Who's that girl...
Hello again!
My name is Dominique, I am 33 years young and was born and raised in Maastricht, the Netherlands 🇳🇱
My native language is Dutch, but I adopted English as my second language not long after I started travelling in my early twenties.
At the age of 17, I moved out of my parent’s house to live closer to the school. After that I never fully returned home. I discovered the travel life in my early twenties. My first travel experience overseas was in 2015, when I travelled to Australia 🇦🇺 on a working holiday. I still had to finish my degree back home, so I had to return home after spending 11,5 months having the time of my life exploring Sydney, the east coast, and a few places in Southeast Asia and I didn't just get infected by a nasty stomach bug, but by a travel bug too. A few round of antibiotics got me over that stomach bug, but the travel bug kept lingering. After getting my bachelors degree in Hotel Management, I decided to follow my heart (and gut) and flew solo again. In July 2019 I started a 12-month traineeship in a hotel in Washington DC 🇺🇸.
And then COVID happened. After 8 months of living and working in the US, I returned home in March 2020. The following 2 years I tried to commit to local jobs and live closer to and/or in my hometown and just travel as much as I could in Europe. After living in Maastricht 🇳🇱 and Antwerp 🇧🇪 combined with working remote in Portugal 🇵🇹 a for a while, I realised COVID was starting to fade away in the background and I could stop pretending to enjoy a life that just wasn’t it for me.
This doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy those 2 years, because I did. I got to live close to my friends and family and gained a truckload of working experience, but below the surface I was always anxious to get out there and fly free again.
So I did! 🥳
I picked up travelling in the beginning of 2023 and kicked off a life as “digital nomad” by starting an online business as virtual assistant 👩🏻💻. After discovering this didn’t exactly align with my core values, I started to dig a litter deeper and did a lot of self-reflection trying to figure out what those values actually were. It took me 6 weeks of living mostly in solitude in New Zealand and doing 2 housesits while worked parttime in a vineyard, to find much needed stillness and the answer.
It kind of boils down to this:
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The first value is to have the freedom to go wherever I feel like going to whenever I feel like going. This doesn’t mean I want to be on the move all the time, but I do like to have the option open at all times and not feel restricted to a place or situation.
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The second one is to be kind to everyone and treat everyone with compassion and without judgement. This also meant that I learned to keep my distance from people I don’t feel the right energy with. And adding onto that; I chose to stay true to my (mostly) introverted personality and spend more time on my own or a small group of close friends or family.
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And the last one is to keep life as simple as I possibly can. I found out that by sizing down on almost everything in life, a weight got lifted off my shoulders and I felt constant release by decluttering my life and now all my belongings fit in a car.
Only by staying true to those values, I find my body and mind at ease.
Currently, I'm living in Byron Bay, Australia 🇦🇺, back in the country where it all started and I’m starting to find my way back to my authentic self again more and more every day. I feel very connected to this place because of the nature and the sense of community. Not a day goes by I don’t go to the ocean and I truly appreciate the life I get to live 💛.
I consider this platform my virtual home where I journal and share my thoughts and the lessons I learned. Domi is my alter ego to escape from the real world sometimes but I will always prefer to stay present in the real world (or wander off to my internal world) and I can easily take a break from the digital world if needed.
Before I sign off, I listed some of my biggest sources of happiness:
🌎 Exploring
I like to wander around all over the world. Accompanied by an interesting podcast, audiobook, music or a friend, I always feel inspired and rarely get lost. Every now and then I need to break out of a routine and start over. Whenever that moment presents itself, and it always has, it’s time to start moving around again.
🧳 Move around
I have tried a lot of ways to live a happy life and came to the conclusion I am happiest when I am not commited to a place and capable of creating a home everywhere I go with the few belongings I have and bring with me everywhere I go.
🌇 Sunrises and sunsets
Need I say more?
☕ Chai latte
Better sweet than sorry. I am a sucker for beautiful traditional masala chais, but I can enjoy a good powder chai latte just as much. Whether it’s a take away in my yellow keep cup or with a friend in a cafe, these beautiful moments with chai are my biggest mood boosters.
🎨 Create things
Both on and on and offline. Spaces to live in temporarily or long term. Creating a layout for a website, a resume or a logo, but also structure and organisation. I can enjoy beauty in its simplicity.
✍️ Write down thoughts
I usually write down things as they come to me. This is who I am, how I go about life and how I can stay the me-est version of me.
🍃 Essential oils
Lavender, mint, eucalyptus, tea tree, you name it. The smell of essential oils can always helps to brighten my mood.
🧘🏻♀️ Yoga
It took a while but I learned to enjoy, understand and later love the peace and energy yoga gives my body and soul.
🔁 Routines
I’m a sucker for routines. With a nomading lifestyle it’s essential (to me) to have a baseline routine to fall back on wherever I go. This way I can keep my mind calm and clear but it also makes it easier to make healthy food choices and exercise on a daily basis wherever I go.
🥕 Gardening
One of the goals I set for myself in 2023 was to grow a carrot. AND I DID! I love the feeling of being able to grow my own food and slowly become more and more self-sufficient. Taking care of a veggie bed and seeing seeds grow into seedlings and eventually into beautiful veggies, is one of the best feelings. And so simple!
🐾 Furry friends
Even though I wish I could adopt a dog right now, it’s difficult to commit to a pet when you’re on the move a lot, which is why I love looking after someone else’s furry family. From my parent’s dog, my brother’s cats, the countless ohter pets I looked after during housesits, to the cute looking dog across the street, there’s always room in my life for new furry friends.
Please feel free to get in touch if you want to chat 😃.
And now go explore, like I like to explore 🍃
Xoxo Domi
