A Cypriot Work Life

I moved to Cyprus with my family in 2006. There was me, my husband and my two sons. We had a great life there at first but the hardship of earning decent money took a toll on us when Cyprus changed to the Euro from Cypriot pounds.

Things got expensive and the money we were earning wasn't enough to keep us. So, my husband took two jobs. I worked for an excursion company and dealt with tourists who wanted to book them. We worked with Thomsons and Thomas Cook and other well-known travel firms. The work was enjoyable and at times quite uplifting.

I enjoyed my days sitting in airconditioned expensive hotels talking to tourists who were interested in our excursions. It was an encouraging job and sometimes it gave me time to write. I wrote for a few small magazines in my spare time and it earned me a small amount of money. It wasn't a fortune but it helped.

I wrote travel articles; mainly about the excursions that were available in Cyprus for a glossy magazine. I also wrote short fictional stories for another magazine that published fiction and poetry along with some articles. I even tried to get published in a local newspaper a few times but gave up eventually.

My job selling excursions was interesting because I also got to go on them before describing them to the tourists that came to Cyprus. I got to write about the excursions in a local glossy magazine afterward. To be honest my job helped me to write and see my way forward with my writing.

I wrote before I came to Cyprus but it really got going when I lived in Cyprus because that's where I started to write my first novel. A romantic thriller set in Cyprus on The Island of Love became my published novel.

The life I lived when working in Cyprus gave me time to think about my real love for writing and how it was making a comeback. I started to write when I lived in the UK after studying creative writing but living and working in Cyprus gave me the stamina to write with thrilling excitement.

The excursions I was selling were delightful and historic. Some interesting people would tell me their tremendous travel stories and it ignited me with a passion that I didn't know I had. From there my fiction writing bloomed in ways I didn't understand.

Working in Cyprus was hard. I didn't earn much plus the hot summers between July to September were scorching and tiresome at times even though I was lucky to sit inside airconditioned hotels or a cool office. Work was enjoyable and fruitful dealing with people who were on holiday and in a happy mood. It made me happy to help them. The environment of my work situation was never tiresome. It fulfilled me because it gave me a purpose to be there at that time in my life. Me and my husband grew our sons up there and they enjoyed living there. Life there was free and happy. Our weekends were spent on a beach except for when I worked on a Saturday morning and sometimes on Sunday mornings on alternative weekends.

The only reason we left Cyprus was because of how low our earnings were and plus my son wanted to go back to the UK to study. My work life was enjoyable but our earnings were never going to go up. We needed money to live and that wasn't happening.

So, what was really important? The enjoyment of working in a job you love for less money or a job with good earnings? We all need money to live a decent life, so, I guess money wins.

You can enjoy your work but you may not get the earnings you seek and that was our situation in Cyprus. Life had to change for money reasons, so we left Cyprus and it broke our hearts.

Also published on Medium.com

Read a romance thriller set in Cyprus... watch the book trailer below: