Hiding and thinking...

A week ago, I had surgery. It was small enough to be in and out of the hospital in a couple of hours, but big enough to have to go under general anaesthetic. It's nothing any of you needs to worry about though. Apart from a brand new scar and some residue tiredness from the operation and anaesthetic, I'm fine and completely healthy. But it has made me hide from the world for a week and leave the world be the world. Maybe it was some primal instinct to protect my body from outside influences and let it heal, maybe it was something I needed anyway and this was the way to take a legitimate break from things like job hunting for a bit without feeling guilty. The world simply seemed a bit too much to deal with last week. So I basically locked myself up in my own little cocoon - sleeping off the anaesthetic, reading my book, watching movies/TV and listening to music - only venturing outside to get groceries. First at my parents’ place and later in the week back at my own place. I even skipped celebrating St. Patrick’s Day this weekend for the first time in years! The combination of a usually ridiculously crowded Irish pub and having a not quite healed wound that someone in that packed out pub can easily bump into didn’t quite seem worth it…

Then today I woke up to a beautiful blue sky day, and I thought it was time to face the world again. Go outside and breathe in the fresh early Spring air instead of staying in my own little cocoon for another day. So I went to the beach, which is about an hour away from my place with public transport. And it was absolutely gorgeous. Despite the sunny day, it was nearly empty and the sound of the waves and the wind drowned out any other sound but my own footsteps. I walked along the shoreline for quite a while before sitting down in the dunes out of the wind for a while just staring out at the waves, alone with my thoughts. Thinking about how finally, last week, I got a temp job as a research assistant which I’ll be starting this Thursday. It’s only until mid April, but at least it’s something and by now I’m so fed up with practically being unemployed and having too much time on my hands that I’ll take anything.

Thinking about how I have another job interview lined up for a really interesting 6-month internship next Monday, which I’m really excited and scared shitless about at the same time. Apart from my interview for the scholarship program I was on during my Adelaide exchange, it will be my first ever interview for something I’d honestly be really interested in doing. It’s an internship on corporate social responsibility for a global management consulting & technology company in Amsterdam, and I’d be working on several projects relating to corporate social responsibility and writing about it for internal newsletters and external press. It would be perfect for me.

Thinking about a very similar beautiful blue sky day sitting in the dunes and looking out over the sea. Only this was at Venus Bay in Australia almost 4 years ago now, it was a few degrees warmer than today and I had a dear friend sitting beside me. Thinking about how long it’s been since I’ve been Down Under and how the upcoming London Olympics will be the first Summer Olympics in 8 years I won’t be seeing (at least partly) in Australia. How even though right now I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else but in Holland, I still miss Australia sometimes and would love to be able to see the people it holds for me in real life more often.

Thinking about how randomly beautiful life can be, even when it doesn’t feel that way all the time. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past few years though, it’s that you somehow always learn to see life’s random beauty again. Maybe even appreciate it more when you’ve failed to see it for a while. I guess it’s not too different from finally going outside on a beautiful blue sky day and breathing the fresh air again after having been hiding from the world for a week…

I hope you’re all well too and always love hearing from all of you too, so please leave a note! Sending much love all around the world, wherever you may be.
xx