Have you noticed how sometimes when you need something or would like to do something, that something just falls in your lap? Like last Monday when I wanted to find a hobby shop, I took a road I usually don't and there it was. I think it was yesterday when I started to think that it would be again time to find out what was going in the world, maybe buy a paper and read it in a cafe. So what happens when I stand outside the old opera house today checking the programme? A girl comes and asks if I would like to have a copy of the Welt am Sonntag, for free. Yes, thank you, I would like one very much!
Promo action of course and if the paper could actually be delivered to the institute I might have even subscribed. But as it was I just sat for two hours or more in the park near the opera house and read the paper. That was good. The sun shone again and it was warm even if I only had a t-shirt on. The paper was long and had some interesting articles about Putin's Russia and religion and literature. The famous Frankfurt book fair starts next week, so they were reviewing some of the books: some critic campaigning rather shamelessly for his favourite, which was actually quite funny.
Yeah, but it was great. Couldn't help thinking how nice it would be to do that regularly. Buy the morning paper and sit in a cafe somewhere reading it, with no hurry to go anywhere... I went to the Tapas place again after reading the paper to have an Alster and a Fajita - read some Toni Morrison and enjoyed the smile and the tattoos of that handsome waiter - and did some calculations. If I rented out my apartment, I could live for about year on my savings. Less if I did some proper traveling and enjoyed life. More if I get all the money I still have coming from different sources and if I live cheaply. If I were to sell my house the number of those years would be at least four and living cheaply a few more....
I have been spoiled, haven't I? I am 33 and I have worked in a "9 to 5" job for less than a year of my entire life. It is starting to sound so dreadfully horrible to me. Going to work every day, living in some horrid suburb and doing the "normal, bourgeois" life... I'm sure it is the dream for many, but I wonder if I am not ready to leave it behind.
I'm already thinking of it, you see. Living in Finland during the summer - I love Finnish summer - in the summer house and you know where, but spending the winters away, except for X'mas. (Oh, and just as a side note, good GRIEF how LOUD the sounds are, when you have had a couple of glasses of wine. Just pulled a piece of paper from the bag and it rattled like it was the thunder god itself. Not that I am drunk or anything...) The autumn in Europe maybe, when it is still warm enough and then at least to Spain - not that it isn't Europe - or to India. I am still thinking of India. I can't find the site now, but it was possible to live in Goa for a month for something like 200 euros.
Don't you think it would be wonderful? I still think it would be great. It also sounds a bit scary, but people do it all the time. And I think it is better also to do scary things than to just die of boredom. Of the utter meaninglessness of it all. I want to LIVE. It is better than to suffer depression and work in a boring job for forty years and then ultimately die rich and leave all your money to great-great-nephews and nieces, who have hoped for your death for the last twenty years.
It is of course also what some people call selfish, but the ultimate fact is that we only have one life. We can get stuck in our routines and hate our lives - or we can do something about them and change them. It is scary and there is no guarantee that it will get better, but is that a reason not to try. Hmm, yep, what can we learn of this. Wine is good and I hope - I hope beyond hope - that I have the courage to fulfill these dreams when the time comes.
Currently listening to: Eisbrecher - Kein Mitleid
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