Introduce yourself - sounds easy, doesn´t it?

How well you can introduce yourself will show quite quickly when you´re bound to write it down, not when you meet new people in real life. Never would I tell someone all about myself at the first meeting.

But, no matter what I will say about myself, people who get to know me in person will have their own opinion about me quite quickly. This will differ wildly depending on the situation you meet me in - around my friends, at hobbies, while dating, in the workplace or randomly on the street.

Here in this very moment you don´t get to see any of that but have to rely purely on what I tell you who I am. To be fair to summarize all of it in one talk or post is merely impossible which is why I will provide an overview and let you find out more along the way.

Well, let´s start with the easiest ones. I was named Jacqueline, but everyone calls me Jacky. There are some other variations that came up over the years but those will have to wait until you actually get to know me. When you got to live in Germany for a while you´ll know what I´m talking about.

I was born in 1992 which leaves me at the age of 29 (and a half) right now. This also means that I will turn 30 this year! How exciting. One thing you can learn about me right now is that I don´t really care about the age of a person but more about their maturity and personality. Therefore, I am friends with people around the age of 12 but also, at the very top, 88, and I`m not even related to them but met in one way or another and felt a great connection. The other thing you can learn about me straight away is that I tend to lie to myself and I actually do care about age, but only my own and the pressure of the BIG 30 leaves me mortified sometimes. I´m working on it, I blame society.

After already writing a whole bunch without saying that much, let´s do a quick overview, shall we?

• born and raised in Germany, half British
• female, cis, hetero, she/her
• highly energetic and happy person
• loves the outdoors
• travelled 33 countries (and counting)
• lived in 5 of them (and counting)
• animal lover (always owned dogs, cats and horses)
• vegetarian
• yoga and meditation enthusiast
• very big on personal development
• very interested in everything that has something to do with nutrition, mental and physical health, female hormones, sustainability, mindsets, journaling, generally psychology
• just started to get into everything with astrology, spirituality, crystal etc. - I KNOW! A year ago, I would’ve called myself crazy too
• extremely close with friends and chosen family
• fairly damaged by life experiences which got me into my passion for self-development
• not yet a coach but follow for long enough and you´ll see

Hobbies include: traveling (might have guess that one already), horseback riding, walking and hiking, reading and learning on a constant bases, dancing, diving, snowboarding, and finally keeping my friends entertained with my chaotic brain and life choices.

So, what have I done with my life up until now. Great question, let`s review it together.

I finished school when I was 19 in 2011 which gives me about 10 (and a half) years time in the grown-up world - wow, I should feel like a grown up by now, huh? Anyway in 2011 I knew exactly what I wanted to do - go to America. So, I did.

While all my friends went head first into their newly chosen carers or university I headed over to New York, where I was to live for 12 month being an Au Pair (basically a fancy word for a life-in-Nanny from another country) to 3 kids ages 7, 9 and 11. To be fair, I lived about an hour away from New York but you wouldn´t know it - it was on the beach though. I started my great adventure living with people I have never met before, trying to parent kids who were not much younger than I was. How did that go you ask? Pretty amazing to be honest. I´ll tell you all about it at some point. It did go that well that after 12 month I decided to extend my stay for 9 more month and moved to a family living in Las Vegas - yup, actually Las Vegas this time, there is nothing else around it really.

Returning to Germany after almost 2 years just because university is free, and it simply would be stupid not to take advantage of it but swearing I would come back to the US and live there - spoiler, I never did and by now I wouldn´t want to either. I spend 3.5 years studying International Management, partying, making friends and just being a girl in her 20s. What a fabulous experience.

I worked in a start-up to make some money and also get my first job experiences in. They actually liked what I did and offered to employ me right after I finished my bachelor´s degree. There I was - freshly out of Uni and responsible for building up an Account Management and Sales unit for a start-up - great! Until it wasn´t anymore... so I left and found myself working as an International Project Manager at a marked research company - up until now the job description of my dreams. I got to manage my own projects entirely, could learn from lovely people who were around my age but also knew what they were doing, I got to travel and work with people internationally. I loved it - until I didn´t anymore.... You guessed right - I left.

But where did I go next? Traveling the world for 12 months.

My boyfriend of 4 years at that time and I decided to leave everything behind and travel as much as we could before we had to be real adults for the rest of time. This was in 2018. We travelled for 314 days, visited 18 countries (Scandinavia, North America, South-East-Asia and Australia). Another experience I could talk about for 3 days straight. We mostly slept in cars, bigger rental ones in most of the countries but also our own SUV in Australia, visited a lot of friends and family, met new people, made experiences none of us will ever forget, got to know new cultures and just lived a pretty amazing life. We returned home a little early to attend a wedding. At that point I didn´t want to return to Germany but as a couple sometimes you make decisions together for the sake of the relationship.

I returned into a 9-5 job in a different start-up. It would all be different this time, the vision was greater, the people lovely, more experienced and management cared about their employees. Well, it was, and they did until this thing called Covid hit all of us and the world changed. I went into home office, the relationship of 6 years ended, and I was very confused with life honestly. Looking back though, it has been the most interesting and developing phase of my life so far and I´m far beyond thankful for it. I learned more important things about myself and the world around me than school ever even tried to teach me. Mainly I found that I somehow ended up living on autopilot, still living a great life but not really being happy with it.

During that time, it turned out that at my company making money was again more important than keeping employees sane (welcome to modern culture). Lasting 1.5 years in a job this time I found myself questioning me and the way l wanted to live my life. I felt quite lost, but I knew I couldn´t stay or simply just move on to the next job. Was that really all there was to life? Work your job, either giving it your all and being taken advantage off or dimming down your fire for the sake of your own health. All for a couple of weeks’ vacation and weekends where you had to do grown up stuff and rest from your week? Where did the girl with big dreams, a big smile and goofy energy go? She died in this way of living.

I said ‚no more‘, quit the job, my flat and basically my whole life. By then I was about a year deep into personal development and it really changed me in so many ways I don´t even recognize the old me anymore. I found a great passion and it blew my mind that no one teaches you all about psychology - I found a lot of explanations along the way why I am the way I am. The best part about is that I always end up pulling people into it without even trying to. Why can’t I do this for a living? Great! I decided to take time off to find myself. All with no plan what that meant, but faith that it will be ok.

This was the Summer of 2021, about 7 months ago. Ever since I travelled to Crete, which became my safe place, hiked in Italy, visited Georgia, came back and lived in Crete for 3 months working as a horseback riding guide and now taking some time to reconnect with my family in England and apparently writing a blog, which I wanted to do for quite a long time.

So here we are, a girl who doesn’t want to live the ´regular´ life anymore - and you guys. I am just as excited to see where all of this will go as you are. What do you want to hear about first?

Oh, you remember the beginning where I said I wouldn´t tell someone all about myself when I first meet them? Well, you also learned that I tend to lie to myself.

See you around 🙂