Routines-girl

Over the past years I have became a person who day after day establishes routines for the time outside work, and sometimes for the time at work. It enables me to get out of bed and without needing to think or analyze any situation around me, get ready for work without missing anything. Lately I have also established routines for the weekends, I am not sure what the purpose is, but whenever I have a place to go to, a flight to catch, or just errands that need to be taken care of in the morning, I can get to start things on time. 

Once in a while, however, I sit in front of the tv or in my car and wonder whether or not it is healthy to have a life filled of routines, a life where any changes can disrupt my feeling of well being after the fact and cause guilty feelings when I have gone away from my set routine (let's be real, I love doing new stuff!).

Today I need to drive 200km to go celebrate Father's day with dad, something I am honestly looking forward to. I also heard my sister will be coming to this country in one week, and probably I will get to hang out with her once or twice this summer, assuming she does not travel around. Those two events or visits are clear "disruptions" to my routine, and while I will love seeing them and spending quality time with each of them, I find myself creating my contingency plan for how to face tomorrow, as I am already aware I will not be able to follow my routine tomorrow: I am staying overnight 200km away from my apartment, I will need to travel that distance in the early morning to get to work, and I will do my best to get to work at my usual time, and avoid any unnecessary changes to my regular routines or schedules at work.

Is this the normal way to live, or do my routines limit my freedom? What would happen if I get to work at 9am instead of at 8? I don't think anybody around me would mind it, or even notice it. I would not miss a meeting nor would I miss preparing a deliverable due tomorrow. Why then do I struggle to allow myself to "break" my routine, to be spontaneous?

I feel comfortable with the life I am living, not necessary happy, but I am used to it and at least for the time I have left where I currently am, I'll most likely keep following my routines. I hope however I will allow myself in my future to be spontaneous at least for a while and remember what spontaneity feels like. Maybe I'll decide to change then, or maybe I'll fall back into creating routines, but at least I'll offer myself the opportunity to bring a change into my life, and how I handle changes and sudden opportunities in life. 

kid

Over five years ago I lived through a few scary days: I thought I was pregnant, frsh out of college, not yet working, and having left the US , meaning, all by myself. While life showed me its wisdonm by not allowing me to become a single mother way before I could have been ready for it (let's face reality, I am not ready for it now, and it's been years!), it also taught me to consider the unthought of on every step in life.
I am not sure what my life would have been like if there had been a baby. I know I would have kept it, I know I would have gone to Germany (and would not have told my parents about the baby!),I would not have told the father, to allow him to follow his dreams and life, but I have to ask myself how the company would have reacted to a pregnant new hire.
What would my life be like now at 28 if I had a 5 year old kid? I would for sure not have travelled what I have, and I would not smoke the way I do (probably not at all). I guess I would only work the mandatory time, to be able to pick up my kid from daycare, and I'm sure I would not travel to Boston as frequently as I do. Maybe I would have gotten used to Germany, after all, according to everyone I know this is suppossed to be a great place to raise kids, and I can imagine the kid would have become my one and all in life.
A few days ago I remembered the fear I had when I though I was expecting, and I have been thinking since then whether or not it would have been good or bad for me. I still cannot come up with an answer. It would be very different for sure, and I hope if that had been the case I would have had the character to face my life and raise my kid the best possible way. Maybe I would at somme point have gained the confidence to go to the father and tell him, maybe not. I cannot tell for sure, as I always knew (he'd told me at some point), he "would never forgive a girl if she kept from him the fact he was a father", and that is exactly what I would have made.
All are questions and there will never be answers to them. It's just strange to think how different things could have been if a simple test had given "+" instead od "-", what a change that "+" would have brought to my life, to the way I interact with people, and most likely even to the way I think of politics.

Crossed Pathways

Often I ask myself what a graphic representation of my life and that of the people I have met in life would look like. The older I grow, the more I realize that the likelihood the path I've followed in life crosses multiple times with someone else's is high, and such a representation would look like an unorganized mesh.
As a little kid (4 years old) I had three good friends: LM, NT and NR. LM moved to Europe when we were in First grade, and over the years to Venezuela and Brazil. We met a few times while she was in Brazil, and after I moved to Europe we met twice in Switzerland. NR and NT finished school in Bogota with me, each of us chose her way, but last year NR moved to the same city I live in, after getting married to a German who got a job in this city.
At work we always say you meet at least twice during your career, and now that I have been almost 6 years in the company I see what it means: People I worked with during my first years in the company have  rotated jobs like I have and suddenly we meet again in different projects and roles, and in a few cases, also in different locations.
While I find it logic that even if there have been years since the last interaction, there is a common ground to start from in the new meetings, I have also realized that meeting new people who have had similar experiences also creates this common background to start from, and can even be a first step for friendship.
I have it easier to connect with travelers, with people who have a technical background, with people who went to the same uni I did, or with people who lived in the same cities I have lived.
At the same time, I struggling connecting with Colombians and with people who believe either in male superiority or in European superiority, even though those are situations I have been exposed to since my early childhood.
I consider myself lucky for the friends I have made over the years, regardless of what the reasons for our friendships are. It doesn't remove the weirdness of not feeling able to connect to my culture, the one I was raised in.

February 8th, 2013 Dundee

Maybe

Maybe it is time to start thinking again, or to stop doing so. Society has the tendency to dictate what is okay to do when and most of us follow its directions, sometimes willingly, sometimes without realizing we are doing so.
It's been a while since I last sat down to write, it's been a difficult time during which I did not even manage to motivate myself to follow my life, and writing was not really an option.
Looking back I can't point at a single event that triggered this phase: Maybe it was work, maybe it was the realization that I am now more lonely than I have ever been and lack the courage to approach new people. Maybe it was my 28th birthday reminding me of all those goals and dreams I had and I didn't achieve, or maybe it was something else.
Whatever the trigger was, reality is that my entire world collapsed: work, family, study, health and friends, and with that I lost control over my life and over myself.
How come I decided to skip carnival this year? Why did I decide to go skiing all by myself? Why did I  book a trip last minute for New Years? Maybe I am trying to escape from myself, or maybe I am trying to find myself.
If I look right and left I get scared at how fast things are changing, how my feeling of inadequacy increases by the minute, while I fail to point at the reason or reasons for it. Maybe it is the happiness of those who surround me, always reminding me of my struggle to accept my life as it is. It could also be the challenges at work, throwing me frequently into a complete state of hopelessness, or that spiral that caught me months ago and won't let me out: it just moves faster and faster and pulls me further into it.
Maybe I should try to start over again sooner than planned, or I should shield myself to my surroundings, so that noone and nothing can reach me. Maybe I should take one day at a time, and wait for the changes to come by themselves.

Late January 2013

Fahrerflucht

Germany is the land of rules: There is a rule for everything, and while I refuse to read the entire book of regulations, I often feel there must also be a rule for when you are allowed to just be alive.
Yesterday I broke a rule that I didn't know was one: on my way home from work there had been an accident to my right, so I went left to avoid going over the closed area of the accident. A car came on the opposite lane to mine on my left, so I drove carefully, paying attention to my left to avoid an accident. This caused me to oversee some traffic cones on my right, which I hit. When I felt the impact I looked on the rear miror and saw 2 cones flying. In my head and world, hitting a (or in this case 2) traffic cone is not a car accident, so I kept driving.
Once at home the door rang: it was the police coming to inform me that I had had an accident and left without being authorized to do so by the police, and an official report had been filed by the authorities. They had taken a look at my car and seen there were 2 marks of the cones, and I was free to give them my version, if I wished so. The consequences can be to lose my license, and or a fine, there will be an official process opened, and a judge will decide what my punishment should be.
I must wonder how things work here. I can't understand how hitting a traffic cone and not calling the police is against the law, and I must also sadly realize that it doesn't matter how long I have been in this country, and how hard I try to always be within the law (when I fly to Europe I don't even bring more cigarettes than what I am allowed to), I will never understand the rules, the country or the people.
After the police departed yesterday, once they had written down my version and checked my driving license, passport and property card of my car, I could only reassure myself that my decision to leave this country and return to my beloved Boston is the right one. It's been 6 months since I requested the move, school applications are in and in 2-3 months I should hear back from the schools. This won't last forever, and yet I'm afraid of going on the street, driving, and just existing in a country in which I clearly don't belong. A country where I feel overwhelmed every time I want to get something done. My time here is coming to an end, and I can only wait until the end comes.

A flight to Hell

It is funny how vacation feels, and how it comes and goes.
It has been almost 3 weeks since I went on vacation, and while it has not been a full time vacation, it has been relaxing, the days I have worked have felt like a regular day, with much lower stress levels than when I am in Germany. However, the most important part is that it has been 3 weeks during which I have been myself full time: I have been happy, have felt I belong to this planet, and that there is a life besides work. Not even the biggest challenges at work over the past weeks made me feel I hate myself or my life, it was after all only work, and I knew all I needed to do was to turn off my laptop and then I'd be a person, somebody's friend and a walk around the city would remind me that life and the world are beautiful.
I only have a few hours left until my flight to Germany departs, and the feeling of loneliness, of sadness and almost depression is already here: I never imagined that I would willingly board a flight to hell, and that is in my opinion what I will do in a few hours. In less than 24 hours I will be back at work, I will be in a country where nobody cares, where rules are the only way to go, and in which my closest acquaintances are household devices: my TV, my wash machine, my computers, and my closest friend is my beautiful and loyal car. Obviously there are people there I care for, but I often struggle to see if I can call them friends or not.
For most people there this country is not paradise, and neither is it for me. A friend here asked me yesterday if I like something specific here. I told him that more than like or being blinded by the green of the other side is how I feel ok with myself: I do see the problems I can face if I move here, I see that not everything are advantages, and that disadvantages will come in multiple ways: work benefits, vacation, medical insurance, ease to travel, but that I am willing to get into that because the good side is much more meaningful than all the drawbacks I see. I see the faults, the problems, but I still wanna give it a try.
However, whether or not this place is paradise, it is for sure not hell, and in my eyes it is heaven.
Flight 423, a flight to hell I will board today.

Productivity

As I child I learnt form my parents that the only definition of productivity is to have the day full of activities: school, homework, sports etc. I used to spend my afternoons after school either with the kids in my building playing or reading books.
I still have that definition of productivity in my head, although I not fully agree with it, and frequently I create a weekend or day plan, where I plot all activities and tasks I want to perform in the weekend or day.
This weekend was one of those weekends with a plan: I had a total of 23 activities planned, completed 21 yesterday and one today (the one I have left was not possible due to German law: It is forbidden to wash a car on Sunday, go figure the stupidity of this country... On sunday you are not allowed to be loud, or wash your car, but you are allowed to vacuum your car, which is loud). Now, while watching TV I asked myself if not having any time free is really to be productivity, and I must admit that since I finished High School I have learnt that there are other types of productivity, mostly, recharging energy.
I now also consider a lazy afternoon productive, and sleeping long on a weekend is in my eyes one of the most productive activities of the week. I would however not consider it productive to sleep every day in.
Productivity in my eyes is that fine balance between completing all the tasks that are needed and enjoying your free time and recharging energy for the new week or simply for the time that lies ahead.
My apartment is now clean, my laundry done, my car clean inside (yeah...), and my clothes and food for work tomorrow ready. Right now I am trying to decide whether to study or play on facebook. What will provide me more enjoyment? What will make me feel the most fulfilled? One of those questions I often ask myself.