NEWSLETTER 10
Empty August/Permanent Vacation
It’s been a long time since my last entry. Since then I celebrated my 24th birthday, spend some time in Germany and had to say goodbye to a lot of friends who have finished their studies and are now going back home or onto new homes. At the same time, following the natural rhythm of a Southern European summer, in August people leave the city for the month to escape to the Costa Brava, to beach houses and far away destinations. I should have done so too, but, I cannot complain, as I am now trailing off to the beach as much as I can while soaking up the heat as if it were nourishment. My destination this summer was more mundane: My hometown. As good as it was to be back, I find myself in limbo returning - happy to see my friends and to eat my favorite foods but reminded of so many things and all the reasons why I left. Coming back to Barcelona, it is nice to see the city take up more space when it is not taken up the quantity of people. While I am deeply embracing tranquility it feels like I cannot keep up with the summer fun that I see other people have when I check online. In fact, I currently find myself on “permanent vacation”, which is the term I have given my current employment status, after being let go while I was on vacation - no fun vacation. A month of unemployment seems tempting but spending all this time without obligations yet without money to use up my free time has left me swaying. On the other hand, slowing down like this has been a mandated introspection journey. I spend a lot of time alone. Time passes quickly and one day connects to the next in a repetition in which I am the only person that has a say in. Usually, I try to keep myself busy with projects and plans but this time I am still. I’m getting a bit bored of being in the city or, more so, the city is boring without my friends and I’m very grateful for the few that stay and the ones that are here to stay. The verdict: I am in need of traveling again. So, if someone is up to travel for a week in September, let me know. I would be happy to go anywhere (cheap) or visit somewhere (also cheap). In the meantime I will live out my beach mood board and force myself to go alone rather not going, because it is the most refreshing thing to do other than spending time in my air-conditioned gym or air-conditioned coffee places.
A Barcelona Travel Guide
Spending all this time in Barcelona, I love to explore the city and I will mark every place that seems nice on my Google maps folder. I decided to bring it to the next level by creating a little Travel Guide for Barcelona with all of my favorite places. Many times people ask me for recommendations and my Google Maps folders have been overflowing, so, I made an aesthetically-pleasing city guide to see what can be recommended and done in Barcelona without oversaturating it. If you wanna save it for a visit sometime or look through it to judge my taste and likings, you can find it here: Barcelona Travel Guide
Recommendation 01 - Was man von hier aus sehen kann
This is for German speakers only: Please watch “Was man von hier aus sehen kann”! I knew it was an amazing movie when I first saw it and it has been my favorite movie of recent but I finally got to show it to a German-speaking friend and seeing her feel for it as much as I did was the confirmation that I needed and now I cannot stop thinking about the movie and how good it is. I promise you that you will laugh and then cry and then laugh again and then be nervous and maybe thrown off and then laugh again and then cry again and then feel like it has been the greatest, emotional, feel-good rollercoaster.
Recommendation 02 - Butter by Asako Yuzuki
This book is the most complex and diffuse story on food, womanhood and society I have ever read. It is based on the real case of the “Konkatsu Killer”, a female serial killer who would lure in men she would find on marriage-hunting websites and then poison her soon-to-be-husbands. Yuzuki expands this story and omits a verdict of the “Konkatsu Killer”’s, Manako Kajii, culpability. Instead, the reader is left wondering what killed the men and whether they were killed, because the narrative is that of a journalist’s who gets up close to Manako Kajii. Drawn in by Manako Kajii, their interaction assess how Kajii views societal standards unlike other women, how she twists them, how she hates women but loves them at same time, how everything is rooted in loneliness and how the truth is a perspective and maybe the place where you feel the most relatability.
A brief entry on Underconsumption
Since July I have tried not to buy any new clothes for myself and it has been the most rewarding challenge. As if it wasn’t obvious, the less I buy the more I find use in the things I own. Understanding that I don’t need more and that I also don’t want more has been rewarding because I have stopped overwhelming myself. The same I have started to apply for food and I have found that the less ingredients a dish the more satisfying it is. Do with that information what you will but maybe try it yourself.
Recommendation 03 - Is there a sane way to use the internet?
This newsletter originally started out because I was doing the 90’s challenge where I was living in the technological world of the 1990s. Now, once again, I have decided to stay away from social media for a few weeks as I just cannot find a way to consume media sanely. I found this podcast which explores my predicament and I feel like the way Ezra Klein explains his relationship to media consumption - “Don’t consume what doesn’t make you feel good afterwards”; “You become the medium that you consume the most” - which also means that there is a happy side to using my phone like scrolling through Radio Garden and listening to smart Podcasts and it will be help me become worldly instead of short-worded from scrolling on Twitter a lot. You can find the podcast episode here and I would also advise you to listen to their episode on cockroaches.
I might have become too boring
I feel like for a longer while after this newsletter I will pause writing them as I am afraid that my life and what I do has become kind of boring. To quote Kendrick Lamar in “6:16 in LA” (IMO the most underrated diss track in his series against Drake) “I'm sorry that I live a boring life, I love peace”. Maybe I have grown old too quickly or maybe I am too aware of myself, or maybe I need my blood levels checked for some energy deficiency but I am not doing anything interesting other than hanging around with my boyfriend, hanging out with friends, reading, watching YouTube, doing sports, cooking food and going on day trips. So, don’t get me wrong, I am living well but I have lost any sense of main character energy that had once urged me to write these newsletters. I do also think that right now I am going through a preparation period as there are new things to start in October and life cannot get boring because things happen as long as time happens and I can feel the time passing already to where I will look at these summer months as the most calming time of my life. But just for now, life is too quiet for me to be interested in writing it down.