about me

In the simplicity of life, I discovered a deeper layer of being free: the freedom to live my life my way. It was the starting point of a path where no one had gone before me and I could explore on my own. A conventional life? No, that was not for me, I realised. I wanted to be free and live consciously.

 

It was 2012, when I left for Nepal. Just completed my second higher education and full of desire to make one last long journey. After that? Settling down and finally starting ‘real life’. Things turned out completely different. In Nepal, I joined a very nice NGO by chance and later founded a non-profit organisation myself. Our mission? To improve the welfare of street dogs. Optimising processes, designing schedules, putting together personnel policy… I got a huge satisfaction from it. I was doing something useful and essential without feeling pressure because someone obliged me to do it.

At that time, I also started living much more consciously. When I left for Nepal, I took only the bare essentials with me. My possessions that I left behind fitted into eleven boxes. So much lightness, what a blissful feeling. That simplicity taught me how happy, consuming less makes me. I became aware of how food and personal care products affected me. So I opted for natural and pure. I walked the path of personal development. I got to know myself from the inside out and shaped my life accordingly. My compass: my heart and my consciousness.

In 2015, I returned to Belgium permanently and I knew from the start… Live like I did in Nepal? I wasn’t giving that up anymore. The idea that anything is possible. Doing whatever I want every day. Feeling no pressure from society to perform. Following my heart. Yes, that’s how I live my life. Being free and making conscious choices. And at the same time still participating fully in society and having financial security. For me, that is creating heaven on earth.

I wish such a life for everyone. Looking around me, I see a world full of performance pressure and haste. I know and feel it can be different. It has been a whole journey to integrate that in my daily life but I can say now that I feel succesfull and that I only need to finetune it here and there from time to time (without change and new dreams life would be boring no?) And that’s what I write about on my blog. Because I feel a desire to inspire to work and live more consciously.

Coordinating the street dog project in Kathmandu was the most fulfilling work-experience I ever had. So I wanted to keep doing similar things. To put my skills to great use for projects that make the world a better place and warm my heart. So since 2022 I work as a freelance project coordinator.

And so appleblueseagreen is both a place to devote my skills and energy to the things I believe in  and a tool to create the life I want. Full circle.

My professional background

Above, you can read my personal story from my heart. Of course, there is also a more rational main side, a.k.a. the trainings I have done and the professional experiences I have had. I like to tell a bit about that briefly too.

I started at a primary school in Lint, Belgium.

At 12, I moved to the Netherlands where I did my secondary school immersed in many languages and cultures at the European School Bergen.

I started with Mathematics at the University of Amsterdam but that turned out to be a bit too brainy and nerdy, so a year later I started a teacher training programme in Mathematics at the Educational Faculty Amsterdam.

Teaching turned out not to be for me, playing policeman was not my thing so I started at energy company Nuon in the complaints team with the idea of staying there for a while and then continuing my studies.

That time became two years before I started my second study for which I moved back to Belgium. SEW, or socio-economic sciences gave me the best of both worlds. Because on the one hand I was very good at numbers and on the other hand I loved doing something with people and for people.

So after two courses, I thought it really had to happen now, my professional career. But then I left for Nepal. I did a few more temporary, part-time jobs at various companies such as the city of Antwerp, tutoring and coordinating a dental practice. All that in addition to managing the non-profit organisation for street dogs in Nepal.

And since the beginning of 2018, I feel it’s really just beginning, now that I can really do what I love and in my own unique way: my company appleblueseagreen.