running

Running was always good for my rattled, spinning, exhausted with feelings mind. 

Walking is a bit too slow. Walking is good if I really need to do thinking... Thinking is sometime to much, too demanding, too scary, too serious,... unless I am trying solving some complex problem not emotional or personal. Then walking is a thing.

Running is like airing out home. It doesn't clean it but it does bring fresh energy. 

I am not a year round runner. I cannot do it when the weather is bad. Now, I can handle rain and wind. But once temperature is around 0 Celsius and days are short. There seem to be no force to take me out running on a weekly basis. I would need a motivated running buddy to do it but I don't have one. However, running in the nature seem to be so tempting, especially when that nature stares at me day and night through the window. I cannot resist. I feel like it guild trips me and at some point I give in, bundle up and go for that run. What a wonderful think to do of that nature to get me out and heal my mind and body. Yes, yes it is just airing out but with fresh energy my mind seem to be more willing to order it around according to my values and dreams... My body seem to gain a spark of power to carry me further...

Running around forests, fields, and small ponds.

I am not gonna do it when it rains cat and dogs and any other animal from the village but the pull out is real and I am grateful for it.

from winter to summer

I was waking back and forth in a back garden at my parents place and chatting away with my husband about everything and nothing in particular. I was warmed by the sun. It felt like summer. My skin was prickly from heat and then it hit me. Here I am in my blue jeans and white v-neck t-shirt enjoying view on the evergreen forest but only a week ago I have spend both day of weekend in thick jacket walking around in quite deep snow, building snowmen with kids and enjoying trees decorated with white-chains. Those were the most beautiful days of this winter.

my Forest in Winter

And today for few hours I felt like summer. 

Those are the wild ways of spring... I need a painkiller for a headache caused by such a pressure and temperature change. But I am not complaining how could I after eating lunch cooked in the fire we made in the garden... summer vibe so naturally connects with a good mood :)

Home Office

 Working from home is by now an old topic. Probably all good jokes already happen and amount of meme created about maybe cannot compete with cat related stuff but made it own special dent in the virtual space. Now... for a lot of people home office ended long ago. For some it is still an option they cherish. More specifically, as I relate mostly to people with little kids. Even more specifically, with families with two kids that are separated from their family geographically and cannot count on grandparents-institution on weekly basis. Now, for those that still work from home and their kids are healthy and attend their kindergartens or what not home office became a convenient option. BUT, my kids are sick since October but not enough to make them lay in bed peacefully... no they closer to wildly waking walls just as we know kids did during first corona-lockdown... Now, after wonderful 3 years of living in semi-lockdown I still cannot really recommend working in the same house as kids are... maybe your kids... but not mine. 

I am now on a 2 month mission of building up my kids immune system. Working from forest where they can spend a lot of time outside in nature when I work. It was a great plan. I though spring will bring warmer days and it will be great. It has been  weeks now, and the great days... were maybe something I can count on one hand...

But the weather finally got a bit better and we had two non rainy days in a row... I know I am naïve but I still hold on to hope that it was a great idea. If not, it might be my last month of work. This post I finish with making fart noises through a duck-face. Over.

2022

It seems that I highly exaggerated with my previous post claiming I have not been writing in 2 years here. It seems like I only skipped year 2022.

Now, I wish I could say that I have not been writing because I had too much fun. I did not! I had a year of constantly trying to figure out how to make it from day to day. From week to week. I only now start to think in months. It is a good sign that my depression is easing...

One thing I can do for sure is to simply check my Kindle app to see what I read. Despite everything 2022 was a good reading year for me. Although reading was my escapism, my main, more precisely it was typically my only procrastination and numbing mechanism. As I am trying to lead as clean life as possible from other addictive stuff. I am still guilty of spending most of my money on books I simply have no time to read all. But I will get there... improving on that is not at the moment even making a cut of top 10 things to work on... Maybe next year or maybe not... One step at the time.

In 2022 I have read 41 books. I am pleased and proud. Only 5 of them were not a romance! Those 5 books started my 2022 and they were all self-help books. I subconsciously needed a break from this genre as I have started many but finished non more until 2023...

I have read everything by Julia Quinn starting with Bridgerton series. Now I had not seen the series. But I read about the second season in the guardian and watched 5 min compilation of the first season on YouTube probably 3 times. And 2 months (or hopefully more...) later I were done with 28 books by Julia Quinn. Maybe that is not all she wrote but it is damn close. Now I wait for her new release "Queen Charlotte" that she co-written with Shonda Rhimes. To decide which book I liked most I would have to think about it a lot. They do blend a bit. But I had a blast reading them.

Once I was done with Julia Quinn and up to my amazon search there was nothing more of hers I wanted or could read I moved on to books by Emily Henry. I have read 3 titles of hers and liked them a lot. Here it is easy to choose and my favorite was "You and Me on Vacation" because of sassy dialogs. I read two short stories by Jennifer Cruise both fun. And then December 2022 and January 2023 went to books by Ali Hazelwood who writes STEM romance. 

As for my career... I dropped out second time from PhD program as I was recruited by head hunters for a position as a patent engineer.

I think that is shortly it. 2022 was intense and so far its chaotic aura spilled deep into 2023... it is thinning out so there is hope that 2023 will bring a beginning of something new. I feel new energy is coming... and it pulls me into planning future beyond a day, week, and even month...

Only good times in front of us... (this phrase came to me from "Welcome to Temptation" by Jennifer Cruise)

so much to say after such a long break

 I haven't posted anything in 2 years or what? I have thousands of good excuses because I am that creative and I have plenty of practice in being late, forgetting something, messing something up... generating excuses is how I go by.

Typing this post is made harder by my laptop's keyboard that I need to go on apparently quite hard otherwise it skips a lot of letters I at least in theory pressed... I had at least 5 typos in this complaining sentence which just proves my point... But I am not easily discouraged once I set my mind on something... haha just kidding... but not this time not by a keyboard malfunction...

I have become a mother to one more child in 2020 and that gradually made anything than dealing with most basic aspects of life difficult or simply impossible especially once I went back to work...

Why I am here. Typing... well... I have run away from my reality to my parents house in the middle of the forest but still with wi-fi. I can work from here remotely and when my parents break their necks trying to juggle never ending needs of my kids... I have some time to be more than just a mum and constantly failing at work employee.

Is there any point to this post... no... but here I made it! 

November 2021

November is a month of LaterneLaufe (walk with lantern) here in Germany, typically organized by educational-units (Kindergartens, schools, etc.). My kids are homeschooled so we simply one evening spontaneously decided that we will just go around the neighborhood on our own. It was not a performance of a lifetime as we were singing one song on repeat or to be precise one or two lines from that song... but it did a trick of pleasing my 4 year old completely. Mission good-parenting his time was successfully accomplished without extensive effort... high-fives all around ;)

From work stuff, my new PhD direction was approved. It was a bit of risk and there is still risk involved but I proposed my own topic and methods. It was questioned and discussed but in the end of the meeting I heard from my committee that they are to support me in my plans and hope I succeed. So far so good… 

I have read two very different books but I would recommend both.

First was "Hold on to your kids" by Gabor, which was very helpful to build a mental framework for some aspects of parenting that align with my vision. Specifically, that kids do benefit from attaching to parents and important in their life adults as opposed to relying emotionally on their peers. I have myself been adult attached and even if not all aspects of it went as their should I believe especially in primary school and early teenage years it helped me to be more self assured. 

Second book was surprisingly good and interesting, it was "My body" by Emily Ratajkowski. The surprise was how relatable it was and how little focus was on glamour versus valuable discussion of relationship to ones own body.

September and October 2021

I have restarted my phd which I am still confused about as I have spend at least 2 years to accept the fact that for my mental health it would be best to drop it. But I am finalizing redefining my new focus with a new team of advisors and my excitement slowly but cautiously grows. 

I got new neighbors and started doing more sports that includes running with the new neighbor which got me on my sporty path... It is a beginning of eating cakes and drinking hot beverages while sitting on sofa season so lets see how far my new fitness enthusiasm will get me not to mention how long it will actually last. 

I got a nanny for my kids that is my other neighbors granddaughter. It was going great and we all started to get used to new routine. I was getting better and better in actually letting go of my kids despite of being home and using more and more of the time for actual work. And then she resigned due to overload with her studies... I am in a bit of difficult situation. I was not completely surprised (one needs to expect that something like this can happen, and there were signals coming) but it is still something generating this level of inconvenience in my private an professional life that I had to take two days to process my disappointment. Now my eyes are dry and I am ready to search for new solutions although  to be honest I am still partially in pieces. The whole thing is that I really got to like the idea of working from home while my kids are there and the nanny has a look at them. Such a set up is consistent with my view on parenting and how I see myself as a parent... and now it might be off the table! It was pure sheer of luck to get in contact with this nanny... a substitute is not a realistic option. And to tell the truth, the longer my kids are home and I am so highly involved in their upbringing the more reluctant I am to give them to the educational system...It is a bit annoying as 3 years ago I didn't have the knowledge I have now to have opinions I have about educating kids... Anyway, I do not want to dwell on details but I need to complain that I am in need for some solution to my childcare crisis as my phd clock is ticking and I have to generate some output if I should ever graduate... 

Since I have not been reading much and my efforts were scattered over few books... all I managed to finish during the last two months is one book... I do not want to excuse myself anymore as I can clearly see that both my reading and my promptness in posting has deteriorated. I am obviously not happy about it but as I do not have that much impact on my circumstances (my little boy is teething, learning to walk and talk… or in short he seem to be ok with sleepless nights... my brain not that much!)… I need to grieve and accept this temporary situation when anything I do beyond taking care of kids and home is on borrowed time.

Goodnight…

Book(s)

“The Obstacle is the Way”  by Ryan  Holiday

Quite timely reading for me about learning from troubles that inevitably come our way... I agree with the writer that one should not let oneself get carried away by extreme emotions. However, feelings come all the time no matter if we want them or not. It might also take years of self development to reach a level of calm where extreme emotions are harmless. In meantime... already from day one, the best one can do is to practice mindfulness about feelings and curiously observe and reflect on them when they come. Emotions should be felt fully but often not acted upon at the moment they occur - both aspects are at least for me a fascinating work in progress.