23.06.2020 | Back And Forth

 For quite a bit of time yesterday I considered ditching this blog and start over some place new. I even went so far as to think of another blog title / URL and check if it’s available and look for different WordPress themes and all that. Clean and simple and back to basics. I can’t even say what came over me to even consider it. Probably the frustration with myself and my lack of content and lack of focus. But then I thought about all the content I’d loose if I ditch this blog. Travel memories and gig recaps. Of course I could just import all the content into an new blog, but that would defeat the point of starting over. So in the end I decided to just make tiny changes to the theme here and stay put. For now anyway.  I feel a bit like the middle-aged person, stuck in traffic, being annoyed by so many little things, who starts considering ditching their family and take the next flight out to a sunny place somewhere ;-). And in the end they (and I) don’t follow through for a variety of reasons.

I started this post yesterday, and thought I’d shelved the idea for now. But to be honest I’m still slightly considering it. I’m beyond help, it seems.

Anyway, the way that I spend quite some time yesterday thinking about something which wasn’t urgent or important, but merely a distraction? That’s one of my “issues” at the moment. I feel I impulse or have an idea and I start thinking about it a bit more and than loose… interest? Focus? Whatever? Whether that’s a blog post or a different creative endeavour or a chore here at home. I get sidetracked so quickly by random stuff. On the upside though… I finally picked up a book about procrastination, which I hope might help me to figure out a bit more how to keep at it. Whatever ‘it’ is in any of those instances.  

So what else? I’ve been working from home yesterday and today as there wasn’t a single occupancy office available for me at work. I’ll be back in tomorrow and possibly Friday. It’s going to be interesting to see how stressed (even underlying) I will feel tomorrow or if the whole last week of being with more people than in the three months before, was enough to get me used to it.

We also had an important Greens meeting last night, all socially distant and masked and everything. It went well, but today I heard some news about a possible mishap. Nothing I did, nothing I could have prevented. I don’t even know how “big” a thing it might be. Nonetheless, my first reaction was to get anxious and feel guilty for not knowing it might be a thing. So stupid. Not the thing, but my reaction. None of us thought of it. And it might not even be a big deal. And still… Spikes on my “stressometer” ;-)

Big news, I should have shared last on Friday already. For the first week of September (4th – 11th) I booked an apartment by the sea. On a small island in the Netherlands. Yay! I’ll keep my fingers crossed that the pandemic situation will stay as controlled as it is over here at the moment and the 2nd wave won’t have started yet. Unfortunately the last one bedroom apartment in that resort complex had been snapped up in the few hours I decided to make up my mind, so I’ll pay for a two bedroom apartment, but I don’t care. I know I wouldn’t feel comfortable in a hotel or B&B with the necessity to have breakfast / dinner in a room with other people, distancing measures or not. I’ll pack my boot full of food from home and buy the rest of fresh produces and stuff on site. And I plan to not to more than just sit there and stare out to sea. And walk up and down the beach. Repeat! 

Besides that… I’m still spending much more time reading than watching TV shows. I started wondering why that is? It’s both some kind of escapism (from the grim reality), but for some reason I can’t get in the right mood for TV shows, whereas I’m buying book after book and my to-read-shelf get’s more cramped by the day. Maybe – just maybe, this thought just now occured to me – that is, because I can let my thoughts and fantasy run more freely with books. I can decide what exactly these people look like and how they sound and all the little things. Whereas that’s pretty much a given with a TV show as the audiovisual medium TV is. I could now bullshit my way through a theory about all the strict rules and lack of “freedom” in a pandemic and that’s why I turn to the place where I basically make the rules… Like I said. Bullshitting it. I have no idea. The thing about books also is that I can read basically everywhere (bed, couch, kitchen table, my mum’s patio), whereas Netflix / Prime are bound to my TV as I don’t like watching TV on a small screen. 

I’ve added a Goodreads Widget, where the cover image links to my reviews (2-3 sentences only) of all the books I’ve read recently. I still need to write that for the last one I finished “If I Was Your Girl”, about an trans teenage girl. That was such a sweet and lovely and – for me as a cis woman – eye opening story. Definitely recommend this one. Right now – and after I’ve finished typing this and had some dinner – I will get back to a book which might be in my top 5 of the year so far, and I’m only a little over half way through it.  “I Was Told It Would Get Easier” by Abbi Waxman. I’ve read and very much enjoyed Abbi’s previous three novels, because her characters were so refreshingly relatable and lovely. But this so far might be my favourite, which is quite funny as it’s about a 45 year old lawyer and her 16 year old daughter on a college tour. I’m neither a lawyer nor a mum and least of all a teenage girl. But the characteristics and mannerisms and the whole dynamic are so spot on. It’s absolutely entertaining. 

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