Robin Pascoe's Expat Blogella:The Rest of My Life

Hi Everyone, If you have ever read books written specifically for expats, there is a good chance that you have read one of Robin Pascoe's books.  Robin is well-known for her witty expat books and I know many of you enjoy reading what Robin gets up to. Many of you have also met Robin when she was on the international speaking circuit, championing 'the expat family' for so many years.

Trying to retire from the speaking circuit, last year Robin launched a Successful Living Abroad series of 20 online video lectures, that you can enjoy for free here. And now, Robin has taken a leap of faith and launched her own Expat Blogella: The Rest of My Life.

Robin's new blogella is expat fiction (although when you read the characters, you realize that Robin has based her fiction on people you have probably met in your expat travels, so whilst it is fiction in terms of Robin's family life, it is quite close to the truth for many expats who have either survived or witnessed the heartbreak of infidelity and/or divorce abroad - and for that reason, it certainly makes a good read).

So far, Robin has posted six installments on The Rest of My Life - the blog of her new fictional character, Joelly Schuster. If you are interested, you can read them all here, or if you'd just like a sample, you can read the first installment below. (Thanks Robin for granting us permission to re-post it.)

Happy Friday/weekend reading! Andrea


Installment One

"I have to begin somewhere, so why not today when I have been 53-years-old for just over twenty-four hours? Yesterday wasn’t the greatest birthday I have ever celebrated but it wasn’t the worst either. My lovely daughter took me out to a fancy restaurant because she didn’t want me to be alone.

She’s worried about her old mother in this new life which no longer includes her father since he recently ditched me, in Beijing of all places. Naturally, it was for a woman half his age and younger than our daughter.

There is a reason clichés were invented. Bumper stickers too, like “Shit Happens”. They can be incredibly useful for summing up one’s life.

Maybe I could write bumper stickers instead of a taking a job as a barista at the Starbucks in the market. God knows I have served enough coffee in my life. I keep threatening to become a professional milk whipper because I’m now completely broke and it would seem, unemployable because of my age and a blank CV.

My daughter isn’t the only one fretting about what I am going to do now with the rest of my life (yes, it is the perfect title for this blog if I do say so myself). My son Brian isn’t exactly thrilled about his mother’s new and extremely reduced circumstances.

Barely out of college, the poor guy has his whole working life ahead of him (once he figures out what he wants to work at) but already he’s been offering his mother the money he has been saving up for a car. What a good son I raised. But I’ll crawl to the supermarket before I will let him give me his hard-earned money. 

Brian is so angry with his father right now, but what else is new? He’s been mad at him his entire life because he was simply never there. He was always on a business trip or working late for whatever oil company was controlling our lives at the time, always too tired if he was home on a weekend to coach any of Brian’s school teams.

I suppose I’ll have to get to that story at some point in this cyber diary with its clever title chosen precisely because I haven’t got a ******* clue what to do with the rest of my sorry little life.

Am I even allowed swearing on a blog? Too damn bad if I’m not supposed to since I’ve already been at it. My son isn’t the only one with anger issues obviously or so says the shrink I lined up before I even arrived in Ottawa.

Wait, am I supposed to even say where I’m living? Is there an instruction manual anywhere other than Blogging for Dummies which I saw in the bookstore? And does there happen to be a version for menopausal idiots who can barely remember to finish a sentence?

Please leave a comment and a link, dear reader. All one of you and that does not include you, Deborah (that’s my daughter). You don’t count. It’s your fault for even talking me into this in the first place."