I’ve just changed the name of my blog, from ‘The Tao of Vacuum Cleaners’. When I chose the original name, I was very annoyed with vacuum cleaners – because they didn’t always work, and because I had to vacuum.
I used to live in a big flat with a live-in maid/nanny and a husband in the private equity sector in Asia. Then we moved to rural Ireland for a change of lifestyle. But my life didn’t look like those lovely home magazine portrayals of people carefree in a poppy field in their Hunter boots. My life was suddenly dirty, messy, hard work; isolated and friendless, at first; with vacuum cleaners as a daily reminder of the humiliating plunge from ‘well off’ to ‘can’t afford’; and so terrifyingly uncertain. Our income level crashed (this is long before the current global recession, so at least I’m used to cutting back – I was in my own recession throughout the Celtic Tiger!). My life seemed in ruins. And I was pregnant.
It’s easier to see all the goodness in retrospect, though. My life is good, notwithstanding the fact that I still have to vacuum my own place. That may sound horrifically snobby to anyone who never had a live-in maid, but it’s just what I had become used to – a measure of our success in life, and I couldn’t help taking it personally when it was no longer an option.
So I thought it was time to call this blog what it’s really about: change. Situations that demand new thinking, or else become chronically unhappy.
Thanks for reading!
