When the universe is on your side…

it really IS. ON. YOUR. SIDE.

A mere three months ago I made a decision to find back to who I have become some five years ago and live the life that made me drastically happy – to an extent that must have been nauseating for some people at some point.

Today, I feel just like I felt then. Dreamingly happy with everything that is, was, and will be. Living in the moment, but looking forward to what is coming and appreciating (yes, really) what has been.

In the past few weeks, the universe has pulled all its power together to let me see what has been conspiring for myself, my daughter, and everyone else who is connected with me – including the 800+ people I have on my facebook friends list (they really should find a better name…).

Everyday now, I see and actually feel how the pieces are put into place in the puzzle what is my life. It’s like your favorite vase breaking. At first, you mourn the loss. But then (if you’re like me anyway), you start seeing the beauty in the broken pieces, pick them up and put them away somewhere safe. After a while, you get to the project and put the broken pieces back together into a broken, but whole vase again.

And the beauty that lies in the broken pieces put together into one again is the beauty I see in my life right now. I am on a drastic high and do not even fear coming down from it because I know life does not plan for me to do so.

Namasté, my friends.

dear universe… love, me (again)

dear universe,

i think today (or ever since monday last week) i truly believe in you again. i opened up again and what you showed me in just a little bit over a week is blowing my mind yet again.

remember, when i was high on life? when every single minute was filled with love and happiness? i remember. now i do.

today was the first day since may 27, 2009 that there was this sparkle in my eyes again. the sparkle that means that i can take on the world and will succeed in doing so.

and don’t be fooled, i am not just saying it this time. i’m living it. to the probable dismay of my family, i will move yet again. out of this country. into a new life i have already lived.

and you didn’t disappoint, you opened windows and doors into a new life, let me see the future and let me know that seeing it is not dangerous.

today, i can be honest with myself in saying that i love life the way it loves me. thank you for giving me the strength to open up again.

the smartass me would now make a comment about the similarity of this feeling to the feeling people must have had when the wall fell in germany in 1989. but i’ll keep smartass me to myself today. 🙂

have a happy day, wonderful people. namasté.

love, me. (again)

Analyze me.

Today, I figured something out. Which is quite impressive as it is only 10:06 AM and I have  had six hours of less or more good sleep last night.

While I was carrying a massive load of stuff into my office (I can’t wait for all the finance-y stuff to be done with so I can get a desktop PC for the office!), I suddenly thought of something: every week, on Monday I splurge myself with fancy coffee, lunch, or something else actually not necessary.

Being the social-science-philosophy-weird-thinking nerd I am sometimes, I immediately asked myself why and found a simple, yet profound answer: I have an addiction to spending money. This is probably not something uncommon. Most people like to spend money, especially on things they “pamper” themselves with – things not necessary that feel wonderful though. It’s a rush that is only accelerated by today’s consumption society.

Yet, I figured that now that I acknowledged the fact, I will be able to put a stop  to it. Not right away (I am having fancy coffee because the lack of sleep from last night will otherwise show in about 30 minutes), but slowly, but surely.

Also, I made a commitment to being not only physically, but even more so soul-y healthy. I wanna get back on the yoga mat, get an hour of swimming into my schedule here and there and take long walks in the park or woods with the June Bug. All this in a quest to become who I was and who I still think I am deep inside myself, but the “me” that has been buried by pregnancy, childbirth, being a single mum, starting a business, living in a place where the members of “my tribe” seem to hide pretty well.

I am starting today, Monday, October 8th, 2012. Wish me luck (or better, willpower)!

Mind reset.

Dear Mum,

Today, I need to get you out of my head. I need to get your negativity, unknowledgeable fear and constant discernment out of my head and into space so that I can go back to being the best I am.

I don’t do that for you or to make sure you feel good about yourself. I do this solely for me. ME. NOT YOU. Understand?

It is not my personal goal to make you unhappy. I don’t hate you. I don’t like you very much either these days. I think you believe that somehow, I have to give back to you for something you gave me -life. But see, here’s the thing: I do not owe you. I never did. You conceived me, chose to keep and raise me. That was your choice, I had nothing to do with this decision. And that is why I do not owe you. Please do not judge me because of this.

I am grateful that you kept me alive, nurtured me as much as you deemed possible and appropriate. I do not feel it was enough, I do not think it was all you could have done. But I do not judge you for it. I believe you do the best you think you can and allow yourself to give and receive what you deem is correct and right. Please do not judge my take on this.

We differ. You and I are not the same person. Neither are you and your mum. Or you and your sister. There are people in our lives that come pretty close to being who we are ourselves. They are called soulmates. But mother and daughter are not necessarily supposed to be that. Please do not judge me for this opinion.

I do not believe that you think that I should act and think like you. That is because I do not think (contrary to me) that your opinion and view on life is right. Call me pretentious and arrogant, but I have figured (my) life out. I have lived in absolute and braggy heaven for four years and was the happiest person I could be. Please do not judge me that.

I do not resent you or anyone else I know for not living that life anymore. I do not resent my very own decision to come back to Germany. But I allow myself to hate on my current situation so that I will keep striving to make it better. Please do not judge me for that.

I will be happy. I will be very much a person that you do not understand, do not think lives “right” or in the way she is supposed to. But I do not want to do that anyway. I want to live in a way that makes me feel good about myself (yes, it’s all about me). A life that is mine. Not yours. I want to be honest and straight-forward, with compassion for the faults of others and myself, I want to be eye to eye with every person I meet. You cannot judge me for that.

All of this I want to be because it makes me happy. All of my life, I have seen you and others struggle for something that is called “HAPPINESS”. Neither you or anyone else seems to know what exactly it means, but constantly you need to strive for it without ever seeming to find a piece of it. Or if you do, you let it fade away because something else gets your attention. I do not judge you for that.

I stumbled upon happiness. Far away from the life I used to live, turning it upside down and making me rethink much of who I am (AND acting that out). BUT, it was true happiness. I felt invincible there and then. But see, life taught me that even in happiness, we are not invincible. And that perfection has flaws (even the golden cut is something that cannot perfectly be achieved, maybe aliens could figure out, but humanity cannot). AND, I WANT IT BACK. I know what I need to do, who I need to re-become, how I need to live to be happy. And I will. Whether you judge me or not.

Eliminating So

For a while now, I have recognized that I start every second sentence or so with “so”. Rather ridiculous to think I am a fairly good writer when I cannot even start my sentences with a more meaningful word than “so”, no?!

Well (that’s not so!), I think it is because I do not think I have very much to say. And in fact, I do not have very much to say. Between motherhood, self-employment, life-building, and crafting, my mind goes to wander off into its own world and when I get to sit down to write about the (more or less) crazy thoughts, they’re usually gone.

In an attempt to write more elaborately about the thoughts I have on a daily basis, I will have to create a writing space. Not a physical space, I have that now that I bought an 18€ desk at Ikea a few weeks back. But a space in my mind and schedule that will allow me to write without starting my sentences with “so”.

Making an impression.

Well, today I found that apparently I make long-lasting impressions on people. A few weeks ago, I saw a woman who looked extraordinarily familiar walking through our town with another whom I had just met. A few days later, it came to me that said woman was a former teacher of mine.

Today, the woman I have just recently met was at my door asking about a call I had not made yet and we came to talk about that former teacher of mine. And guess what, that teacher woman, whose identity I only remembered after two days of nagging thoughts in my head of the kind “You know her, you know her, but how?!”, almost immediately remembered who I was AND my full name. What?

It has only been almost a decade (boy!) since I am out of high school and with the number of students she has probably dealt with since then, I find it rather amazing that she remembered my full name. I get when someone remembers a first name as this is mostly what we associate with “who someone is”, no?! I know many people from my childhood whom I have known by full name, but would now need a while to possibly remember their last name.

No matter what, this is the second time a former high school teacher remembered my name in two weeks, so I am going to just go with the “I make long-lasting impressions” theory. To teachers, anyway. And yes, I often was the teacher’s pet. But I HIGHLY doubt that has something to do with it.

I have one more.

Today, I have one more.

Earlier on this wonderful, glorious day I thought about relationships love. About the love between two women to be exact. And how it is different to the love between a woman and a man – to me.

I found that when two women love each other, it just fills their whole world. Everything is their love and touched by it. Like the love is not just on a physical, emotional, and mental level, but all else – ethereal you may say.

A Good Place On My Own

A few days ago, I read this post on inspirationlocation.com. It stuck with me and is still causing major rumbles in my head. I have been needing to go back and re-read to get my mind straight on what I want and can take out of the post. Here is what I got:

The main thing that got me was the bit about “outer geography”. This has been (as those of you who read all the blurbs I post on here know) a major concern of mine since I returned to the “forsaken” land. Just kidding, it’s not forsaken. Not really anyway. I have been thinking, rethinking, analyzing, and over-analyzing what it is that keeps me from being me and being totally happy here.

With saying that, I have to attest that I am in no place where I would be in danger of being depressive or any other kind of clinically crazy over this issue – despite my mother saying otherwise. That’s a different story though.

Finding a good place is something I have been trying to do for a long 18 months now and I am getting to a point where I want to give up. I just want to say, f**k it and go. Somewhere else. No, let me rephrase: not just somewhere, but there. When I read Kath’s writing about finding a good fit for you, I had to smile big. Because that is exactly the phrase I used to utter so many times in talks with prospective students. I used to say: “We want to be the right fit for you, but if we’re not, we will not make you stay for the sake of you bringing in the money.” Well, I didn’t actually say it with those words, but my PR brain is on vacation tonight.

Either way, finding a good fit in life is substantial to your ability to feel good about yourself and those in your life. Maybe this is all that is wrong with me here – I haven’t found the right fit. Good thing I have plenty ideas for how to do better with that. I actually started today and so far, it’s going pretty well.

P.S.: This post sounds much less philosophical than the thoughts floating around in my head. Maybe I will be able to rethink and word better in the next few days, but for that I will probably need a reminder. So, if you are reading this after March 14, 2012, please comment so that I will go back and edit. Thanks. 🙂

You can always learn a thing or two…

Today, I learned that…

…babies don’t just cry. If you have no other answer, try body contact.

…JB doesn’t go to sleep in her own bed (yet) because she can’t cuddle as closely as in my bed.

…just a little contact with the wrong people can rile baby up to no ends.

…being strict is the toughest thing in the world. Good thing I didn’t become a teacher.

…I forgot so, so very much about being a child. Time to relearn to build forts, pet cats, read books.

On personal life.

Last week, I had the biggest argument I’ve had in the past two years. One of the issues brought up by the other person was that I invade their personal life and that it is not something I should or was permitted to care or make my opinion known about. You have to know that I am rather closely related to the person saying this. As you can tell, I am rather occupied by the thought of this statement which is why I now will babble on about the definition and – more importantly – meaning of “personal life”.

So, here are the questions (I never just stick to one, do I?): What does personal life mean? Is there a definition that counts for everyone or should you be allowed to decide what it is? Is someone’s personal life always the same thing in regards to that person? Or can you change it around just so it fits your current situation?

When looking up “personal life” on Google (kids, this is not something you should do when home alone; have an adult with you at all times), the first page on the list was (what else…) Wikipedia. Here is what I found on their page on personal life:

“In modern times, many people have come to think of their personal lives as separate from their work.[11] Work and recreation are distinct; one is either on the job or not, and the transition is abrupt. Employees have certain hours they are bound to work, and work during recreational time is rare. This may be related to the continuing specialization of jobs and the demand for increased efficiency, both at work and at home. The common phrase “Work hard, play hard” illustrates this mindset. There is a growing trend, however, toward living more holistically and minimizing such rigid distinctions between work and play, in order to achieve an “appropriate” work–life balance.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_life#Sociology, 2/29/2012)

Now, that is pretty much what I understood of the term which leads me to think that I can’t be way off topic when talking to any random person about this. This, in turn, means that the person I had this argument with must be pretty much going off their own path with this one. This, I think, is not generally a problem, but if you live in close proximity and your relationship with said person is close in an emotional way as well, I do think that this inevitably leads to problems.

And that, it has. Definitely. Terribly. Horribly. In frank speech: big-ass problems. And meanwhile big asses are not a bad thing (more of the opposite, see Sir Mix-A-Lot), an argument like the one from the other week is. For me anyway. Not because it riles me up emotionally which it did for a week or so (that’s when I wrote that first paragraph), but because in cases like this I feel like I need to take action.

And the only effective action to deal with someone like this person and something like this situation is to cut ties and move on to a better life with more understanding people who are on the same page as I. Which I did. As sad as it is.