Blogtober 31: the end

It’s the last day of October, so let’s have a look back on my month of writing. This project went well whenever I was at home in evenings; most of these posts were written after dinner and before bed. The days where I forgot were the days when I was doing something else; earlier this week I was at a church thing and fell into bed as soon as I got home.

Was this ~good content~? Sometimes. It was definitely a quantity over quality game. At times, it just replaced my daily journaling habit, which I miss. I’m very glad I wrote these posts as a time capsule of my first month in a new city. I think having done this will encourage me to write more often; as I’m doing an MA in English, it’s great to have more writing practice.

I’m proud of myself for writing on varied topics, and not just writing a 30 day thesis on Meteor Garden. I’ve spent a lot of time watching Meteor Garden this month. I spent some time thinking about how I could write an actual thesis on Meteor Garden. (The answer is subtitle translation and cultural norms. They use the word “surely” more in one episode than I’ve ever said it in my entire life.)

Next month I’m going to work on my sleep and attention span. They’re both in the pits after my move; it’s just so easy to pop on a podcast when I’m trying to fall asleep, even though I know it’s actually hindering me. For you, dear reader, it’s back to just writing when I have something important to say. Thanks for following along this month. Bis spaeter!!

Blogtober 30: the lie

Tonight is the Halloween party on campus. It turns out that when everyone entering college is of legal drinking age, there are a ton of public parties on campus. I’ve promised some friends that I’ll meet them there, and I’m cautiously optimistic about my costume. I’m going as Eloise, the six year old who runs The Plaza because I already have the jumper and shirt. It sounds like a good time, so of course I found myself in bed at 5 pm with a migraine.

I debated whether to take my meds for this one or not. It’s always a debate because if you take the meds too often, you get rebound migraines. They’re just like regular ones, but they happen more frequently. I decided to stop worrying and love the ritzatriptan, and now I’m feeling much better.
My other option would have been to call it a night at 5 pm and tell my friends I cant make it. The problem with this is that it invariably sounds like a lie. I’m the type who doesn’t really go to parties and prefers to stay in. whenever I stay home with a headache, it feels like just another excuse. Eventually, invitations stop and you’re at home on the night before a public holiday because you have no other options. So I took the meds. If you’ll excuse me, I have a party to attend.

Blogtober 28: when no one’s watching

“Character is who you are when no one’s watching.” Is there a phrase that reeks more of high school cafeterias? I can see the poster on the cinder block wall now…it’s of a football player looking into the sunset. Everyone ignores it as they walk to their next class.

Who am I when no one’s watching? Pretty much who I am right now. I currently have a five day weekend situation, and since most people don’t have that much free time to hang with me, I spend a lot of it alone. It’s a useful exercise in self-reflection. It turns out that I will spend hours watching bad tv on netflix if no one is watching. (Current faves: Riverdale (again, somehow) and Meteor Garden (I’m watching for the second time.)) I’m not a highly motivated, type-A goal setter if there’s no external stimulus.

At the same time, I’ve had to sink a lot of time into unlearning bad habits from my time working at a bank. It’s okay if I’m not busy all the time; being bored is a useful skill that most adults forget. It’s okay if I’m not being productive all the time; that leads to burnout. And I was burning out. I felt like one of Rainbow Rowell’s vampires, burning brightly and briefly. Never good enough, and unhappy to boot. Too many people were watching, and I was stuck in an unwinnable game.

Right now I’m taking it easy, and I’m surprised by how many moments in my day are interrupted by a feeling of pure happiness. Will I eventually find a part-time job to supplement my studies? Yes. Am I going to base my self-worth off of that job? No. I’m back to where I feel the safest – the place where no one’s watching.

Blogtober 27: planning & goals

Every month, I set four or five goals for myself. They’re related to my yearly and five-year goals, but I’ve come to a problem. One of my main goals for my life was to come back to Germany….and I’m here now. So here I am, twenty-eight and goalless.

The way I set goals is based on a ton of stuff I’ve read online, but the biggest influence for me is definitely Ella The Bee. I can’t recommend her videos enough if you speak German; her weekend reset videos helped me a lot when I was floundering after graduate school.

Every month I look at the previous month’s goals and write out the answers to three prompts: what worked, what didn’t work, and things to change. I look at those to make my monthly goals for the upcoming month. Since I enjoy using my planner, this is really helpful. I’ve had goals as big as taking the TestDaF and as small as reading a book a week or calling my grandmother. I’m usually successful in this area because motivation isn’t my problem; it’s remembering what I wanted to do.

Luckily, there are only two months left in this year. I might just let myself be pleased that my yearly goals went so well, and leave the next round of goal-setting for 2020. After all, completely upending your life doesn’t just take a few days and I should enjoy my success this year. If I don’t let myself stay still and be happy, there isn’t a point to any goal at all.

Blogtober 26: Goerlitz, Again

Savvy readers of this blog might be acquainted with the fact that this isn’t my first rodeo in Eastern Germany. (Fun fact: despite being from Oklahoma, I’ve never been to an actual rodeo. Too dirty.) So today’s trip to Goerlitz, a town on the German-Polish border, felt a lot like deja vu.

It was so strange to see the same things I saw five years ago with a new group of people. The strangest things were identical – like the group of drunken Dynamo Dresden fans we encountered on the train from Chemnitz to Dresden. (I don’t know if I’d recognize Dresden if the train there wasn’t filled with drunk and obnoxious Dynamo fans.) I saw the Jesus Bakery and the church and ate at a restaurant I just took a photo of last time. The food wasn’t great, but the meal only cost 20 zloty, which is about 4.50 Euros.

I saw the pottery shop where I purchased my salt and pepper shakers, and I whispered into the Whispering Arch again. I miss my Fulbright friends, although the people I went with were just as confused about where we were and what we were doing there as we always were.

In fact, the biggest difference that I noticed was that the church was being renovated, so the spires were’t visible. That’s something that’s constantly happening in Europe that seems weird to me as a Midwesterner. Everything isn’t constantly being renovated where I’m from; we build things on the cheap and don’t expect them to last very long. We’d rather tear something down than build something that will last. In the end, we don’t have beautiful candy-colored cities with picturesque church spires because we didn’t do the work.

Goerlitz is an astonishing place to visit. Since you can walk over the border into Poland, the entire area feels like it’s fallen through some cracks in what it means to be a country. A shallow river. Poland on one side, Germany on the other. The Czech Republic nearby. Slowly you slip into the place. It doesn’t matter what country you’re in; it matters that you’re there to experience it.

Blogtober 25: studyblr

Have you ever looked at a social media account dedicated to studying? They’re soothing, motivational, and cozy. Studying can be pretty and cool now, thanks to the internet. These accounts take me back to tenth grade. My biology teacher told us we remember things better if we take notes in different colors, so my science notes were a riot of color until I graduated high school.

I’ve noticed studyblr – the community of pretty motivational study pics on tumblr – influencing how I take notes while I read. I highlight more now, and I got a set of pastel Stabilo highlighters. (In my defense, these are really pretty highlighters and they’re inexpensive here in Germany.) I want my study experience to be aesthetically pleasing, because that’s how studying success is measured on the internet.

It’s not pretty to post a photo of an exam you did well on or the cover page of a paper you wrote. It’s not inspirational to get a B in a class. But a cup of coffee with a beautiful view? I’d hit that like button every time.

Of course, there is a problem with all this study inspiration. It makes learning all about taking pretty notes and spending the most time at the library instead of focusing on how you learn best. We have no idea if the people posting these images are even doing well in school. It also contributes to our general societal obsession with being busy; we can demonstrate that we’re busy with school by showing how much time we spend in the library reading or in a coffee shop writing. With every snapshot of a page full of notes, we’re building a type of social capital.

I like studying, especially since I’m only taking classes for my major as an MA student. It’s even more pleasant than the last time I was a student because I had time off in which to miss it; there’s nothing nicer than getting a window seat at the library and using your time to make your brain a little smarter. I’ll never be the type to take perfect notes using perfect handwriting, but I can still take the motivation from studyblr without grabbing onto the culture of stress and high achievement that accompanies it. Like with all social media, it’s best to take it with a grain of salt, and disengage with anything that makes you feel bad about yourself.

Blogtober 24: madame nyquil

Friends, I’ve caught the sore throat that is going around campus. I was first made aware of this unpleasant malady yesterday from one of my classmates and woke up similarly afflicted this morning. Then I met an acquaintance for lunch, and she was also ill. I’d forgotten how quickly sickness tears across a college campus, especially at the start of a new term.

What I want to do now is to simply give myself over to the charms of Madame Nyquil, but alas. I didn’t bring any with me, and the odds of getting some over here without going to the doctor are pretty low. So I’m making do with endless cups of tea, cough drops, and alphabet soup. (I bought alphabet pasta a few weeks ago, and it makes me so happy.)

Luckily, I didn’t have any classes today, so I had no obligations to excuse myself from or only take part in half-heartedly. (It’s like a meme – you don’t have to take a sick day if you don’t have a job!) I’ve decided my purpose for the rest of the day is to relax and see how far into German Netflix I can dive. See you tomorrow!

Blogtober 23: the reboot

This evening I was clicking around, surfing the web as one does when one is trying to stay awake past 8 pm when I came across this article. It’s called “Stop Rebooting Things That Aren’t Danny Phantom,” and I agree with this title wholeheartedly. Granted, I’m not sure that I’ve seen an episode of Danny Phantom, but it seems like a good idea to stop rebooting other shows.

I’ve still got a weird taste in my mouth from the revival of Gilmore Girls. It had some lovely moments like the musical and the first scene, but others were so incredibly mediocre that it made me question my love of the show. Other shows, however, have fared fare better. I love Queer Eye (not just because they set up camp in Missouri for two seasons). I literally can’t stop thinking about the reboot of Meteor Garden. The main difference there is that I didn’t see the original of either of those shows, and they’re not continuations of the original storyline.

Are reboots better if we don’t know the source material? I liked First Day of Camp way better than Wet Hot American Summer because I saw the revival episodes first. I’m sick of Disney rebooting their animated films (especially since they cast a problematic actress as Mulan so I can’t even go see that now.) Is the problem the reboot or the fact that we love certain stories and can’t let them go?

Famous stories have been retold too many times to count. Everyone can think of at least three versions of Romeo and Juliet or The Odyssey. Stories about a chosen one date back as long as storytelling itself, and we don’t seem to be sick of them yet. What we need is a change in characters and a change of scene. The story itself can remain the same – we love a chosen one. But our brains get bored if all the stories are exactly the same as the ones that came before. Please stop rebooting things. (Unless you want to reboot Danny Phantom. I’m not going to begrudge the author that.)

Blogtober 22: Spooky Scary

Here in Germany, Halloween isn’t a big deal. There aren’t decorations, and stores have already shifted to Christmas merchandise. (Lust auf Zimtsterne und Lebkuchen? Dann habe ich gute Nachrichten fuer dich!) However, I’m still in the mood for something spooky scary. So here’s the list of Halloween movies and shows I want to watch before October 31.

1) What We Do in the Shadows

A cult classic for a reason. It’s a mockumentary following a group of vampires around New Zealand. It’s a hilarious film, and I forget how it ends about half the time, so it never fails to delight me!

2) The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Selected episodes only. I like the series as a whole, but there are parts I’d rather skip. I love the dark baptism storyline, and the Christmas episode is nice and creepy.

3) Hocus Pocus

Yes, I’m one of those people.

4) Riverdale Season 1, Episode Six

It’s the best episode of Riverdale, which often toes the line between soap opera and creepy Halloween fare. Josie and the Pussycats singing over Jughead and Betty finding Jason’s car is perfection.

5) This episode of Even Stevens

To this day one of the creepiest episodes of television I’ve ever seen.

6) David S Pumpkins

Until I die. I’ve been boycotting SNL ever since the election of 2016, but David SP cannot be denied.

This is quite a list, but I only have class two days a week and my visa hasn’t arrived so I don’t have a job yet. I plan on enjoying a lot of these this weekend as the temperature drops into the 40s cuddled up with a mug of tea and a bag of German chocolate. (Running out of candy – that’s the spookiest Halloween of all!)

Blogtober 21: a bad day

Today was a bad day. Several things happened that threw me off my game, and I ended up googling my old company to see if they’re still hiring. (They’re not, btw.) Some days are like this, I told myself while sitting on the tram. Not every day can be perfect. Some days you’ll let yourself get too hungry and start worrying too much about money. (Which you can’t earn until you get your visa, which you’re still waiting on.)

Today was also a good day. My roommate gave me some of her lunch, which was delicious. I had exact change when I went to buy chocolate. I got my insurance card, and finished reading Othello. I actually understood Othello and have coherent arguments that I want to make about it tomorrow. I realized that I’m doing what I want to be doing, and although the prospect of the future is daunting, I will figure it out.