Transglobe Blog The World in a Blog

Alison is an Artist/Blogger on a creative mission. She loves life and is not too keen on "the system"; her plan is to inspire others to live to the full and to take action

My day starts around 10am after my boyfriend has gone to work. I start with a cup of warm water and freshly squeezed lemon. I head out to the balcony of my first floor apartment and pull up a weathered chair, sit down and close my eyes. The morning sun warms my eyelids. I usually take a few minutes to reflect, smile and feel grateful for everything I have. I open my eyes, finish my lemon drink and look out across the dark blue sea. I stretch and head back inside to exercise.

 
I like to exercise at home because it's convenient and so I put on an exercise DVD and workout for a while. Then I take a quick shower and prepare breakfast, usually I have a fruit smoothie made with whatever fruits are in season. Currently I'm enjoying avocado, strawberry and banana mixed with linseeds, sesame seeds, almonds and water.

I pop some washing in the machine and then sit down with a pad and a pen and write my "To Do List." I'm working on a few projects at the moment, each involves learning something new. I have my Art blog which needs updating a couple of times a week. I'm currently enrolled on a couple of e-courses, a Wordpress theme design course, which involves learning CSS coding. And for the right side of my brain, I'm taking an experimental art course. I'm also dabbling with Photoshop.

 
When I have my to do list all planned out, I make a nice freddo espresso, a typical drink in Greece. It's a double espresso, whisked in the blender then poured over ice. Next, I turn on my computer and start to work. (Sometimes I get distracted and end up browsing the web) I plod on until around 2.30.

 
Then I make a nice healthy salad for lunch, chick peas with spinach, avocado, spring onions, tomatoes and feta cheese. The fresh produce is very tasty in Crete! I top off the salad with a few olives some oregano and some green olive oil. Green oil is quality oil, yellow oil is just not good enough! We don't usually pay for olive oil because our friends have olive trees and they give us tins of fresh oil, produced during the winter months.

 
My boyfriend arrives home with some fresh bread from the local bakery and we sit down to eat lunch. We chat about how ridiculously un-organized the system is and then we laugh because; after all it's the system we're attempting to live without.

 
If he has spare time we may pop to the beach for an hour for a quick swim and sunbathe. If we do go to the beach, we take internet marketing books with us, usually a couple of Seth Godin's books. If not, he'll head back to work and I'll continue with my "To Do List" after hanging out the washing.

Late afternoon, around 5.30 I usually pop out for a walk. We live in a small village set on a hillside, just outside of the main town. Our neighbours have large plots and beautiful flowers line the walkways. The neighbour at the top of our street is a toothless old lady. She keeps chickens and goats and has a wonderful vegetable patch. I walk past fields filled with colourful flowers, dancing in the breeze. Once again, I smile at how lucky I am.

I arrive home, grab a sketch pad or a canvas and either draw or paint until it’s time to make dinner. We eat around 9pm and then work on our computers until around 12pm. We may watch a 45 min t.v program with a glass of home made wine, to relax a little. If there's nothing we fancy then we check out what's new on Mixergy which is a fantastic video blog by Andrew Warner. He interviews entrepreneurs and it's totally fascinating.

 
Then we download a Podcast, usually either one from BlogcastFm or SmartPassiveIncome, we get into bed with our bloodshot eyes and our ipod touch and take one headphone each. We're such geeks. Then we drift off to sleep and dream about doing what we love for life....

You can find alsion at Alison Quine.com and by the end of May she'll be over at Art Blog Action too.