about

Following one’s dreams, traveling solo, meeting new people as an introvert, love, loss, comic mishaps, fear, faith, risk-taking… these have all found their way onto the pages of this unfolding story. Life is personal, flawed, scary and amazing, and I attempt to keep it real on these pages without being a reality show. Let’s see how I do.

A little background
I spent more than twenty years in marketing, raised children mostly as a single parent, progressed in life and career and acquired the basic stuff of which American dreams are supposedly made. Over time I began to realize that most people work really hard, have little time for life and are often worn out. As technology speeds up, people are expected to speed up. No matter how hard they work they can’t get ahead of the avalanche of information, email, expectations, things to do. I was one of these people… spinning around the wheel, doing well but not fully engaging the dreams that lived within me.

I began to look at what was missing and I saw that people’s spirits and dreams were undernourished or absent. I knew too well how this happens. It took tremendous energy to do my job well, raise children, go to grad school, learn and progress in my career. Over time I became disconnected and out of integrity with the reason I was here in this life. I needed to change my daily existence, to see if it could really be different for someone like me. I threw my life into the air and trusted that it could be remade from what called my heart.

What had kept me from restructuring my life sooner was the comfort of the known, the risk to my ‘good life,’ personal and professional commitments and the lifestyle overhead that I had to maintain. And there was that pesky uncertainty that had me frozen. I had bought into ‘someday’ thinking. Someday I’ll have the time; someday I’ll have the resources, someday the timing will fall into place. It took several events in my life, including the death of my father, to realize that someday is a day that rarely comes.

So it began…
So I counted the cost and and took the leap. I sold or donated much of what I owned and bought a one-way plane ticket to Ireland in April 2010. I have been blessed in the past 2 1/2 years to spend time writing and living in or visiting Ireland, France, Scotland, England, Greece, Italy and Germany. I currently live in Scotland and am studying and writing full-time in the beautiful city of Edinburgh.

This journey is full of surprises. I can attest that it is true that all kinds of things rise up to meet you when you heed the call of God on your heart, and invest your life in following it.

Life is meant to be a great adventure. Hopefully some of the things I experience and share and what you choose to share with me and others here will help each of us dust off our God-breathed dreams and live the life that is ours to live.

Charlena