About Us
My name is Michelle – yes, really… no hiding my identity here! – and I am a Canadian living, working and raising two kids in Warsaw, Poland. My husband is Piotr – yes, really – and my boys are Max and Alex. An absolutely key factor in choosing their names was that we had to find something that both sets of grandparents could pronounce. So, Polish names like Krzysztof and Stanisław were out for my Mom, and English names like Jacob and William were out for my in-laws. Also, we like the letter ‘x’.
Piotr is an art director, which means he designs magazines, ads, billboards, pamphlets, websites, and so on. I have my own business and both love and hate that my office is literally 10 paces from our bedroom. But being my own boss means I get to write on my blog whenever I want, without having to sneak glances over my shoulder that my witch of a manager will catch me and demand to know what I’m doing.
I realise that blogs are becoming retro (they’re soooooo 2005!) and with the birth of Twitter and Facebook, short posts are the norm. But I am a wordy person (140 characters? You have GOT to be kidding me!) and I find social networks distracting, since they have become much less about connecting or expressing yourself, and much more about quizzes and games and portraying one’s life in ’status updates’ in a way that is misleading and – quite frankly – false. I think it’s partly to do with the lack of space to write in length about things, but it’s also about the whole ‘my life is so cool factor’, and I for one am not that cool. Yes, really. And if you read what I write you’ll see that I speak the truth.
So, it’s back to the retro blog format for me, so I can write and talk and really show my life as it is. It’s a good life, a full life, one which I treasure and cherish. But it’s a challenging life, as well, and most of the challenges come directly from bringing my kids up in a country where I don’t speak the language fluently and do not always understand how people think or behave. It’s not a life I’d trade, but it is a life I need to reflect on at times. And that’s what I’ll do here: write, think, get perspective. And hopefully learn and grow.
