I'm not sure if this
is something everyone can relate to, if it's a girl problem or if it's
just me who is affected by it, but let me tell you something. Sometimes I look
in the mirror not just to check that I don't have any stains on my clothes or to
check my face for leftover toothpaste, but in order to really look at me. As a
matter of fact I assume that every single person who knows me has probably more
of an idea about my face, its shape and generally how I look than I do.
Sometimes when I share one of these intense looks with my own reflection
it happens that I do not even recognize me anymore. Or maybe that's just the moment where I can truly see all my features unlike those short glimpses I get
throughout the day.
Usually when I take a
little more time to look at myself I start to see every flaw. I don't have pure
skin, there is this scar on my forehead and I think that my face is genuinely
not what I consider good looking. Of course there are also things about my body
that I dislike, which add up to my vain unhappiness. I mean I know that I could
do more for myself and I'd probably look better, I could wear more make-up, use
skin care more regularly and dress better, but even though I think about these
things doesn't mean that I think I should do them every day.
There are also other days
luckily, in which I can't help but compliment myself, like for example the
colour of my eyes, for how my hair lies or sometimes a shirt that I bought that suits me. Getting a
compliment from a friend is cool and feels nice, but getting one from my
harshest critic, me, feels just as good. Sometimes one of these
I-kind-of-do-not-dislike-myself-that-much days can lead up to some pampering.
Sometimes I start to paint
my nails, just because I can. I do not care on most days, yes, but I can enjoy treating
myself with some make-up or nail polish from time to time. It might not end then;
sometimes I want to embrace that good feeling even more so I start to look into
my wardrobe for the right piece to enhance my beauty. When I found it I look
into the mirror again. It's the same person I considered ugly the day before,
the very same features, but my perspective has changed. It happens that I spend
minutes just standing there, trying to understand why I can feel so different about
my own body that has not really changed but just feels different. From time to
time I'm done at this point, looking and trying to figure out my own self, but
it there are also moments when I move on to another Level.
I hate photos of me. I
don't mean I dislike pictures of me and my friends, I love them. I just don't
like me alone in a photo. There are only two moments when it's ok for me to
take a picture of myself. Firstly when my profile picture on facebook is so
outdated that I managed to change my hairstyle twice since taking the last one
(trust me, that did happen way too often) and secondly when I feel beautiful. As
a result I have probably more selfies than you'd expect, but most of them were
taken on about six days throughout my entire life.
Let me tell you, giving
yourself an ego-selfie-photo shoot is a real joy. Some of my pictures look very
very bad so I delete them just after taking, but others are very nice ones too.
Don't be embarrassed to pose a little; no one is ever going to see them anyway,
unless you decide to share them. Enjoy your own body,
feel unashamed. Try out different angles, pull faces or
use filters, whatever pleases you. Don't listen to anyone, not even
yourself, when they tell you you're worthless or ugly as beauty is in the
eye of the beholder. If you dislike cameras as much as I do then face it
anyway, you don't want to look at all the beautiful photos of your friends and
pretend all of them look incredibly good and you are the ugly duckling. It's
not true. And remember, one thing is for sure, a picture says more
than a thousand words.
Cheerio.
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 .
Soon, very very soon it
will be my favourite month again. It wasn't anything spectacular until the year
2011, but since then I can't help but be excited for it. I even remember that
the year before November was especially rough as I had to go through a lot of
personal struggles (including a broken heart, hard times at school and health
issues). Luckily those are now all over and as I said, November turned out to
be my favourite month despite the cold weather. I have already told you pieces
of it, but today I hope you get the whole picture of the adventure called
NaNoWriMo.
NaNoWriMo stands for
national novel writing month, but in fact it should be called
"international" by now, as there are people all over the world
participating in it. When I first heard of it during summer 2011, I had no idea
about the journey that it would take me on. I thought the idea was plain crazy,
but I've never been very opposed to such things. I decided to make an account
immediately. The goal of NaNo is to get people to write. We all know that first
drafts are very rough; the plot holes might be as deep as Marianas Trench and
the character are as flat as a lake on a day without wind. Whilst we are aware
of that, we also know that without producing anything you cannot improve. If
you do not write, how are you supposed to get the stories out of your head?
That's quite hard. So during the thirty days of November a participant is
obligated to write 50,000 words, which are approximately 1666 words a
day.
You can't win anything,
except for the words you write and the knowledge that you did it. To be fair
that is pretty amazing and it feels brilliant. On the other hand it is hard
work. It means scheduling, maybe lack of sleep and less time with your friends.
Writing has to be on your list of priorities along with school and those
things. I usually cut down on facebook and the general not writing related
internet then. During my first year I was a senior, participated in a musical
and as I said I wrote a novel of 85,000. It was intense but so so good. I may
have already told you, but before this experience I considered myself neither
creative nor a writer. Nowadays those things are very important features to me
so yeah, I'm glad I figured that out.
Looking back there was a
huge chance of me just not attempting it the first year, even after signing up,
but the forums kept my spirit up. In October I joined the purple elephants, a
group initially formed to help out one guy with his girl problems that brought
together a bunch of cool people from different places. I think they are in
their fourth year by now and they are some of the rare threads that stay active
all year round. Basically all of them are very dear to me and were there for me
in times where I couldn't talk with anyone in real life and they are open
minded and supportive and I really really love them. Without them the noveling
experience would be half as enjoyable and as I said, they keep you motivated
with their excitement.
Now I want to tell you more
about the two stories I wrote and the one I'll be writing this year. NaNo '11
was a very important for me. I wrote the story called "truth is stranger
than fiction" which basically was a novel consisting of stories that
happened to me and my friends, in addition of a lot of fiction. Through this I
was able to get past some things that were bothering me for years and I learned
just how good of a therapy writing is. To this day it's the only story that
found an end, even though I have not managed to do any editing yet. I'm not
sure if I ever could do something with it because it's so personal.
Last year I did something entirely
different. Based on a nightmare I once had I created a dystopian world in which
there was a thing called "the ritual" in which kids become adults.
That story was called "Toward the light - Dem Licht entgegen" The
whole thing was supposed to be very psychological, the world building killed me
though and that's the reason why I stopped right after November. I'm still very
fond of the novel but right now it's just to time and energy consuming.
This year I'm back to my
used field, I want to write another young adult /teen’s novel. The basic idea
is stolen from a guy I know. He wants to do a volunteer year and before he
leaves he wants to sell his phone and delete his facebook account. That
somewhat made me think. I'm pretty often on facebook and even the idea of not
having a phone feels pretty uncomfortable for me. All in all that plan
inspired and fascinated me a lot and I decided to use it, even though I felt
very awkward at first. I always do when I use things that happen around me for
a story, but I work best when I have at least a rough idea of what I'm talking
about. I have to stress the fact that except for the very basic idea, the rest
is pure fiction. I always fear that people might get me wrong when I write romantically
stuff that is roughly based on someone I know. I am a writer and creativity
knows no boundaries.
Of course the general idea
is not that spectacular, so I had to add a pinch of drama, some romance and
several unexpected happenings. I also wanted to challenge my writing skills
somehow, so I gave the story a twist. I have two main character. There is Elis,
the guy who leaves for South America, and there is Chloë, a girl who is still
in school. They used to be friends but drifted apart somehow. Now she writes
him a letter because she is angry about what he did. She does not expect him to
answer, but he does. The whole story is supposed to be narrated through those
letters. Nothing else, no more descriptions, just a whole bunch of letters.
It will be quite hard, as
there are only that much you can include into a letter about for example how
they look like and about the very obvious things that they've known for ages, but
I will try my best to figure out a way. I'm so looking forward to where this
story may lead me.
So I'm sorry if I bored you
to death, but bare with me during this time. Or just leave if you don't care :P
Cheerio.
P.S. This post is scheduled
as I'm in Germany right now, just thought I'd tell you.
Two things I see as given
in my life, firstly I try to be as punctual as possible, secondly I'm terribly
chaotic. So when you mix both of these together you get a person with an
absolute need for pressure in order to finish something. If there is no due
date then I'll probably procrastinate until either I run out of more irrelevant
things to do or when pigs actually start to fly.
Here, have an example. I
told you about this presentation I had in my last post. I actually wrote it the
night before, making the PowerPoint presentation the very same day I had to
stand in front of my class and talk about it. I tried to start earlier, but
couldn't squeeze one mildly intelligent word out of my brains. Besides, you
know what? The lecturer told me actually that I was rather good. Of course it
wasn't perfect, but I never expected it to be anyway.
Another situation on which
I realized that not everyone can actually withstand the tension* of last
minute entries was when I wrote this big paper during my final year of school.
I had all the information gathered but I was only able to write on it about
four weeks before I had to hand it in, which considering the amount of time we
had, was very little. Even my teacher made a remark on it saying he was
slightly worried and admitting that he had no reason to. That also was the
moment my mum could finally accept that I work in my own pace.
They even talk about this
whole issue in the bible, I mean hello? What I'm talking about is written in
Ecclesiastes and to be honest, that's part of the reason why this book is my
favourite. Just read the verse and you might understand me. "To every thing
there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." [Eccl. 3:1; KJV]. I just feel like this sentence gets
my way of thinking. It's not about pushing it off mindlessly, it's about doing
it when you are ready, when the idea is ripe to become real.
That's also the reason why
I try my hardest to keep a weekly schedule up, even when weekly isn't determined
with a certain day. When I loosen up too much then I might quit, which is the
last thing I want to do right now.
Finally this whole schedule
thing gets more and more important as NaNo approaches fast. I think next week
you'll hear more about it, as I want to introduce this fabulous project to all
of you. The fact that you just have to get the right amount of words during November
is the best push I can get. I don't want to see myself loosing, especially
since I have won the past two years, of which the first my schedule was about
to burst due to all the things I was involved. I'm pumped for it and almost set
to go. On the other hand I need to have my time organized well or I might
end up neglecting either school, writing or my social life, which I want to
prevent from happening!
To sum this up, schedules
and deadlines keep me motivated and help me organise, even though what I'm
doing might look like a mess to orderly people. I simply flourish
under pressure. They also provide me with good
products instead of just some lightly planed bits and bobs, as last minute
execution leaves way more time and room for good planning beforehand. It's probably best
that everyone has their own way of dealing with their own time.
Cheerio.
* I am sorry, insider alert
;)
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
Over the past couple of
years I have accomplished to life with the fact that sometimes I get extremely
awkward. I don't consider that as something special, because I know that a lot
of people get to know that feeling at one point or another. One thing that
usually makes me quite uncomfortable is in fact a very small detail, but I've
always been very good at over analyzing so enjoy reading along. Let me
introduce you to the difficulty of saying "Hello" & "Goodbye".
I don't mean the general
shouts in a crowded room, no I mean actual face to face welcome style
"Hellos". Basically in my life there are five general kinds of how to
get that done around. The most common is "the handshake" It's
appropriate when you meet someone for the first time, if you want to reduce intimacy
of any kind and you might even express a little discomfort towards a person
through this medium. It's also important for less close relationships like business
related things. In case of insecurity always go for a handshake and you can do
almost nothing wrong, at least in western civilisation.
In certain situation it
might feel uncomfortable though. When I meet a person around my age I consider
a handshake to be too formal. Also when I'm meeting friends and I don't want to
really interrupt them I need something different to get their attention. There
"the wave" is great. People can decide to acknowledge your move and
welcome you properly or they can just look past it. It's also very useful to
make a general statement instead of having to walk up to each person
individually. To be honest I guess "the wave" is my go to move as
it's very nonchalant to use.
A third thing is "the
clap'n shake". I know that one mostly from the guys at our church. It's
less formal than a handshake, a little friendlier and more personal. It means
first you clap your hand together and with a smooth movement you switch into a
short handshake. Troubles included in that one is a bad clap and confusion by
the person not knowing that you initially wanted to do that move. It's pretty
handy though and I fully understand why the guys use it a lot.
My former enemy and now
best friend is "the hug" though. I used to seriously hate hugging
certain people as I didn't like getting touched in general. Over the time I
learned that some of my friends are veery good huggers though and I also
understood the general meaning of a hug. You can put in a lot of warmth,
sincerity and care into that move and it shows a lot of positive feelings. I am
a hugger but I'll never forget that I wasn't always so I can respect other
people's boundaries when they feel not comfortable with that one.
And last (but also least)
is the freaking awkward 2-3 kisses on the cheek thing. Yes I have a biased
opinion on it and you might've guessed that it's not positive. I do not
understand it; usually it's just rubbing your cheek against another and making
kissing sounds. Why is that even a thing? It doesn't mean anything and it feels
odd. Actually that is the reason why I write this post. At my Uni we have this
bible study group and for some reason they've used this method to greet each
other. So far I've managed to escape it by using "the wave" and
settle things as soon as I enter but not today. So I awkwardly held out my hand
and totally confused this one guy, which internally made me laugh a lot. I mean
those cheek kisses with a girl is doable, with a guy I dislike and with a
bearded guy I hate, I am sorry.
Oh and on the subject of
seriously awkward, did it ever happen to you that you wanted to hug someone
whereas they aimed for a handshake? Or maybe the other way around, who knows.
And please do not let me get started on the troubles one can get across while
hugging, like stroking alongside someone’s face and hitting someone while
stretching out to give a proper hug, really terrible stories, believe me. Oh
and let's not forget when you accidentally missed to bid someone welcome the
right way and that person got disappointed or sad? Which reminds me of
that one person who seems to do that a lot towards me lately, how rude ;)
So you see, I am completely
nuts, but what do you except of a sleepless person at quarter past three in the
morning. Maybe I should get more sleep instead of thinking so much about
lavalieres.
Cheerio.
