I left my PhD after a year. I loved my topic but I didn't want to just read about it, I wanted to live it. I didn't feel the need to prove my knowledge and experience to others and I didn't need to be recognised as a master of my field. The passion was certainly there (in bucketloads), and I did want to promote the idea to others. But that is not a PhD. Talking my thoughts … [Read more...] about Why I left my PhD
frugal living
How to thrive as a one income family
We have made a choice to live on one income in order to home educate our son. It could have been that we set things up more equally, with us both spending some time working and some time with our child. And maybe that would have been better in some respects. But my partner has a career he loves and has worked hard at, and after taking maternity leave, I didn't feel ready to … [Read more...] about How to thrive as a one income family
Mortgage-free at 40
I always intended to be mortgage-free before I turned 40 and we made the deadline with months to spare. It took us 12 years. I’m proud of our achievement, but we took an unconventional path. It’s the first house we bought and will probably be the last. We bought it in a city with cheap housing and, although it’s on a quiet street close to the city centre it was relatively … [Read more...] about Mortgage-free at 40
Digital nomads and the mass exodus from conventional life
There is a movement taking place, of writers and artists and thinkers and creatives, musicians and activists. People shunning conventions and constraints, boundaries of time and place. Of course, this has always been so. There have been free-spirits and travellers, millennia of nomads. Now it's different. Less a continuation of a tradition, but a separation; a tearing apart of … [Read more...] about Digital nomads and the mass exodus from conventional life