Almost there

The countdown started long time ago, and now it's finally getting close to zero: t-16 until my next vacation starts, 16 days until I disconnect from work for 9 days and allow myself to be just the crazy, uncomplicated and impulsive girl I still am, and who does not exist while at work.
The last 2 months I have fully dedicated to work, there have been few moments for myself, even during my days off I have worked in documents, had phone calls with colleagues and more often than I'm proud to recognize, downloaded my emails to avoid not being informed about what has happened at work during my absence.
When I assume responsibility for something I throw myself fully into it, mostly when this responsibility involves not only me, but also my colleagues. When it goes only about me I tend to be a slacker and either let things accumulate or simply don't do it. Work is different, like school used to be while I was at school. I am still human however, and whether or not I want to recognize it, I cannot give my best for an unlimited period of time without giving myself a real break, flying somewhere far from work where I have no computer access nor am reachable over my phone, where I am partially forced to disconnect and disengage from work.
I am almost there, my vacation will start in exactly 16 days 10 hours. that is when my train to the airport departs, where I will catch a flight to the Middle East.
Life in Germany forces a maximum amount of hours worked in average over a period of time. I blew my average in the summer, and now since 3 weeks I am under observation by HR, as I have to reduce the average. It has been a stressful month of going to work for a few hours and completing my work offline, attending calls from home and reducing the internet usage. Only few days to go this month, and I am almost there. I won't get into green area by the end of the month, but I will no longer be in red. It will be yellow, and it will fix itself during my vacation. Almost there, when I come back I will no longer require to go to HR regularly and ask how to manage time, whether it is ok to work only 5 hours a day, and whether this has an impact at the end. When I come back from vacation I will have taken all my compensation days, my account will be clean, ready to take the crazy overtime awaiting for me in November.
October will be a special month: I will come to peace with myself by allowing myself to be human, to relax, laugh and meet people. I will go to a country I have wanted to go since I met E. in college, who nine years later still counts as one of my best friends. I will re-take my test for grad school, while in my beloved Boston, as I will also be there part of the month: 12 days in total, my longest stay there since college. I will visit professors from my undergrad time, who are willing to give me recommendation letters, and I will spend time with E., L., V., M., and B., those amazing friends I miss every day, those who met me as a shy18 or 19 year old, and who grew with me into grown ups, each of us with their job, following their dreams and working for their futures. All of these will happen as of the day I fly to the Middle East. I am almost there. Only 16 days 10 hours to go.

Letter to a friend

Dear friend,

Every time I try to start this letter, I find myself wondering how I can start it. So many things to say, to explain, and in some aspect, so many things to apologize for.
As you might know, last week I "celebrated" my 5th anniversary in the company and in Germany. The last 5 years have not been easy for me, and while I did try to adapt to the new country and environment, I never fully felt I was in the right place.This country is too cold and disciplined for me: there are rules for everything, every person lives for him or herself, and expecting a hello on the street is more than utopic. It might seem like a contradiction coming from a person like me: somebody who wanted to enter either a nonnery or the military, a latina who does not see herself as such, and who has since her early childhood had the tendency to an extreme independent life. I guess we, humans, are made of contradictions. I do love discipline, and the time I spend with myself, I do also believe I have in me more of a latina than I have ever realized, or wanted to aknowledge.
We met in the past 5 years, and over time our friendship became a pilar in my life: you became one of the few people I felt I could be myself with, somebody I felt I could confide when I did not want to work, or when I was simply sad or tired. Our friendship meant and means a lot for me. Please don't forget it.
I never fully caught the life train over the past five years: I left time go by and focussed on work, I saw how, aorund me, people found the right partners for them, and only dreamt of one day finding mine, while the words I spoke were something like "I am to big of a coward to try" or "I don't believe in love". Most of those around me moved on, started their own families and their eyes expressed their happiness, mine, similar to my words, only expressed the amount of work I had, and how much I often felt out of place. I am sorry I never told you how happy it made me to see you happy, I am sorry I never told you I wished one day in the future, in my future, I could follow your steps and find my own source of happiness, I am sorry I never told you I envied you for daring to jump on the life train on time, and move on with it. I really am.
A few months ago I made a decision, I want and will fight my way to return to that one place where I once lived and felt alive: the city where I go out and enjoy being there, where I feel free, where all the mad rules don't come over to me as limitations of my own freedom, but as guidelines to enable a better community feeling. Maybe, when I expressed my decision, and the reasons that are foundations for the decision I hurt you. Trust me, I never meant to. Like I said, our friendship means a lot to me. It is true I feel extremly lonely here in Germany, and it is also true every time I can I go see my friends from Uni. I promise you, the why the time I spend with them means so much for me was not that you were not a good enough friend to me, the reason was (and is) that they are in a similar stage in life than I am.
As you know, my decision to go back there is taken, I am preparing school applications, and have officially requested my relocation and localization there as of next summer. If I had a free wish I would take you with me there, as I want our friendship to remain there. I am now too old to believe in fairy tales, and thus I know that I might not see you more than 5-10 times more in my entire life. I do hope though, that you remember that there was once a colleague to whom you were an amazing friend, and who would have been there for you any time. For those I care for I'd give it all, as my my friend's happiness is very important for me.
I am working hard in setting myself on the "right" path, in bringing myself back to that wonderful city I love and to which I belong. This however does not mean, I don't care about those who have made my time in Germany bearable.
We might have different cultural backgrounds, we might have different understandings of friendship, of loyalty, of life in general. This, however, I see as part of life, and while sometimes it may hurt, it only hurts because the friendship matters.
Take care my friend, I will miss you a lot.

M.
 

Peck's quote

"Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it." ~ M. Scott Peck

M. Scott Peck was an american psychiatrist born in New York. Through his adult life he worked in theories in the areas of Discipline, Love, Neurotic and Legitimate suffering, Evil, Love, and Community. The quote written at the beginning of this entry belongs to the work he did in the area of discipline, and while looking at it I find myself trying to decide whether I agree with it or not.
When it comes to the plain definition of discipline, I am considered by my peers and by myself as a disciplined person. I am, however, an amazing procastinator, and generally discipline and procastination are considered opposites to each other.
Is the fact that I procastinate often a sign, that I do not value my time? I know that every time I watch TV or play bubble games on facebook after work, instead of doing my homework for school or studying for the GRE I am not making the best of my time. As an overachiever I am, I am also aware that this procastination will put me in a stress situation when the deadlines (Exams) approach, as I am far behind where I should be, and I will not be ok with leaving any of the 7 subjects unfinished before the exam. 
On the other hand there is the factor "time". Time is sacred, it is a scarce ressource and this I have known since my early teens. I consider puntuality extremly important, and a sign of respect to every person and their time. Any 15 minutes spent waiting for somebody at the door of a station is time that we will not get back, it will be gone. While over the last couple of years I have became more relaxed with punctuality (sometimes I am late), I do tell the people I am meeting in advance of my delay, so they can decide whether to wait or to do something else while I arrive. 
Time is not only to be taken into account when it comes to puntuality, and it influences others. Time is also of importance in each persons personal life. This is the area where I have not yet mastered the art of respecting it. With the amount of commitments I make to myself and to friends and work (Work over weekends, fly to different countries for friends' weddings, full time student), I should be disciplined to ensure I can enjoy some free time regularly, without considering it procastination. Despite the fact that I make schedules, set my alarm to wake up early, and tell myself on my way from work that I will study in the evenings, I almost never do so, and frequently I spend the last nights before a deadline working without breaks to complete my commitments. 
Going back to Peck's quote, I need to admit that I don't value my free time enough, to be disciplined with my commitments and complete them on time, instead of crunching them over a few days. I however disagree partially with the "not value yourself" part. I believe I vale myself, I consider myself capable of reaching (academic and laboral) goals, and I set the line for myself high, ensuring I grow in those two areas permanently. In my personal life I will have to agree with Peck: I do not value my personal life and time enough to be disciplined with it: Weekends, free time and Sleep are overrated in my eyes, and I get frequently sick because my body simply goes into exhaustion. 
I often think of ways to defeat the procastination and be more disciplined with the ongoing work, to avoid crunching things at the end. Peck's words show me that this goal is fully in my hands: I only need to learnt to value myself also in my personal life. Then I will give the value to it that it deserves, and ensure that I get the free time for activities I wish to take part in, and which do not contribute to my career or academic life.

August 4th

Today is Saturday August the 4th, and while drinking my coffee to go to the office (yes, on Saturday), I started thinking about the date. Today is the birthday of one of my best and oldest friends, a friend I have called a total of 19 times in the last 20 years for his birthday, also a friend who I know would not forget my birthday, and I can always count on. 

T. and I met in "Basico" (First grade), and were mad rivals for many years. We were back then the best students in our class, and raced through our Spanish and Math books, ahead of our classmates. We were not real friends in school, but the rivalry between uo turned into friendship, and has lasted for 2 decades. 

Every year I spent my summer holidays with my parents in Germany, and every August 4th I waited until 2 pm German time, to go to a phone boot and using 5DM coins (or coins from whichever country we were in), call him and wish him a happy birthday. Many times I woke him up, his parents knew I was calling from overseas. 

5 years ago I was in China, more specifically in Shigatse (Tibet). In my trip diary an entry on August 4th says "Despues de la comida fui a llamar a T., que estaba cumpliendo años. El no estaba en Bogotá, pero su papá me dió su celular y lo llamé. Vaya sorpresa que se llevó".  Only once in the last 20 years we have not talked on the phone on his birthday, 4 years ago. August 4th 4 years ago I was with my father in Tanzania, and the trek to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro started at midnight that day. Since I knew we were going to be in a place where it was not possible to make a phone call, I asked a friend in the US to send him a message in my name. 
T and I both understand and have lived in cultures different than the one we grew up in, we both feel we belong somewhere different than Bogotá, and we have the same understanding of friendship, something I have discovered is not necessary the case with people I am friends, that I have met over the past years. 
I don't know where he will be in 5 years (I hope London or Berlin), nor where I will be in 5 years (I hope Boston), however, I know that today in 5 years I will be calling him, and wishing him a happy birthday. It is great to have such a great friend, and it is even better to know that the friendship has now lasted 20 years, surviving our teenager years, and our first steps in an independent life, which is a good omen for the friendship. 

Summer in Germany

As a child, I spent most of my summer holidays in Germany. I remember those months in Germany sunny and warm. Once in a while there was some rain, and my sister and I would sit, bored out of our minds, inside the house, and read, or paint, or build some jigsaw puzzles. At the end of the day we would go with dad for a bike ride for one or two hours, around the golf fields at Neuhof. When I look out of the window this summer, I barely see the sun. While the temperatures are completely ok for me (around 20C), it is not summerly warm, and it rains multiple times a day. One could say this summer reflects my inner feelings, and the rain is just a sign for my tears: Just like it rains almost on a daily basis, I cry almost every day. 

I have always felt ashamed of myself for crying: it is a sign of weakness, of vulnerability, and to myself I am not allowed to show myself weak or vulnerable to anyone. Over the last 5 years there were maybe 4 or 5 times when I cried without control in a different place than my appartment: one of them was the day Forthy died, the other were very emotional moments at work, and I cried sitting by myself in a meeting room, or at the smoker's area. This past weeks however there has been a change, and in my opinion, a change for the worse. Tears now come to my eyes when I look around myself, and find myself in Germany, when I walk every morning from my car or train to work, and realize I am not dreaming, and I am really in Euskirchen, and when I sit in my car and find myself forced to drive back to Cologne, to spend one more evening sitting in the living room watching TV, smoing, or studying by myself. The most humilliating situation came last friday, when I was sitting at my desk and started crying, and one of the guys who sits near my desk had not left the office yet and realized I was crying. He did not say anything, neither did I, but I don't think I'll be able to face him this week, or ever again: He has now seen what a weak and immature person I am, and he won't have any trust on anything I do. Why would he trust the work of someone like me?

Days at which the sky is blue and the sun shines have a positive effect even on my depression. When I see the sun shine I remind myself that there must be a way out of my situation, that there are opportunities to get out of Germany for ever. However, the sun is not visible frequently, it comes and goes, and the same unstability is now in my soul: During one single day I go up and down multiple times. A word, a gesture, or just an email can throw me from one extreme to the other. everybody has realized, my boss compleains all the time, and regardless of my efforts to control it, I am failing miserably. What does this mean for my "career"? Is it even worth it for me to keep pushing, or should I give up already, and find myself a guy willing to marry me so I get a green card in the US? Do I have any chances inside the company to be relocated? I cannot see why the company would be willing to invest in someone like me, someone weak and unstable. I love the company, the values it stands for, and if I could make a wish I would remain in the company while relocating to my beloved Boston, but I think it might be time for me to face reality and aknowledge the copmany might not want to keep me, and I should be looking at ways to go back to Boston on my own. With the same frequency clouds cover the sun this summer, my hopes of going back with the company sink. 

I am still working in getting myself under control, in not crying, and in spending as much time as possible busy, studying and working, and just not thinking. I am working hard in not letting words- written or spoken- get to me, and not feeling anything that is said to me is personal so I don't break down at work. I just don't know how much strength I have left, and I fear there is none left. I need to hold on to the hope that I will see my good friends from Boston, L. and V., at the end of August. Maybe then, spending some time with people I know care for me, people who make me feel I am worth  being alive and I am not a complete waste of oxygen in this planet, I will be able to make it through this summer. 

Destiny

The popular song "Que sera, sera", written in the mid 50s, expresses what I have been telling myself over the last half decade regarding my life: What will be, will be. The dreams I once had a a girl have long since abandoned me, and there are few and emotional times now, when they come back and remind me of what I once hoped to achieve in life. Some of those dreams depended fully on me, other only partially. What they all have in common now is that I have given them up.

I wanted to dedicate my life to medical research. As a 10 year old I use to mix different things, liquids and food, and observe over days what happened. I loved to wear white coats, and put on goggles, and pretend I was a scientific. I held the dream of investigation, no longer in medicine but in engineering, until I was over 20, when I still tried to get into a PhD program. I only got into the MSc, which would still have opened the door to a PhD later on, but by then I was scared of what could be if I failed, and decided to take the safest option I had at the time, and accept the job offer.

I wanted to be recognized as an athlete either in tennis, or in rollerblading, and much longer ago in gymnastics or horseback riding. Gymnastics I gave up, because the girls in my class were much better than I was and made fun of me, horseback riding because I developed allergies to horses, and tennis and rollerblading cause I gained too much weight, and once again people laughed at me. Giving those up and dedicating all efforts to those activities for which fat girls were accepted (also known as nerds) was much easier.

Academically I re-shaped my dreams to fit the image that I considered was the way to be accepted by society. I do love engineering, physics and math, and I do love reading, however, besides of reading, neither engineering nor physics belong to my childhood dreams. They have brought some sort of fullfilment in my life, and as long as I don't remember what the real dreams were, they remain my passions.

As a person I dreamt of finding the "right" one, and get married by 27 and become a mother by 30. I am now 27, and have not found him, which automatically delays any dreams of motherhood. While some could say to this topic that you cannot accelerate your future, I must admit that in the last 5 years I have taken myself out of the game, and have worked on not getting to know anybody. I am not sure if my "intimidating" character is a consequence of this effort, it is in any case very helpful.

I dreamt of belonging to a clique. I have some friends, spread over the world, and I was lucky enough to belong to a clique for about 2 years of my life while in college. After leaving college I realized that those 2 marvelous years had been an exeption, and that I simply make friends with people all of which belong to a clique in which I don't fit. I now am thankful for my friends, even if it means that the opportunities I have to see them are limited as I simply don't belong in their groups.

The dreams of my past are thus gone, there is however a newer dream I have built over the last years: Moving back to Boston and starting a new life, a stable an permanent life, there. Currently I am facing a "crisis" with two potential outcomes: giving up that newer dream, or going for it. There are things I am used to I might lose (vacation and flexibility), and the thought of losing them and not feeling fulfilled draws me into overthinking mode. I think I love Boston as the city it is. I cannot deny the memories I have, as well as the friends I left behind there, most likely have an influence to my emotions regarding Boston, however, I believe that there is more to the city than friends and memories. In Boston I feel alive, I am not intimidated by the people around me walking on the street, and when I walk I don't have the need of having my hands in my pockets and looking to the floor. There I am not ashamed of myself when going to the movies on my own, or for a drink. I feel home, and a sense of happiness invades me every time I see the Charles river, walk on Boston Common, or sit next to the Ocean in the Columbus Waterfront Park.

I am now working on going away from Que sera, sera. My destiny will come, yes, but I feel I need to act to bring it to me, and I need to start by making a decision so I can go after the one dream I still have not given up. 

Papam

Papam, my parent's housekeeper and my sister's and my nanny, is a hard worker woman, who treated us like her own children, with love and respect, and at the same time discipline, and was there for us when we needed her.

Papam, whose name is Amparo, started working with us before my sister was born, around 1986. She has two daugthers of her own, older than my sister and me by a few years. Her girls were her life, and she had two jobs in order to support her girls through school, and offer them the opportunities denied to her in her youth.

Despite of her efforts, life played a trick on her, and both girls became teenie mothers, leaving Papam with the feeling of being a failure: How could it be, she wondered, that both girls got pregnant at the same time, when the older one was 18 and the younger one 14, and gave birth with a week difference? How could it be that the girls had not learnt in their childhood that a child is no guarantee to "tie" a man, when they had grown up without a father?

When I look back I see two ungrateful girls (now grown up women), who never appreciated the education they were getting, nor did they appreciate the guft God had given them in their mother.

Today is Papam's birthday. She is turning 55, and is a grandmother of 4 or 5 children. She has been in charge of raising one of them, as her youngest daugther left home, and her son behind, when she moved in with a new boyfriend. Papam has worked over the last 16 years to raise this boy, now a teenager, who seems to be a good student and will graduate high school soon. Her daugthers are no longer there for her, and of her grandchildren, only the one she has raised is there. I called her to congratulate her, and her voice told me how happy she was of hearing my voice, how it filled her to see that both my sister (who also called) and I remember her and her birthday.

It has been around 12 years since she stopped working for us, but we haven't been able to break the contact: she is part of our life, she took an active role in raising us and helping us become who we are, and I like to think that it wasn't her fault the path her daugthers chose, as I cannot imagine how she could be such a good influence for my sister and for me, and not for her own kids.