the evening cathedral

because it’s a balmy, velvety, starshining night outside and I’m remembering last year’s camping trip to the Balkans with longing, here is a poem I wrote on that trip, pretty much exactly a year ago…

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………………..The Evening Cathedral

……………….. Particles of dust and peace

……………….. are floating in the shafts of light

……………….. that boldly enter between

……………….. the high domes of the pine trees.

……………….. Birds are singing hymns

……………….. while angels drift golden and red

……………….. across the serene sky,

……………….. disguised as wisps of cloud.

……………….. And when dusk arrives

……………….. in its dark robe, carrying the evening star,

……………….. men and birds and rocks hold their breath,

……………….. overwhelmed by the immense stillness

……………….. as the world stops spinning for one heartbeat –

……………….. and then goes on with the business of nightfall.

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writing about music

I’m passionate about music. I used to live in London for a while. What can the intelligent reader conclude from these hints?

Yes, of course: live music. Lots and lots of live music. Quite some for free, other concerts I had to pay for, I didn’t go to enough (what’s ‘enough’ anyway when it’s about music?), but I shared my experience of some of these concerts on a music blog I created – Cresting the Sounds – and that I had been contemplating creating for some time before then anyway, because not only do I love listening to music, I also love talking about it and exchanging experiences and songs and reactions. So that seemed like the perfect way forward!

Now, I live in rural southern Germany, in my hometown. It’s nice, it’s pleasant, it’s green, it’s outdoorsy, summer is coming and I have a huge garden to lounge in… all great. The big drawback? No live music. Nothing except a few local bands that do mostly covers, or some small, potentially interesting bands that play in some remote village that I can’t get to. *sigh*

What’s the point of this tale? Just to announce that I have reanimated my music blog, because I found that I still have lots and lots to say about music, even if I cannot share concert experiences. My sparklingly new post at Cresting the Sounds is asking if music is seasonal and I’d be very interested in your answers!

oh, that sweet smell of rain!

Yesterday started cloudy and cool. It went on to become cloudy and murky. It ended in sticky air and a  a few raindrops. We rushed to take in everything from the garden that had made its way out over the course of the day – dog toys, cushions, sun shades, abandoned socks and shoes. After ten minutes of light rain, it stopped. I almost screamed in frustration, because the rain had only added to the damp hot air and not brought any relief at all. Half an hour later, as I was hunched over my computer, I literally jumped when a huge lightning bolt lit up the sky right above the town and the thunder that followed was less of a rumble and more of a roar. Through the window I could see lightning after lightning and the thunder turned into almost a continuous sound and then – finally! – it rained. I rushed out of my room to open the door to the little yard that is right in front of my window, and just stood there in the dark, with the cool, sweet air on my skin and the rain streaming down from the dark sky, with the thunder growing fainter with each clap. And oh! that unmistakable smell of rain on a summer day! I have longed for it all year, although until that moment when I opened the door, I hadn’t known.

Camp NaNo

Okay, here goes. This is the post in which I allow you to make fun of me. And not only that, I’ll even give you a reason: I’ve signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo, after having miserably failed NaNo in November at a meager 5000 words.

You have no idea what I’m going on about? Well. NaNoWriMo is the somewhat mystic-sounding (really. imagine the vowels drawn out really long, resounding from the steep walls of a rocky valley high up in the mountains… ) short form of National Novel Writing Month, an initiative originally started as a way to get more people writing, which has snowballed into a very popular global online community. So each November, this great event takes place, in which thousands of people around the world try to write a novel of (at least) 50,000 words in one month. Which I took part in last year, and, as mentioned above, gave up at 5000 words.

Since this event is so popular, they have started to introduce the summer camp version of the original November NaNo some years ago, Camp NaNoWriMo. And that’s what I have signed up for. And the reason why I feel slightly ridiculous? The question that’s running through my mind of ‘why the blazes do you imagine you can do it now when you failed miserably before?’.

The answer that I give myself is the following: this time, I’m planning. I’ve never planned a story full out before. I might have planned the characters, and the beginning and, very vaguely, the end. But never the different steps that take the characters from the beginning to the end, with all the obstacles, dangers, tests, wrong turnings and so on in between. But this time, I am. I’ve spent much of the last two weeks doing extensive outlines and brainstorming ideas and developing backgrounds and am now putting down the actual steps that my heroine has to go through to reach the end I have in mind for her.

Phew…. It’s a lot of work, and actually, it’s also a lot of fun, which I never expected. It also takes A LOT of concentration. Even though I’m not nearly done, I’m starting to look forward to writing out my sketches and outlines in full and giving voice to the characters. It’ll start on June 1st and yes, I’ll share some of my experiences here.

This time, I won’t give up. I owe it to myself to see it through. It’s a matter of personal honour.

awesomeness appreciation: Walt Whitman

A friend’s status on facebook, quoting Walt Whitman, reminded me to go back to my old copy of ‘Leaves of Grass’ and thumb through it. As usual, I ended up reading ‘Song of the Open Road’, which is something of a personal hymn. Who couldn’t be enchanted by a beginning like this?

Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.

And then, later on, my favourite part of that poem:

From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

So yes, Whitman is a bit wordy. And yes, sometimes that can deter from what he has to say, and sometimes it’s plain annoying. And then, just when I’m about to put down the book, I’m caught by the rhythm of the repetition – I get a shiver down the spine from the honest, straight-forward love of humankind that flows from his writing – I stumble across a single, little gem hidden inside the repetitions and the big words

…..something like:

I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.

…..or:

I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
We convince by our presence.

- and I forgive the repetitions, the overflow of words, and am left only with a sense of grandeur and gratitude. Grandeur in the small things, in small ideas, in small people. Gratitude that there are people like Whitman who was able to see that grandeur, and love it, and express it.

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defining ‘a good story’

I just found another way to define what is a good story: a story that makes you cry even though you’ve read it 10+ times already.

Another one: a story that will not allow you to put down your book, no matter if you have all hell break out around you and should be doing a gazillion other things rather than read – even though you’ve already read the book more than once and know exactly what’s going to happen.

And another one: a story that makes the world around you seem less real than the one on the page (yes, even though you’ve read it more than once before).

All these things happen to me whenever I pick up any of Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books. Any. No matter how often I’ve read them (and I’ve read them VERY often).

I wish I could tell a story like that. I wish more other people could, as well.

Do you have any stories that fit into these definitions for you? Or do you have any definitions of your own?

research

Research.

What can I say about it that hasn’t been said by a thousand writers before me, all of them more knowledgeable and experienced? One thing I can say is that I always, ALWAYS underestimate it. After all, it’s fiction, isn’t it? I can just do what I want. … Or maybe not.

Today, I wanted to ‘just quickly’ look up some Welsh fairy creatures. Just to get an idea what kind of mythological things populate that area. Just as background knowledge. Nothing to do with the story itself. That was this morning. Tonight… Well, let me put it like this: I dare anyone to ask me anything about Welsh mythology and get away in under an hour. Except for the pronunciation, which totally defeats me. Okay, so maybe I read too much, but it doesn’t feel too much. Rather, I totally underestimated the effects my ‘little bit’ of research would have on my story. Where I originally thought to have the standard range of fairy creatures (dwarves, elves, fairies, …) as a backdrop, maybe with a Welsh name thrown in here and there, I know realize that…

 … the actual creatures are so much more interesting! I mean, who wouldn’t prefer to have a disembodied screeching voice that announces the death of a person to a bunch of boring old elves? Or a black dog with putrid breath and fiery eyes to a run-of-the-mill ghost? And did you know that in Wales they have this amazing creature that is called the Water Leaper? It looks like a giant frog, only it has bat wings instead of forelegs and it snaps the lines of fishermen, and sometimes it eats the livestock. Cool or what?

… all these things, all the legends and mythical creatures and spirits and so on actually fit the story so much better! That will really throw my main character off balance, and she needs being thrown off balance pretty badly. To start seeing fairy creatures is one thing. But to see fairy creatures she has never even heard of before… Perfect!

… Yeah, well, that’s the drawback: I need to make major changes to my story.

*note to self: in future, do the damn research *in depth* before you even start typing the first word!*

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on finishing something

The last few days I have been obsessed. Possibly also possessed. Anyway, that’s my excuse for failing miserably at writing one post a day.

I couldn’t think of anything else, except of my project. Ironically, that project is all about blogging, which would make the sane and normal person think that it would remind me of writing a blog post, but nope. It didn’t. I woke up in the morning, long before the alarm, with the feeling that I was wasting time, after I had dreamed about the project the whole night, grabbed my computer, worked right through the whole day without stopping except for a quick walk with the dog, went to bed with red, swollen eyes and completely exhausted around 11 pm, dreamed all night about it, woke up much too early, … I think you can guess how it continues.

Anyway, that was me the last three days.

Right now, my part is done and I’m waiting for reactions. Which leaves me suddenly feeling adrift. Even though it was so exhausting, I really enjoyed my headlong rush to finish a project I can be proud of. Waiting for the reactions from my classmates is eating me up inside and making me nervous as anything, but at the same time, I’m already looking for the next project I can dive into with the same abandon as I did with this one. That might not be so easy, because I usually have a problem: I’m a committment-phobic when it comes to my own ideas.

I’m really fabulous at starting things and quite the reverse when it comes to finishing something. Fantastic ideas always come to me, and I never see them through. So right now, I want to take a quick look at what made this project different. What made me see it through to the point where it’s actually out in the world and depending on other people to carry it further.

• First, I had a vision. But then, I also sat down and turned the vision into a real, do-able goal. I thought about the details and the nitty-gritty, instead of just the glory of the finished product. I drew plans, made notes, researched stuff.
• I started doing something, even though I knew it wouldn’t be perfect. I knew I would have to revise and, quite possibly, completely rework it later on. Still, I did it. I did it, because I needed to show the people I wanted to work with (my classmates) something concrete, instead of just talking about it all the time. I needed something to work with, even if I would have to change every single thing about it in the process.
• I filled dozens of papers with notes. I wrote down every single tasks I had to do, be it ever so small, and I did not let myself get up until I had completed all the tasks there were. I stayed in my chair and kept the fingers on the keyboard, or the mouse. Actually, it wasn’t really a chore – I didn’t want to stop. But I didn’t want to stop because I could see it moving forward and progressing.

Sound familiar? It certainly does to me. It’s what everyone always tells me. It’s what everybody is being told all the time. It’s what all mentors, all handbooks, all guides say: Set achievable goals. Work out what you have to do to get there. Sit down and do it. Don’t stop until you’re there.

I guess all those people who have given me advice… they were right after all.

afternoon (a word picture)

As I was lying on the springsoft meadow, flies buzzed about my ears and the dandelions looked down into my face, wondering what I was doing amongst them, shaking their heads in slight bewilderment, but smiling brightly nonetheless. What was I doing?

I was watching the wind erode the tracks that the planes had cut into the hazy sky.

 

a rambling roundup of randomness

I almost went to bed without remembering to write a new post. I’m not sure I can stick to writing one every day for a whole year, but I’m certainly not giving up after not even two weeks! So here I am, with nothing new to say.

I’ve been thinking about my wonderfully smart friend Fitri‘s advice, that I should be treating writing like a ‘real job’ and establish some kind of office hours, which sounds like a sound idea. (I really need to look up why ‘to sound’ and ‘sound’ are the same!) So I devised a new plan this morning and stuck it up next to my desk, with all the other plans I make every other day or so. They are all written on small post-it notes in pink, green, violet, yellow and orange. And with colourful pens.

Hey, it works for me.

Despite having this new great plan that will help me write more, I didn’t get around to writing today at all. Instead I spent the whole day tinkering with my other project, the human rights blog I was complaining about some days ago. I figured some stuff out and it’s looking better by the hour. Tomorrow I will test-drive it with the help of two friends, and if everything works fine, I’ll send out invitations to my fellow-bloggers-to-be on this group project and I’ll get some serious feedback, and then soon, we can get started! I cannot wait to get going on that blog for real, it’s going to be SO awesome!

Oh, and I still haven’t made up my mind on the question I asked your help for yesterday. The answers so far are one against one.

Until I have made up my mind, I’m re-reading Alexander McCall Smith’s ‘The Double Comfort Safari Club’. His books always calm me down and make me smile. Try it yourself. You won’t be able to resist smiling while you read. I’m pretty sure about it.

the classic question: to read or not to read?

Yesterday’s awesomeness appreciation post on Dylan Thomas received a hitherto unknown-on-this-blog amount of interest. Which was really neat and very much appreciated!

It leads me to the idea that maybe a lot of the people who dropped by love literature. Or good writing. Which leads me to the thought that maybe they also love classics. Or maybe they don’t (but that’s okay). Which leads me to the thought of asking for advice: to read classics or not to read classics?

By classics I mean those kind of books that you are supposed to have read to have a good (classical) education. The kind of books that appear in literary canons. I’m ambivalent about reading them. On the one hand, I think they did not become known as classics for nothing. They are probably really good and have great things to say. On the other hand, there are so many books that are also really good but relate so much more to the world I live in. They just haven’t been endorsed by generations of readers yet.

And really, it’s not like I haven’t read anything. I’ve read quite a bit of the English classics, and I’ve read the usual German ones (Goethe, Schiller, and anything else they wanted us to read at school), and some of the international ones, like the Odyssey, and when I think about it, actually I have read quite a lot. But even as I type, I have the likes of Hebel, Storm, Hesse, Kleist, Stifter, … (= all of them are on the ‘should-be-read’ list of German literary canons) staring down at me from the shelf with reproachful bindings. Not to mention all the American and English ones I haven’t read. 

So, a question to you guys and girls reading this: should I read them? Or may I indulge my secret desire to re-read one of Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books without feeling guilty?

awesomeness appreciation: Dylan Thomas

This is an awesomeness-appreciation post. Today, I’m appreciating Dylan Thomas all over again.

To begin at the beginning:

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.

The first sentence. The very first time I read it, years ago, I was irrevocably hooked. It goes on to describe how the whole town is sleeping, and I love every single word, but the part that I love especially, apart from that first sentence, is this:

Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrodgered sea. And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wetnosed yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.

Is there anything more effortlessly vivid, more neatly expressive, more beautifully evocative than that?!? Somehow it’s the ‘anthracite statues of the horses’ that always send a chill down my spine. If you’ve never read Under Milk Wood, you’ve missed out. Go and get it. Even better, listen to it. It’s a radio play, after all.

Which reminds me… You can hear Dylan Thomas read it himself:

my life, a movie

The first week of committing to this insane idea of writing one positive post every day, and already it’s getting hard.

I spent today in a horrible mood. I had dark, fatalistic thoughts. I practically bristled with negative energy, except that I didn’t have any energy at all. I wanted to curl and give up. I had to resort to the last line of defence, so I used my special secret talent for falling asleep anywhere and at any time, and had a two-hour nap on the couch. When you sleep, you cannot think negative things. Also, you interrupt that horrible downward spiral. It worked okay. I wasn’t in a much better mood afterwards, but at least I pulled myself out of the down trend.

How is this a positive post? Actually, it isn’t. So far. If my life was a movie, I could now tell you a beautiful anecdote of how I learned something about myself, the world, the universe from this day, and how that made it all worthwhile.

Well, it’s not a movie. I didn’t learn some kind of lesson. I’m still not feeling peachy.

But you know what? I don’t care.

This is a positive post because it rained half the day (the garden has been dry as tinder). It is a positive post because the sun came out in the afternoon and glittered on the raindrops quivering on the red tulip petals. It is a positive post because I watched a documentary segment about a young woman in Afghanistan, who sprays graffiti in Kabul to spread hope and spark new ideas through her art, even if she is continually in danger while doing it. This is a positive post, because my grandma is recovering well from a very recent eye operation, because all my family is healthy, and because apparently, from time to time, I need days like this to appreciate what I have and to be motivated for the future.

Damn it, a lesson sneaked in at the last line. Maybe my life is a movie after all?

Well, I better go and  find that writer who’s responsible for the script. I have some ideas I’d like to discuss…

ducks and rain and wild garlic

All these three things featured in my day. In ascending order of importance. Or prominence.

Unfortunately, I’m waaaaay too tired to give you all the details tonight! (hint: it’s not because of the ducks, nor the rain…)

Instead, I’ll give you two pictures. Because apparently, pictures are worth a thousand words. Which means I’ll overpay by about 1500 words, so you can consider yourselves lucky.

If you’d rather have the words, you have to wait till tomorrow, when my brain is functioning again.

Sorry.

But the photos are neat as well.

group blogging anyone?

As part of my let’s-keep-busy campaign, I’m working on a crazy idea I had some months back: to start a group blog with all of my classmates. ‘All of them’ being roughly a hundred people.

Yes, I mentioned that it’s crazy, it’s right there in the first line!

So I’m busy setting up this blog, which will be all about human rights, from human rights law to personal experiences in working with a human rights NGO, to … basically, whatever my classmates want to write about. As long as it concerns human rights. Which is what we all studied.

One obstacle, the one I was fighting with tonight and certainly not one of the dozens of others that have gone before it, is how to manage a blog with – let’s be realistic – about … fourty authors. Most of whom will only be contributing twice a year. Probably. Judging from the number of names that I have written on my ‘not only enthusiastic and positive about it, but actually really on board’-list, it might be a blog with only seven people.

Even then, however, we’d still have the problem that I was trying to figure out tonight: how to manage that many different people in one blog.

I have some pretty good ideas of how I want it to look and to work once it actually works. I’m also trying to make it as smooth and uncomplicated as possible. So I sent myself invitations to the (not yet public, because not ready) blog, using all the different options that wordpress allows (author, contributor, etc.) and trying to find out which one would be the least hassle. However, the only way in which each post will be credited to only one person, and that person can make comments on that post and answer comments by readers with the same name, is by giving everyone an account on wordpress.

Now I’m left floundering… Should I send everyone invitations and hope that nobody is turned off by setting up yet another account (thinking up a username, trying to remember another password, …) or should I set up very simple accounts for everyone and just send out the log-in details for everyone? Or even just set them up once they have submitted a post?

The second option would be an insane amount of work and concentration, trying to keep everything straight, for me and any one helping out with the administration in the future. The first option means that some people, especially the less tech-savy ones, will be deterred from contributing.

Decisions, decisions, decisions. I really don’t know what’s best to be done.

Does anyone have experience with group blogging and the technical details behind it? Anyone?

craft

This morning, while browsing my feed reader, I was intrigued by this article by author Jillian Kent, as a guest post on literary agent Rachelle Gardner’s blog (which I love to read, by the way). Jillian Kent asks whether I am a craft junkie. And goes on to explain what she means with ‘craft’ – the craft of writing. The art of writing. And how she cannot stop buying books on writing.

I answered with a halting yes. Actually, I would love to be. I would love to have all these books, go to conferences, talk to authors, read what great writers have to say about the craft of writing. Unfortunately, I’m usually broke. And when I have some money, I usually spend it on live music. Hm.

Actually, I’ve made the experience that the more I read about writing, the less I write. Often it intimidates me. I love reading those books anyway. Especially because I doubt myself all the time anyway. So I figure, it’s better to doubt myself and read something that can teach me, than to doubt myself and panic. But I also know that those books can strengthen my insecurities. So I read them in small doses. Maybe it’s good that I’m broke so much.

doodling

Today, I doodled. And I don’t mean pictures. I played around with a plot.

It’s an old idea. Actually, the original idea is about fifteen years old, I wrote the beginning of the story when I was still a teenager. Two or three years ago I re-discovered it, knocking around on my computer, and at the first time of reading it again, I laughed out loud.

In a good way.

So I started doodling with it, every time I thought of it. Because that’s what I do with stories. I think of them, I go all enthusiastic, start writing, find out that I have no structure whatsoever and then put it away in some folder on the computer. And every time I feel like it, I take it out and start playing around with it.

Somehow I seem to believe that stories finish themselves, if only I wait long enough and play around with them from time to time. Maybe they mate. Or they need time to hatch. I’m not sure. It doesn’t work anyway. They don’t grow.

So today I doodled on this idea. I wrote an interview with the main character, which I didn’t finish because he was way too talkative. He also kept hitting on me. So I ended it, but I learned a lot about him. Like, that his friends call him Dev. The name I gave him was Devlin, but he doesn’t like that. He thinks it’s too Celtic. Too grown-up. Too serious.

Then I went with my old and trusted method of just asking questions of myself and answering them. Mainly, I ask ‘why’. It sort of develops from there by itself until I have a pretty good idea of where it’s all going. It did work – as in I have some more ideas – but it also brought some new challenges that I hadn’t  thought of, and the most important one is that the stakes aren’t high enough. All the events and actions I’m putting on the line for Devlin (or rather Dev, as I now know) – he’d never in a million years do them! And the reasons I had before, that would make him do it, aren’t strong enough. I need to be much, much more mean towards him.

At that point, I thought that some really serious structure would help, and I brought out my little chart of what has to happen in which part of the story (first part: introduce character, establish setting, dump character into problem – second part: character tries to solve problem, fails, … and so on and so on). I tried to fill it in, but didn’t succeed much beyond the first part. Structure. I need some. Also, I need some more fiery hoops for Dev to jump through. And bigger rewards to make him jump in the first place.

*gottathinkitout*

I never used to do this much plotting, but I think that’s the main reason why my stories don’t mate. Or hatch. Or don’t grow in any way. I need structure.

What about you?

no time for anything!

This morning I really wanted to write. I didn’t get to do it all day. I’m really not sure what happened, but somehow there was no time. In an effort to find out how this has been possible, I have listed all my activities today and I will ruthlessly analyse them to see where I went wrong.

• I had breakfast and read the newspaper.
  Obviously, totally important. Nothing wrong with that. The fact that I skipped through the newsy part and devoted half an hour to the local news is only common sense, because I get headaches from all the negative stuff that happens in the world and who wants that at breakfast? 

• I read through a large number of blog posts, news articles, comments, etc. that I had been neglecting for days.
  Most of them were serious things. News. Law commentaries. Cute animal videos. Commentaries on contemporary feminism. Music reviews. You know, the usual stuff. It also did *not* take me the whole morning. Only about four hours.

• I researched temporary and part-time jobs here in my hometown.
  Extremely boring, but has to be done. It didn’t take more than twenty minutes as well, but then I received a shock that it took me hours to recover from: they really want me to send an application by *letter* for working part-time at a gas station. Did I slip into a time-loop? Should I go up to the attic and see if my mum’s old 70s clothes fit me? Then I had to go and look at some more newsy stuff, to check which decade I’m in.

• I argued with myself over which type of job it would make most sense to apply for.
  Important! I cannot apply to just anything… I need to have a plan first, especially if I have to combine working part-time with receiving (partially) social benefits.
  *note to self: keep in mind that all this is only temporary until you get a real job*

• I wrote e-mails.
  Gotta keep in touch with my friends! They are all over the world, and I’m stuck in this little town now. E-mails, facebook and skype are important. They are the substitutes for my non-existant social life. So back off on this one!

•  I read the last few chapters of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep.
   I couldn’t stop thinking about it! It’s no use trying to write your own story when you think in the language of another book and that character is influencing how your characters talk!

• I had a nap in the sun with the dog at my side.
  Important for bonding. Also important for the functionality of my brain. Even more important for the dog, who just needs personal contact all the time.

• I kidnapped my sister’s camera and experimented with it.
  Alright, I give in on this one. It might not have been entirely necessary. But it was sooo much fun. And the pictures just look so nice! See for yourself: 

  

I really don’t see how I could have squeezed any writing time in there. Honestly. Just too busy.

Any writers out there? When do you write? How do you hold yourself accountable?

signs of growing up

I survived! The first day of being thirty, and I neither feel particularly older, nor did I spontaneously develop wrinkles over night.

Yes, I did check quite closely in the mirror this morning. Why are you grinning like that?

I dreaded this threshold for a long time, but now I’m past it, it seems that neither wrinkles, nor growing up, happen over night. It’s easy to check for wrinkles, it’s a bit harder to check for signs of growing up, but I’ll be going with these for the moment:

• you don’t get joy out of the fact that you managed to go over the speed limit, as verified by a digital “speed-awareness” sign, on your bike
• you don’t sing along to your music while in the middle of town
• you don’t admit to the insurance guy that you have no idea what he’s asking you about on the phone because you’ve just never had to think about it/never were interested in it/never could be bothered – and even if you do, you feel guilty about it

I think I’m good.

Unless you know any other “you’ve grown up” signs? If you do, please let me know. I need to make sure nothing is sneaking up on me.

the big one

Tomorrow is my birthday. No, really, it is. And it’s not just any old birthday, it’s the one with the big ’3′ in front. For the first time. I’m dreading it.

Don’t get me wrong: I love my birthday. It’s insanely important to me. I’ve only ever met one other person who is as crazy about her birthday as I am, and she is the eldest of a large family as well. We think that might the clue to this feeling of ours, that our respective birthdays are the most important days in our lives. The one day when it’s all about us. No, change of personal pronoun. The one day when it’s all about me. I get to choose what is eaten, who is invited, what is being done, where I go, what music is being played… and I don’t have to respect anybody’s wishes and I don’t have to take a step back. It’s the one day in the year where I feel totally unabashed about being the centre of attention. Actually, it’s the only day in the year when I like being in the centre.

Also, I’m just happy on that day. I wake up with a good mood, I dance and sing the whole day like some annoying Disney heroine, I love everyone and tell them repeatedly (a bit like being drunk) and nothing can spoil my happiness – I can take anything in my stride on my birthday.

The downside of that: I’ve always taken it as a milestone. Because it is so important to me, I keep measuring myself on that date and compare how I ‘did’ during the last year, what developments I went through, what I succeeded at, where I failed. And because tomorrow is ‘the big one’, I’ve been trying to take stock of the whole decade in the last few days.

I found myself looking at what I wanted at twenty and how much of that I achieved. The answer isn’t pretty – it’s ‘Not much’. I haven’t sailed around the world, I still do not speak more than the two foreign languages that I could already speak ten years ago, I haven’t published a book, I’ve never ridden a horse or went paragliding. The list goes on, but I think you might get the idea. On top of that comes the realization of my present situation: unemployed, living with my parents, out of money, out of ideas, in debt, no practical work experience to speak of.

I *did* warn you, didn’t I? It’s not pretty.

However, the most important resolution I have made is not to whine anymore. Not even to myself, and most certainly not to my friends. So instead of looking at the deficit side (what I wanted and didn’t get), I want to take a look at the plus side. And I want to share it with you. So this is my list of all the things I achieved in the years between twenty and thirty, in no order whatsoever:

• finished three university degrees
• lived in six different towns, three of them abroad
• made a huge number of friends
• stayed in touch with most friends
• lost some friends, but learned from the experience
• fell in love
• fell out of love
• never quit writing
• learned to go out by myself
• learned how to be alone and to rely on myself
• taught at two different schools
• went through a severe psychological crisis and worked hard to come out of it again
• survived a potentially dangerous illness
• climbed mountains by myself
• travelled with friends and alone
• discovered new music and went to lots of concerts
• never gave up my belief in humanity’s goodness, although often questioning it
• helped people who needed help – not always, not everyone, but every time I could
• read massive amounts of books and learned about humanity
• connected people
• never stopped trusting people and faring quite well with that policy
• gained self-confidence
• got experience and knowledge in a huge number of areas: love, friendship, how to listen, when to speak, what to say and what not to say, people in general, group dynamics, music, writing, myself, thinking
• had lots of fun at so many concerts, parties, gatherings
• saw beauty in all the expected and in even more unexpected places
• never gave up questioning the world and reflecting my actions
• never grew up to the point of giving up my dreams

I like this list. Some of the points might be repetitive, but I wrote them as I thought of them. This has helped. I think I’m ready for tomorrow now.

It’s time to go out and celebrate in style and welcome the 3 into my life.