Why Not 1.

Why not be just happy about the most simple things in life? Just like...

- Compliments about the new ring I bought yesterday
- 5 pieces of pogácsa free of charge from the baker in the morning
- Sizzling indian summer in Budapest
- The hottest (or so they say) chili paprika bush which will provide components for the gulyás we plan to cook in the garden on Saturday
- The book written in the unique style of Amos Oz
- The textile seahorse that turned into a cute brooch today
- Killer Callanetics lessons together with one of my best friends
- My friendly cactuses on the balcony that I got from the Mom of another one of my best friends
- And: why not?

5 Things You Can Do When Your Job Is Eating Up Your Life (And It's Not Too Late Yet)

This list might seem to be a good joke which lacks any seriousness but don't get misled by the funny way I put it. This is bloody serious: you have only one life and nobody else will have fun in it or discover your limits instead of you.

So what are your options?

1. Be a Waiter/waitress or Tourist Guide in Greece

I was lucky enough to try both and it was one of the best periods in my life. I left a serious job with a promising outlook for months of complete freedom and full of discovery. It cleared up my mind and I came back knowing exactly what I wanted to do - and it was not what I had left behind - so I put my life on a completely different new track.
This was years ago and by now Greece is not the best destination so you can replace it with Mallorca or Phuket upon your wish.

2. Sell paintings in Portugal

If you work in sales or marketing, this is your chance to get back to the roots and see things from a different perspective. You will literally work for every cent. But your office will not be neon-lit anymore: you will change it for the beach or the avenue where lovers stroll in the evening. If you are lucky, singles will also stroll your way.

3. Become a zookeeper

Not the cleanest job, we must admit. But just imagine all the kids looking at you with envy and respect when you feed the penguins! Be careful, being a zookeeper for more peaceful and harmless animals is much funnier than feeding the polar bear so you might get a good use of your networking and negotiation skills you had developed in the multinational environment before.

4. Volunteer!

If you are as lucky as to be able to afford this. Use the internet, discover the opportunities and get on the road! There are so many fields that need volunteering work: disabled kids' camps, saving endangered animals, day-care of AIDS-infected, and so on, but there are also programs that offer consulting and free know-how to developing countries' rural people in the field of agriculture or small business management.
The choices you can make are countless but the result will be only one: the most useful time of your life ever.

5. Self-employment

This needs dedication just like any of the mentioned options but here we must also consider dedication in financial sense.
Make a good plan, prepare, save money, research your market - in a nutshell, use all the skills you use in the office every day. You can open a private nursery or make goat cheese - there is no limit to what a person's creative and entrepreneurial side can achieve when it is used to all its effectiveness. Probably this is the one of all the above listed ways of escaping that needs the most preparation. You will be taking risks and might not have a single day off for the next couple of months or years to come. Think about all this, discuss it with people you trust and when you get really excited - jump!

And for the rest of us, whose lives are not eaten up by our job: be nice to waitresses, tourist guides and zookeepers! They might be your boss next year!

Hungarian flowers

The most beautiful flowers grow in Hungary. They come in every shade and on any item of clothing, our traditinal blouses and skirts are full of embroidered flowers. I even have a such embroidered jewelry-box which I got from my boyfriend probably in the first month of our relationship and this box always reminds me how wonderful our traditional culture is and how much we must nurture it as our treasure.

Nurturing sometimes means giving the culture new directions, presenting it in a new form, in new context, but not depriving it of its true self: its deeper meaning.

The reason why I love this pair of earrings is exactly because by making it I can express my respect for my own culture.

By showing you the flower I used for this hoop-earring I am also showing you my brand new price tag which of course is green, at least partly. Do you like it?