I've realised that social awkwardness is something I definitely have. For example:

​I’ve just had an automated email from KLM, asking me to give feedback on my recent flight to Humberside from Bangkok. My granddad used to say to me, “if you haven’t got anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all.” I will not, therefore, be completing the feedback survey. 

I’ve decided that part of embracing change entails embracing my mid-life crisis, and thus I find myself co-owner of a rather fabulously loud and attractive Porsche Boxster S (the co-owner says the ‘S’ is important!) I am pretty happy to join the exlusive club of Porsche Drivers and am excited to experience the Porsche Driving experience in full. I'm not actually sure if my porsche is one of the fast cars of the world, but it is a fabulous car driving experience.

Sometimes change can feel overwhelming, but a little bit of positivity can go a long way. Public health warning - earnest blog post coming up on why embracing change is a good thing! 
 
Many of my friends and family know that last September I gave up my full time position as Head of Libraries at Bangkok Patana School. This freed me up to spend a greater percentage of my year living at home in Lincolnshire, in the UK, than that afforded by visiting in regular school holidays. There was a lot of change to embrace. There was also a lot to be positive about.
 
The arrangement isn’t perfect. I now live between two countries and my brain often seems to lag behind where the rest of my body is, worrying needlessly about things that it cannot change in a country that it isn’t even in. And, of course, I miss the people in my family who I'm not currently with. My two home bases are a bit far apart and time travel would be welcome: Bangkok and Broughton definitely need shoving a bit nearer to each other. However, as a way of embracing two different lifestyles, and keeping a foot in two worlds and enjoying time with family who happen to live thousands of miles apart, I think I can announce that living in two countries is distinctly doable.

I was having coffee with a friend yesterday who asked me what I typically do at the beach. I asked her if she was a facebook user as she could look on there. I then ‘laughed out loud’ and asked if she imagined that I have long soulful walks, perhaps holding hands with my husband, as we plotted our perfect retirement together, as the waves gently lapped round our ankles. Meantime my daughter would be reclining at the poolside reading self-improving literature guaranteed to help her obtain optimum exam grades. She responded with a raised eye-brow. 
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It got me thinking though, as it is this picture postcard perfect existence that most of my friends and I portray on social media. Take today for example: my family did travel to the beach, so a typical facebook post might say, ‘yummy  dinner at a our favourite Italian, after a fab day surfing the waves.’ I’d perhaps follow this with a beaming photo of us all holding raised glasses and a jaunty close up of our pizza and tirimasu making my facebook friends salivate with envy! And it would be … well one version of the truth. Another version might be that it this would be a facebook lie! 
 
As a facebook user though a different version might be less palatable..