now

Letters to the universe

March 18, 2015 filed under: lists!, now, real life

I think Kyria started these posts with little letter snippets to the universe and then Lisa and Nilsa posted their own versions and don’t we all have something to put out into the universe sometimes? I sure do, so here we go.

Dear 24 hr fitness – it would be absolutely fantastic if you could offer more than 2 yoga classes per week that are not scheduled in the middle of my work day. Who can take more than 60 minute – lunch breaks AND make it to downtown and then back to the office to attend a class mid-week? Not me. Thanks!

Dear Anonymous 1 – I am a very patient person and always, always have an open ear for someone’s heartaches and problems, but I am also hopelessly optimistic and – after an appropriate amount of moping – like to try and fix things. So, please do me a favor and help me help you by doing your part in the process and I promise, I’ll do everything that is in my power to make things better, too.

Dear Anonymous 2 – whoever you think you are for thinking that you can hack my credit card information and get away with it, you’re wrong. I hope you’re still waiting for the Macbook that you ordered with my information and that you’ll never ever get, because I canceled the order and reported you as fraud! You’re welcome, jerk.

Dear ePantry – You’re awesome. I’ve only found out about you a couple of weeks ago, but you have amazing, earth-friendly stuff at very reasonable prices, your customer service is stellar and I love to support a small business like yours.

Dear body – thank you for being so cooperative and even – dare I say it? – happy about my decision to get back into running again. I know it’s been a love/hate relationship in the past, but right now, I am thankful that you seem to enjoy it as much as I do.

Dear California weather – I am not one to complain about sunshine and blue skies, but hold off the 80+ degree temperatures for a few more weeks, m’kay? Take these extra degrees to someplace else where they’re more welcome right now (oh, you know, like the East Coast or something).

Dear America – why do you have to hate on us foreign educated professionals so much? The German Abitur is highly superior to your high school diploma (very many mandatory classes that are considered college level here) and yet, you want in writing that I took calculus and physics when I have a Masters degree to show for and those classes were prerequisites to even get into university. Get over yourself!

What letters would you like to write today?!

Affiliate links included in this post. If you decide to join ePantry via this post, you will receive $10 towards your order and I will receive a $10 credit on my own ePantry account.

The only person who has to be happy with your life is… you!

February 14, 2015 filed under: about me, now, real life

My friend Caiti wrote about her struggles with 32 (go read her thoughts here) and I could relate so much to the somewhat terrifying notion that everyone else and their brother seem to have the “big pieces” of life (career, marriage, home, kids) figured out while my life is ~~a mess~~ a bit messy and less cut-and-dried in so many regards. Only with the tiny difference that I probably struggled with this at 32, but now I am 38 and pretty much none the wiser.

Did you just fall of your chair?

It’s ok. Most people don’t know (or don’t think) that I am 38 (almost 39), which is partly because I apparently look younger (yay, good genes!), but probably also because I don’t have a house and kids (yet). The assumption simply is: because she doesn’t have those things, she must be younger.

Alas, I am not.

A couple of weekends ago, I went to the birthday party of my friend’s 5-year old and I was the only person without kids there. I didn’t feel awkward about it until at the very end one of the other guests introduced himself and asked me “Hi, my name is so-and-so, I am so-and so’s dad. And you’re whose mother?”

Uhm, excuse me?

There was a snarky remark on the tip of my tongue for a split second, but then I simply replied: “Nobody’s. I am nobody’s mom. I am a family friend.”

My friend’s husband was so nice to jump in and add “but the kids love her!”, but the look on that guy’s face was surprise mixed with disbelief and astonishment.

Yes, granted, it was a birthday party for a small kid and the assumption that, if you’re invited, you’re most likely the parent of a kid of the same age, is not that far fetched, but I did find it curious that this guy asked the question the way he did. Like there was no other excuse for being there unless you’re chaperoning a little person.

This made me think about societal expectations and assumptions that we make about other people’s lives.

Obviously, the question we should be asking is: does everybody have to want the same things? The short answer would be: no. The long answer is more complicated. Of course, I have asked myself these questions: do I want a house? Kids? Or more abstractly, What do I want from life? You’d think that at 38, you should know, but honestly, I still kinda don’t. Not with 100% certainty at least. I want to be happy, I want meaningful relationships and make memories that nobody will ever be able to take away from me. But they rest is still a little fuzzy around the edges.

It can be hard to detach yourself from expectations and truly look inside yourself and see what your personal answers to these questions might be.

I think this is my struggle. If I knew for sure what I wanted and didn’t want, I’d be happy to say so. I am not afraid to say “this is my life and it’s exactly the way I want it”. I don’t have time or patience (anymore) to live up to the expectations that other people (strangers even!) have of me. What is right for them, doesn’t have to be right for me. I don’t feel like I have to defend or explain my decisions. But in reality, it’s all a little more complicated than that.

So, you might be wondering, do I want a house?

Sure, that would be nice. I’d love to live in a house (rather than a small apartment), but it’s not always about what you would like. What if circumstances prevent me from making this a reality? Can I be happy in a rented apartment? Why is the expectation that home ownership must be on everybody’s life list, no matter what? (Especially in this country? I can’t count how many times I have been asked not if, but when we were going to buy a house. In Germany, it’s much more common to rent and I am totally ok with renting.)

Do I want kids?

Maybe. Don’t get me wrong, I love kids, but caring for one (or three) takes careful consideration. Not everybody feels a super-strong calling to motherhood and there might be a gazillion different factors why it’s not in the cards for some people (which, on a site note, is really nobody’s business). I know, some people say that you’ll never be ready to have kids if you’re waiting for the right moment, because there will always be some circumstance that could be improved upon, but I personally have reasons that I can’t just disregard or shrug off as minor side nuisances.

Sometimes in life, we are able to solely make decision based on what we want or don’t want, and sometimes circumstances leave us less room for this kind of completely carefree decision-making.

I always thought that you hit a certain age and — boom — you have clarity in your heart and mind about certain things. Like, questions that have plagued you before 30 are magically answered when you hit the big 3-0. For some reason, that hasn’t really happened for me and I suspect that I’m not alone.

Let me entertain you with some wisdom, because I did have two epiphany throughout my thirties:

One, things don’t just magically happen (surprise!) when you reach a certain age. You can’t passively sit around and wait for things to fall into place, because nothing will, unless you actively work towards your goals and make them happen. If there is something that you want, then you have to decide to make the necessary changes to achieve it. However, just setting those goals can be a daunting task sometimes (if you are one of the people who always new exactly what they wanted, more power to you. I am not that lucky.)

Two, however much you think you have a plan for how your life will pan out, you won’t be able to count on it. There are always going to be unexpected obstacles and events (at least for most of us) that will stir us of our chosen path, delay progress and/or force us to think our whole life plan over.

This definitely hits home for me. I never thought I’d be where I am at in my life. I don’t know where I thought I’d be, but I never envisioned my life the way it is now. I never thought I’d move to a different continent (like permanently), leave behind family and friends, change my career path and completely uproot my life. This is not to say that I am unhappy. Quite the opposite, but what I mean is that you can easily find yourself in situations that completely turn your life upside down. I don’t know what I envisioned when I was younger, but I probably thought that I’d become a teacher, that I’d have a kid or two and maybe buy a house and settle down. That’s more or less what everybody expects and you go about these things with a bit of naivety when you’re young. You don’t consider the what if your life journey doesn’t fit into this neat little box that you created for yourself?

I am the first one to admit that even though I am ok with where I am at (most of the time), I still struggle — even if only on occasion — with the fact that I haven’t hit certain milestones at a certain age. I contemplate the ‘what ifs’. I think it’s because it’s somewhat ingrained in our brains that this is how we’re supposed to live. I try to remind myself on a regular basis that everything is a could, nothing is a must and things will work themselves out. They always do.

When things didn’t turn out the way we planned, it can take time to let go and focus our energy on making and working towards new goals. That might very well eat at up a few years of your life and then you find yourself not-so-all-of-a-sudden wondering where the heck the last 5 years went. One thing is for sure, life is continuously changing and we have to adjust and appreciate the day-to-day, the here and now, not measure our worth by how many arbitrary milestones we have hit.

My life doesn’t look like many other’s, but so what? Maybe at some point in the past, I might have thought my life would look like theirs, but that is not my reality now.

Luckily, I know many, wonderful and inspiring women who are in there 30’s and don’t have kids, or a house, or even a partner. And even though I know that some of them want these things, I also want to high five them for their courage, for soldiering on and accepting their journey for what it is. I’ve always been ok with swimming against the tide a little bit, but it definitely is nice to know that there are other fish going the same way. (Did I call you ‘fish’ for the sake of a linguistic metaphor just now? I am sorry. Maybe you’re a Pisces like me and won’t be too offended.)

The truth is: the ‘big pieces’ don’t have to be, and often won’t be, the same for everybody. It’s not like there is one clear-but path that everybody has to – or will inevitably – follow. And that’s ok. I realized that life looks more and more like a maze, which everybody has to navigate on their own choosing the right turns — and sometimes going in circles — to make it through.

At the end of the day, societal expectations are just that – expectations. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be happy and have a fulfilled life if you don’t live up to them. You have to evaluate your given circumstances, and then do what’s right for you. The heck, you can even change your mind a couple of times, if that’s what you have to do. There’s really no use of comparing ourselves to others, because we’re not them and they’re not us. We only get a finite amount of time on this planet; we were at one point placed here and eventually we will be gone, but this time, this in between, is what is uniquely ours and we have to make the best of it.

Unbelievable, I know, but it’s true: the only person who ultimately has to be happy with your life is… you.

A reminder

January 12, 2015 filed under: news, now

A few days ago, I got proof that my chosen word for this year was a good one, although I really didn’t need the reminder already, thankyouverymuch.

J and I found out last week that a friend of ours passed away before Christmas. It was a shock to say the least. Almost bigger than the shock of his passing was the way we found out though. Have you ever found out that someone died over the Internet?

I don’t recommend it.

The only reason we even went online is that we’ve been wondering for the last couple of weeks why he hadn’t gotten back to us and J was fearing the worst as it was so unlike him to ignore emails and calls for such a long time. Finally, J said what we both must have been thinking, “what if something happened to him?”

I protested right away and insisted that he must have been too busy over the holidays or something and that he would for sure get in touch soon. Or else, that there must be a really good reason for him to ignore J’s calls and that he would explain later.

Little did we know that he didn’t even live through the holidays and when J pulled up his obituary on Google on Thursday night, we were both in utter disbelief. It just couldn’t be. And it feels very surreal when you don’t get a call from somebody informing you about someone’s passing, but when you have to find out this kind of news by googling it.

When I woke up the next morning, I had to check if it wasn’t just all a bad dream. (We have in the meantime gotten confirmation from an actual human being, in case you were wondering.)

Either way. The start into 2015 went from really great to pretty shitty real fast. I can only hope that this is not a bad omen for the rest of the year.

As I said earlier, it was a reminder that the word I chose for 2015 (‘now’) was a good one. Do things you want to do now. Don’t delay them. Give someone a call today, because you don’t know if tomorrow will be too late. Let people know how much you care about them. Tell them how much they would be missed if their light didn’t shine anymore, how dark the world would be without them.

In our friend’s case, we won’t get this chance, but I can only hope he knew how much he meant to so many people.

Goodbye 2014, hello 2015.

January 6, 2015 filed under: California, now, OLW, travel

My idea of a perfect start into any new year? Bundled up in freezing temperatures somewhere in the snowy mountains … as you can tell from my Cheshire Cat grin, it was a good start.

This trip to the mountain? That is a perfect representation of the word that I chose for 2015.

NOW.

It’s a little word with just three letters, but it’s something that I want to take to heart this year. In past years, there were a lot of reasons for talking about things a lot, but not really (being able for one reason or another) putting them into action. Now is not a good time is what I heard myself say lot. This year I want this to be different. Now is the time and the trip to Tahoe over New Year’s was the first step.

I don’t really set many goals (or resolution or whatever you want to call them) at the beginning of a new year, because if I am perfectly honest, I am usually planning and scheming all the time and any day of the year is a good day for resolutions.
But regardless, the new year does always provide a blank slate (and a fresh, untouched planner with seemingly unlimited possibilities, if that is something that is as exciting for you as it is for me!) and therefore it comes naturally that we think about goals and changes this time of year.

So, I want to plan more and stick to those plans this year and make living in the here and now a priority.

Instead of just talking about how we should take more trips, I’d like to just do it. Decide on a whim to just get away for the weekend. Travel to places – especially places that are so close, but I haven’t been to – when we feel like it. Who says we can’t just get up on a Saturday morning and drive? Ok, admittedly, I usually like a little bit more planning than that, but you get the idea.

I’d like to use my time more wisely. I sometimes fall into the trap of saying that I don’t have time to do this or that, but I know that this is not true. I don’t make time. Don’t get me wrong, I’d still love it if the day had 48 hours, but that’s just wishful thinking. I think I’d still feel like I don’t have enough time if the day did have 48 hours. Admittedly, my biggest problem is that I have a hard time setting priorities. It feels like I want to do everything and I’ve been that way as long as I can remember. It’s always been hard for me to chose one activity over another. I also know that sometimes the sheer amount of options paralyzes me (and I end up doing nothing – at least not anything productive in my opinion) and I’d like to find a way to use my time more efficiently and not feel frustrated when the evening hours have slipped through my fingers yet again. Maybe it means that I have to plan a routine in advance that I can stick to and which will leave less room for indecisiveness during the week.

I’d really like to work on getting into a regular exercise routine again. I have been going to yoga pretty consistently and I have had on-and-off phases where I ran more regularly and then fell out off it again. I’d like to turn this into a more consistent routine this year. Now is the time.

I’d like to keep up our cooking routine, be more mindful of the food that we buy and put into our bodies. I think we’ve been pretty good this last year, but there is always stuff to improve on. When if not now?

I’d like to make more local friends. It’s been a challenge for various reasons in the last few years and I didn’t put a whole lot of effort in last year, frankly because there was a possibility that we weren’t going to be here much longer. But now that it looks like we’re going to stay around (at least for now), it would be nice to try and find some like-minded people to hang out with.

I’d like to continue to create. Crafting is my biggest outlet and my biggest joy. I want to learn new things and improve on my skills. Now is as good a time as ever.

What is your guiding word for 2015? Did you pick one?
Or have you made any resolutions or set goals for this coming year?