Back To Shore

Lyrics: “The Next Storm” – Frank Turner, 2016

At some point in the last few days, I noticed the urgent impulse to put myself in some kind of “retreat” mode this weekend. Stay off the news. Stay off social media. Spend time inside my head, but in a good and healthy way: Mediate. Listen to mindfulness / self-care podcasts. Journal. Read. Be more present with myself. If that makes sense.

I know myself and I know that I wouldn’t / couldn’t be able to do that while I’m staying at home. Because home is full of “fun” distractions and also has too many things (laundry, stacks of stuff to sort through) which remind me of my failures, and which dial up the volume of the critical voice in my head. The weather here was awful so any nice weekend getaways idea would have been a stupid idea. In the end I just booked myself into a small self-catering apartment in a small town I know well enough about 1.5 hours’ drive away.

I had actually planned to not leave the apartment at all, because the weather forecast was dreadful. But when the rain stopped yesterday, I went out for coffee and cake. I resisted the impulse to take a photo for an Instagram story, because… off the grid and all. And what really is the point of all of that anyway?

I listened to a lot of podcasts (episodes): About self-compassion. About distractions. About focus. I would love to say that I stayed offline all weekend, but that’s not quite true. I downloaded podcast episodes from the internet. I managed to read about 15% of the over 300 saved articles in my bookmark feed. Which of course also happened online. Articles about (current and sometimes not so current just interesting) political / social / science issues.

I finally got back into reading one of the many self-help / self-care books in my stack. I managed to read a few pages each of my current fiction and non-fiction.

I’ve decided to startre-listening to the Outlander audiobooks (starting from book 6, because the first five I know / remember so well) to remind myself of all the things that’s been going on before book 10 will be published in 2025 or 2026.

I’ve also finished my latest “meditative drawing” if that’s what I want to call it. I did that while listening to podcasts, which works fine for me. Focusing on one or the other – listening OR drawing – might possibly have been more beneficial in the grand scheme of things of “focusing”, but one step at a time.

Now back at home for a few hours I notice the distractions (tech, entertainment, food) which want to grab my attention much more clearly. I still gave in for a while this afternoon. But at least I now seem to have a better idea of why they want to distract me from uncomfortable thoughts and emotions or from boredom. I hope I’ll find it a bit easier to stay less distracted and more present for the rest of the year. And also beyond of course…

Lyrics “Reasons Not to Be an Idiot” – Frank Turner, 2008

I’ve been back home from my last stint as “Travelling Fangirl” for a good week now and still haven’t shared any photos or stories. From the two Frank Turner gigs I went to or from the two cities I visited – Antwerp and Paris.

I was exhausted. I was back at work with lots of things to do. I had other stuff on my mind. Feeling a bit overwhelmed with work and life and everything. Catching up on sleep. Catching up on news and interesting articles to read. To be honest more collecting interesting articles to read with such speed and intensity that will make it difficult to catch up with it all.

Sharing all the photos and experiences from this wonderful trip still felt / feels overwhelming, because for some stupid, inexplicable reason I thought I had to share all of it all at once. I’m not good with feeling overwhelmed. It makes me feel inadequate and I shut down and then don’t do anything. Until I snap out of it and at least get ready to share something. I don’t have to do everything all at once and right away. Small steps.

Forgive the self-help babbling above.

So, Antwerp. We went there because Frank Turner played a show, but also because the city itself seemed interesting enough. And it was. So lovely and with so many interesting museums / buildings / churches to see. We only were there for a day and so of course were only able to scratch the surface. I do plan to spend a whole weekend or even a bit longer there next year – preferable in the spring / summer and not November.

Let’s start with my favourite (only to be honest) museum I visited that day. The Museum Plantin-Moreteus, which is a museum about the history of book-printing and within that also about cartography. As someone who loves maps and cartography and books and who is interested in the history of things I was in my absolute nerd heaven. Which I hadn’t even expected to be to be honest. I came back out with the impulse to find non-fiction history books on a variety of subjects, which I felt I don’t know enough about. I admit I haven’t gone searching for those books yet, but I might.

Here are the two things that made my nerd heart soar a bit in this museum, both came as a surprise.

Remember the days – 20 or so years ago – when more and more fonts became available in any kind of word processors or web design software? How many do you really know of, except Times New Roman, Arial and Comic Sans? Did or do you have favourite fonts?

I always had a thing for serif fonts. Not Times New Roman in particular, but others. Georgia is my favourite these days, I think. On this blog I use a font called Libre Baskerville. I must have had a thing for the Garamond font back in the day as well. At least I remember it well. So imagine my delight to see this little label on a wall next to a glass case:

How awesome is that? The mere idea that we are typing our thoughts in a typeface someone had thought of 400 hundred years ago?

The whole process of actually making the metal types being used for printing also was super interesting to read up on and see images off. How they standarized the types so that the letters are all spaced equally in a line / on a page and all that stuff.

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The second piece on exhibition which blew my mind was the first ever atlas. Maps collected in one book. Sounds so simple these days. Well for us who learned their geography from maps hang on the wall in a school room and atlases and not through maps on a screen. No judgement for the latter, just a bit of nostalgia.

Abraham Ortelius had the idea to adjust the scale and format of maps to make them fit into one book. It wasn’t even called atlas then. They only came up with that term about 100 years later. And there it was the first ever collection of maps in one book. I did A level geography, so of course my mind was blown.

I could go on and on and on. I won’t, don’t worry. Just trust me that I had a great time and might come back to this place if I visit Antwerp next year again.

The lighting wasn’t always good enough to snap proper photos and I wondered about that and alsovabout health and safety on narrow old stairs and such until I saw this sign 🙂

Anyway here are a few more photos. For some reason I can’t get the gallery working the way I’d like. Maybe in my next post.

And yes, that painting is a Rubens. In a private home of a rich businessman back then. Because, why not?