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What is Financial Independence?

After spending so much time in this community, reading people’s stories, I realized that Financial Independence meant different things to different people.

According to Wikipedia FI is “is the state of having sufficient personal wealth to live, without having to work actively for basic necessities”.

But does FI mean for the people in FI community?

Let’s see.

Continue reading “What is Financial Independence?”

Here’s to two amazing years here in Ireland!

Two years ago to the day, I started working at my dream company .

Just a week before that and after 2-3 years of debating whether or not I should give up my dream of living in London, I landed in Ireland.

When I arrived in London back in 2009 I was only 24 years and it was the dream city for me. I wasn’t the partying type but I loved the idea of improving my English and meeting people from different cultures. For about 5 years I lived the dream but what I had not realized is that this city was eating my alive body and soul. It took me 3 years to finally admit and accept the fact that my life and my career weren’t going anywhere I wanted them to go.

Then around February a miracle happened, one of the greatest company in the world offered me a job at their HQ here in beautiful Cork. This was the third time they offered me a position.

Continue reading “Here’s to two amazing years here in Ireland!”

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A year ago, I almost died.

May 2nd 2017.

For those following this blog you know thay I cheated death a while back. Well yesterday marked the first year annviersary of the second worst day of my life.

I won’t go into details to explain what happened, if you want to you can read this post that explains what happened : how I almost died

 

All I know is that considering how bad my kidneys worst that I should have died or at least lose both of them. It did not happen. I can’t explain how or why and my surgeon and gp can’t either. All I know is that I’m here today and I’m here to stay.

Continue reading “A year ago, I almost died.”

How I turned a coping mechanism​ into a successful youtube/fiction channel!

As mentioned in a recent article, I have a very successful youtube channel that now has over a million view.

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It all started in 2009 when my mom died. I found myself at my godparents’ with nothing else to do but binge watch my favorite shows and…. a lot of fan-made videos.

The show I was obsessed with at the time was Criminal Minds and my favorite character was SSA Emily Prentiss.

As I sat there watching amazing fanmade videos it occurred to me that I too could make videos like this.

So I did.

Here’s how I proceeded :

  1. I started by bine watching the show and taking notes of moments I thought would fit well with certain topics (friendships, women kicking down doors, characters being hurt etc…).
  2. I would use screen flow to record the passages I had taken notes of. (I found it for free at the time but if you do not wish to go through the trouble, you can use QuickTime to record the videos and then import them in IMovie).
  3. I would pick a song that I thought fitted the theme of the video perfectly.
  4. I would then edit all the bits of footage together making sure that the transitions between each different piece were smooth and unnoticeable.
  5. I would export the video and upload it to youtube.

I know I make it sound easy but this was my process and to this days my videos still get thousands of views every month and even though I have not made videos in years my monthly views do not seem to drop at all.

I do not promote this channel anywhere. Quite frankly, I started making these videos as a way of coping with my mother’s death and decided to upload them as a way of saving them somewhere they would never get lost. I had no idea they would be that popular.

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Here is a concrete example of one video I made that is one of my favorite.

Continue reading “How I turned a coping mechanism​ into a successful youtube/fiction channel!”

Want to be happy? Try being grateful first.

A few days ago, I shared my feeling about the sudden change in my mood and general state on the choose FI group and someone was kind enough to share this video with me want to be happy? be grateful . It is a video of David Steindl-Rast, a monk and interfaith scholar. The point he is trying to make here is that if one wants to be happy one must be grateful.

Truth be told I have been privileged my whole life. I was spoiled rotten by my parents, grew up in a small village where there was no crime, no drugs, where I could ride my bike with my friends without the fear of being run over or kidnapped.  My parents, my cousin and I all went on vacation several a years and I was always able to study in good conditions. Yes, I had a perfect life up until I was about 17 years old and yet I have always been a Debbie Downer.

At least that’s how most people would call me but I would rather describe myself as a realist person.Ever since I was a young child, I have always had this ability to see the world and people for exactly what they are, it is not that I do not see the good in people or believe that the world can change, it is just that I do not expect it and do not organise my life around potential changes that may never happen.

You may ask yourself, what made her this way? Quite frankly nothing. If anything, I should be the most optimistic person in the world.

Continue reading “Want to be happy? Try being grateful first.”

Why I have succumbed​ and decided to upgrade my laptop. And why I finally sold my Ipad.

It all started in the summer of 2009. I was working technical support in Greece for a bit IT firm and they had us use Macs. I had entertained the idea to buy one back when I live in London, even went to one of those free session to learn how to use it but was scared of the unknown.

It has been almost 8 years and I have not looked back, I have used Pc’s at a couple of my jobs but I have remained faithful to Apple’s laptops and desktops.

I remember buying the 2009 Macbook pro when I was in Athens and then in 2012 upgrading to a mac book pro retina when they were first introduced.

Then when I moved back to London and finally settled down I decided to upgrade to an iMac. That was one of the best decision I have ever made. I bought it second hand and used points I had on eBay and got a 50£ discount. I kept it for years until I finally moved to Ireland and was unable to bring it with me.

Before I moved to Ireland I bought a MacBook air that had very basic specs(only 4gb of ram) and then a tv that I paid about 200€ on sale. I would mostly use my Ipad to browse the internet and would connect the MacBook air to my tv to watch my tv shows.

Unfortunately, the more time passed, the slower the mac would get. It hit me when I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago and tried to export photos from Lightroom. I had about 400 pictures, which I admit is quite a lot. I had the time to go shower, wash my hair, dry it, get dressed and the import was not even halfway through and the mac was burning hot.

Enough was enough. I could not continue like this anymore!

Continue reading “Why I have succumbed​ and decided to upgrade my laptop. And why I finally sold my Ipad.”

The App that convinced me to send postcards again!

Disclaimer, I was not paid to write this. I am just a happy user!

If you are a traveler like me you probably enjoy sharing your memories with your loved ones. The problem is, not everyone has social media. Also, I found that parents or grandparents often prefer receiving postcards they can pin on their fridge or show their friends so they show them to their friends and brag about what a great world traveler you are.

Wait, did I just say postcards?

Yes, for those who weren’t born when they were popular, postcards are little square pieces of paper you send to your loved ones whenever you go on vacation!

The problem with postcards is that nobody uses them anymore but why.

1. It is a pain to find the one you like, find a post office to buy a stamp and post it.

2. You can never find the right one.

3. They’re everything but original. Imagine you’re going to NYC , you will have the choice between a postcard of the statue of liberty, time square or the Empire state building or other touristic monuments. That is everything but personal or remotely interesting.

4. They are still quite expensive.

5. Depending on where you send them from you never know when they will be received.  As a matter of fact, as a child, we had this joke in my family “ we’ll send you a postcard and will pray that it will arrive before we come back.” So we often ended up sending them on the first day which sucks because we did not get to write much!

So what is the solution?

Fizzer!!!

Fizzer is an app that will allow you to send postcards all over the world.

Okay Céline, great, very original.

Well, let me tell you what fizzer have that others don’t have.

Continue reading “The App that convinced me to send postcards again!”