silverlexia

I was on vacation for the past 11 days and now back home, the whole reality of "life" crashed down on me without mercy. It can't be healthy to go from relaxation back to complete stress this fast.

September 11th: Be nice to a stranger. Walk around with open eyes and an open heart. Hold a door open for someone, help carrying a bag, be especially friendly so a service person or just smile at someone in the train. It doesn't have to be a super big action. Just a small gesture and, what's even more important: you are present with your thoughts and willing to help and make someone's day a little better. 

September 6th: get to know your hometown... From home: Choose one building, bridge, park, stature or any other "sightseeing" place from your home town and look up its history. The next time you walk past the spot with friends or family, you'll have some profound facts to share. They will be surprised by what you know about it. 

September 4th: Stop yourself from chickening out.
          
          Normally, you're capable of waaaay more than you acutally do right now. 
          This is a very hard thing for me to accept, too - let's say I'm the queen of last-minute-excuses and staying in my confort zone because it's easy and nothing new.
          But throughout the past year, I did some small things to get myself out of my shell and - even if it was very hard every single time - it always resulted in something really great.
          
          So todays task is: think about one small (!) thing you want to do but never did, yet. It's not about doing that thing today, no. Just collect all the reasons, why you would really like to do it. And then think about the reasons that are holding you back. Are they really worth not doing it? Or is it just fear of the unknown, that's stopping you? 
          
          You won't be the person doing it best if you do it for the first time. Maybe you'll do very shitty at the begining. But you won't stay a beginner forever. If you really like it, you'll do it again and again and get better and better. So maybe it is worth trying.

September second: write down the lyrics of your favorite song. Choose a pen you love, and a pretty paper. Put on the song and start to writing. Try a new font if you like. Add some doodles around the text if you feel artsy. 
          Focus on the words, the melody, the aesthetic. 

September 1st:
          I'm going to start a series in September where I think about little challenges to be less on my smartphone and resharpen my mind, get a little bit out of my shell and just do some kind of social media detox. 
          There will be easy tasks and some that are a little bit harder. Some are done in one minute and some may take 20.
          
          I will try to post one activity every other day and it will be in english so I can improve my english skills on the way a little bit, too. 
          I would be very happy if some of you participated or even just took some inspiration from my ideas.
          
          So here's the first one for today: sit down somewhere outside and eat a little treat or sweet drink, just by yourself. Without checking your phone. Leave your phone at home if you can. Without Music. Just you, analysing your surroundings, the people who pass by. Take five or ten minutes for that. 

I don't know if any of you remembers, but about 1,5 years ago, I told you about a new internship that I was super excited about. Now, I have the chance to start my PhD in this very same project. 
          I was panicking about my future for the past couple of months, not knowing what I wanna do and where I'd find a job. 
          And then I saw this position. 
          It almost sounds unreal. 
          I was so damn happy and exited. I immediately called my parents to tell them about it.
          
          There's only one thing: there's a very high chance that the research group's going to move abroad in the next few years. 
          So I would have to leave my family and friends behind.
          Leave my hometown that I love so much.
          It could be only for a year, which would be a great opportunity. But it could also be for three whole years and that is in fact a pretty damn long time. 
          And now I really don't know how I should decide....
          
          
          So many of my friends moved away after school to do their bachelor's someplace else. 
          I genuinely don't understand how it was that easy for them. 
          Why does moving away sound so fucking hard to me? 
          

I wrote 20 pages of my Master's Thesis in the past four and a half days because the Professor offered out of nowhere that he will look through it before the final submission if I manage to send it to him by the end of Wednesday...
          
          I genuinely didn't think that I could pull it off. 
          
          But somehow I did. 
          
          Now all that's left is adding results of one measurement that won't be finished until tomorrow, writing the final conclusion and formatting some graphs and waiting for the professor's annotations. 
          Feels so strange. 
          

Scared of becoming like all those people billy joel sang about in "piano man"...

I had one of those super rare nights yesterday, that feel like you're in a movie. You talk about life and dreams, god and philosophy, goals and fears. Just you and a friend, darkness around you in a sleeping city at 3 a.m. You stopped caring about standing out in the cold or going to be tired the next day. The only indication of time moving forward is the moon slowly drwaing it's path across the sky. 
          But unlike in the movies, you don't get your happily ever after. You just drive home when the sun comes up and nothing has changed in the end. There's just this one subtle feeling deep down that reminds you that life might have more to offer than the same old daily grind.