Winter Walking & Writing

Sorry for my lapse in posting, I've been trying to separate my blog posts into "regular life" and "Belgian life" (which you can read about here) and our Belgian life has been much busier lately!

I mentioned a couple posts ago that I've been lucky enough to find some writing work. Right now, I'm working on the third article in a winterwandeling (winter walking) series for Flanders Today, an independent weekly newspaper. It's been fun because it's gotten us out to different, beautiful areas of Flanders that we probably would not have gone to otherwise. We've been to a couple of gorgeous nature reserves and to an amazing arboretum that has redwoods.

The Bourgoyen nature reserve - outside of Ghent

But freelance writing isn't coming that easy to me. I'm up against another deadline and am having trouble concentrating. It takes me several days to write an article and I find myself getting easily distracted and needing all sorts of breaks. At times I find myself longing for the steady, clearly defined, well-paying job that I left behind.

The plus side of all this is that I've always enjoyed writing and now I'm gaining some great experience, both in writing and photography, because they are using my pictures with the articles. And I'm loving the flexibility of working from home. It will be interesting to see how this plays out when we head back to the States--especially with the economy still in the toilet.

It's surprising to note that we are now about halfway through our time in Belgium. The time has been flying!