Back To Shore

I’ve been back from this short stint as “Travelling Fangirl” for over a month now. A busy month, tiring, overwhelming with too much stuff to do and too many thoughts to think. And that’s just in my personal / professional life. Then there is of course so much going on – to have thoughts on – all over the world as well. But not on here. This weekend feels like a good time to recall one of my favourite quotes from my favourite musical:

The world’s a mess, Charlie.
Small flashes of joys, that’s all any of us can hope for.

So let me tell you about the French flash of joy in November 2024. In two parts again, because it feels like there are too many photos for one post.

In the late 1990s I did two weekend trips to Paris with a friend using the service of a commercial travel company: on a bus with a group of people we didn’t know. Hard to imagine these days to travel like that, but it was the 1990s. You didn’t book hotels, trains, flights on your own on the internet yet. I admit I don’t recall all that much from those trips and I wasn’t really interested in going back. I don’t speak French. I also remember some of the French museum etc. staff in Paris as being kind of snobby and not really welcoming. A couple of years ago I started to change my mind and thought it might be nice to visit once more but then I never had a good reason to or was not motivated enough to make plans.

Then Frank Turner made the decision for me 😉 I’m only half joking. I’m glad that him playing shows all over Europe gives me the incentive or the little push I obviously sometimes need to make up my mind. So, after Antwerp my friend and I got on the train to go to Paris.

In hindsight we might have been overthinking the whole how to get a metropass thing. I know I had. It was easy, though the few-days tourist metro pass is just a tiny slip of paper. I mean, come on: What’s wrong with a proper sized (paper) card like other cities do it :-)?

We headed to our hotel, dropped off our stuff and went back on the metro to go up north to Montmartre to meet up with a gig buddy I’ve known since 2015 or 2016. They live in Paris and were coming to the show of course but also wanted to show us around a bit. Hence Montmartre. We didn’t have a lot of time, but took the funicular up to the cathedral, had a look inside, strolled around a bit.

After that we headed back to where the venue for the night’s show was, had something to eat, wen to see a great Frank Turner show. I never sweated as much at a Frank show as I did that night, I think. Holy shit, but it was a great gig.

The day after was hardcore touristy day. As you do when you’re only in Paris for a day. First on the list: The Mona Lisa. Of course. Thanks to my friend’s amazing planning and preparation we didn’t have to wait in line to get in or to go see the Mona Lisa for all that long. When I had a look out the window at some point, I was so glad my friend was so prepared.

I think it’s time to admit that I wasn’t really prepared for the Paris trip, tourist wise. The weeks before the trip had been busy at work and stuff, like most of the year had been. I was happy to just tag along with my friend to be honest and get a sense of the city again. Thus I had no real idea of what the Louvre would look inside. You can spent hours walking around just looking at the building as such and not at any piece of art exhibited there. I mean…

Here are a few more of the ceiling. Every single room was so opulent and different and just breathtaking.

Then of course: the one and only: Mona Lisa. There were quite a few people in the room and in front of the painting, but there was no queue and it actually was easy to get to take “the” photo but also just take a moment with it.

After we checked that of our list we went back to the galleries we just hurried through on our way in. A few of the highlights: The Coronation of Napoleon. I needed to take a photo for that relevant section in my Lyrical History of Mankind post, obviously.

Another one: This because… France!

Here are more photos of the Louvre highlights. I think this first visit – because I will definitely go back to Paris hopefully in the next few years – was supposed to see and check off the “must see” items. Now that I have some idea of the museum as such, I can focus on just one section of the museum next time. But we wanted to have a look at the highlights, so we did.

So much to see in the Greek and Roman Galleries and the Egyptian of course. So so much…

Part II will be up tomorrow, I think. I hope anyway….

When I thought about if or what to post here this weekend I was going back and forth between

• this short slightly introspective post about what I have been up to and what it’s like in my head at the moment
• the long overdue post with photos and stories from my trip to Paris about a month ago

And I had been determined to do the Paris post today, because in general I didn’t want to do those public soul-bearing introspective posts anymore. On the other hand, why the hell not? Maybe someone reading this will find it helpful to know that most of us are a bit of a mess and struggling to make sense of our lives.

I also realized that the Paris post will need much more time, and I wouldn’t be able to finish it today. To avoid feeling like a failure over that, I’ll postpone it and share a few random personal thoughts after all.

So here are three little prompts. Lyrical ones, because…it’s me.

“All in my head is worry“
“Worry”, Lottery Winners, 2023
To be honest it feels like I have been worrying much less than I used to. Again “Three cheers to therapy” I guess. I still worry quite a bit as I will probably always do. But more often than not these days I quickly catch and stop myself from going down the spiral of negative thinking. And that feels good.

On Friday a work thing was worrying me, but instead of letting that ruin my whole weekend I decided to make use of one the many tools I’ve learned from all the self-help advice (books, podcasts) I’ve consulted over the years: Set aside a limited time for worrying – I do that by putting my thoughts on paper – and only think about it in that time slot. It worked ok this weekend, though I have to admit I still need to do a bit of that today, because I haven’t really found a solution /strategy yet for the work thing that’s worrying me, and I need to deal with it tomorrow. Obviously. But at least I mostly managed to keep that worry out of my head or at least stored it well in some backroom of my mind and didn’t let it ruin my weekend.

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“Choose to be me, to be free, to be my way”
Sunrise Avenue. 2006
This year or the past few months at least I’ve realized I’m more comfortable in my own skin. And I mean that more intellectually, emotionally than physically. For most of my life I felt alienated from others and felt like I wasn’t living the life everybody else was. The life I was supposed to live. I’m single with no kids, living on my own. I see people half my age putting down roots with a partner (buying joined property, getting married). I see people changing jobs or getting promotions. I see people try or do lots of new things in or with their lives. Trying out new hobbies. Travelling to foreign places.

I sometimes felt like I was (too) stuck in my ways. Too boring. That I should have achieved more in my life. That I should / need to leave my comfort zone more often, because that’s what being an adult is all about, right? And that I didn’t do any of that bothered me for such a long time and made me feel less than. I don’t know what changed over the past few months, but I recently realized that “being me” bothers me much less than it used to. I’m fine with being “me”. The nagging voice in my head telling me that I should be ashamed of being so boring and that I need to be different, isn’t nagging me nearly as much as she used to. And that feels good. It’s a bit sad that I needed to be almost 50 years old to get to that point, but better late than never, right?

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“Let us make little changes”
Frank Turner, Little Changes, 2018
The time away from home last weekend did help a bit to make some changes. Be more mindful. Be a little bit more organized. Get more sleep. Be more forgiving with myself. This all might go hand in hand with the “choosing to be me” part. Bit by bit and step by step.

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…