Dear Reader,
we are in spring and it is time for me to come to early conclusions about this year. Like Kylie Jenner once proclaimed the year 2016 as the year of realizing things (I can’t believe I am so old that I am quoting memes of almost ten years ago!), I am proclaiming the year of 2025 as the year of doing it all. The year where contradictions only exist as confirmations of who you truly are. I have been taking myself as proof and experiment to test this thesis. And here is how it has been:
First, there was winter. Cold and dark, it has a toll on us (me). My smiling, happy being might be based on my plant-like traits: Sunlight and water. The past weeks water became tea and sunlight became the two red heating-rods of my electrical heater that I bought for 20 euros and stopped working two months ago. If I was a plant, I would be loosing leaves, but since I am human, I am loosing my mind. Winter makes me stressed. Micromanaging sun-time and resigning to the sunset at 17.25 - unaccomplished. Unaccomplished, because this year I had a winter resolution: Not to become lethargic. Now I realize, I have become more lethargic than I thought.
And then February moved into March and I realized that spiritually I am also closer to my actual mammal body. Winter hibernation. I woke up slowly. And then March was this packed and stressful month where I kept pushing deadlines, combined with hang outs, visits and me-time and it miraculously worked: I have sold my first illustration (three in total at three different events!). I have been thoroughly involved in my two Masters - one in creative art and one in political communication. I have been going to the gym again and just now ran my fastest 10k since the pandemic. I have rested more and spend more time sitting on the couch. I have been working on myself by letting it rest and talking it through and siting with it. In many ways I have been less ambitious. I have truly accepted the often-repeated “It only has to make sense to you”. And there have been many doubts. The idea of being surrounded of artists where “the best” doesn’t exist but endless possibilities. I have been working in the café and I have been cherishing all the regular customers that have become a part of my weekly routine and make me feel so loved. And I think I have been more peaceful about my friendships and realized that they won’t fall away but that I need them to not fall short of a good life and nourishment. It’s been exhausting and rejuvenating. There are so many things I think about but just now I feel only that I am so proud because of the effort. I have acquired a new comforting thought: I realized that I will have a sense of being fulfilled because I am always the person that can invest themselves and excited themselves about so many things.
The consequence of intimidation?
I have been thinking a lot about how it came about - the change, the piece of mind, the stable heart, the growing roots - and I find one thing that has been happening to me a lot: Intimidation. Every day I work or study in a language that I have been speaking for about one and a half years. Every presentation no longer becomes a preparation of slides but a preparation of words. Every customer complaint becomes a delicate situation of finding words instead of the refunding button in our ticketing system. Every deeper conversations comes to a halt after some time because of me. I used to take pride in how I use and absorb language but all of that is gone. I am the dumbest in the room almost every day and I am reduced to it a lot. In class it is the first thing people say, at work I am complimented for my English or reminded of how slow I speak Spanish. It’s intimidating when every day conversation become the test that a stressful situation is supposed to be. It is intimidating always being the only one who’s not part of a culture, especially when this is your partner’s friends and family. It strips of all sense of belonging and when I create belonging then in a language that also isn’t mine but just the language I learned before.
Equally, at my second Master I am a baby compared to the people in my class who have been educated in the fine arts, graphic design and animation. I have been in a field that no one understands. A lot of time what I am trying to do no one understands. I don’t make sense to people anymore. The culture I can rely on is unknown, the language I can best utilize is not understood and the topics I have invested years on lie parallel to the subject I am now in. Maybe it is realizing that cringe is repackaged adrenaline that will keep you going. Then, this is peace - knowing that I can only do it for myself; that no one else will understand it the way I can; knowing that I don’t even need to try to explain but do and see - my reaction and then theirs. I am guided by this. I am trained and rewarded and rejected. It has taken a long time to realize that I am a foreigner as I talk and look and where I aspire to, but there has been the most acceptance here. And this is how I feel roots sprouting from feet. As I start to run into people randomly because I know people around the city now, as I have random chats at events and in trains, as I am referred to as ‘la rubia’ and as people try to find or loose track my German nationality. It took me a long time to realize that I am simply interesting to them. They want to know and I love to practice my words. So I chit-chat with the customers and my fellow students and my partners friends and family, often humiliated but never like the others. And I understand that belonging is not an activity.
The missing puzzle piece
Then there are these moments that seem like hidden revelations that I will keep as a life lesson until I am old and grey. February’s life lesson was the importance of the sofa. I am not kidding. Since moving into our apartment we have been struck by challenges: Broken fridge, bed bugs, and NO SOFA. For all this time it has been difficult making our house feel comfortable and us being in tune with each other. All this was metaphorically written out by the status of the sofa we had ordered the same week we moved into. The DANA in Valencia affected the warehouse and delivery was pushed back a month. Then we missed the delivery date and then we were never informed about the new delivery date. The entire time we had an empty room and I can’t understate we way it subconsciously affected my feeling of being whole in the apartment. I keep the work “through-it”-mentality and so we did but, truthfully, the day we finally got our sofa and sofabed for guests something magically cleared up. It all made sense. The apartment we purchased. That we moved in togethers so quickly. That we had struggled with adjusting to it. Maybe we just needed a place to lay down that wasn’t a bed. We needed a breather. And somehow a sofa can be breather just like spring is the breather we take from winter. I was so irritated why we weren’t in our comfortable space, but it wasn’t more complex than the sofa. The missing puzzle piece was the couch. The emptiness was felt because it physically existed. We are spacial beings always and I think we all underestimate the physicality of environmental factors. Those are couches and plants and pictures on a wall and a place for our keys and a certain spot in the fridge for the milk and the order of arranging the plates after washing them.
Recommendation 01 - Wilmington 10 - USA 10.000
I saw the incredible movie that is Wilmington 10 - USA 10.000 by Haile Gerima and Skip Norman. I got to see it in the local museum’s cinema. Recently restored it brings up history and a sense of life so bleak and brave and sober that it felt the life I was getting back to when leaving the cinema was the staged one and not the movie. When watching old movies I notice one thing above all: The well-spoken-ness of people - especially (Afro-American) liberation activists. Where have the great speakers gone? The film also features an interview of Assata Shakur from the Black Panther Party, before she escaped prison. Her poetry at the end of the movie grabbed me entirely. And the music featured beautiful protest songs. And I wonder what happened to being well-spoken and what happened to protest music? Where did Revolution go? And how will anyone start it, if they can’t talk about it right?
In an admiration of protest music, I have long-ago started to curate this playlist:
[I added onto it after the movie. The theme song of the movie is a beautiful acapella piece called “Echo”. I tried to find the song after the movie but couldn’t. So I texted the museum and I got a reply from the organizers who personally screenshotted the credits to me. I have been loving this idea that they would care for it. It gives me hope that, in all my attempts to strive for employment, publishing, contracting and growth, that I may continue to reach high and that a long shot might as well be the right distance.]
Illustrations!
Since I am pursuing something new, I just wanted to show some things I have been doing and highlights of my time practicing illustrations, mainly because I need it. It’s been hard starting out and slowly finding my style and people that like it. You can find all my stuff on Instagram but I wanted to post some highlights of my first exhibition, a printed illustration about the potato and doing all of this manually.
Most recently I made this little booklet:
Thank you for reading!
This one was a little bit more “carpe diem” than I might like but I hope it inspires you in a non-cringey, honest way - just like it is meant :)