Rainbow Child

These last two weeks have been horrible. I am overworked, overstressed, overunhappy. I though I could break free from the prison called work and do it on my own as a freelancer but all my dreams and hopes were shattered. I had one nervous breakdown after another. My problem is that I’m gullible and naive and it’s so easy to give me false hope and then when it turns out that well, I have to stay put ’cause you changed your mind about working with me as a freelancer all the things I had imagined, every bright day I had pictured came tumbling down and it sucked. Big time. Now I have to pull myself together and think if I want to go to work with tears in my eyes every morning knowing that nothing will improve there for my point of view or if I want to risk and still try to make it on my own. It’s such a hard decision as long as I don’t have anything real that I can hold on to… I still have a couple of days to think about it and I’ll do that.

This is my third day in Baia Mare and I still can’t sleep properly. I used to love the bed here and whenever I got home I just put my head on the pillow and I was asleep. And now I toss and turn and nothing. Not even the two duvets and the overheated room don’t make things easier for me.

But it’s good to be back home, I have to admit that. I have already met some of my dear friends from here and I still have many more to meet. I haven’t had time for myself but I managed to have my hair cut (yes, A., now you won’t have to see the ugly cut from the back of my head anymore ), buy some winter shoes and spend quality time with Mum. Oh, it’s soooo good to eat cooked food again! I’m sick and tired of falafel and pizza! At the top of my list with resolution I should put ‘cook more’. But who actually keeps track of those silly resolutions? I think they sound nice, they give you the impression that the year that’s just starting is going to be different, better and then you end up doing the same stupid things all over again.

I’m eating tangerines like there’s no tomorrow. I envy that my father has a green thumb. Yeah, their apartment gets more sunlight than ours, but still… They have so many plants and flowers and so few casualties. All the plants that I buy wither either because I water them too much or too less or because they don’t have enough light. I want to bright up the place and I can’t. I such a loser in so many ways…

This snow is such a bitch! When I woke up there was a thin layer of snow everywhere and it was snowing beautifully with big fat flakes and now it’s gone I really can’t picture Christmas without it and the city looks so sad and muddy and ugly. But there are still some days left and I still have hope.

I want to go back to bed and read all day but I don’t know if I have the patience to do that. I’m really mad at myself for not reading as much as I used to. I have to change that but how? Reading is something so personal, so mood-dependent. I can’t force myself to read if I’m not in the right mood and because I have other activities in the evenings I don’t have much time to read. It’s a horrible vicious circle!

*DeYarmond Edison - As long as I can go

Ar trebui să-mi repet asta de zeci de mii de ori pe zi…

This time I’m doing it the right way: not mentally, but physically. I haven’t exercised since I was in high school and even then I wasn’t very keen on going to sports but I don’t know what happened and I don’t know what hit me but I signed up for climbing classes. I’ve already been there 3 times and I love it! I don’t want to climb rocks, I just like the idea of being Spiderwoman and I think the exercise is great!

The only problem is my laziness and the fact that I don’t know anyone there. I talked to some people and we helped each other but it’s still not the same as going there with a friend or with someone you know. I’ve realised that I hate being alone, apart, outside. The people there all know one another, they all help each other out, they’re like one big family. I don’t want to make new friends, I just want to feel less awkward. But I should probably give it more time.

These last weeks all I did was work, work, work and then work some more. Honestly, I’m sick and tired of it, I need a long holiday, which I intent to have for Christmas. I’m less depressed and sad, now I’m simply overworked. I always feel tired in the morning, I hate going to work everyday and I hate the fact that everything is urgent, that everybody wants everything NOW!

But like A., my therapist, said, I am very good at spotting the bad parts. I have to focus my attention on the good ones, so here’s a list with good things which I’m looking forward to:

• going climbing
• snow
• going to Baia Mare
• Christmas
• editing another book
• going to the Radiohead concert in Berlin next July!!!
• writing my dissertation (should be fun)
• my Tuesday therapy sessions
• going to Sibiu at the end of the year (who’s coming out for a beer with us except Béranger and Yuki?)
• meeting friends I haven’t seen in more than a year!
• giving presents

*Radiohead – Climbing up the walls

We might have come back from Germany, but I’m still thinking a lot about it: the way I felt there, Martha and Vio, the beautiful buildings, the Entschuldingung-s I’ve heard everywhere… Man, I’d move there without ever looking back!

The book fair is just around the corner and there’s so much work to do! We’re all so tired and I’m daydreaming about Christmas and going home and, like always, doing nothing! My far-away friends will also come this Christmas back home and I can hardly wait to spend hours talking and drinking tea with them. And I’m already thinking about Christmas presents and I have some ideas but not enough and I don’t know if I have enough money for all I want to give. Well, I can be generous at least once a year!

Since I’ve been working with books I’ve started to lose respect for their physical appearance. Not that ugly cover designs don’t make me shudder, but I’m more negligent with their pages: I don’t mind treating books like objects and not like gods. And I read so much at work and then I read some more when I get back home but I don’t want to stop, I just want to go back to read for my own pleasure and venerating books. I used to think that the coolest job ever would be to read books and get paid for that, now I’m having second doubts…

I know the saying goes something like ‘third time’s the charm’, but for me it was the second time. The first time we were in Köln we stayed for a couple of hours. Now we had two full days to explore the city and fall in love with it. We arrived last Saturday at around midnight but we had no problem getting from the airport to the Haupbahnof (HBF). Again, DB (Deutsche Bahn) made things incredibly easy for us. I’m sure other countries have a good railroad/metro system but I am totally amazed at how well the DB works. Anways, our first night there was spent walking to the hotel, eating sandwiches and drinking white beer and trying to get as much sleep as possible.

The first day there was fabulous! Our hotel was close to the HBH so we walked there and met Vio and Martha. I am so grateful that they came to see me! I really can’t picture going to Germany and not meeting them. I like it better when we’re a group: more topics to discuss, more ideas, more laughing and more feeling good. So the four of us started the day with a delicious cake and a cappuccino and then we walked around for the rest of the day.

We wandered around Altstadt (the old part of the city) and we were lucky to find the shops open (usually they are closed on Sunday). Every time I go abroad I swear I won’t enter any shops and then I break my promise and end up wasting money on clothes. Well, this time it was different: I bought shoes. And so did Martha and Vio and now we have the same shoes but in different colour

It’s incredible how many shops there are! We walked for a couple of hours and every street we came across was full of shops and cafés. It was absolutely wonderful! Also, I was surprised to discover that although Köln is a big city (more than 1 million people live there), it’s very quiet and relaxed. Like everywhere else in Germany, there were many people on bikes and I thought there were quite a lot of young people as well. Bottom line is that Köln has become one of my favourite cities ever!

As for the Bon Iver concert from that evening… my God, it was fabulous, like nothing I had experienced before! I was expecting something calmer and more peaceful, but they totally rocked! They sounded magnificently out of tune and they made my heart beat faster and faster until I thought I was going to burst with joy and emotion.  I still can’t listen to anything else: on my playlist it’s only Bon Iver over and over again. The concert was totally worth the trip!

Th only sad part was when we had to say goodbye. It’s not fair that people who mean so much to me are so far away and that I see them so rarely. I should spend half the year in Romania and the other half in Germany, maybe then I’d feel like I found my home.