How to start your own online creative business & not go mad in the process

Back "home" after 30 years...

After years of running a medical practice with my partner we threw caution to the wind and started all over again in what used to be our home country 30 years prior.

You can read the whole story HERE, but basically, for me it meant that I had the freedom to find a new career. Having had our own business before, we have always been entrepreneurs but we did have to be somewhere at a given time to attend to our patients and we couldn´t leave until they were all seen to. Needless to say, holidays need to be booked far in advance and you can never be sick or laid back.

My new life was initially filled with finding my way around our new home town. Helping our children get settled in to school and organising their new sports & extra curricular activities. I also met a young Somali woman with her daughter who I helped settle in to Holland and speak the language. I felt at times we were sisters in arms trying to find our new identity. She definitely had the rougher deal.

For lack of a social life, Twitter was my best friend  

For lack of a social life, Twitter was my best friend for those first months. It was a great way to find inspiration for new initiatives, meet people working on interesting projects and contact businesses for possible job opportunities.

It soon became apparent that, in spite of being trilingual, a business owner, hard worker, life learner, leader, having a university education, initiative, amazing social skills AND a sense of humour that my age seemed to work against me. Not that anybody ever told me that but I did have to draw that conclusion for lack of anything else that made sense.

In all honesty I should add that I only applied to jobs that I thought I could do without being suicidal within a week -which rules out supermarket cashier and bookkeeping- but I even responded to receptionist & bookstore sales positions. So no arrogance on my part.

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