IF NOT NOW, WHEN?

Yes: if not now, when will I have time again to follow my passions? To spend my time writing stories, blogging, reading? Being an accompanying partner could be hard sometimes, especially if you have to leave your career. But fortunately, for me hasn't been like that.

Before moving to China, I already wanted to change. I wasn't happy with my job and some of my female-colleague behaved like a snake, not like a person! To be honest, sometimes I had the sensation to work into a reptilarium! However, as many of us, I needed to work and earn money, not only for contribute to the family budget but also for have my professional identity.

Till I was a child I had the dream of doing something creative. Most of the times art and fantasy don't make you earn your daily bread, so I've done my duty and I became e a bookkeeper. I will never enough thank my boss, who gave me the opportunity to learn the job and acquire professional, but I cannot say that was the job of my life! During my free time I was keeping on write and draw but, I think you know how it's working, this free time seemed to be less and less.

The proposal of the “Asian job” had come exactly when I finally decided to quit and search for another job, always as bookkeeper but part-time.

So everything was turning in the same direction, everything was going in the right way.

During my first year as an expat-wife, I had a lot of free time! I used it for going around, knowing people, shopping, discovering places, learning Chinese. It has been a very interesting year!

And now I have embarked in this new adventure: writing an English blog. And I also would like to write short novels and a book! What an ambitious project, eh? Maybe all this new things on which I'm working on are like a dead-end street that will lead me nowhere, something I do just for fun. In Italy we say: if they are roses, they will bloom. That's means that if something is promising, it will develop in the future. Otherwise, I'm doing exactly what I like now, and this is already a great gift!

If you are an accompanying spouse and you don't work, I suggest you to take advantage of your free time. Try to discover which are your passions and try to develop them. Who knows? Perhaps they will become your new business, or will give you satisfaction that you never imagined. Don't get depressed by the feeling you don't have anything “important” to do. In the daily life in our country we have a lot of tasks, in the expat life we often have a lot of time. It depends on us to waste it or make the best use.