August 6, 2020 A Change of Pace Laying in the saltwater on the beach two Sundays ago, my fiancé and I were chatting while we watched the clouds passed overhead. The topic of the conversation was the same as it had been for the last few months: my job. I was experiencing the Monday Blues, real bad. We talked and talked–for hours–at the beach, until we came to a decision that was both risky but responsible.
September 28, 2019 From I to We Dressed in a pair of nude heels and a $.99 dress from Goodwill that remarkably looked super business professional, I sat in the middle of a room of a thousand people, recorder running and pen in hand. I was mentally present, but before the meeting had started at all, I was having my own personal dialogue going back and forth in my head.
August 31, 2019 What is it REALLY Like Living in Florida? A little more than a year ago, when I first made the decision to move to Florida, I got a lot of the same sorts of questions from people: What are you going to do there? I’m going to work. Why Florida? I went to Florida because honestly, after living in Taiwan and experiencing absolutely not one snowflake of snow in nearly three years, I was not too keen on jumping back into the Chicago frozen tundras again.
August 3, 2019 A Simple Choice Every morning, Ted rises at six in the morning. He grabs his cup of coffee, makes some breakfast, and sits in front of the TV to see the news. It’s the same themes, different faces and locations. But Ted enjoys it. It fills his empty home.
July 27, 2019 Why Convenience Isn’t All That Great Once upon a time in a not so far away land and time, I was living in Taiwan. Or as I like to call it, the land of convenience stores, amazing food, and Pokemon Go everywhere you go. But mostly convenience. I used to think that America was the Convenience King, but I was proven wrong. Taiwan is the King of Convenience.
July 20, 2019 Clean Eyes A couple of months ago, there was this ten year challenge going around on various social media, mostly Instagram and Facebook. I remember looking through photos (and yes, I did post one just for fun) and thinking to myself that I literally look the exact same. My hair was more or less the same length, color, and I was more or less happy to the same extent, at least upon first glance at the image. But if you dug beneath the surface, Marie of 2009 and Marie of 2019 are very different.
February 24, 2019 Taking on Taiwan: Ch-Ch-Changes Recently, I explored some old posts of mine, just to see if I think the same way I did back then about things. It was rather interesting, reading it and remembering exactly how I felt. At the same time, however, I have to admit, I have trouble associating with who I was back then. Just remembering the things I used to see daily in university and back home compared to the things that I am used to now makes me realize how truthfully different my life has become. If you want a glimpse of it, check out this post. Contrasting them is trippy.
January 27, 2019 Taking on Taiwan: How to Pack To Move Abroad When I accepted my job to Taiwan, I was over the moon ecstatic. Living abroad was something I’d always wanted to do, ever since I could remember, and it was finally happening. There were so many things to straighten out and prepare for, but by God, the most annoying of them all was packing. Yes, that’s right. Packing.
January 23, 2019 Taking on Taiwan: Health is Wealth When I came to Taiwan, I was fresh out of working job that involved manual labor, sometimes longer than eight hours a day and six days a week. In a word, I was exhausted. I spent the two weeks I gave myself off from the job laying around, catching up on all the things I didn’t have time to do when I was under the blazing sun. And like in years past, I seemed to gain back all that I had lost during the ten weeks I worked, and then some. And then couldn’t shake it off me.
January 16, 2019 Taking on Taiwan: My Lizzie Moment Growing up as a late 90s to early 2000s kid, Lizzie McGuire and Disney were all the craze. Honestly, I think everyone wanted to be Lizzie McGuire at some point in their childhood. She had Gordo and Miranda, and then she even got a movie where she met a handsome Italian pop singer (who turned out to be terrible in the end, unfortunately) and she sang in front of thousands of people, and still got Gordo in the end. But mostly, I wanted to be Lizzie McGuire for one solid reason: that Vespa ride in The Lizzie McGuire Movie.
