People are always talking about striving for balance: work/like balance, balancing friends and family, balanced meals, balanced workouts, the list goes on and on. This sounds great in principle, but recently I’ve discovered that this balance does not equal life; and struggling to achieve this balance can actually make you miss out on just living the life you’ve created! I think the most important part of life is finding what works for you. For some, a perfectly balanced life may not be it.

“Life Unbalanced” is about living life by your own rules and not those defined by anyone else.

A little background about me and how this blog came into existence. When I graduated college I started in public accounting, earned my CPA and hit the ground running with my career. I was doing everything “right,” everything I was supposed to do. However, I quickly burned out on long hours and nonstop stress doing a job that I hated. So after almost 3 years, I decided I was done.

When I quit, I was in pursuit of a more “balanced” life. The start of my journey had been very career focused, and while I very much wanted to be successful, I needed to find some more personal direction. So off I went to find a more fulfilling job that allowed me time to focus on some of my personal goals as well. Much to my surprise, I actually found what I was looking for as a financial analyst at a Law Firm. Unexpected, I know. For the next two and a half years I excelled. I enjoyed my job; I was able to focus on projects that were interesting to me; I forged relationships with amazing colleagues; and I developed myself professionally. To add to it, I was doing this all over the course of a pretty average workweek. This allowed me to also focus on my personal life. I saw my friends often, met new people, travelled frequently and continued to accumulate valuable and exciting life experiences. Overall, with this career change, my life was pretty balanced.

And then the itch struck again. Life was great, but I wanted more. I didn’t want to just vacation, I wanted to travel. I wanted to live somewhere new and experience the world in a whole new way, not just what I could cram into the week or two I would spend vacation-ing. So from there, this plan evolved. It started with moving to Australia, then changed approximately a million and one times before ending on a year of travel. As I realized after what seemed like an endless amount of thinking and debating, there is never going to be a perfect time to just drop your life and travel. So finally, instead of trying to plan for that perfect moment, I just decided to pull the trigger and do it. So in January of this year, I bought a ticket to South America! And so the next leg of my journey begins.

What started as a career focused life transitioned to that balanced life that everyone strives for, but it still wasn’t fulfilling. I believe many people can relate to this feeling. Balance is comfortable, but sometimes you need to go outside of your comfort zone to experience life. This is an adventure that I need to go on before I live to regret never having done it. I’m determined to make it the best experience of my life and to continue to live my UNBALANCED life to the fullest.

Follow along with me on this incredible journey.

Cheers!

xx Christina