What's on my mind

Today I'm thinking about activism. What I can do, what I have done, what I still need and want to do! I was very inspired by two interviews that I listened to on my drives to work and back. They were from the Pioneers of Change summit 2023, which I sort of dismissed initially because I believed it's probably just a bunch of whitewashed opinions. But I have actually heard quite some different people. Yes, the majority is white (which still makes sense in the Austrian/German sphere) but there were also a few people of colour and the topics and types of people were quite varied I must say. I am definitely guilty of dismissing activism movements if they don't seem perfect enough and I know it's not helpful. We all need to start from somewhere (which is always our perspective and lived experience) and then expand from there! And have empathy for everyone who is on the path of changemaking. About what I heard. One interview by Ronja von Wurm-Seibl was about the effect negativ...

I guess nothing's exactly wrong with my life. I mean, I feel like I literally have nothing to complain about. Even though that has never stopped anyone from complaining. I guess what I'm trying to say is, do you ever feel like the life you're living is somehow all wrong (or maybe not all, but major parts of it) and you feel so unsatisfied a lot of the time and trying to tweak it here and there but somehow you haven't figured out which parts need to be changed and to WHAT? I somehow blame all those activism pages, articles and movies about normal people doing extraordinary things, a thousand youtubers online who tell you about the endless possibilities of how to become awakened and alive and spiritual warriors or climate warriors or generally making yourself and the world better with your spiritual practice and all the good you do in the outside world. Are these people real and I'm just too much of a coward to not be one of them? Or are they not real, or at least bor...

I want to write, but it's not as easy to formulate my thoughts when other people are in the apartment with me (in this case my partner and the handyman). Therefore, instead of writing my original thoughts, I will share a poem I wrote last weekend. I'm actually rather proud of it, especially since it's been a while since I last wrote a poem I wanted to show to people. This one, I read it to my partner, two of my friends and my mom. My friend said it really touched her! And while rereading it, I saw that indeed it is special. And you know why? Because the moment I was writing it I was feeling an unnerving mix of feelings: uncertainty, longing, joy, regret and a tingly sort of awkwardness in my body. I guess my first instinct was to rationalise the shit out of these uncertain and uncomfortable feelings and try to take over with my mind. But then, I didn't. I was confronting the awkward and started weaving it into words. The theme was clear: bittersweetness. For a little bi...

I am angry, very angry right now. I can feel this fire burning in my heart and chest area, it feels painful and vibrating with intense energy. The rest of my body feels tense, my muscles contracting, my face and jaw tight. These are the physical sensations I am feeling right now and which are common for me to feel whenever I am angry. These physical sensations are accompanied by feelings of hatred, unfairness/indignation, humiliation and feeling inadequate and small. Some of these are directed at myself and some at others, but all suck and feel intense and painful. On top of that, thoughts are spiralling in my head around the reasons why I am (righteously) angry and why the person my anger is directed toward (and whose guts I hate right now!) is in the wrong and should be punished for how they made me feel. They fucking suck! They are so freaking selfish! How could they do this to me? I don't want to talk to them ever again! How can I punish them? How dare they talk to me like that...

The past year has been quite tough for me in terms of my mental and emotional health. Especially the first half of the year, I felt like I was barely scraping by and only steps away from a full-blown burnout. Recently, my best friend showed me this match stick test that's been used for identifying burnout and when I look back, I could identify mostly with the fifth match stick from the image below.  Feeling overwhelmed and lacking energy, but still managing to stand upright and keeping the facade up most of the time. On top of that, my tension headaches became more frequent again and I was living with the latent feeling that if I wasn't careful I was going to lose control of my life in a heartbeat, i.e. going into full burnout. This led to anxieties around sleeping, resting sufficiently and getting enough alone time. All this to make sure I could keep going; mainly for work, but also to be able to maintain my relationships.  Many things in my life seemed to be going really wel...

This week was quite educational in terms of my work, but not what you may think. I'm sure I learned a bit more professionally, but the educational part was about something else. Without going into too much detail (someone may read this after all), I basically disagreed with my bosses about a rule that was implemented for my work structure. This wasn't a general regulation that was applied for everyone in the company and I felt that this was neither logical nor necessary and would limit my flexibility in deciding what would be optimal for me to do my work well. I spoke to my supervisor about it and he didn't seem to have any strong feelings toward it either way, but when we had the meeting with one of the managing partners it was certainly a different story. Long story short, the "position of the company" was that they wouldn't budge on this.  The outcome may be expected and a little annoying for me, but this is not what I want to focus on here. For me, this wa...