When I was coming home from my first day trip on a German section of the Way of St. James last weekend, I had tentatively considered setting out again this Sunday (today). When I then had looked at my schedule for the week I right away did the sensible thing and postponed that idea. Today-Me is very grateful to Sensible-Me from last week.
Work | The first full week after my time off was packed with meetings and conferences and too much work for my liking. At least too much for the week after a vacation. It all went fine and I / we got a good deal of things done and projects signed off by the people we need the ok from, so I shouldn’t complain too much. I should and do and this week definitely did appreciate that I’m working in this environment. I get along well with me very capable co-workers and we enjoy working with each other. I like that my work has significance or at least that I feel that I’m making a (tiny) positive change to a cause that is important to me personally. One of the long days was a conference which is always a great way to get new ideas or just be newly motivated to work on what I’m working on.
Funny anecdote: One of the speakers used a Titanic metaphor and then went off script with “By the way: there would have been space for more people on that door! And you try more than once to get the 2nd person up, right?” I guess it was a good thing that the average audience probably was old enough the remember the movie.
Endings | Midweek there was a bombshell announcement of a marriage ending, which for a short while kept my mind more occupied than it should. It’s not my marriage. Neither a marriage of family members, friends, neighbours, co-workers or any other people in my everyday life. I should not care that much or indeed not care at all. Both are artists I’ve grown to love through their work, which often resonates deeply with me and whom I’ve also grown to care about through the way they present themselves to the world. From what I “know” about them they both are kind and decent people. I wish them well and it’s just sad to learn that they couldn’t make their marriage work. It sucks! Plain and simple! Being a fangirl can put you in a weird headspace on occasion, let me tell you.
Introspection | Interesting side-note to the previous prompt: While one part of my mind for a bit kept mulling over that ending, the other part kept asking myself, why I was mulling over it to begin with. Similar introspective thoughts occurred this week in regard to my own actions / behaviour / relationships with other people. To paraphrase Eckhart Tolle: I was watching the thinker quite a lot in various corners of my life this week. While paying a bit more attention to my thoughts and emotions I’ve also realized how far I’ve come over the years. With therapy of course, but also with learning and getting insights from other sources. Trying to keep working on being more compassionate with myself. Learning to not doubt that things sometimes actually work well. Trusting that I actually know what I’m doing – that’s meant for the imposter syndrome gremlin in my head. It’s been an interesting week in this regard.
Celebration | I’ve been part of the organisational team for an anniversary celebration yesterday. It all went well (in the end), but I found the whole day rather stressful, in the beginning at least. This all added to the introspection mentioned above in two ways: For one I realized that I felt quite comfortable with myself in situations which years ago I would have dreaded to be in. Situations which I later would have overanalysed about how much I had messed it all up and had said stupid, embarrassing things. The other aspect I haven’t quite figured out yet: Did I stress myself or did other people stress me? Did I have wrong assumptions? Did we not communicate clearly? Am I too sensitive or are others just a bit blunt? Lots and lots of thoughts maybe for this following week.
Recharge | Summed up: A super busy week at work. Preparation for said anniversary on Friday afternoon. Anniversary all day yesterday (including taking down the tents, sorting the leftover food and such). Of course, my day today had been super chilled so far. Sleeping in. Watching a bit of Ben Lloyd’s Lost Evenings night 3 stream on Instagram during breakfast and such. Sorting through and editing yesterday photos. Catching up on my reading, because I haven’t done enough of that since I got back home from vacation.
I’ve finished my 2nd novel penned by Alexene Farol Follmuth, who writes contemporary / (dark) fantasy under the name Olivie Blake. I enjoyed both the YA romcom “My Mechanical Romance” by Alexene and Olivie’s adult, more serious romance “Alone With You in the Ether”.
Even though they were quite different – obviously, different genre and target demographic – I enjoyed both immensely, because I absolutely love her writing in both. Here I sometimes claim to be a writer (if anything in a creative genre at all), but I clearly lack the words to explain what I love about it. It felt different and refreshing and less like following the trodden path of phrases and words and plots used by many others before. There is another YA out, which I will definitely buy and I’m very tempted to give Olivie Blake’s “The Atlas Series” fantasy trilogy a go. Because I adored her writing. I don’t really care all that much for (dark) fantasy though or at least I need to be in the right mood / headspace for it. We’ll see…
