On a different note, one of the most important realisations I have had in the past few days is that we all have a certain value. You agree, right? Yet, we often manage to undersell ourselves on so many levels. Whether it be in a relationship, at work or pretty much anywhere else. We forget that there are certain personal beliefs that we should never step away from.

I don’t want to sounds like a hooker, but I tend to ‘undersell’ myself constantly. Example: I know something is bad for me, yet I do it anyway. And then: it hurts and I wonder what happened. That is very vague, I know, but you get the point. Why do we do this? I am told it is a question of self-worth, but I’m not buying it…entirely.

Perhaps the bigger problem are the ones who think they are worth way more than they actually are. Go figure.

I obviously did not come back with a bang. Blame it on sleep deprivation.

So, accordingly to what I just wrote, I believe that before settling down for good (or so we hope) a person should explore the world and all the beautiful people in it. That will make ‘the one’ that more special, special because they will indeed be getting a partner who has put this/her soul at ease.

On a related note, have you ever noticed that when you do indeed commit to only one person – all the others come running? They may be some  newcomers in your life, but most specifically I am talking about those individuals whose attention you have been craving, but never received. Suddenly, they realize that you are actually a magnificent person. There is something terribly attractive about being unattainable. It is – and I beg you to differ – one of the strongest magnets. The French have a beautiful saying (on top of it all, it rhymes): Suis le, il te fuit – fuis le, il te suit.  For all of you suckers who don’t speak this beautiful language (or who don’t know got to use Google translate), it means: follow him and he will run – run and he will follow. Why do we tend to make simple things so complicated?

Sometimes, albeit rarely, I wish that finding a partner wouldn’t be my choice to make. I am sure that my parents would do a great job – and that would relieve me from going through this terribly nerve-wrecking ordeal. Ok,  at the end of the day I’ll admit it. It’s all very exciting … and the best is yet to come.

However, expectations are a tricky bugger…because I think only 10% of them are based on real facts – and then, our imagination kicks in. Can I say that this is typically more of a women’s trait? Yes, I can. Someone we like will ask us out and we will be humming the wedding march whilst getting ready for the date. Exaggerating to make a point, of course. Anyhow – there must be some truth in the abandonment of all expectations. For example, I think we all experienced the best time ever when we  didn’t even feel like going out. There’s a point for zero expectation tolerance. The best romances were the ones that came out of nowhere and how could I ever forget surprises? I personally adore them, I think they are one of the loveliest things someone can do for you…and actually, it’s really because you don’t over think it before.

I often thought that I have stopped expecting – and have told myself not to on many occasions. But then, all I could think of was what I was not supposed to think about. That’s just how it works, right?

It’s been a while since I posted a song and I remembered Belle and Sebastian today. I expect you to like it! ;)

I don’t feel particularly close to this holiday – I would if it were a day off – but as a hopeless romantic, well, I can’t help but acknowledge it.

So…Happy Valentine’s day to you all. Whether you love someone, a tree, life…or preferably yourself.

With love,
Zala

Another thing I keep noticing around me is the constant need for drama. Whenever we are truly happy we start wondering what will go wrong and when will it end. Being happy is almost unnatural, it must be some sort of con. I mean, what did we do to deserve it? Personally, I have noticed that I tend to be some sort of a drama queen. I don’t mean that I want constant attention (I actually really don’t like it) – I also don’t tend to make it all about me. Well, at least that is what I would like to believe. No, what I mean when I say that is that I am a real drama junkie.

Looking back to my past relationships, I see that absolutely none of them have been normal. No ‘girl meets boy and they maybe live happily ever after’ type of thing. I have had plenty of one way streets, long distance phantasms and emotionally extremely unavailable men. Or, let’s be honest, some of them were simply unavailable. Yet, I really did believed in them all and when this lose-lose situation actually became a loss…well, I was shocked. I always ended up thinking why this keeps happening to me? Well, wake up and smell the coffee dear me. I just needed the fix.

Why is that so? Well, I have been thinking about this thoroughly for the past few days and I managed to come up with one fairly plausible explanation. We’re all supposed to find someone, right? Someone to fall in love, feel secure and have a family with. By all means, it is supposed to be grand – like this clear lightning that hits you.”The one”. “The great love”. Girls wait for their prince charming and men wait for the reincarnation of their mother. Well, but finding someone is not a safe bet and if we don’t, we feel empty…like a part of us is missing. I will go past the fact that even thinking like this is dramatic and say that we desperately seek all that drama to make us feel complete. To make us feel the rush – the rush that we are supposed to feel, but don’t. Ironically, we should never wait for someone else to make us feel complete – we have to fill that void for ourselves…because no human being can ever be the part of us that we crave. At least not forever. That is why even people in relationships seek the rush. We all want the drama…to feel alive. To make all of this worth the while.

Do I make any sense? It is very early on a Monday after all.

In case I haven’t made it clear yet, I hate airplanes. I hate that I can’t understand them, I hate how it seems too unnatural to travel with them and I hate the idea of being locked inside a tin box. In the SKY! It’s too much for my mind to handle. I do, of course, travel by plane…but I try avoiding them as much as I can.

Anyhow, the author describes so well what feels so unnatural about them: you skip too much. You get in a plane in Europe, have a cup of coffee, nap, have lunch, nap some more and bam! You’re in India! A whole other continent, a whole other setting, another time zone,  a whole other culture. How did that happen? You have no time to process the change, all the beauty and all of the horror that you simply fly across. What I love about earthly means of travles is exactly that – you see the changes. I love to just sit on a train (car, bus or whatever), listen to music and look outside. The architecture changes, the sings, the language.There might be snow somewhere, somewhere it might almost be spring…and at the end you arrive at your destination with the feeling that you have actually traveled. You feel it on your body and you feel it in your mind. See, that is natural for me. Apart from loving modern technology, I have no business being in the 21st century. And yeah, I do understand the awesomeness of travel time reduction, I just don’t want to be part of it.

You know, I am very superstitious (for lack of knowing, I proudly used to tell people that I am very superficial). I guess that is what being an atheist does to you (I think I am about to lose all of my religious followers here, bless their hearts) – we need some kind of supernatural rules in our lives. Life itself seems to be too magical to be understood with the help of profane explanations. I am not sure what good  spitting three times over my left shoulder every time I see a roadkill does, but I do it.  I also dislike black cats (this later on expanded to cats in general) and crows. Crows just seem to utterly evil, don’t they? I hate the noise they make, I even hear them in movies sometimes. Piercing sounds of mischief.

While I am on it, interestingly enough, last year a friend of mine actually took me to see a fortune teller. Again, it was my birthday present. I remember how very nervous I felt there in the waiting room, almost as if I was really going to be told what my life will be like. When my time was up I came in and sat down next to and chain-smoking old lady who spoke so fast that I could barely follow. I was still thinking about who the misleading man in my life could be (there seemed to be one) – and she was already telling me about my kids. So, this is what stuck with me: I will indeed meet a well-loved and nice  (tall, dark and handsome) man with whom I will have two children. My career will start to prosper after I turn 30 – and I will be really good at what I do, not only that – I will receive great recognition for it. I will live until 84 and will be satisfied – most of the time. Mark her words…and let’s get back to this in about fifty years.

Would you ever consider reading the rest?

“This is my story.

I always wanted to be a great football player. Or singer. I wanted to do something with my life, something that I would always be remembered by. Even like Lenin or Mick Jagger. I don’t really care of the means. Even as a young boy I knew that my life would be grand – there was always this little voice inside of my head saying: watch out for the cars when you go to school, beware of the dog – you must stay alive no matter what. Somewhere somehow you’ll be okay no matter what. You will be more than great, you will become unforgettable.

I became an orphan at the age of five. My parents were killed by a lion while they were on a safari in Africa. I don’t remember them much, I only know that my mother had the most beautiful red hair that I have ever seen. Not the fake red that you might see nowadays, it was red like the sky in the evening before a beautiful day. I went to live with my spinster aunt Meg, who didn’t have cats like you might imagine, but she cultivated snails. She kept the apartment moist enough for her little lovers. She studied their procreation habits and even marked their shells with red nail polish so she knew which ones she had to pick back – that was when she took them to the park to go on a stroll. She was not cruel after all. I always felt she treated me a bit like I was a snail, I even had nightmares that she would come into my room and water me during the night. We could talk about only two things: snails or love. Meg had one great love in her life. She met him in Portugal when she was a young girl, I remember my grandmother telling me how beautiful Meg was back in the day. She had the kind of beauty that resonates from the inside, her eyes were like a long tunnel leading to her beautiful spirit. However, once her great love affair ended she never opened her heart to anyone and slowly her beauty faded…or was neglected. I could still see a spark in her eyes every now and then, whenever she hiccupped. She believed that those were the times when he thought about her. She was sure they had a bond that no one else on the planet could have, for her it was a kind of certainty that only comes around once in a lifetime. I guess that’s just her side of the story, I think that they could have made it if they both wanted it. Obviously that wasn’t the case.

I am getting too far from my story here.”

My generation is the generation that is experiencing one of the biggest gaps in history. Sure, the hippies were way different from their close minded parents – but we have embraced another thing that our parents could have never imagined growing up – modern technology. I am not proud to admit, but I cannot imagine my life without my computer, the internet and my phone. I get freaked out if I ever forget my phone at home – I will turn around – and even if I am late, go back and get it. The phrase “I had to go back for my mobile” became a perfectly valuable excuse for anything. Sure, you can’t be left without your phone! The horror!

At my age, my mother was already a mother. She had a life long responsibility on her hands. She had a job (that she kept until she retired), she was married and had settled down with the only man she had ever been serious with. And here I am, far from marrying my first boyfriend (at least I honestly hope so). Here I am, in a time where not changing your job every now in then is a proof of your cowardliness. You have to risk it, right? The pressure of making it grand is always upon us, the time is ticking and we absolutely must live an amazing life. All else is just a life waisted.

Yesterday before falling asleep I thought about how I have no real role model who would let me know where the line of adulthood is. My friends are mostly in the same mess and, as I said, my parents aren’t much of a help either. Actually, does it even matter? Why do I want to know so badly? It’s like I keep hoping that things will marvelously fall into place when I will actually start feeling it.  Then I thought that I perhaps can’t see the line because I am currently walking on it.  At that moment my friend Jo told me one simple truth: it is not until you create a new life that you stop wasting time thinking about yours. Amen to that, Josephine. Bless your heart.

Janis said that freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. Well, she was obviously from another generation. Freedom today means having the possibility of gaining everything and losing it five seconds later. We want it all and at the end of the day, we don’t know what we want.

Take me for example! I always thought that what you want to do in life comes to you – preferably on a silver platter.  No,  seriously – I really did believe that random life choices, wishes…and somewhere along the line, the things that I am actually good at, will lead me to my dream job. Perhaps I am too anxious about getting there – but for now, I still have absolutely no clue.

Knowing what you want has become one of the luxuries in our life. A true luxury, that is – you cannot buy it with money. You need to figure it out for yourself. Everywhere I go people ask me: are you happy with what you do and if not, what would you want to do? I always feel like a complete idiot when I tell them that I haven’t figured it out yet. Well, maybe I should have told then that I wanted to be a movie director two weeks ago,but that that has probably changed by now.

Let me take you through a history of my career dreams:

Age 7:  While all the other little girls in the class wanted to be singers, actresses or teachers – I wanted to be a sailor. Yes, a sailor. I’m not sure I knew what it was per se – but I thought I’d get to wear a cute dress and swim a lot.

Age 9: Influenced by the time I had spent in my uncle’s studio, I decided to one day become a painter. This made my parents extremely proud because …well, I abandoned the sailor idea. I guess.

Age 13: like every normal child I wanted to become a doctor. I was the self-proclaimed first aid provider on every family trip. I had a little case with bandaids and gaze that I ran for frantically every time anyone bumped into anything. My brother killed those dreams by writing silly things on my doctor’s kit. That was the end. For a while.

Around the age of 15: I discovered that I was good at convincing people to do something they initially did not want to do. Things like stealing candy from the store or just generally doing dumb things that would get them (but not me) into trouble. That is when I realised that would be a great job to have.

Age 18: Following my dreams of wishing to mislead people, I wanted to study marketing. I ended up opting for law.

Age 21: I seriously considered quitting law and enrolling into medicine. I gave that up after I found out that I couldn’t deal with dissecting a human arm in year one.

Age 23: I actually listened to my own head and finally bit into the marketing apple. No regrets, just more fogginess.

Age 28: I have no idea what I want. There are so many options, right? Well, what I really want right now is to lie under a palm tree in Bali.

Actually, I am running late for my train to Vienna!

The other day I was telling the story of a friend of mine who is a perfectly nice guy – smart, funny and has rhythm but can’t seem to find a nice girl with whom to hold hands  and walk into the sunset. It’s not even like he is pitching outside of his league (if I may be that blunt) – hell no! He is smitten by perfectly normal girls who could be overly excited about having him in their lives. They are not supermodels nor over the top genius feminists…yet, they show no interest. Still, he remains smitten, attentive as ever. In brief, the dream guy.

So, what the fudge is wrong in this picture?

That is when I received the most satisfying explanation up to date. Simple, yet captivating.

Let’s travel back into the past:
Man was a hunter, a brave creature who ventured into the wild to bring home food for his offspring. Woman was  a gatherer who would stay close to home and gossip by the local well.
A while later man put on a suit and went to work in a big office where he got to make big bucks, smoke cigars and drink bourbon with other men. He got recognition for his manhood and was the pride and joy of the family. He brought home money with which he could support his family.  Man did not lose his hunter instincts – a brave creature, he ventured into the night to bring home his prey…to have sex with, of course. In the mean time woman learned how to make herself look pretty and spent her days taking care of her kids and gossiping in the kitchen.  Having a man was not an option, it was a goal – a way of life. Woman did not choose a man, she got chosen…and everything remained pretty much the same as it has ever been.

Then, woman discovered that it is actually easier to be a man, make her own living and do whatever she wants. She lit a cigarette, put on pants and went to work.  She, of course, still found the time to make herself look pretty and take care of the kids. She chose a man if she wanted to and began looking out for more than just financial stability. She sought after a partner, a great conversationalist ..and only then – a man.

Are you with me? Well, let’s snap back to reality! I mean, to today.

Here we are, the daughters of the women who put on the pants and smoked cigarettes. We have been listing qualities of our dream man since we have been five years old. By 25, the list got very long. We want a man who is strong, yet sensitive. Serious, yet funny. In brief, I could name all the opposites here. Not only have we become picky, we have also discovered that we have a hunter’s instinct as well. We no longer want to be chosen, we want to choose. We like the pleasure of making our own choices and since men have not become complete sissies in the mean time..well, we are kind of fighting for the same thing. We want it to be …perfect for us. It is rare for us to see eye to eye.

So, what is the solution? I will let you in on a little secret – a woman still wants a man. And sooner or later, her romantic beliefs will make her take a better look and maybe she will see that perfectly nice guy…who just wants to love her. But in between…she will play. She will play like a feline with its toy.

Come think of it, this post might not be ground breaking. It’s just honest.

(cat sound)