picture by Jupiter
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The glorious vacation
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Now my week-long vacation is over and the longer two-week one coming up in just a few days and I have the opportunity to recap and make new plans. Since the recap would be very short (the words ‘I did nothing’ come to mind) I was going to lengthen the entry by describing in detail why my vacation time was split in two parts. Fortunately for you, I got bored when writing it and therefore figured everyone else would be a hundred times more bored reading it, so, cutting it short, I couldn’t get the three-week vacation that I wanted because other people’s plans got in the way. I’m sure that’s more than enough information on that topic.
So, a recap of my first vacation week: by objectives: So I mostly slept, sometimes more than 12 hours a day. I can’t remember ever doing that. And I refuse to feel guilty about that since I obviously needed it and it’s not like there was something else to do. I’ve started to feel like a human for the first time in a long time. It’s actually strange how stress and sleeplessness can reduce optimism. I’ve always been an optimist, thinking that there is an escape route out of everything and that I’d be able to survive anything. But lately I’ve felt like I lost a big part of that belief and started to believe that bad things around me would never get better. And I’m not just talking about the current political situation, both here and abroad, I’m also talking about my financial situation and the emotional mess that sometimes seems to surround me. In short, everything seemed to be wrong. I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t coping as well as I had, it just felt like problems were piling up and I had to sort through them all. And I did my best coming up with solutions and distancing myself from situations that were beyond my control. It was Megan who pointed out, after I had detailed my escape plans in case a bad situation took a turn for worse, that I was too pessimistic and there were solutions that wouldn’t bring about a total ruin for me. My first reaction was to deny that these existed and I struggled to find fault with her proposed solutions. But I still started thinking about what she had said. I knew I shouldn’t be a negative person, I knew I was able to solve any situation with the best possible outcome for myself and those around me, why had I suddenly become so negative? The solution, of course, was obvious – the bankruptcy. That was the event that made the biggest difference in my life, it made everything go downhill since it made me feel like I couldn’t rely on my job anymore. And the income, which had seemed sufficient before, suddenly started diminishing, leaving me to struggle – and, ultimately, to fail. Ironically enough, I haven’t failed yet. I still have the Hellhole, I haven’t even been late on any loan payments, I have a plan to get the rest of the renovations done, I am out of the worst of debts. And yet, I lived in the fear of failure. That was what I wanted to defeat; and the only way of doing that turned out to be the vacation. I got to sleep, I got to think. And I finally got to the point where the fact that I didn’t have enough money for everything didn’t bother me anymore, because there were ways around that. The work situation didn’t seem as bad anymore when I got to spend a few days away from it; vice versa, it seemed to be improving now that I got a chance to look at it from a distance. The optimism has returned after only a week of sleeping – let me have two more weeks and I’m ready to look beyond my own problems and start solving the world’s. ***** When I set out to write this I didn’t see the introspective mood coming on. But I’m happy this happened. Sure it didn’t make a riveting read but it helped me to recap some stuff that has been floating around in my head. Who knew there was some actual benefit in writing this? So – my accomplishments: - sleeping I can’t wait for the next part of the vacation to begin!
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