As a start

"As I was thinking about seeing you this evening, I realised I should tell you that now that you are working full time, you should be careful not to forget what you actually love to do." It was something like this that The Best Neighbour* said to me this week when we finally saw eachother again at our favourite place in Amsterdam. And it was a painful realization that for both of us, it was a bit too late already. He has been working for a bit longer than I have, but we're both in the same situation. After a great student time in Amsterdam, with little classes, lots of freedom and enourmous amounts of intellectual and creative input, we started working full time. For me, it feels like (not even slowly, but definitely painfully) going partially brain dead. And first I loved it so much; I put in long hours and was extremely enthusiastic. I worked hard and it paid off; they loved me as much as I loved the job, and I soon got promoted. A few months along the road, I've come to realise that although I still love working for this specific company, I also lost myself somewhere in those long office hours and after work drinks. It is fun; everyone is young & enthusiastic and when we finally get out of the office, we go drinking & dancing. Get some food along the way and party the weekend (and sometimes the week) away. It is fun. But somewhere in the last two weeks I realized I wasn't enjoying it as much anymore. Because inbetween the job that doesn't really challenge me and the always fun, but never really deep, conversations over beers with colleagues, I forgot some important parts of myself. My love for writing, cooking and photography. And my love for travelling, foreign cultures and different languages. 

But hey, I only needed to travel 600 km for it, and have a good talk with The Best Neighbour and MM**, to get me all excited and bursting with ideas again. So as I am now preparing to go back to Berlin, I've quickly started up a blog again. Here I'll share with whoever wants to read it how I will rediscover the things I love. Because that way, I'll also get some of the writing done along the way!

* In Amsterdam, we lived in the same student complex for a while. We still miss eachother. Watching TopGear has never felt the same. 
** MM is the abbreviation for my mother. The two letters actually stand for something else, but as I am not telling you what they stand for anyway, you might as well think they are short for My Mother.