Portrait of the artist as a middle-aged expat
May 20, 2007 at 16:41 I’ve got a little more than a year left in Belgium, and I’m constantly looking back on my time here and looking forward to what might lie ahead.
I’ve written about my day-to-day life and our travel and experiences in Europe, but sometimes I think what will stand out in my mind when I revisit my expat years is the way I nurtured my creativity. Being plucked from my busy, busy, busy American life and dropped into a new country without a job, a friend, or a single item on my calendar was unnerving and yet liberating.
I often felt lost in every sense of the word during my first year here, but the up side of all that down time is that it removed every excuse I ever had for not expressing my creativity, for not stretching my skills, for not giving myself permission to try and possibly fail at something new.
When I started my blog, I did so with the idea that going public with my personal writing would force me to spend some time at the keyboard every day, to take an idea and fully explore it, to take rough writing and finish it, and to soldier on with my work whether I felt inspired or bored. In that respect, this blog has been a success. It may not be widely read or well known. but it’s fully my work and my online portfolio. I've written about 500 pages. The process of posting four to five times a week has taken my writing to a new level. I don’t think it’s ever been better, and I look forward to taking what I’ve learned back into the work place next year.
While honing my writing skills was my intention when I started this blog, I gained so much more than I ever expected; I’ve made friends, developed relationships, and learned from others’ experiences. It’s been the ultimate reality show with the most amazing cast of characters.
While here, I’ve also taken baby steps into the world of art and paper crafts and thoroughly enjoyed learning to stamp, watercolor, and make cards and scrapbook pages. 
With one year left of my “sabbatical from American life,” I’m more determined than ever to advance those fledgling skills and take some chances. I want to take a class in book making and one on painting techniques. I may even sign on for a class in making mosaics.
Suddenly time seems short. I both look forward to and fear going back to the U.S., wondering what shape my life will take when I’m once again planted in the land of the fast and the stressed. I try to focus on the positive, on the opportunities that await us, but part of me is also braced for what will seem like an assault on our low key European life style. In theory, we are going “home,” but home doesn’t exist anymore as a familiar, comforting place. Who knows what life will really be like--where we’ll live, how we’ll balance work and family time, and if we’ll be able to travel?
All I know is that I have one year left—and places to visit and things to do before I’m back in the rat race. Tomorrow this non-artist is going to boldly register for those art classes. It’s something I’d never find time for in the U.S., which is exactly why I need to do it now.
May 20, 2007
Reader Comments (8)
A local magazine published an article series on life in Montana, interviewing farmers in a state 100 times less populated than Belgium. They couldn't quite fathom what it meant living in a sprawling, profoundly urbanized country.
While many of us negotiate the insane daily hazards of the Antwerp and Brussels ring roads, we do realize that Belgium still has its largely unpopulated Southern halve and even people living around Brussels manage to uphold a relaxed lifestyle.
In general, the US indeed tends to be the land of the very fast and the very stressed, and Belgium, well, in spite of evidence of the existence of our Belgian rat race, many of us do manage to approach life in a somewhat slower lane. If we can.
Life would different for me if I worked and if I drove anywhere but in my village. The traffic here is every bit as terrible as in the U.S. metropolitan areas and it's more aggressive, and I'm not dealing with life in an office.
A few things that make Europe more low key:
Europeans seem to draw tight boundaries around their work. They go home or go out at lunch time an no one blinks at taking an hour for lunch, they are not expected to work 9-10 hours a day or to be constantly on call at home or on holiday via the cell phone, voice mail, and e-mail.
Other than when they're driving, I never see Belgians rush. A queue can be a mile long in a store or a restaurant and no one is going to move any faster. Holidays are holidays and pretty much everything is closed. Far more people work on holidays in the U.S. and taking a vacation longer than one week is almost unheard of.
Plus, my sense is that there's less competition. Americans are conspicuous consumers. The very drive that makes American business so amazing permeates every part of American life: where you live, how you dress, what you drive, how "successful" your kids are. If you don't consciously step out of that mindset, you get swept along a path of constant motion and busyness. It's just expected that you'll be "on the go" all the time, that your kids will be engaged in multiple demanding activities, and that you will be too. This is why Americans eat and drink in their cars all the time--home is a pit stop on the way to somewhere else.
Certainly there are areas that are more low key and people can choose to buck the prevailing trend, but life on both coasts (where most of the population is) and in metropolitan areas all over is fast paced compared to Europe.
It will be fun to see what you end up doing in the year ahead.
P.S. Where's the profile photo of you smiling?? I like that one more. ;)
P.S. You haven't been updating the blog lately. What's up?
I know I've been horrible with my blog this month. For the first week, I was in a state of shock with all the dreary weather. All that sunshine spoiled me. Did summer come early this year and now we're back to Fall? Very depressing!
Last week we spent the week in France. I'll be posting some photos of our trip soon. ;)
I bet this next year is going to fly. I hope you find time to do everything left on your list before you move back to the US.