Flattered? I guess?

Posted on October 25th, 2008 by k.
Categories: Living Abroad - Life in London.

Tonight, I inadvertently Googled ‘Travelfortwo.net’. To my surprise, someone had referenced our blog recently and hence, their post popped to the top. Here’s what they had to say:

Crazy Jealous
Posted on October 13, 2008 by Ashley
Today, my friend K sent me a link to the blog of someone she knows. All I can say is, I hate them.

http://travelfortwo.net/

I want that life.

Hmmm….I suppose we should be flattered? We do enjoy our life. But, lately I’ve been a bit less enthusiastic about it than before. So, I thought it’s worth posting about so that you–our friends–are privileged with a more balanced view. We tend to talk about the rosy stuff because we don’t want friends and family back home to worry. But I don’t want folks to step away with an stacked view of the tradeoffs of the life we live.

London’s not new any more. It rains one out of two days. It’s always grey (even mid-summer). We’ve been here for 2 years now and we’ve done most things at least once and we’ve exhausted most of the easy weekend destinations. Our thirst for travel has started to subside. And, hence, we realize now that we actually spend time in London that we need more friends :) For the first two years here, we focused on making the most of our time–traveling all about and never sitting still because our initial plan was to leave after 12-24 months. Then, we regrouped and decided not to head home just yet and to adopt a more long-term focus.

But, recently my dad had a major accident on the farm. He walked away with a broken jaw and a bruised ego. He was very lucky. But then, a couple weeks ago (on the heels of my dad’s accident) my uncle died. There are friends and family back in the States that we haven’t seen in YEARS–we keep in touch through email, googlechat, blogs and postcards–somehow your margarita tailgates for VT games seem way more fun. Picking up and living so far away comes with tradeoffs. And it’s not always as glamourous and fun as it may seem.

So, I guess the purpose of my post is the balance the scales a bit. The grass on your side of the fence also looks quite green from where we sit. Hmmm…if only we could be fit without exercise, magically find a 3 bedroom house in Belsize on sale for £1, adopt your cutie tykes and forgo the need for drawn out pregnancies, have the cutest puppy on earth, have our stock portfolio returned to pre-recession levels AND keep the pleasantries of our current life constant…now that would be something worth envying :)

This said, we like our life. We’ll keep it. And hope this post finds you happy with the balance you strike in your life as well.

3 comments.

Ashley

Comment on October 27th, 2008.

Sorry :-) That was totally meant as a compliment… mostly because I completely miss being abroad… but I can see both sides (and experience it as my husband’s brother lives on the other side of the world - and we can count the number of times we have seen him, and our nephew, in the last 8 years on one hand!).

k

Comment on October 27th, 2008.

Hey Ashley–no worries and no offense taken. Happy to see you’re a regular reader! Welcome.

I should say ‘Thank you’–finding your link made me realize that by leaving out the trials and tribulations, at times we’re probably painting an unbalanced view. We’ve often omitted the gripes and complaints (at least post MBA) because we felt that it wouldn’t be a fun escape for folks to read the icky bits interspersed with the good. [Kind of like our revolt against Private Practice focusing on the Credit Crunch in Episode 1 this season...we wanted to watch the show to get away from it not see how it was affecting fake characters!]

But since we’re real people rather than TV stars, it probably helps to have the realism that a few bad days can bring. Everybody hates perfect people…perfect’s the enemy of good :) And perfect we are not.

Hope you’ll continue to read!

Jimmy

Comment on October 28th, 2008.

Hey G and K, what an interesting post… thanks for sharing some of your more personal views on life and where you two are in relation to most others. I have to admit to have fallen into the trap of viewing your lives as being pretty idealized. Reading your blog always reminds Tobi and I of how much we’d like to travel together; yet we never really have the opportunity. But like you said, everyone has a healthy mix of the good and bad in their lives, so we should all appreciate what we have.

Sorry to hear about your dad and uncle. As for VT tailgating, let me just say you’re not missing much. Ha! Sorry!

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