Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtzentag, lieber gaharr!!

Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag, liebe vout!! Möge das nächste Lebensjahr ein zunehmend entspanntes sein!

This has got to be hormonal. Has been a while since a movie moved me this much. Also, hello? I'm tired, as in, exhausted? Could I please fucking sleep already?

You're standing on a bridge. You were being hunted by the police (you're one of the good guys, but in secret, and they don't know).You can hear them talking on their radios, about how the bridge has only two ends (and its high, so very high above the water). It's the bridge from Inception, and the middle part is lifting, leaving behind a gaping hole in the bridge, and you steel yourself. Your partner has already jumped and is fine, back at headquarters already. Now you need to. You take a deep breath and remember all the rules.
Spread out while you fall, so as to gather as little momentum as possible. Contract to a very small, thin arrow, right before you hit the water, and then spread out immediately again, and swim like crazy to reach the surface again.
It works, and you're a very good swimmer. You let yourself drift a moment, happy to have gotten away, confident in the wide, friendly, lukewarm river.
But then, suddenly, you spot it: The monster. The urban legend the team had been dismissed as utter fiction is actually true. All the debris and junk that had been thrown into the river has accumulated and grown into this shapeless, vaguely orange monster, and you remember:
It eats people.
So you try to swim away like hell, but it's quicker. So you try to use the planks and concrete pillars in this industrial area to change direction as quickly as humanly possible (like a hare), and it misses you again and again.
But you get scratched. And it's a biological colony of millions of small organisms, and now you're infected. Tiny orange flecks slowly spread on your skin around the scratches.
Finally you grab a big, wet carton and hold it in the direction of the hungry mass coming after you, and apparently it thinks there's food in there, for it jumps right in. You close it and put it down on a slap of concrete, upside down. The thing is confused, not trying to get out, but at the same time, you can see it seeping through the carton. It will get free.
But you have the time to cross the river and get out of the water by then.
There are small houses there, you just go to the very next one. It's cute, if a bit tiny, there's a family living there, looking at you in bewilderment and growing fear.
(You are, btw., a beautiful young woman with short black hair and a lot of muscle, wearing a black fighting outfit, now bloody, dirty and utterly wet.)
Where's your telephone? you ask. Out back, they say.
So you walk through the whole house to find the telephone on the porch, and call headquarters. Jimmy from dispatch is giving you a hard time, but you're not up to jokes right now. You give your code in a raspy voice, and he puts you through to the rest of the team.
It's dusk, by then, birds singing in the back garden. You look at your scratched arm, but you're not worried. You know how a TV episode like this ends.
Your team will find a way to save you, just in time.

******

So the Shadow-Self says:
You've jumped from the traditional pathway into the one that works with your emotions, and you got away. But yes, there's something disgusting lurking here.
Put it in a box for now and call your tribe. They will find a way to heal you.



True that, partner, true that.
But don't forget: This is just one side. The other one is a desperate old lady, watching her life's work in peril around her. I will fight the infection in my mindset. And I will stay one of the good guys.

2009 started with a one-word New Year's resolution: Early. I wanted to be on time for once, with everything, being early enough to gain some confidence and leeway for relaxing with a good conscience.
The year found me trapped in a hamster wheel of frantic activity, leading nowhere. I had the cushy office job at university, offered to me by my favourite professor during my oral exam, last exam before graduation. But I had no idea how to behave there. I had a big task which started to become topic no.1 in most conversations I had: The Chronologies. Building a table of dates and information, an overview of the complete history of India, China and Japan, meant to be used by starting students of Cultures and Societies of Asia (KUGA), a field of study that demands an astonishing amount of knowledge of all three countries in a shockingly short amount of time.
So, I could easily see the sense in the product I was supposed to create and was fascinated by the things I read up on. But I had studied Japanese Studies, I had no idea about India, and only passing knowledge about China. And I didn't dare ask.
7 years I had been trained to get a task, produce the best I could, hand it in and then wait for the grade to come back to me.
My professor is a very busy woman, so everybody tried to bother her as little as possible, while at the same time communicating as often and clearly as possible, too. There was one colleague, a seasoned "scientific assistant" as my post was called, and she had also teaching assignments. Students were afraid of her, colleagues intimidated, I was terrified. Not because she did anything wrong, no. Because she didn't do *anything* wrong. She taught me how to teach, how to teamwork, how to communicate in an academic setting, how to work efficiently instead of helplessly controlled by my perfectionism.
For most of 2009 I was lagging behind expectations, one step behind the things I had committed to. And there was a long list of things I had to do that I didn't even get to, like working on a doctorate.
I read a few self help books without doing anything with what I learned from them. In December 2009 I had worked myself sick. I had to stop any intake of white sugar, white flour, raw fruit and dairy. I had a cold more days than not. Christmas was a small but very satisfying affair, apart from not being able to eat any sweets and only participating in the feast knowing it would come back to haunt me.
I was anything but Early, losing the few free days I had to Resistance. Without my safety net of love and support I would have probably lost myself.
A cushy office job was supposed to be Plan B. Not plan A to Z without even time to focus on health or getting back any orientation in my own life.

So 2010 was started with a new resolution, this time phrased as a priority: My body.
I started out with an actual plan, based on the self-help strategies that had made the most sense for me. My body was always priority one. If something didn't feel right, I tried my best to change it before the bad feeling in my middle turned into actual indigestion.
I spent most of my time on the university job, struggling with the massive task that was summarising the history of three major countries in a concise way that was still able to show internal causalities to absolute freshmen. What I had left of potential for creative productivity was spent on rpg, writing (mostly fanfiction) and translating poems for Jessica.
I went outside a lot more, on walks, picknicks at the lake, visiting Dad in Kiel, Anja in Hamburg and Jessica in London. Jessica had asked me to help with the daunting challenge that was 37 years worth of cluttered paperwork and, well, stuff, accumulated in her 7-room-appartement in London. I started that task in October, and she was so pleased that she took a wad of actual cash, put it in my hand and told me to make a career out of this. Since my convoluted self-improvement strategies had already pointed to self-employment anyway, I decided to do so.
At university, it became quite clear by then, that I had gotten a long list of completely wrong instructions. A pile of bureaucracy bullshit was leading to the fact that the Chronologies would never be used the way I thought they would. First all of India was cut out, then all of China - the both parts I had spent nearly all of the research time on. Then Japan was cut down and down and down until the end product looked like something I could have easily assembled in about two months.
Completely disgusted with the academic world by then I didn't even try to apply for other jobs there, when my contract wasn't prolonged. A fate all scientific assistants but two shared: The university had, on top of it all, completely spent the budget for the *next* semester already, so we were let go after December 31st.
I decided to commit to my dreams. I decided to Fail Harder.
What I had managed was not only to get on top on all of my due doctor's appointments, but I also established a working communication with my own body. My body really was not only my greatest tool, but my partner in living. I had even acquired the habit of going to the gym 2-3 times a week, and loving it. And at the same rate communicating with my body worked out, communicating with the Shadow Self grew into a functioning dialogue.

2011 started in London, where I was completing sorting through Jessica's possessions, talking to many people who'd have assigments for me the moment I could produce some kind of credibility - or at least business cards, it seemed. Instead of going to watch the fireworks, I spent playing a curious mix of maid and host at Jessica's. I staid there for ten days, oscillating between loneliness and a soothing, wonderful awareness. I had a photo with me that showed my Visualization Wall at home, where I had tried to shape everything I learned and all my goals into something that the Shadow Self would understand.

(note to self: calendar design)

2011 has a one-word resolution, too: "Now". Instead of always preparing my life I decided to actually live it.

So. January. I came back from London on the 8th, aiming for the stars: Not only would I go for self-employment, I would try to form an agency with a trusted friend, and Jessica's financial backing.
I started with so much momentum, only to crash against a wall of university work - I still have the teaching assignment to finish, and since I haven't yet managed to get rid of this pesky perfectionism, I can easily fill all my time with just the one course (Art and Daily Life in Japan through the ages, btw). I didn't quite start to sort through all the new information and inspiration that I had gathered in London for nearly two weeks, because there were so many people who's opinions I was waiting for. And I did a stupid mistake: Starting into a break, a much needed complete day of recharging, without having a plan, orientation, anything, really. I couldn't have opened the door for Resistance any wider if I tried.
And then there was the introductiory lecture on Art in a team-taught lecture series every freshmen of KUGA Japan or Japanese Studies has to take to gain a first insight into, well, everything.
I tried to use everything I had learned last year to make my gigantic to-do-list work and battle Resistance at the same time, but failed in too many ways this month to feel proud of myself. I also didn't quite manage to go to the gym as often as I'd liked, and instead caught a cold again.
But it's okay, I didn't do too bad. The lecture was a success, my professor asked if she could use the script next year herself. I met up with nimielle again, which was wonderful. I started the agency thingamabob with al_pha and, in the end, started to write again - high time for that, really!
And I found new music to help me through.

And, hey, I managed to write a long LJ entry.

(Feel free to ask for specific details, I can't quite decide what to write about in detail first.)


 

Sorry for being so uncommunicative for so long. I've been burning the candle from both ends for weeks now. So today I crashed. Hard. Slept for a long time, and although I've been reflecting and plan-adjusting and recharging as much as I could before, too, this stolen day obviously did the trick.

( So, here you go. )

Erkältung #7 and counting...