putting on the brakes

South Hadley, May 18, 2012.

Right about now I would be sitting in my friend Rachel’s house in London, sipping wine and enjoying a good old girlie chat. Instead, I am propped up in bed at our home in Western Mass, nursing a stinking cold. 

It was not an easy decision to cancel the trip to Germany and England and all that I had planned for the next two weeks: meetings with friends and family, appointments to view apartments and of course my job interview. I could have postponed everything by a week but decided that what I really wanted to do was stay here and focus on what is in front of me right now: my health, my interview for U.S. citizenship, the sale of our house and getting all our stuff organized and sorted before the big move. What contributed to this notion was the falling apart of a potential deal on our condo when the interested buyer - who had viewed our home multiple times - tried to take advantage of our situation by completely lowballing us in a very disrespectful and backhanded kind of way. We were so disappointed because she seemed to genuinenly love our place and the timing of the proposed closing fitted perfectly with our anticipated relocation schedule. Alas, she was not a sincere buyer after all and so we start all over again. Which means that we really don’t know yet when exactly we will be moving and it is simply too soon to be planning apartments and jobs in Cologne.

I feel strangely at peace with this decision. I say strangely because I hate letting people down and I also worried that deep down I allowed my fear of flying to influence my actions, because that also played a role in the feverish panic I felt on the day of my flight. But I realized that the stress over recent weeks had been feeding into my fear, not vice versa. I was trying to run before I could walk. This was the right thing to do. 

The weather right now is gorgeous and I am itching to get out, alas, my head is still too sore and more rest is needed. So I am just taking it easy, listening to music, feeding my body with lots of vitamins and homemade chicken soup and watching my favorite German TV shows. My plans for this week: weeding out more of my stuff for our next flea market sale, organizing my gazillion photos into envelopes, learning American history and coming up with a plan for healthier eating. My job at the college has finished and I look forward to making the most of this wonderful free time ahead of me. And speaking of jobs, when I talked to the hiring manager at the school in Cologne where I had my interview, she couldn’t have been nicer and more understanding. And she was so happy when I said that I would like to stay in touch because I am still very interested in their school. She replied that this was mutual and that they still want to meet me, as and when I am ready to be there. 

All is good :)

too much information?

My last day at the college. iPhone, May 10, 2012.

After seven years of blogging on a very personal level I still go through phases where I feel uneasy about the depth of detail I share online. I have often called this blog my free therapist and it seems that expressing myself within that definition is the only way I know how to write. The problem starts when I become too conscious of what other people may think, namely professional contacts, casual aquaintances and even some members of my family. I feel like I am constantly walking a fine line between authenticity and “too much information.” If you met me in real life you would soon know that I am pretty open and direct, and that I love a deep analytical discussion about anything really. But the reality is also that I do draw boundaries with people, especially in my professional life, and those boundaries are much harder to mantain on my blog, for the simple reason that anyone can read it. 

“I suppose we all do that. We reveal. Then we feel vulnerable. So we pull back. We strip the layers and we’re liberated.  Then we feel naked. So we hide again.”
~ Angie Mizzell 

Last look at my office building. iPhone, May 10, 2012.

Lately I’ve been wondering whether I am outgrowing my need for this public therapist? And perhaps even for the blogosphere in general? I am much less active these days, rarely leave comments and have just reduced my feed to 20 blogs! As I am beginning to unclutter my stuff for the big move ahead, I equally feel a need to streamline and simplify my online life. Not that it’s ever been that complex to start with, but I increasingly found myself reading other blogs as a means of duty and distraction, without true engagement. Yet to give each blogger the attention they deserve and on a level that is congruent with my desire for meaningful relationships was becoming too overwhelming. That’s why I don’t do Twitter, it’s too much and too superficial for me. 

The sky today. iPhone, May 11, 2012.

All I know is that I do not want to stop blogging. I still love to write, especially in combination with my photography, and also to engage with this amazing online community. But like Angie, I long to step out and into something different, but without compromising who I am, or those who I love. At this point I am not sure how this will look, I have some ideas, but as you can imagine my mind is mostly focussing on other things right now. So I am just going to be patient and lean into the current transition and see where it takes me.

so what DO you want to do when you grow up?

I heart German window boxes. Taken in Heidelberg on July 9, 2011.

This post by the fabulous Jeanine (beautiful writer and photographer, also currently in transition after having moved across the Atlantic, for love nonetheless!) really made me think about my professional life and the path it’s taken me on over the years. 

Unlike most kids I never had a definite dream of what I wanted to be when I grew up. My dreams were more about lifestyle rather than a specific profession and nearly four decades later I look back onto a ‘career’ that has taken me across the world (au-pair, flight attendant, corporate account manager), tickled my geeky techy side (IT project manager, programmer), fed my love of working with people (receptionist, hotel manager, airport check-in agent) and placed me in some unexpected places (director of an online dating site, secretary at an American elite college) … are you getting the picture?

As of late this kind of all-over-the-place job history has caused me more than one sleepless night. I mean, who would want to hire a middle-aged woman without a ‘proper’ education and profession? Then I read Jeanine’s post and realized that I don’t even have a vision of my future career, let alone life. This left me feeling more fragmented than ever because it’s not just that I cannot pinpoint my dream job, I cannot even visualize the place where I want to live happily ever after. Because, well, there is more than one place that feels like home to me and where I would love to live (again): Vancouver, Bellingham, London and Bath being on top of this list. It is this sense of fragmentation that’s been feeding into my doubts and overall sense of restlessness ever since we made the decision to move back to Europe. 

Hmm, yes, that would be me in the middle. Carnival many years ago.But here is the thing. This move to Cologne, as unexpected and challenging as it is, does feel right. Even though I don’t list Cologne among my favorite places above, it IS HOME. Of course it is. It’s where I grew up and where I still have lots of family and close friends. But even more than that Cologne offers me an identity, a proud sense of belonging. I realised this when my husband and I were browsing YouTube the other day for clips on my home town and we came across a few about the carnival in Cologne, which is a pivotal annual event for anyone who lives in that city. It’s pretty much a crazy time where the whole city dresses up and gives into fun and laughter for an entire week. Of course there is also a seedier side to all this jolliness, with too much drinking, promiscuity and hangovers, but that’s a choice some people make, it’s by no means the overall intention and meaning of the tradition. This was demonstrated by a woman in a medieval costume who was interviewed and who said that the carnival is all about loving life and letting go, about hugging each other and bringing some light and color into an otherwise dreary winter month, about the good nature and charm of the Cologne people. That’s when it hit me: I am a “Cologne people.” This is where I was born and bred and that filled me with a warm sense of pride and love. 

In some ways that was a turning point for me and for how I am approaching this transition into yet another brand new chapter of our lives. I started wondering: what if I stopped resisting the sense of fragmentation and started using it to my advantage? What if I transformed all this life experience I have accumulated over the decades into an asset? What if I gathered all the various pieces of my professional experience and my knowledge of the world and turned it into a beautiful and shining prism reflecting depth and authenticity? To be honest, I cannot even really explain what I am trying to say here, all I know is that there was a shift.

At the same time job opportunities started popping up, even though my mind was far from being in job hunting mode, simply because there is so much else to do and we don’t even know yet when exactly we will be moving. An admin position at an architect’s office. A corporate sales job. My younger self would have jumped at these opportunities, merely because they were presented in such serendipidous fashion. It’s how I’ve landed most of my jobs in the past. It’s how the fragmented me tends to operate and how the worried me ensures job security on a professional path that seemingly lacks direction and true passion. Aah yes, passion… Where are thou? 

Jeanine is passionate about writing and photography. Susannah is passionate about polaroids and her workshops. Christie and Karen are passionate about healing our relationships with food, our bodies, our lives. My husband is passionate about the respiratory system and patient care (his first passion, flying, had to remain a hobby because his eyesight was too poor for a professional aviation career). My sister is passionate about art history. My mother is passionate about books (and a power seller of such on Amazon). Me? I don’t know. Whenever I get to this point I easily fall into a quiet desperation because I simply cannot pinpoint a passion. Somehow this always used to make me feel inadequate and incomplete. 

Then I remembered something. Many years ago I was made redundant from one of my technical jobs. It happened as part of one of those major corporate restructuring exercises and I was not unhappy about it because even though I might not know my passion, I have always known what was not my passion, and this job squarely fell into that category. As part of the redundancy package we were sent to a work placement seminar and it was one of those life-changing events. This is where I learned about Edgar Schein’s Career Anchors, which are “a combination of perceived areas of competence, motives, and values relating to professional work choices.” My anchor was - 

Lifestyle: have a high need to balance work and the rest of life; enjoy work, but realize that work is just one of many parts of life that are important; subscribe to philosophy of “work to live”, rather than “live to work.” Careers must be integrated with the rest of life flexibility; desire to work with organizations that accept and promote balance.

I cannot tell you the relief I felt. It did not matter what I did, I could do anything as long as it supports the lifestyle and work/life balance that is so important to me. Within two weeks of the redundancy I had a new job, doing something that I would have never considered had it not been for this workshop and epiphany. 

All of this was going through my mind when I considered the possible job opportunities and my tendency to pursue whatever comes my way simply because it’s something I can do, rather than something I want to do. And I made some decisions:

There is no rush. We are in the middle of a huge transition and there are plenty of other pieces that need to fall into place first.

If I feel unsure about any such opportunity I do not have to make a decision about it right away. Of course the opportunity may go elsewhere in the meantime, but that’s not the point.

Tune out the noise of the worries and and listen to my instincts.

We met in 1984 as au-pairs in Vancouver and have since lived together in Cologne and worked as flight attendants for Lufthansa. She is now raising a family back in Vancouver and still trolly-dollying around the globe :)And it is number 3 that got me a job interview! This week I met one of my longest standing friends in Boston, where she had a layover (she is a flight attendant), and we had a great chat about everything. That night I was feeling quite restless and started surfing the net, researching some of the stuff we had talked about. And purely by chance, because I was not browsing for jobs, I came across a job listing with an English school in Cologne. And I immediately knew that I was onto something. I love my current job at the college and would be happy to stay in an academic setting. But even more so I would love to work in an English-speaking environment and this is a British school and you all know what an Anglophile I am! I reminded myself that I have a rather unique set of skills and experience and how much of a positive impact and contribution I can bring (and have brought) to an employer. And I asked myself: could a job like this support my desire for Lifestyle at the same time and be something I enjoy? The answer was yes, potentially. And so I ended up on the phone to the hiring manager and sending in my application, all at 4 a.m. in the morning because insomnia had taken over at that point. And within 24 hours I had a job interview! Phew. Not what I was looking for or expected, but I won’t lie and say that I am not excited about this. 

The interview will take place in a couple of weeks when I am traveling to London and Cologne for a fortnight. And I have no expectations other than going in there with myself, an open mind and the intention to determine whether this is indeed the mutually good fit that I think it could be. Stay tuned… 

transitions and attention

Our move to Germany is stirring up a lot of emotions for both my husband and myself. One of the issues that keeps rearing its ugly head is the weightgain that we have incurred over the last six months, undoing all our efforts from last year.

Our weight is a loaded subject for both of us, it’s something we’ve struggled with for most of our lives. On an intimate level my husband’s extra pounds have never bothered me, to me he has always been tall and handsome, with a wonderful smile and big strong hands, they are like bear paws and could easily crush you but his touch is always gentle and caring. I love and see him at his core for the genuine and amazing person he is. As do others; he is one of those people where, once you meet and get to know him, you just don’t see the weight anymore, all you notice about him are his true kindness and engaging charm. I also know that he loves me just as I am, despite all the pounds I have piled on over the years. He sees me, too. The same goes for our friends and family, they may worry about our health or have the occasional judgment about our inability to keep the weight off, but overall they accept and love us for who we are, not how we look. And while a part of me dreads bumping into people from the past and what their initial thoughts may be when they see how overweight I’ve become, I also know that those will be fleeting notions that won’t affect any real connections we may or may not re-establish.

The real issue is our own perception and how the weight is affecting how we feel about ourselves and the world around us. There are the physical aspects of feeling unfit and easily out of breath, of high blood pressure and stomach issues, of feeling lethargic and, well, heavy. Whatever the trends say about how we should accept and love ourselves at any weight, for many people this seems to be simply a pass for continuing to engange in unhealthy behaviors. There is a very physical reality to obesity and while there are healthy overweight people I would argue that most of us in this category suffer under the physical discomfort and related diseases.

So why is it so hard for so many people to live at a healthy weight and stay on a nourishing and healing course? There wouldn’t be a multi-million dollar industry out there if the answer to this question was easy and straight forward. Chances are that anyone who has ever dealt with the subject has a good idea as to their own reasons, and they do differ from person to person. And whatever those reasons are, they are stronger than any logical or sensible desire to be healthy and fit.

However, the point of this post is not to descend into the abyss of my own reasons, but I rather wanted to touch on this issue because it IS affecting how we feel about the big transition ahead of us. In the past, whenever we have embarked on major life changes, they were often preceeded by diets and weightloss. Because these are the side affects of the intial stages of dieting: you are rewarded by a liberating sense of accomplishment and control, which in turn opens you up to the world and all its possibilities. You feel good about yourself and that carries its own positive karma. Good things begin to happen and cosmic opportunities present themselves. To that extend diets do work. What doesn’t work is the assumption that they will cure our problems. A diet will address the symptoms but never the cause. A diet is a tool, not a solution in itself. And any of these positive side effects are only temporary as long as we attach them to the diet, rather than initiate them from the roots within ourselves.

The difference about our current transition is that we are not emabarking upon it feeling particularly good about ourselves. We have regained a lot of our lost weight and are feeling unfit and uncomfortable, and any attempt to change this is half-hearted and inevitably fails. Our demons get particularly hungry and noisy when things begin to unravel all around us and we feed and numb them the way we always do because we do not want to deal with them otherwise.

I have a couple of friends who I can talk to about all of this and they reassure me: “Moving your whole life to another continent and going on a diet at the same time is not a good idea. Give yourself a break. One thing at a time.” It is what I want to hear but I am not convinced that it is what I should hear. It’s a bit like planning to start a family, ask any parent and they will tell you that there is never a perfect time for having a baby, there are always reasons (money, job, other commitments) why you should wait and if you really want it then there is only one thing to do: DO IT.

Whenever I mull all this over in my head to the point where it wants to explode in disgust and despair I think of this quote by Karen Maezen-Miller:

"Attention is the most concrete expression of love. What you pay attention to thrives.
What you do not pay attention to withers and dies."

As much as I want to ignore it all and live in denial about what we are doing to ourselves and our bodies, I know that that this is not an option. Neither is a diet in its conventional context. I want to start paying attention to my demons and heal my relationship with them. I want to start paying attention as an expression of love. I long for my body, and my life, to heal and to thrive.

I am not confident at all that I will actually do this. I have failed too often before and I am feeling weary. But it’s like there is a small flame still burning inside and it refuses to be extinguished. And so I want to start paying attention to it and this will potentially change the direction of this blog. In fact, it will bring it back to its roots because it started out as a diet blog seven years ago. I am still working on the details and all I know at this point is that it’s not going to be a food diary or anything like that. I envisage a journey where I will utilize many of the available resources, where I will research and learn what works for me, where I will share successes and failures, as well as recipes and, of course, photos :) Because it will be a rather specialised path I expect that I will lose some readers and I won’t feel offended. I completely understand that this is not of interest to everyone.

There will probably be a URL change, too, as I am moving my blog back onto self hosted Wordpress. I never got around to canceling my longstanding dreamhost account and as much as I have loved Squarespace it is a monthly expense I can do without during the transition and until I find a job in Germany. Watch this space!

visible part two

Remember this post? Written on December 30th last year it was filled with passion, hope and BIG PLANS. I did have a vision and for a while there it got me really excited. My big plan was to offer an e-course based on my Heal your Heart workshop that I created and presented some years ago when I lived in London. My whole heart had gone into this workshop and I did get a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction out of facilitating it. It even turned out that I was good at it, too. And the thought of transforming it into an online class was rather exhiliarating, to the point where I was convinced that this was “it.” But there was one thing I needed to do first. Because a large part of my workshop was based on a book by a German psychotherapist I wanted her permission to continue using it for the online version. So I wrote to her but unlike before I never got a reply. But that was not the main reason that stopped me in my tracks. While I was waiting for her response I realized that a part of me wanted her to say no. And that my real motivation for wanting to do an e-course had nothing to do with a passion for the actual subject and everything with the lifestyle it could potentially provide me with. Location independence and ‘easy money’ (so long as you get enough people to sign up) - it looked like a very appealing bandwagon and I wanted to jump on it. Alas, who was I kidding? I’ve seen the incredible hard work and true passion that goes into creating a successful online business and deep down I knew that this was not for me. My motivation was all ‘wrong’ and once I admitted that to myself the big plan evaporated into thin air. And then of course my husband got the relocation news and that has since taken over our lives. 

Nonetheless. I keep thinking about my word for the year. VISIBLE. Running an e-course would have required and guaranteed a lot of visibility. But maybe that’s not what this is about. Maybe this is about becoming visible to myself, rather than the whole world. It is quite hard for me to explain what exactly I mean by this, it all comes back to the work I did a couple of years ago with the Enneagram and in order to better understand what I am trying to say I want to quote the following (source here): 

“What Type Nines generally do not have is a sense of really inhabiting themselves—a strong sense of their own identity. Being a separate self, an individual who must assert herself against others, is terrifying to Nines. They would rather melt into someone else or quietly follow their idyllic daydreams.”

I am a Type Nine through and through. Whenever I read descriptions of this type I recognize myself all the way from my childhood to now. Even though the term visibility is not used in the above paragraph it is written all over the Type Nine and its tendency to use the cloak of invisibility as a shield from life’s pain and suffering. Over the last few weeks I’ve pretty much lived under this cloak. Comforting eating and drinking, numbing out the stresses involved with the big move across the pond and dealing with a husband who is very much resisting this change, even though he is the one who brought it about. As a result neither of us are in sync with what’s going on and that’s taking its toll on both of us. And that’s just the way it is. Sometimes life decisions do not come easy and sometimes we make them even harder because we lose ourselves in the process. I know that’s true for me. It’s the story of my life really. But I also know that I can never give up my quest for more visibility and that sense of identity. 

And because I am never short on ideas, another plan is forming in my head. Nothing nearly as spectacular as what I had in mind at the beginning of the year, but something that will be much more aligned with where I am in my life and, more importantly, with who I still can - and want to - be. And you won’t have to wait four months to hear about it, either :)