Back To Shore

Lyrics: “Machines” – Biffy Clyro, 2007

For a moment I had considered the following words for the title:

“Cause I′ve started falling apart, I’m not savouring life”

which are the lines leading up to the words I did choose in the end. That would have made a rather depressing title though. And I’m not in such a low mood, because I am very consciously trying to work against that, by “taking the pieces and building them skywards”. Getting enough sleep or at least trying to. Being kind to myself. Drawing lines. Taking breaks. Doodling. Staying hydrated (not always managing that as well as I’d like. Being kind to myself about that as well).

Work is once again / still super busy and partly overwhelming. I question myself too often still and have to tell myself again and again that making mistakes is human. Not sure I made all that many mistakes, but it feels like it more often than I like these days. Anyway, sometimes my job comes with perks, or at least by now I don’t feel bad to claim perks, when they are available. Like volunteering to assist some coworkers on a job they had to do on a spoil tip, which is closed off to the public. I basically just went so I could look down and around and out….

Lovely little break from our office everyday routine. This weekend will also be a lovely little break as I’m away for a wellness trip with some friends.

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Civic engagement is also taking it’s toll still and again and I sometimes just wish I could just quit my participation, but I’d feel too bad about letting down the others long before I had announced I would. It’s just that it feels like I’m one of the few holding it together and I don’t know if I need to draw more lines. Ask for more support. But how can the other not see what needs doing? They’ve been part of it all as long as I have. I can only partly “blame” it on being raised as a woman with the inherent female impulse to pick up the slack. We’re as many women as men in our group so that can’t be it.

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Another piece to build it skywards is buying books. Reading books. Not the same activity. I still need to update my reviews on Storygraph, I have read quite a bit recently, while also binging “Department Q” on Netflix. Holy Shit, what a great show. Once I had finished it I had to skim back to some episodes to see how neatly they had woven all those trails together and planted hints along the way. I also immeaditely read the few “Carl / Rachel” fanfics I could find, because… duh! Chemistry!

And then there of course is music and buying gig tickets. I know I probably wouldn’t have needed the pre-sale code, but when I have it and know I want to go, I can just as well buy the ticket right away, right? My upcoming vacation in September, Department Q and all that had me in a Scottish mood: So I bought the Biffy Clyro ticket for January 2026 mere 5 minutes after the presale started and am at the moment getting reacquainted with all their good old stuff. The opening chords to “The Captain” still get me all hyped up, I mean just listen to it

I plan to watch the whole 90 minutes at some point in the very near future. Isn’t it nice to fall back in love with a band?

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Another thing that’s been weighing on my mind a bit these past few days, was, that my gynaecologist last week urged me to have recommended procedure done rather sooner that later. She called the hospital, I had a pre-op appointment there today and my procedure is scheduled for next Thursday. Out-patient so no big deal, but still a bit of a deal. Anaesthesia and so on. In my 50 years on this earth I only had to go through that once over 25 years ago. I’m not really worried about it all, it’s just such a nuisance to spend hours at the hospital, in surgery (more minutes than hours hopefully), recuperating and all that. But I’m glad this happens long before my trip to Scotland, so I can enjoy it. Six weeks more to go.

A post on a Thursday, what a surprise. And it’s not even that I have a lot to say or share. Maybe it’s time to re-think what I want to do with this online space? At various moments these past few days ideas popped up, but then when I was done with regular (paid for) work, I either couldn’t be bothered to sit down in front of a screen again to write something. Many thoughts also weren’t really that thought out, which also kept me from writing anything. And then there is the whole how much personal stuff do I really want to share here issue as well. So…. no proper posts this week so far.

I miss the good old days of Twitter, where I could / would just randomly share thoughts with “the world”. I don’t know if that was a good thing or a healthy thing, but at least I wasn’t second guessing everything I’m putting out. But maybe it’s a good thing that I do. And yes there are other social media apps these days and yes I’ve signed up for most of them, but it’s not the same and I just can’t be bothered with a lot of these anymore to be honest. Instagram is the one I’m using (at least following if not posting as much) the most. But sometimes my thoughts need more words than I my self enjoy reading in a several slides in a tiny font on an Insta Story.

There is no real reason to this post. Obviously! One of the “mmh, maybe you’ll write about that” ideas made me upload and an image from one of my many Scotland trips a few years ago, because I probably will visit that particular place again in September. I had originally planned to drop off my rental car in Dundee and spend a few days there, take the bus up and down the coast. I already booked an apartment on booking.com and all that.

Then Frank announced three “The Road to Lost Evenings” shows, one of them in Aberdeen, which is about 1:20 h north of Dundee (by train or car). It’s a tiny venue, so of course I’m going! Duh, fangirl and all. At first I thought I’d keep the apartment booking and just spend a night in a hotel in Aberdeen. But then I checked the latest reviews of the apartment and quite a few of he more recent ones complained about the mattress on the bed. Red flag! I need a good night’s sleep. Yesterday I had a look around and checked hotel room prices (Travelodge for the win, because I can be reasonably sure they have decent beds), even though I had planned to stay in a self-catering apartment. But… as I wouldn’t be in it for two days basically, that might be a waste of money. So the plan now is to stay in Dundee for two nights, store my suitcase for two nights, while I travel to Aberdeen with my big backpack. Then stay three more nights in Dundee before I move on to Edinburgh for Lost Evenings. I haven’t changed any bookings yet, I’ve still got enough time to cancel on booking.com, but will probably do all of that on the weekend.

What has this all got to do with the photo I mentioned? I checked what I could visit on my way back from Aberdeen to Dundee and the bus stops near here.

So I’ll be back and I’m sure it will be lovely. As long as it’s not raining. I plan to be there on 22 September and this photo was taken on 19 September in 2017, so I remain hopeful.

To get myself in the right mood for Scotland I’ve finally started watching “Department Q” on Netflix and 3,5 episodes in I’m enjoying it so far. The villian(s) we see so far (there might be more, as the the plot goes on) are a bit creepy, psychological torture and all that, but I like to see Matthew Goode all grumpy and messed up. And still charming in his way.

Originally I had planned to keep watching “Departure”, but the first episode of season 2 didn’t really get me hooked. Why is she working in Canada all of a sudden? London was one of the main reasons I tuned in for season 1.

Oh well, a grumpy Englishman in Edinburgh on Department Q make up for it.

“More on the conference and other stuff later this week. Maybe.”

That was the end of my post a week ago. Oh well. Maybe a Sunday recap is all I’m able and ready to do these days.

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This past week my mental capacity mostly was used up with work, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I feel like we’re getting somewhere with our main project and the next phase for it. Lots of good meetings with different people. A nice lunch break with a few colleagues – we often don’t manage that with our different work from home / at office schedule. A budget meeting that didn’t go as I had liked, but I have to deal with that anyway. At least it didn’t keep worrying about that all weekend, which is such progress from me a few years ago.

My current role in civic engagement also took up some of my time and I’m very much looking forward to stepping back a bit from it later this year. The social interaction of it takes most of the toll on me these days I think. I sometimes wonder if it’s the other people or me, but I guess it’s a combination of both and how we have changed over the years.

Whenever I felt it was all getting “too much” I also managed to not always seek distraction on my phone / TV / with books, but take a few moments to work on my recent “Doodling” it’s what I still call these:

But I also did fun stuff this week.

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Yesterday I went to see two basketball games as part of the FISU – World University Games 2025, which take place in our metropolitan area that the moment. You not often have the chance to watch professional sports (and uni /college sport already feels quite professional) for just a few Euros. The US women and men basketball teams both had a game nearby so I went and it was enjoyable. I don’t know how the player / team selection usually takes place, but according to the info online this year the USA decided to not put together a team of various students from different university, but select one team to represent the US. For the women it is the Red Raiders from Texas Tech and for the men it’s the Baylor’s Bears for Baylor University.

It was fun to watch, even though I don’t really know much about basketball rules. Like how many steps are allowed while dribbling and such. For the men’s game I had people behind me who clearly did and who almost called the infraction before the referees did. But the general concept of the game I know so it was easy to follow.

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I also made good of my Unlimited Card at the local multiplex and on Friday afternoon watched “Jurassic World – Rebirth”. I don’t remember how many of the Chris Pratt Jurassic movies I’ve watched; some I guess, but not all, I’m sure. I enjoyed this one though, because Jonathan Bailey makes a fine nerdy museum guy and there were nice heartwarming family moments with the sailboat family. With these kind of movies I know not to get attached to any of the secondary crew, because they are most likely to be killed in the genre specific disaster: here eaten by a dinosaur. So I didn’t care too much about all those ship crew, cheered early on when the rude annoying guy got culled, was indifferent about the other two. None of the good (nice, regular) people gets killed in this genrer anyway. So yeah, fun summer blockbuster movie.

The same goes for “Superman”, which I saw last weekend. Typical superhero genre movie, fun to watch if you don’t take it all too seriously. Because if you would seriously consider the death toll of that rift in the earth and everything else? But it’s a fictional superhero story, so you better not.

I realize I haven’t mentioned that the week before last, I also saw “F1” with Brad Pitt. That was a trip down memory lane. I liked him to look at and as an actor since the mid-90s. Not all his movies and all his looks, but he’s aged well and has still got “it”. The movie as such was quite interesting as well.

With going to the movies every week (sort of) I’ve seen the same trailers over and over again. I need some of those movies to come out already so I can watch them. Movie trailers I saw in descending order of my interest_

Fantastic Four – First Steps
I’m generally not a fan of the whole superhero genre (I only vaguely remembered the Justice League connection for Superman), but this 1950’s vibe has got me interested and I’ve also had a tiny girl crush on Vanessa Kirby, back when she was on “The Crown”.

Project Hail Mary
I like Ryan Gosling in general. Not all of his movie choices, but this looks like an interesting enough one. Not coming out before Spring 2026 though.

One Battle After Another
The same thing I say about Ryan Gosling goes for Leo diCaprio. I don’t watch all of his movies and with this one I’m afraid it might turn a bit too violent at some point, but all in all the setup seems interesting enough. And… it’s Leo diCaprio.

Materialists
I’m on the fence about this rom-com. Yes it has Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal competing for a woman’s affection, but the whole posh marriage matchmaker world it’s set in turns me off a bit. I still might see it, because of the Unlimited Card.

I Know What You Did Last Summer
I guess it’s not a direct remake of the 90’s slasher movie, but seems like a similar setup and plot. The characters (and actors) from the 90s all seem to make an appearance. I haven’t watched the one in the 90s, won’t watch now.

The Long Walk
Based on a Stephen King novel and it’s too dystopian and too gruesome for me from the trailer alone. Nope!

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After the busy Friday afternoon (haircut, movies) and Saturday (civic engagement work, basketball) I knew today I had to decompress at home. On my own. Not talking to anyone. Instead I binge watched “Departure” Season 1 on Netflix.One more episode left to go, which is where I’m heading after publishing this.