✨ Your Integration Bestie ✨

It’s been 1.5 years since I officially moved to the Netherlands from Sydney.
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I didn’t move to Europe looking for poetry in the everyday.
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I moved because I felt that quiet itch—the kind that creeps in when life starts to feel a bit too predictable. You know the one. That voice in your late 20s or early 30s that whispers, “What if there’s more than this?” Long story short, I packed up, booked a one-way ticket, and told myself it was time for a new chapter.
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A little reinvention.
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Maybe some good cheese and a new language (still struggling with Dutch, by the way).
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What I didn’t expect was to have my entire relationship with life – how I move through it, how I see it – gently yet majorly rewired.
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Back in Australia, life was fast, free, and sun-drenched. As someone who immigrated there at the age of 17, I entered adulthood carrying a very specific fire.
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Immigrant life hardwires you for motion. You learn early how to adapt, how to prove yourself, how to build a life in a place that doesn’t initially feel like yours.
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You know you need to try harder than others to earn your space. To feel like you belong. There’s no coasting — only forward. There’s a grit to immigrant life, a fire you carry in your chest.
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Those 17 years in Australia were full — genuinely. I had so many good moments, beautiful friendships, career wins, beach days, big nights out. It was a chapter I loved.
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And then one day I started to feel comfortable. I was no longer fighting for a place, no longer scrambling. Everything felt settled.
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Then came Europe. It felt a bit like the house was almost built, yet I suddenly wanted to walk away.
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So I arrived in Europe, and it didn’t match my pace. Instead, it looked me in the eye, smiled softly, and said, “Slow down. Sit. Taste. Watch. This is it.”
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At first, I thought I was just here for the ‘workcation life’ — working on my business while experiencing Europe, doing Europe the way Instagram told me to: croissants in Paris, gondolas in Venice, hopping from one city to the next, filling my phone with perfect photos and my calendar with destinations.
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And then I settled in the Netherlands. Having lived here for 1.5 years, what I’ve really learned is this: life isn’t meant to be rushed through, constantly chasing the next goal or checking the next item off your to-do list.
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Also, Europe doesn’t just do aesthetics. It lives them.
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The real aesthetic of life is about intention. It’s about slowing down — not just to relax, but to actually feel your life. To taste your food. To linger in conversation. To be present in a way that feels almost rebellious in today’s hyper-fast world.
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In the Netherlands — my new home base — these lessons come wrapped in the small rituals of everyday life: buying fresh tulips in spring, biking along the canals in summer, lingering through quiet museums in autumn, and making your home warm and ‘gezellig’ (cosy) in winter. It’s practical. And it’s poetic.
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So no, I haven’t become a completely new person. I still have deadlines. I still rush some mornings. I still do work lunches more often than I should. But something has shifted.
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I look up more. I pause longer.
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I’ve learned that aesthetics aren’t about appearances — they’re about attention.
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And maybe that’s what living beautifully really means: not curating the perfect life, but showing up for the imperfect one with open eyes and an open heart.
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That’s the philosophy Europe gave me:
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– make life beautiful, not perfect.
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It’s the quiet, imperfect, lived-in scenes in between—the ones that don’t make it to your feed but stay in your memory.
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And maybe that’s the most rebellious thing you can do in a fast-moving world: slow down. Pay attention. Live like it matters ✨