Simply Living Aloud

Environment | Cooking | Life

  • Three 30-Day Challenges for optimizing growth potential in 2025

    Don’t we all love a bit of a challenge in life? I recently finished reading ‘Reading the 12 Week Year’ and what I’ve found is that you can really accomplish more in life if you approach life twelve weeks at a time and with my first twelve week cycle nearing it’s end (by the time…

  • Three unique hobbies for women in their thirties that will make you feel invincible

    Three unique hobbies for women in their thirties that will make you feel invincible

    For so many of us, our twenties were riddled with trying to figure out how to build our careers, leaving ourselves out of the equation. Luckily, the world has taken a turn, and focus on mental health and proper balances in life has taken center stage from a young age. Hobby selection is such an…

  • The important role of environmental assessment practitioners

    The important role of environmental assessment practitioners

    Developers, engineers, and property managers in South Africa must understand environmental regulations early in project planning to avoid penalties and redesigns. Registered Environmental Assessment Practitioners (EAPs) play crucial roles in managing environmental impact assessments, ensuring compliance with laws. Ignoring their advice can lead to severe project disruptions and legal consequences.

  • Why Blogging? My simple reason behind joining the madness

    Why Blogging? My simple reason behind joining the madness

    I have been writing for a very long time. Dating back to 2015, I started blogging under the website name “Mad & Glad”, a play on words (considering my name is Madeleine, I felt particularly clever when I thought of that one). Through the years, I have tried many different blogging approaches. From writing niche-specific…

  • A day in the life of an Environmental Consultant

    A day in the life of an Environmental Consultant

    Fresh out of university, you have your whole life planned out in front of you. With a degree in Environmental Science, Social Science, Geographic Information Systems, or one in a similar trajectory. You expect that you will save the world one adventure-filled day at a time, imagining yourself akin to Indiana Jones or the two…

  • An Intentional Lifestyle – The South African Way

    An Intentional Lifestyle – The South African Way

    2024 has been a blur. Now that we’ve reached the end of this year, we find ourselves looking back at the year that has passed. Our accomplishments, our goals, our successes, our failures. The things we are incredibly proud of, and the not-so-proud moments of our year. I look at this time as a time…

This is how it all started…

I have been blogging on-and-off for the better of ten years, never really finding the sweet spot on the internet I could call home. It’s almost like my personal life in the last ten years. Having moved more than ten times in the last ten years, it is quite strange to say that I’ve finally found my home. This was the first time in ten years I didn’t get my annual itch to pack up and flee for my life, which says a bit about the approach to my second stint in our Mother City. This time she captivated me, and the lifestyle she promises is what I strive for in my everyday life.

Now, have I been living to her full potential. I would say no, I haven’t. With my work in applied sciences (long hours and high stress), I barely made an effort to survive, let alone live. I got to November 2024 and realised the year has passed me by and I could hardly recall the highs and the lows. I was living in autopilot. That’s when I made the decision that would not be my life anymore. That is a version of myself I do not want. So, I decided to pick a word for the year again (a practice I haven’t done since before 2020), set up my yearly bucket list (a practice I haven’t done since 2022) and create a new outlook on 2025. Dubbing it the year of ‘Intent’.

This is where Simply Living Aloud was born. It was created to be a platform where life lessons, passions, travels and personal goals could be shared. Finding beauty in the mundane. Frolicking with letters and pictures after the real-world frolicking was done.