3 Days at Texel

These pictures were taken at Texel during a short trip (26 till 28 september 2008).

I was forced to take of my shoes.

my girlfriend spotted some interesting living creatures

This sailor most have enjoyed his hours at sea

Resting in the sun

I just love this camera

Maarten’s Winkel

Roasted chicken salad

Isn’t she sweet ;-)

Time for a haircut..

Where’s the balance?

Have you ever wondered what you really need in life? There many different answers to that question. Enough money, good health, spending time with family and friends. For all the things we want in life we have to sacrifice something else. Hardly never we get a chance to get all we want at the same time.

What is the most important part of your life? The one thing you can’t do without? For me that’s the feeling that I’m achieving a perfect balance in the things I’m doing. Cause even if I would have money and I wouldn’t be in good health or wasn’t able to enjoy my spare time with family and friends, having money wouldn’t mean a whole lot to me.

Right now, I don’t have any money, I don’t have a home for myself and I definitely spent more hours working or thinking about work then I enjoy time with family and friends. It makes me feel a bit stressed from time to time. What really makes me do all this? What really drives me?

Funny enough I have trouble defining this myself. I think I just want to make a difference in this world. I don’t mind that other people have more money or that they enjoy life to the full. I feel that it’s my mission to make a difference.

From an early age I’ve found myself helping others. Setting up newsletters to communicate what was happening to the money we brought to school ever Monday for a village in Kenya, try to think of ways to save energy. Dreaming of how I could persuade others to stop doing harm to our planet.

However, I never came up with a truly good idea to balance time spent on those projects, doing my homework and make sure I had the money to continue.

Right now, I’m facing the same issues. I’m working three days a week for Play it Forward for a fee which is far from realistic when you consider the fact that I don’t have the money to rent a place myself. I’m also spending more time on developing ideas and concepts for Strandpunt that aren’t making money.

On the other hand: I certainly enjoy being with my girlfriend and I have a strong feeling that I’m getting closer and closer to doing those things that I wanna do and make some money along the way. 

All in good time…

Wrapping up a few weeks to catch up

I’ve started working at Play it Forward. Please feel free to sign up as a Player to become part of a new way of supporting projects run by enthousiastic people who are making good things happen around the world. By signing up as a Player, we will keep you posted on what’s going on at PiF and you’ll be part of the happy few we can say: “we have started to change the world”.

A lot of things take my time at the moment. I’m moving out of a house, stacking up my stuff in an other and I’ll become a gipsey for a few months. My girlfriend and I would love to get ourselves a nice place in either Amsterdam or Utrecht depending upon many things.

I witnessed a person getting shot, or actually I saw his dead body on the ground. Sofar, I dealt with it pretty ok I guess. But together with a lot of hours of work on various projects, a few parties and events to attend, it has been exhausting for the last few months.

My girl and I went away two weekends at the end of September and October to the Islands, Texel and Terschelling, alone and with my family. We had a great time, hiking, bicycling, eating and drinking, and enjoyed the last few hours of summer sun. We definetly entered Autumn with clouds, rain and heavy winds.

Took some pictures with my camera, a Canon Powershot S5 IS 8.0 Megapixels, of our trip to the Islands. I’ll be adding to a post the later on in the week, if I find some time that is.

www.maartenvanleeuwen.eu

I’ve changed www.maartenvanleeuwen.eu in a startpage for Maarten van Leeuwen on the web.
All you’ll find is my contact details and several links to my online profile pages.

The blog you’re reading right now is the one were I’ll be publishing photo’s, videos and were I’ll share information that I find on the internet combined with my own experiences and opinions.