People sometimes ask me why I chose a career in HR.
I smile politely, take a long, philosophical sip of coffee, and say:
“I didn’t choose HR. HR just sort of… happened to me. Like a surprise pregnancy. Or lower back pain after 35.”
Some years ago, I didn’t lie awake at night dreaming of policy manuals, internal investigations, or soul-sucking Excel files named something like “2025_Employees_FINAL_REALLY_FINAL.xlsx.”
In today’s fast-paced, hyperconnected world, the concept of a “balanced lifestyle” has become both an aspiration and a necessity. Well, let’s be real—modern life resembles juggling fire swords while balancing on a unicycle along a tightrope… over an abyss of emails. You get it now?
Amongst work deadlines, relationships, exercise, mental wellbeing, attempting to hydrate, and keeping your hormones sane, seeing “balance” become a reality feels like searching for a mythical place—something between discovering Atlantis and not killing your houseplants.
It always started the same.
“Please… just five minutes. Let me see you for five minutes.”
He swore it would be only five. But somehow, five always turned into fifteen. And even then, it never felt like enough.
He would watch her with sleepy eyes and say, every single time, like it was brand new:
“You’re beautiful. Again.”
When I first moved to the Netherlands, my friend M. smiled at me with that knowing curve in the corner of her lips and said, “Let me know when it gets hard. When you start missing home. Or when you’ve simply had enough of all this… Dutch.”
And sometimes, it does get hard.
Not in a dramatic way. I don’t find myself sobbing over jars of zacuscă at midnight or daydreaming about crowded buses in Bucharest. It’s something quieter. I miss leaving my lovely daughter with my mom at any hour, without cross-referencing agendas and syncing calendars like it’s a NASA launch. I miss weddings. Real ones. Romanian ones. You know—where the music doesn’t stop till the sun comes up, where sarmale steam on every plate, and where you dance until your shoes beg for mercy. Read more
It’s summer. Allegedly.
I know, social media is flooded with swimsuit selfies, sandy toes, and check-ins from Mamaia, Greece, Vadu. Oddly enough, Vama seems suspiciously quiet this year—where are all the barefoot bonfire pics?
Meanwhile, I haven’t even bothered to take my sandals out of the box.
Right now, my weather app shows rain tomorrow. And all weekend. Again. Of course, here in the Netherlands, the forecast changes faster than a toddler’s mood. One moment it’s sunny, the next it’s Noah’s Ark auditions. The Dutch weather has more plot twists than a telenovela—and I love a good drama, but this one? I’d like to cancel my subscription. Read more
There are moments in parenting that catch you completely off guard. Moments that make you pause, smile, and think: Where on earth did that come from? This was one of them.
We were just sitting there, doing nothing special, when Miss J. (age 7 years and 4 months, a very precise and important age) dropped this gem of cosmic wisdom: