.SOMETIMES RAW.

Yay! Another lockdown is around the corner and I am tired of it. Really tired of it. Even though I see this virus with different eyes now because I caught it three weeks ago but these lockdowns make no sense to me at all anymore. I rocked through all the symtpoms more or less okay and besides being tired and a bit weak everything is fine again. When I hit rock-bottom I came up with this “get-me-sane-through-another-lockdown” list to cheer myself up. It worked.

• Compliment others.
• Take a compliment without justifying anything.
• When a guest says your meat loaf looks like a giant fotball, don’t tell them that their partner is obviously gay.
• Don’t bite your cuticles. Even when nervous.
• Invest in quality clothing. Rather less quality items than too much cheap stuff.
• If your white shirt has sweat stains, throw it away.
• Take care of yourself. Don’t stink. Take showers. Get medical check-ups.
• Rest when you are sick.
• Get your teeth cleaned.
• Read.
• Join a book club. Join two.
• Don’t tell your friends with kids that if they die, you will take care of their kids.
• If you don’t like something someone says, say: “That’s interesting…..”
• If you like something someone says, say: “That’s interesting!”
• Don’t complain about your interior/exterior designers and how they messed up your 45,000 Euro kitchen or your garden design for 140,000 Euro.
• Give flight attendants your full attention during their in-case-of-emergency take off routines. Show respect.
• Engage strangers while waiting in line.
• Don’t reprimand people who call you sweetheart.
• Accept it: you are too old to drink more than two glasses of wine and sleep comfortably through the night.
• Enjoy when bouncers still ask you for your ID.
• When your partner is in the bathroom, don’t knock on or talk to them through the closed bathroom door.
• When a person doesn’t get your reference, don’t repeat, “Oh, just kiss my ass!” with the hope that they will.
• Listen to erotic audiobook when you scrub the bathroom floor and gangsta rap while cleaning the windows.
• Don’t worry about anything too much or too long.
• Get involved in a holistic, healthy lifestyle and ask me how to get started.
• Quit smoking.
• Ask your friend who is a shrink if you should see a shrink.
• Look at yourself in the mirror. It is you. Smile.
• Don’t use face-filter apps on social media. Or ever.
• You are unhappy in your relationship? Change. Stop complaining.
• Make love to your partner. If this doesn’t sound like a good idea, figure out why not. Then change.
• Clean your apartment/house like you have never cleaned an apartment/house before.
• Consider that step of buying a house instead of renting.
• Learn that life is more fun when you are loose.
• Take Pilates, hot Yoga, and give yourself a hug.
• No need to wear Lululemon Yoga pants for 150 Euro.
• Don’t say “you are busy” or “you are working on something” or “you have poor internet connection” if you just don’t want to talk to someone.
• Rather buy from an independent bookstore than the big “A”.
• Make love to your partner when they say, “It is your money. Do whatever you want with it.”
• Make love to your partner when they say, “I will cook dinner tonight, do the laundry, run you a hot bath while I take the kids to bed. Do you want a glass of wine and some dark chocolate?”
• Don’t lie. Obviously.
• Develop a signature look which says: I have good taste. I am clean. I am confident. You can trust me. People will know and feel if you are fake!
• Don’t get lonely when your partner is not around.
• There is nothing wrong with having nice things but don’t get in crazy debt.
• Learn how to fix things in the house.
• Don’t be lazy. Don’t cut corners. Don’t slack. Don’t infringe. Don’t be a slob.
• Listen to others. Stay calm.
• Oh, in case you forgot: Stop complaining.
• Be part of the solution, not the problem.
• If someone moves to make room for you, take up more room.
• If someone sneezes or coughs, run.
• If you don’t want someone to leave, sit on their suitcase.
• Even though you can take care of yourself, it is okay to let someone be nice to you.
• It is fine to take a nap on the laundry.
• If you stand in the kitchen long enough, someone will feed you.
• Just because it is gorgeous outside doesn’t mean you have to go outside.
• Just because you can fit into something tight doesn’t mean you should.
• If you want to be left alone, say so.
• If you want to surprise someone, lie in a bathtub and then jerk back the curtains when they sit on the toilet.
• Eat cheese with the refrigerator door open so it counts as a light snack and not a three-thousand-calories-cry for help.
• Clean your bedside table from empty mugs and wineglasses, and any ChapStick-rimmed glass of stale water with cat hair floating in it. Wait, you don’t even have a cat.
• Make a cup of tea that’s a thousand degrees too hot and forget to drink it until it is cold.
• Say that you are going to go for a walk in the crisp, cold air on a Saturday morning and then it suddenly being nighttime without you even having put on pants.

Sounds good to you? Then we are compatible. Stay happy. Stay healthy.

I love you, mom. Happy birthday. You make the best chicken soup on this planet. Hope to see you soon. <3

Advice My Mom Gave Me: Do what you love but finish school and get a degree.

Me: Go to college or university only if you’ll major in science, engineering, or money. It’s a bleak job market, and majoring in English literature or anything with the word “English” in it has been useless unless you want to become an English teacher.

My Mom: Never show up to a party empty-handed.

Me: Never send a text to the host twenty minutes before the party starts to say that you’re “sooooooo sorry” to cancel but you have stomach issues.

My Mom: You want a job? Write resumes and apply.

Me: Apply to jobs via LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, nepotism, or Vitamin B. Write a cover letter and attach your résumé, then manually enter the same information through the company’s portal, which looks as though it was designed in Microsoft Paint. Do this twenty times a day for two years, and you’re bound to make it to the third round of phone interviews before getting ghosted. They might let you wait for months, let you redo the test and interview, then re-apply for your post, or don’t call you at all.

My Mom: Don’t put photos of yourself on the Internet. You’ll get kidnapped! Or your child. Also, why do you have to share so much other stuff on Facebook or your blog?

Me: Post thousands of carefully curated photos of your life on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn so you can build a following and attract sponsors who reflect your core values.

My Mom: Spend your twenties finding a partner within a two-mile radius of your village. Someone who is “normal”. Then build a house, settle down, keep your job even though it sucks, build a white fence around your house, get a dog and a cat (optional), two (or more) children, and plant a tree. Come over for coffee and cake anytime.

Me: Spend your twenties and thirties moving between the U.S. and Canada, back to Germany, maybe Italy, and finally Vienna to figure out what you want in an ideal partner by dating as much as possible imagining you found real love. Have one child in between.

My Mom: Never date someone who seems weird to you. Listen to your gut.

Me: Don’t listen to your gut because you know better. Listen to your head that tells you, “He might not be the best but he takes the garbage out if you remind him. And he cooks you dinner if you pay for it because he is broke in the middle of the month. Or he smokes a joint to drive more safely because people on the road make him aggressive.” Date someone who rides a unicycle, is a Fruitarian and shares his apartment with seven cats. Date someone who wants to start ten projects at the same time and gets nothing accomplished in the end. Date someone who has an ego as high as Mount Everest. Then get married to those men and listen to your mom who will say, “I told you so! We all did!” Then get a divorce and pay for everything.

My Mom: Invest early. Get life insurance. Safe money. Don’t overspend and never be in debt unless it is for a car (that you really need) or a house. THOSE are good investments.

Me: Spent all your savings on divorces and books.

My Mom: Never wait to do your taxes.

Me: If you wait long enough to do your taxes, there might be a global crisis/pandemic that forces the federal government to extend the deadline. Then you can wait some more and do them right before the new deadline.

My Mom: Don’t talk to strangers (on the Internet). Avoid eye contact on the bus and subway.

Me: Talk to every stranger (on the Internet), because meeting new real friends is really fucking hard. I spoke to the lady who decided it is okay to eat her seafood lasagna next to me at 7:30 am on the train. She never became my friend.

I wrote about this. ————> [Subway Creatures: How not to be an asshole on the train]

My Mom: Find a good job that pays well so you can save for retirement and enjoy life.

Me: Retirement is something you’ll read about in your history books under the rubric “Abstract Ideas.” Who knows if we all even get there. This damn pandemic taught me to live in the here and now, enjoy life, spend money but all within my means. And I actually consider twice if I really need something before purchasing.

My Mom: Health is the most important thing we have. Invest in health.

Me: THIS I fully agree with. <3

I considered the alternatives and failed many times because you were pretty much right on with everything. Love you, Mom.

Are you overwhelmed with stores opening again? With masses of people everywhere? Don’t get me wrong. I love that life gets somewhat back to “normal” but all these people everywhere freak me out a bit. I got used to “quiet” and am looking for alternative ways to live. Is that weird? To me, it is important to encompass all the fundamental values that help my son and I live a more wholehearted life, from being connected to the present moment to appreciate the little things and taking time to enjoy and celebrate life. Of course, life is life, and there are many things that try to hinder me on my quest to live more in the present, including the glorification of being busy, consumer culture and materialism, our digital age, and virtual consumption.

What does society tell us? That there is an association of being “busy” and being successful which is a dangerous equivalence. We cannot be busy every hour of every day, so when do we stop? How do I know when I have reached the limit of my busyness and the peak of my success? And if I am not achieving anything, for example workwise, does that mean I am failing?

For some, there is a deep fear that if they stop being busy, for just a moment, they could be confronted with silence, and even more terrifying, we would have to face the fact that perhaps what we are “busy” doing isn’t actually that important at all. Think about this for a moment.

It is important to remember that success does not just have to be defined by the big moments in my life or by collecting material possessions. There can be great significance in the small, quiet moments and in life’s little details. Just stop to think about it, there are other ways to evaluate how successful our lives are. For example, the connection with others, how much love and happiness I inspire, the impact I have on my surroundings.

How we shop and consume things has changed dramatically over the last years, with shopping and buying material items becoming entangles with our identities and social statuses. We are used to consuming things at a rapid rate, not only in terms of our shopping habits and the products we buy but also in how we consume information. Pretty much anything is available at all hours of the day but if it is no longer cool or relevant it simply goes out of style. Whether or not an item is “in fashion” or “in style” remains the driving force behind consumerism. One of the reasons that consumerism has become such a fundamental part of our society is the fact that shopping and buying things gives us a sense of identity, and most importantly, our sense of worth comes from the “stuff” we consume. Often, this is fueled by the idea that something is lacking from within, and whatever we consume can fill that void and fix us. it is also apparent in the way women and men are marketed and portrayed in magazines. Magazines are good at showing impossibly perfect ideals and with the turn of a page, showing products that will help attain this unrealistic definition of “beauty”, whether it is clothing, beauty products, or home decor. Did I get off on a tangent here? 🙂

It is so easy to get caught in the loop of working to earn money, to buy material possessions, to improve social status and happiness. But, of course, material possessions and consuming things don’t actually do this. I keep repeating this but for me, experiences, not things, make me happy. Buying stuff can be fun (books), but it is important to notice what is motivating me to shop and consume. Whether I am buying something because it is an essential item or whether it is a treat or luxury, providing a boost for my sense of identity and self-worth. It is also important to realize that even essential purchases are still wrapped up with my sense of self. Actually, separating my consumer choices from my sense of identity is difficult, but having an awareness of the industry and how we are marketed gives me the understanding to make more conscious choices.

And, there are always things to look forward to. They do not need to be big or extraordinary events but can be really simple pleasures such as cooking dinner and having friends over. Also, spring is around the corner. And summer. And beach. And lake. And BBQs. And strawberry-picking. Just a little reminder in case you forgot. Oh, you are welcome.