Growing Pains
I have been meaning to write the last few months but I have been struggling to find good words. There are so many updates but they seemed too personal, too inconcrete, too boring. I’ve been receiving comments about my life being either boring or wholesome which really shows who thinks of the glass half-full or half-empty. It took someone yelling at me drunkenly that I am boring when I left a party before everyone else, for me to think that I have become less relatable. I have been focusing on myself so much that I have safeguarded and prioritized a life that is so different from a year ago that I am not sure if I am shedding skin or peeling it off. Going home over Christmas, it felt the urge to reintroduce myself. Sitting in the sad, grey Winter landscape of Germany I escaped myself. It was uncomfortable.
Growing pains. Becoming unrelatable. Not having enough time to explain your life to old friends. Feeling different emotions. Becoming the optimistic counterpart. Skillfully and maybe delusionally avoiding skepticism, reservation and anxiety. To just do it.
Growing pains. Feeling all the frustration from the neglect that I experience from faces of the past. Finally feeling anger and rage. But no anger is directed to anyone or myself, it’s simply been brewing within me. Getting mad at insignificant encounters. Taking the higher road but wanting to sink low.
Growing pains. Taking distance. Leaving things be. Understanding that the present is the present. No interpretation. Taking everything for how it is and what it is in the moment. We’re close if they want to meet me and estranged when I don’t hear from them. Resigning. Rescheduling. Saving time for simple things. Pure acceptance. Trying to sleep eight hours. Waking up refreshed. Feeling my head spin and then coming back to center as I stretch my hands out of the blanket and take a look outside the window and thereby take a look at the day.
So what has this year been like? If I wanted to I could write this year like a romantic comedy, because in January my boyfriend came back to the city and we got to truly be in our relationship. I was still hanging out with people that moved away and it all became quieter until it was spring. I moved places and finally found a pretty room and wasn’t living with strangers anymore. Then I started working as a Barrista again. In April I went to Germany for almost three weeks and met some people that got me back on the trajectory to pursue creativity and arts although I had written off. Simultaneously, working in the café welcomed me into the city and into a new community, a place of connection and I met a bunch of new people. Then by summer more people moved away and it got real quiet but somehow within that tranquility and heat I didn’t realize how much socializing I was still doing. August was a long siesta and in September I became an Arts Student and sunk deep into my projects. At the same time, my boyfriend and I decided to move in together. After an exhausting search we moved in November, although we spend the first month with barely any furniture and one complication after the other. After six years of shared living I wake up thankful every morning to live with my boyfriend in a place where the park is close and the city is close but muteable. This is also the year where I learnt to speak Spanish, an entire new language in a year might be my proudest achievement. I had many people come visit me. I enjoyed everyone here. I learned a lot about friendship this way. I learned a lot about relationships and most of it in since moving in together. I learned a lot this year by picking up new studies. I truly love to learn.
Other things vanished into relativity as many things that I worked for are coming true. So, I won’t be back. I will stay here, respectfully, peacefully. I try not to be cringey but I think words of fullfilment often are. So in many ways there are only cringey things left to say. I will keep those to myself. The sun is shining already and the trees are green in winter. My reliant companions. Unwavering between growing pains. Who are your companions?
Rage list
A thing I haven’t given a lot of space to this year or ever is anger. So here is a list of things that anger me to even the score, best enjoyed while listening to some angry tunes I compiled.
My general inability to sleep 8 hours for more than two nights.
Needing activities to hang out.
Loving to work with people but getting exhausted from it.
Polarized opinions. Stop making the other person your enemy. There is a reason why you are talking to them - your proximity to them is accusatory.
The general trend to make everything a topic and a conversation. Stop dissecting details when you know the person in general.
Talking with keywords. Truly explaining yourself happens beyond words of whatever psychology trends are being blown up on your for-you-page.
Criticizing people’s opinion based on how they look.
The loss of true hobbies. (Hobbies that aren’t coffee, yoga, reading, movies, etc.) And equally that the pursuit of arts and creativity is not considered deeply human but a hobby. That it needs courage or that it is considered different not to strive for a corporate career.
Using a group dynamic (aka a power dynamic) to address things.
Feeling attacked for people showing decency.
Being too quick to leave and let go of people. The most beautiful relations are those where conflict can be dealt with and differences are accepted. You don’t know depth if you only interact with what you agree with.
Not keeping contact and blaming it on being busy.
Talking about the past all the time.
Not trying to understand. I keep saying this to myself and everyone else struggling with the language they are learning. If the other person speaks the language and doesn’t understand you, they don’t want to understand you.
Allowing things to get to me.
Skepticism instead of support. Reservation instead of engagement. Anxiety instead of encouragement.
Using phones when a conversation gets dry, a hangout gets slow or time needs to be passed. You are missing out on the mundane, the daily, the innocent.
The lack of nature in our daily lives.
Recommendation 01 - Shrinking
The general recommendation is that Apple TV+ is worth it. Bad Sisters. Ted Lasso. Truly worth it. However, Shrinking is a charming, entertaining, hilarious, deep, heart-wrenching life-commentary about a bunch of psychologists, their neighbors, daughters, best friends, patients and pasts. It has Jason Segel as main character who plays a Psychologist who lost his wife and is trying to overcome the grief. I think grief is maybe the most social emotion. A person is never grieved by one person only. There is a network around that and they all try. Shrinking makes you feel it. Shrinking makes you laugh it too.
Recommendation 02 - Best of 2024
Top Music: 2024 Wrapped
Top Books:
Sally Rooney - Intermezzo
John Williams - Stoner
Gabrielle Zevin - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Coco Mellors - Cleopatra and Frankenstein
Top Movies:
Perfect Days
Poor Things
Was man von hier aus sehen kann
Challengers
Top Places:
Lisbon
Greek Theatre on Montjuic
Pedraforca
Our apartment
Top Foods:
Dehydrated Coconut
A simple salad dressing: 1/2 Joghurt, 1/4 Mustard, 1/4 Agave
Bocadillo con Tortilla de Patatas
Lov Ferments Kombucha Baya
La Consciente Ferrero Rocher
Top Apps:
One Sec
Radio Garden
Germany?!
You weird place of efficiency and stares. Of amazing heat isolation and greyness. Political failure without consequential revolt. Outdoor clothing and a weird trend following for deserts. Clear rules and clear conversations. I wonder, did they stay there because they wanted to or because they know nothing else? Did I leave because I didn’t like it or did I just want to be different? I hate how Germans talk to their children. How quickly they are fed up and annoyed. It shows how well this country works. I had already made up my negative narrative of it: Individually great, collectively disappointing. And then a grandma came up to me and we had a wonderful conversation while waiting for the metro. And a woman ran up to me to compliment my bag. And I was making jokes with a man who lost his Santa beard. Equally warm as it is cold. The German seasons as the German mentality. As attractive as revolting. Germany makes me wonder. About myself and what I want. Germany makes me wonder. About how everything works but at what cost. I wonder. Enigmatic and frustratingly smooth.
Pattern recognition
You want to know what I learned this year? I have been asking myself often this year: How to know whether I am right?
Maybe I am mistaking the right thing with the egotistical thing. It is easy to choose in my own interest but that is not (ethically and philosophically) truly “the right thing”. Nothing personal can be good based on economic consideration. What is good for me? What pays off? Boycott Homooeconomicus!
But maybe I am only doing what is right for others because of it. How to identify a people pleaser? What is the difference between a community-oriented collectivist and the ones that exploit themselves? Oh to be Eleonor Ostrom and slam down decisions with a humanistic gavel.
Then there is analytics. Systems thinking, design thinking. A trend but intriguing like sea moss and bone broth. To be innovative, analytical, human-centered but not self-centered. Meta-levels. Too big. Over my head.
And then I talked to my friend who studied physics. The science of the world. The science of everything too small or too big to grasp. I would like to define physics as the philosophy of time and matter. I apply this definition often. When I read about Entropy and I relate the disorder to the world. My friend tells me it is all pattern recognition. She is right. Once there is a patterns, I know what is right. Finding connections, there are no isolations.
Mark Twain correctly said history does not repeat itself but often rhymes. Bronze Age Collapse, Stock Market Crash. Global Pandemic, Witch Trial Panic. 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Agent Orange Pollution by the American Army. Someone tells me about being ghosted a fifth time. Someone tells me about their too busy life after the third career change. Someone tells me about not having enough time to take care of their home the forth week. And you realize it might not be surrounding circumstances. And I realize, just like they will have to, that (1) The pattern is me, I am the pattern. And I realize to respond to the pattern that makes me happy with amplification and I realize patterns that make me suffer or unsure. I realize (2) the sense and sensibility to leave and stay at the right times is the key to mental resilience. The resilience and flexibility to leave and stay is the best adaptation. Pattern interruption.
Thank you for being part of my Newsletter and of my 2024!
I wish you a happy new year. I hope it didn’t show too much that I was writing this newsletter while listening to Lana del Rey feeling very existential - or maybe that is a good thing. Feel free to leave a comment or a message about anything. Have a good one :)