New blog at last!

My attempts at writing a new blog have been fruitless so far. I’ve tried a few times over the past few weeks, because it’s not that there hasn’t been anything to talk about. I guess I just couldn’t find the right words. But then I figured, it’s not always about finding the right words, sometimes it’s just about writing anything at all. Because otherwise you obviously end up writing nothing at all for over 3 months. So here’s me, trying again.

My life over the past three months can easily be summarised in one word: working. But you know me, I can’t keep it short even if I tried, so here’s the longer version of what I’ve been up to. So pretty soon after my last blog I started my one month stint as a research assistant for this research on the possibility of new voting ballots. They were long days, but we had a fun group of people and it was interesting if only for the fact that it went on at the same time as the Dutch government was in major crisis. You get some pretty interesting political discussions when the news of the day coincides with what you’re simulating, namely possible new elections. And just when I couldn’t bare to see another voting ballot again for a very long time (seeing over 8000 voting ballots pass before your eyes in just one month kind of does that to you…), our government fell the very day after we finished working on the project and new elections were written out for September. Hello election campaigns!

After finishing the research assistant job, I pretty much immediately started working an office job 32 hours a week at this re-integration company in return for government welfare. Has to do with the Dutch welfare system, which I won’t bore you with. But although the work itself hasn’t been the most exciting thing I’ve ever done (and that’s an understatement…) it’s been good in the sense that it makes me feel part of something again and brings structure to my days. Having the whole day to yourself and being completely free to decide what to do with it only stays fun when you know when it’s going to end. After almost a year of unsuccessfully looking for a job and only getting back rejections for jobs I know I can do and do well, the four walls of my 10m2 room were really starting to close in on me. So even though technically I’m still unemployed, I now at least get the benefits of having somewhere I need to be every day, being in a working environment and feeling like I’m contributing to something larger than myself, which is something I’d been increasingly starting to miss. And I’ve had some pretty interesting conversations about work and life and everything around it with some of my new colleagues, which has been awesome :) Like the other day, what started with talking about the cleaning of the coffee machine ended up almost 1.5 hours later with talking about the question of can men and women be friends. (I say yes by the way, or I’d be in big trouble and pretty much have to half the number of people I currently call good friends. Then again I’m fully aware not everyone believes in the platonic male-female friendship, as I don’t think I have one male friend who I haven’t been assumed to be romantically linked to by someone at some point…)

Apart from working I’ve also applied for two really awesome things. One is this ‘Better the World’ program, where you start up a project for a good cause with a group of people over 4-5 months with a minimum time investment of half a day a week. When I didn’t get the internship on corporate social responsibility I told you about last time, I realised it’s something I would love to do more with, but I don’t quite know where to start. This Better the World program is kind of designed for that, as you get workshops and training sessions to help you get started and then coaching along the way as well as you put together your project. It starts in September and I’m already heaps excited about it :) The other thing I applied for is this traineeship, where the aim is that you gain work experience in three different companies over two years time, while at the same time working on your personal development and management skills with the half-a-day a week teaching component that is part of it. I had my job interview for that last week and just the other day I heard I got through to the second round, which is this Thursday! So I’m keeping my fingers crossed, but getting that would be pretty awesome too :)

Besides all that, my life has mainly been about catching up with friends as well as getting quite into the Euro Cup soccer, sometimes even combining the two. I always surprise myself with how much I get into tournaments like the Euro Cup seeing as I’m normally not much of a soccer fan, but I just love it :) Maybe it’s also because I have several soccer tippings going over (parts of) the tournament, which automatically makes it more exciting. Unfortunately I already lost two (!!) against my good friend Coen (if only Ireland and/or Croatia had scored a goal in that final minute… ;) ) but I’ve been holding the top position in the one I have going with my fam for the past ten days or so! And this weekend I’ve been touristy in Amsterdam with my housemates, as we finally made our idea of going on a canal bike on the Amsterdam canals reality. It was a lovely day and very funny trying not to hit the sides and doing our best to steer clear of the big canal boats. We now feature in quite a few tourist photos apart from our own, because apparently our canal biking attempts were quite a sight to see! Good times :)

And in between everything there have been plenty of birthdays, there’s been good news and bad news, and in keeping with good Dutch tradition there’s been a distinct lack of anything that really resembles Summer. So I guess it’s just been life in all its randomness. Hope you all feel a bit more up to speed again with mine! Please know that even when you don’t hear from me for a while I often wonder what’s happening in your lives too and love to hear about it, so feel free to drop a note or leave a comment! Hope that everyone is well, happy and healthy :)
xC.