What they should teach in elementary school is that time flies whether you're having fun or not.
[Friday - 01.31]
It’s rather weird to write that I have already been in Germany for nearly a month…in fact, it felt even weirder to put it on paper just now. I specifically remember my good friend Kevin messaging me right as I took off on this adventure. He left me plenty of tips and tricks to make the most of my time abroad and, to me, one of the most prominent pieces of advice was: “this is one of the most important trips you will take in your lifetime, do everything you can and (no matter how hard it gets) try not to wish it away”. In the theme of self-reflection, it’s a little difficult to not wish the time away faster as the painfully ambitious individual I am. I am the kind of person that changes their life plans almost weekly. Where I plan on living once I graduate, what kind of work I want to go into, new trips I want to plan, little hobbies I want to pursue; it is like a segment in the local weekly news that’s full of action and drama and romance. (Then again, so is this blog…see what I mean?). So, as I spent the last 4 years of my life preparing for this entity called ‘Germany’, I pictured going to the country itself as the goal. Since I landed and got off the plane it feels almost as if I have completed the 4-year long goal of ‘going to Germany’ and it’s time for me to move onto the next.
I guess it took me a while to accept that my next goals lie within this trip.
Incredibly shocking that my Excel-spreadsheet of a brain I missed this little detail. I didn’t – in my weeks of neurotic micro-planning – consider the idea of accomplishing things within these 4 months. Whenever anyone asked me places on my bucket list to visit I always said it did not matter to me and that I would figure out things as I got there. I’m not sure I fully realized that 4 months is a very long time, and ‘going with the flow’ can only take a person like me so far. I sometimes feel that it is life in general that has put a pressure on me to have a list of directions for happiness physically written out so that things feel guaranteed. When I think more about it, I came to Germany with a mindset already concerned about what I would do for work in the summer…I flew here in January! That’s certifiably crazy.
This is a conflict I have encountered for all of my life, and I guess I have always been curious if other people feel the same. This constant pull of knowing you have to work hard and dream big in order to succeed in life, but then being told by countless people to relax, enjoy life and “don’t put too much pressure on yourself”. I think that growing up will continually prove to me that this is a lifelong battle and I should get used to it.
Well. This entry got a little deep, didn’t it? Doesn’t sound like me at all.
Essentially, I am finally starting to get comfortable with all of this. It’s interesting to me how I spent so much time living on my own the past few years to better understand myself – a saga for another day – and, to this day, there is still so much I continue to learn about myself. There’s one reason that all of these long train rides are a benefit: I can listen to music and stare out the window and contemplate the meaning of the universe.
Maybe some time it would be a good idea for me to pick up Sudoku again or something else that’s a little less existential…
I don’t know, we did just establish that I’m still trying to figure out balance, so here’s to a new thing to keep up with on this trip of mine.
Talk to you soon –
Your favorite walking contradiction
