I'm currently hanging out at a 24/7 internet café in Berlin. And I realize it will cost me a bit. I don't want to get thrown out, and I need somewhere to be for the next 7 hours. So whenever someone looks a bit annoyed or ask me if I want something with a look in their face as if "or get the heck out" I order something. Thus far I have gotten one coffee, one beer and now one pepper mint tea. Really nice tea though. It is a cup of hot water filled with fresh pepper mint leafs. And having spent 3 hours here already, the people here doesn't seem to mind all too much that I'm loitering about.
So now I'm mostly just being bored, counting down the hours to when my taxi comes at 3:30 am. Hoping that my 15-something euro I got left won't run out.
Bored, bored, bored. I did get a call from my family though, which highlighted my evening quite well.
As I got nothing better to do, I might just as well write the story about why I choose the name "overhaul".
The Overhaul
My overhaul was a 3 step plan to get back on track in life. I was in a really bad place a few months ago. Hated my life, hated myself, hated my job. So, I had a choice. Either I continue this spiral of hate, and that would lead to bad things in the long run. Heck, even in the short run I was starting to alienate friends.
So, to battle this step one would be "quit my job". Step two "get into shape" and step three "see the world". I decided I would do this at the last year's Norberg Festival.
I started with quitting, feeling a lot like you do when you really need to go to the bathroom, that you need to go "now now now". However I couldn't just leave. Would both look bad and feel worse. So I filed for my resignation, hoping that the two months of notice would go by fast. They did, they only took a month! Thanks though magic applied by my team leader together with a stroke of luck there was a change of schedule period at work, so I got to leave early.
Step two, get into shape, was a really awesome plan. I would work out 3 times a week, and walk for 1-2 hours a day. However first thing that happened when I quit my job was that I deflated completely. Even getting out of bed felt horrible. It was as if the structure holding me up went out of my body. As if stress had been the only thing I was. Shortly after I got a long, slow cold. Then my back broke. With so many things stacking up and without any energy left in me I gave step two up and just took walks whenever I could.
Step thee is the current step. See the world and get over my shyness as much as possible. To the surprise of many of the people I've been visiting I am actually very, very shy. Almost to the point of social anxiety (probably past it too). Asking for things in shops feels awkward. Trying to upkeep conversation is awful and hard. And so on and so forth. If I meet a new person, it takes me a long time to warm up to them and be open and honest. This whole travelling is really just a smoke screen to force myself to "get out there". It is not easy, let me tell you. I still have a hard time approaching people for buying random stuff in christmas markets and the like here abroad. Sometimes I cut myself some slack. Sometimes I tell myself "You're not leaving until you spoke to that person". It is slower than I hoped, but it is going quite well.
Last, forth, step is not really counted into this. But it is to get a job once I get back to Sweden. I've had a few job offers (some even abroad, but they pay bad, but if I somehow get stuck in San Francisco... ... for some reason *innocent hope*, who knows?). But if all else fails, I'll become a train driver and throw away all my aspirations of web design, design, and creative work.
So, there you have it.
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