What do you want to do when you grow up

This question we all got asked hundreds and hundreds of times growing up. Last Wednesday I was at my old school's graduation as I still knew some people who just graduated and I just wanted to go back. The thing is, that there were quite some people that I used to talk to quite a lot and after leaving school I never heard of them again, so I just asked the small talk question probably everybody would, starting with "how are you doing?" and ending with "what do you want to do next?". 

Finishing school is the end of this very lengthy chapter of your life so far. I still remember how it felt, having spent two thirds of my life, most part of my conscious existence, in education and suddenly you are out in the open. What do you do? There are some real classics, taking a gap year, going to Australia or another country far away, learning a language, working, starting university... barely anyone I've talked to didn't have at least a hint of an idea what the next few month were going to hold for them. I mean, I was the same, the plan was very clear: finding a job, working, travelling, starting university the year after. That did not work out and I wasn't even surprised. I kind of knew that, as a chaotic person, life and I tend to have different ideas for the next step, but that is ok as long as there is a plan at all.

I get so terribly aimless when I don't want to achieve anything. There are people who are amazing just surfing on those waves that the ocean of life provides them with. I'm not. Even though I am lazy I always try to involve myself in, to have a say in it too, but that's not always what I'm supposed to do. If we stay with that surfing picture, there is the lying on your belly and chasing the wave just as much as the riding it. You need to practice until your body knows what to do without even thinking about it, until it's more of an instinct than a thought through act. That's when you'll do it the right way. (Disclaimer: I've never really surfed in my life except for the internet, but you know...)

Now when I look back to getting asked the title question as a child I can remember various jobs I wanted to do: doctor, lawyer, computer engineer, forensic assistant, high school math teacher and so on. All of these require years of studying and hard work, besides, most of them are natural sciences, which is not my cup of tea as I know now. As a kid we don't see it that way. I know that probably every second child in an American kindergarden wants to become the president of the United States. Probably no one is going to have the guts to tell those little ones that the chances are very very limited for them. 

When we are young we just dream, we don't see what it takes to get there, we just see the goal. Now that I'm older I should be different, I should be aware that the way I work as a human being, I can never have my dream job, because that's the truth. I've never believed in those seemingly obvious things though. A few month back I was at a camp were we talked about callings. A friend of mine who was leading that camp asked me to tell the story about how I discovered what I was called for. She is familiar with my story and I have told it over and over before, so it was no big deal. Whilst talking to that small crowd of about 20-30 people I realized an additional thing though. I did not just talk about how in a dream I saw that I was helping a prostitute get out of that business, and I thus realized that this was what I wanted to do, but also what speaking about my dreams has done to me.

I'm talkative and sharing. Usually when something bugs me people will know. My intentions are mostly clear; I'm an open book to read. By telling so many people about my job dreams I have given them the opportunity to see me fail. I dream big, I want to fly high, so the fall could be pretty awful. I know that at the age of twenty I could've done more, I could be further. I still have no idea how I will end up where I want to, if it's even possible for me or not. I don't know where it will take me. I've struggled so much recently with another part of my life that it starts to affect how I feel about everything else. I begin to lose trust in myself, my goals, my friends...

And that's where it needs to stop. This is not how I want to live my life. The word impossible doesn't exist in the same universe as God does. No one would tell a kid that it can't be doctor because the educational path is tough, because you never know if it'll make it. How I was four years ago doesn't define whether I can or cannot be better tomorrow. I know what I want to do when I grow up. I have not grown up yet, because that process will only end when I exhale my last breath. Until then I don't want to know about the odds of something happening, I just want to try my best to master this mess and during that, maybe I'll get lucky and achieve some of my well chased goals. If not, there will be some other good things in this for me.

Cheerio.

Ps. I'm kind of over apologizing for not writing. I needed a break and I took it, now I'm slowly getting into the mood again. Things hopefully return to normal now, but no promises.

Hit me baby one more time

I should probably just stop making titles out of pop songs I don't even like, but the other option I had was "from Saul to Paul" which from the perspective of a non-church person sounds either bad or like absolutely nothing. Anyway, here is the thing.

There is this topic that has haunted me for a long time now and whenever it reappears in my head I struggle with it all over. If you dislike everything biblically touched then feel free to skip this paragraph from here on. Otherwise just continue it is actually something more or less relatable. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the biblical story, but there was this bad guy called Saul who wanted to haunt down all the Christians only some years after Jesus had died. He was very successful doing it until one day all of a sudden he had an encounter with Jesus himself and that changed his life forever. Usually this little story and his life are used as a metaphor to cheer up those who consider them self too flawed as that they could ever be used by God.

As a person who lived on this planet for nearly twenty years let me tell you two things. Firstly we are all flawed and broken human beings. We all have scars somewhere, visible or not. Secondly, still some people have it worse than others and I just know where my place is in that scale.

I am a lucky girl. Don't get me wrong, I remember this time a year ago I spent most of my nights crying myself to sleep. You can now either think I'm weak or you understand that the breaking point of everyone is different. As you can see it took me less than a year from the ground up again. My life consists of valleys and peaks and I make sure to enjoy the view from a viewpoint as long as I'm up there. The next little down is probably just around the corner, its shadows reaching for me. I should just be grateful for all the sun that I got during my life, but it's a source of fear instead.


There's this saying "God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers". I mean if you are going through a hard time that sounds perfect, but when you know yourself that you handle things moderately then it's not as pleasant. This saying basically makes me the weakest soldier to ever join the forces. I honestly fear that I will not be taken seriously ever if my life resolves like this. Don't we all look up to those incredibly strong people who have not been taken down by anything?

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not asking for actual bad things to hit me, that'd just be plain stupid, no thanks. I also know what some people around me went through and I am very thankful that I didn't have to deal with it. Sometimes I just fear that due to me being what I call lucky, I do not understand how hard it actually is. Pain forms you, no one can tell me it doesn't. Imagine this piece of clay. It doesn't become a beautiful vase without some serious kneading, right? Humans are the same I think.

The fears get even worse when I think of what I want to do in the future. I might see some pretty terrible things later and I'm not absolutely positive that I can handle them. I've known that for a long time now and I still worry that that's the main reason why I'm not supposed to ever work in the field I plan to. What if I just fail due to my own weakness or because I simply won't be taken serious.

I'm a white girl, coming out of a family whit not too many issues. What do I know about the real world, about things like depression, violence, poverty, world hunger, drug abuse? Nothing. There are some other things I know though. I know that I'm willingly to learn about them. I want to listen, I want to help. I might not be strong yet, but I'll learn it, step by step, fight by fight. 

Sometimes I also feel like not yet awake. I think that there is more to me that I am now and I want to use my full potential. How do I wake up when I feel like I'm asleep all the time? How do I get past that stand-by mode, how do I awake the Paul that lives inside this lazy little Saul?

I think it's about transformation in general, about growing over you, again and again. You don't need to hit rock bottom, but you need to face fears. Everyone needs to fight their own battles, one demon at a time. If my biggest problem is my own laziness then that doesn't mean it's less of a problem than real life depression. Whatever hurts me is something I as a person cannot tolerate anymore. I might not have heroic stories afterwards, but I'll have personal growth and trust me, nothing is worse than standing still for too long.

Cheerio.

P.s. Sorry I'm lame, NaNoWriMo is eating my soul and my time. Which is a bad excuse but yeah .

Home sweet Home

As you all probably know and have heard too many times, I moved out. Well technically I'm only staying at my new plays 4 days a week, but you know, it somehow still counts. I'm halfway through my fifth week of doing this and very slowly but surely I adapted to this new phase and I feel more and more comfortable with my situation. Let me tell you a bit more about the whole first impressions I got.

So when I spent my first night at this scary new place I've only been there twice before. As I had some busy weeks right before I started uni it kind of happened that I only properly moved in the day prior to the actual first day. Of course my stuff was already there but it's not your place until you at least spent several hours there/slept there. I felt very anxious that day. I had not yet bought any food and I almost didn't dare to go out of my room as it was intimidating and somewhat overwhelming. My dinner that day was leftover celebration my Mum bought when we unpacked my things the week before.

I didn't sleep well that night, again due to the strangeness of the whole situation, but at least I expected that. Now I'm not going to tell you how the university stuff worked out, I might want to tell that in another post, I just want to talk about the shared flat I live in. It was strange sharing a place with people I didn't know at all. I did not even see my third flatmate until the day after I moved in, which seemed very odd to me. 

I live with two guys who speak French as their mother tongue and a fellow female that is Swissgerman. She is in her first year just like me, whereas the older guy is in his third and the younger does some kind of school (of which basically none of us understood what it's all about). I assumed that me and my FFM (female flat mate :D) would be going along well because she is easy to be with, but I was not sure about the guys, especially given the fact that I'm not confident at all of my French. At first the language barrier was huge, but it's not as bad anymore. (I can always use an English word if my French fails me).

The first week was very though and I missed home already on my second evening there. It was the sum of everything happening around me, the fast changes that caused this feeling, but still it was very hard on me. When I knew I was going home on Thursday evening I danced around in my room, happily packing my bags. I think I've never felt as homesick as the moment my train arrived at my hometown. I could've literally cried. I would've never thought that you could feel this way after just four days, but I couldn't help it anyway.

So the next Sunday I really didn't want to leave. Don't get me wrong, I didn’t have any really negative experiences, it was just too much to cope with, too many changes for me. I missed to have my friends close, I missed talking to my brother about things he doesn't care about but he still listens and I felt very lonely in general, which is weird given the fact I was surrounded by people a lot. Again I managed to get through that week, having only very small conversations with my flatmates.

During the third week we managed to be in one room all at once, which to be honest was quite the achievement. Since then it has increased rapidly though.

The situation now is pretty good I'd say. After some struggles with convincing the boys to stick to the cleaning schedule of us girls we have the older one on our side. The younger one starts to be annoying due to him lying to us about cleaning and not trying to understand what we say. Also he doesn't slow down while speaking to use which is kind of rude as we are trying our best to converse in French. Probably we should just blame it on his age, but c'mon, that's just not ok.

My FFM and the older MFM have started a prank war with each other, including fake arguments. It is hilarious to watch and listen to. I have declared my neutrality, but I'm secretly helping her a lot. I mean I've been pranked so much that it's kind of dull just watching, on the other hand it's in fact really nice not to be targeted all the time.

Yesterday the three of us stayed up till 1 am, even though we had class at eight, just to talk about music and movies and stuff. I realize how I start to actually enjoy this place, and once the word "home" even got into my mind while thinking about it, which made me smile.

I don't know how this will work out, as there is still a lot of time left here, but to be honest I feel quite confident that it might end up alright.

Cheerio.

Oh and before I leave, I should be writing on a presentation that is due tomorrow but I'm busy procrastinating .... The FFM proposed to drink Grappa to get over writers block....oh college life xD

Late night thoughts

Today I woke up at 4 am, out of nowhere. I could still feel sleep lingering somewhere in my head, but in that moment I knew that I wouldn't get more of it straight away. It's not a good sign to just wake up that early, I need a certain amount of sleep to maintain happy thoughts and to keep myself positive. When I wake up around this time, I start to think about my life and that at then it usually seems as if my optimism hasn't woken up yet. I'm just not able to see any good in a given situation then, my worries become huge and I'm overwhelmed. On the other hand I didn't want to get up, because that would've meant a serious lack of sleep and that's something I try to avoid as much as possible. To try to calm myself down I started to write the thoughts that I had into this post, because I didn't see any reason not to write about my fears and worries, as they are a part of me. Just be warned, if you are an easy target for negativism, then keep out today. So, here is what was going on:

The first thing I worried about was finding a flat. In my life there is always one main issue and right now, it's the shared-flat problem. I've now visited about seven flats, usually that's when people have found one, but of course not me. That lead me to think of what you all need to find in life. The perfect flat, a good job, friends, a significant other... There are loads and loads of decisions to make and that can be overwhelming and scary. Other decisions were already made by me, what if they were wrong? How do other people manage to survive the pressure of just being alive? Do they even feel the weight, do they think about the little decisions they take on a daily basis that are defining their lifestyle? I then went deeper into some topics.

Right now I'm working as a cleaning woman at a hospital, when I'm done I'll have worked there for five months. Other women are working there for ten, or even twenty years. I could never do this job for that amount of time; I cannot even imagine doing the same thing for three years. Doesn't life get boring and everything becomes bland? How does one be happy with only five weeks of holidays per year? Maybe it's just me, or maybe I'm just too young or to inexperienced, but I just don't understand. What do you do when you can't find a job? I tried for six month, but my parents kept my back. When you are older and you can't find anything, what do you do then? 

As I seem to be surrounded by couples lately I also am thinking a lot about guys these days, as you might've noticed in my past couple of posts. I can't help it, but most of the time I just can't see myself with someone else. How do you manage that the other person doesn't annoy you, or vise versa? I'm not so difficult to be friends with, but I think I'd be an annoying girlfriend, don't ask me why. Also I started to wonder how I would tell my parents if I ever had a boyfriend, how I would tell my friends. At this point just the situation seems incredibly ridiculous. 
What about later, at some point I might get married, have kids. Did you see the world we have around us? You know what could happen to those poor little creatures. Or what if my husband changed as much as my Dad did? What if I changed completely? I said being optimistic requires energy that I don't have in the morning, so I'm not always putting myself down as much.

The last thing I worried about was the whole growing up, going to University, having to find new friends problem. To this day I never really had troubles finding friends, I need some time to adjust but then it's not that hard. Still I worry a lot about that. What would the whole Uni experience be without the people around you? In my head not very funny. What will happen after Uni? I did not even start and I'm already afraid of it ending that is just crazy. 

At some point around 5 am I fell asleep again, but I really hate having all my fears building up that much in front of my eyes. The good thing is, life doesn't stop because of my fears, it goes on. As I had to get up at around eight, the shadows of the past night had vanished back to where they belong, the far ends of my brains, and I could go on as usual, at least more or less. During the day I finally remembered a song that goes hand in hand with my experience. I'm posting a cover version made by kickthepj below (I prefer it to the original one).

Cheerio.