Expat life, home-life balance, working abroad on 29 October 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Several people I know in Europe now have husbands working abroad. Anything other than their spouses’ weekly commute home is out of the question. One lives in northern France and has a consultant husband in the DACH zone countries; another lives in west London and has her husband in Dublin Monday to Friday. While a third has recently moved with their two children [...]
