astraltraveller - Tumblr blog

[astraltraveller]

Liam

Lily

[astraltraveller]

- that he wouldn’t do it now because it was inappropriate and he is older

- I wouldn’t because I was pushing him away and telling him not to. probably shouldn’t do something like that when you’re in a relationship. when youre with someone that you’re happy with, you only have eyes for them. you don’t want anything else

- started talking about Iceland, would he have done something?

- how do I know he’s just not looking for a hookup, because he was doing that in Iceland? because he doesn’t want just a hookup

[astraltraveller]

Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say "Well, that was pretty great." But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say "Wow, that was a close shave, wasn't it?" And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream ... where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.

Alan Watts

[astraltraveller]

MS Things

- Einmal, “oh, so I was right!” - escape room 1: mandarin numbers - escape room 2: talking about how he felt so good about getting the calendar thing and saying how good he felt, building up self ego

flexing in appropriate situations whole camping situation and inexperience caring too much about what other people think poor stamina cardio: talks about used to running 4.5k’s when it’s convenient, talks about how he does noooo cardio when it’s convenient los geht’s in front of other people, making sure they hear flirting with German knowledge even though he didn’t pass B1 “gern geschehen” and not saying gute nacht properly thinks I really go to the gym to ogle him took the relationship game way too seriously thought he was sooo unique when he ate a lot of the boba up front “wow I really am weird”. who says that? vegetarian with poor cooking. wanted to have me over for dinner badly but didn’t really know how to cook anything substantial except for boiled potatoes and chickpea curry in a bag. always carried me into the bedroom?? awkward texts - trying too hard in general with leading into things like 8ball out of nowhere after talking about chalk, or bulletproof vests and escape rooms monkey’s paw and being weirdly loud in the section with the women’s etiquette to make a point of referencing something the cashier said doesn’t drive for real.  hasn’t been “waiting for someone to go camping with” but doesn’t strike me as someone who would have the initiative to do it himself “I’ve been lifting longer than you!” but yet says dumb stuff like “where are your ___ deadlifts?” well I don’t make testosterone... thought it was “cool” to hook his water bottle on his jeans?

always non-stop insisting “I see this going in a good direction” “I wish I met you earlier” as if it would be significantly different. I had to be really point blank about it. very Fisk-esque. talked about us dating???

key jangling thing, people parting

- didn’t know you’re supposed to shake with ice. “the video didn’t have it” “I haven’t seen scenes in movies where people shake with ice”  - bought whipped cream???? - doesn’t know about Sandra Oh and a lot of other significant shows. doesn’t seem to have a very large worldview

- definitely seems obvious that he talked about feeling ashamed about not being able to get an offer in Germany and comparing it to me in Switzerland and wanting to measure up. Had to drive home the fact that the speaks a bit of German, is in IT (many more opportunities) so is at least statistically more likely to get a job

- first day, asked if I took calculus? then when explaining Taylor Series later on, couldn’t quite explain it properly. got a sense of him not actually really knowing his shit?

whewwwwww that is a lot of things. writing is out makes me realize some people are not worth wasting time with

shoelaces, I had to tie them for him because he only knew the bunny ears method

cried for 3 hours after getting hurt with something as a kid (that I recall being minor)

[astraltraveller]

September 2, 2020

Phewwww. Had a kinda stressful morning. And I’ve only been awake fro 2.5 hours. Just realized that the housing situation is okay, but I don’t know if I’m gonna love the idea of taking a bus around. I guess it’s normal but I have no idea if I’m gonna have a car, live in St. Gallen the whole time, be able to find a place in Zurich, manage in the lack of international-ness that is St. Gallen, jesussssssssssssssssssssss

Made me realize that two years ago, when I was adjusting to driving and Nav, that that was easy. That was different. Not stressful in the same sorta ways at all. Ho boy. I mean, it was stressful, but in a different way. Stressful in terms of not getting CTed. But it was easier because it was a reason to get a car, the people were kinda my type, I was living comfortably at home, and of course the food, gym, daily life was as I expected. But I will admit, it wasn’t a particularly exciting time... with a very narrow trajectory for my future.

Don’t wanna stress too much because left jaw pimples but damn this is kinda stressing me out

Getting out of the comfort zone etc etc

[astraltraveller]

August 25, 2020

After a few months of job searches, PhD applications, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco WebEx meetings, I found my perfect match. 

This is going to be life-changing. PhD’s are life-changing because they typically bring you on the path where you are a scientist, potentially working in industry, and are definitely qualified and no longer one in a million. Consulting, pharma, academia, whatever it may be. 

Goes to say that moving across the world to another continent will be crazy and a half. I can’t even begin to imagine all the things I will encounter, both unbelievably thrilling and stressful, and everything in between. Things that I can’t even imagine now. It’s gonna be such an adventure for sure. But I’m ready for it. I need this in my life right now, a move away from the typical, a true exploration, a calling to somewhere where I feel like myself, not like the shell of a robot on a mission that someone else told me to chase. 

Three years goes by quickly. Three years ago, it was August 2017 and it was one year before I defended my master’s. Dealing with the Vasily mess, still making visits to the US, had some med interviews in the US. Didn’t know what was next and certainly didn’t know about ATC. Hadn’t even started online dating. The fact that I was still in my master’s tells me that it wasn’t that long ago. Wasn’t driving yet. Still lifting but hadn’t purchased Tanfo. Went through all my breakups in those past three years. Went on a few solo trips and camping expeditions. 

Remember every year when I tell myself I’m gonna meet so many new people this year who I had no idea I was gonna meet, places that I didn’t know I was gonna see? That is certainly the case here. It’s never been more true. In the middle of a pandemic, no less. Can’t even begin to imagine how much is going to change. But I’m so excited.

[astraltraveller]

May 18, 2020 to 2025. (30)

Quick time capsule/note sorta thing. "Where will you be in 5 years?"

I hope to be living somewhere in Europe, fluent in German and French.

I hope to be working in consulting or an interesting industry job with my PhD that I will have gotten through MSC ITN. 

I hope to be still good at lifting and have as much passion for it as I do now.

I hope to be running 5k’s at least once a week, maybe more (distance or time). I hope to have run my first half-marathon by now.

I hope to be going on lots of trail runs. Lots of hikes.

I hope to be in a serious relationship, or if not, at least content alone. 

Five years ago, I had just finished my undergraduate degree and was just starting my position at SickKids. That was five *years* ago. Crazy. I was a total kid back then. About to start my master’s, which was pretty young tbh for a 21 year old. I was still set on med school being “it”. Was unhappy in a bad relationship, financially unsound on bus trips and flights. But I did some good things: had really good gym habits, started deadlifting, where 20lb on deadlifts were no longer “hard”. Got my res pal. Definitely learned and grew and traveled a lot in the past five years. Gonna keep it going. Just the beginning!

[astraltraveller]

Nguyen-Kim tells of a day in March 2017 when she decided against the life she had been working towards for years. The one-year Abitur, the chemistry studies in Mainz, the research stays at MIT and in Harvard, the doctorate in Aachen and Potsdam. When BASF offered her a laboratory manager position, it sounded like the logical continuation of her biography. Matthias Leiendecker, 32, who was still her fiance at the time, had also just started as a doctorate chemist in the pharmaceutical industry. Before them lay a draft of a life as tidy as the periodic table. Two secure jobs with high salaries, a house in the countryside after a few years, maybe an electric car and certainly one or two children. So much for the rough plan.

On that day, when she rejected the laboratory manager job, her videos on YouTube were viewed only 681 times. Nguyen-Kim was already part of the new youth network funk from ARD and ZDF, but fought with less than 10,000 subscribers. By the standards of the media business, she was a nobody. But there was something in the air. Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump's advisor, had just invented the term alternative facts . As if facts were a matter of opinion, depending on how it fit. In the life of Nguyen-Kim, however, facts come right after friends and family.

https://www.emdgroup.com/en/careers.html

[astraltraveller]

Another quick note because a lot of shit is going down right now. And weird shit deserves a timestamp. Because I’m gonna laugh about it soon.

Life is definitely weird and a half. 

I had an amazing time in Europe. I remember questioning myself when I got there and wondered what would happen. And how I thought back to Iceland and my first reaction being uhhhhh, okay. And how I even felt uncomfortable early on on the hikes. What a weird time. And how I had to convince myself that I even thought differently before I flew out from Munich and “i don’t wanna know” was on repeat. And how I was also really confused in Cesky Krumlov in that cold ass washroom, because he went too. And of course, by the end of it, I had quickly fallen head over heels. He’s not quite bad a communicator. Was sure of that for a while. Reassuring, point-blank, no spielstern. But then the quarantine happened, and then things got really confusing. I ran into posts multiple times where the thing is, it’s fuckin’ quarantine, buddies. Everyone is on their phone more, looking for things to do, people to talk to. If they’re not talking to you, it’s because they don’t wanna. I definitely did/am doing that with EL now. It’s just the way it is. But this has been going on since the quarantine stuff started and it’s so confusing that I’m too tired to figure it out anymore. I know what I saw, I know the lie as it happened, and I know my values.

So, onto bigger, more important things. I don’t know if I’m getting the raise. I also don’t know if I’m getting my contract renewed. I think my contract will be renewed, but I don’t think I’ll get the bump when I think I should be. 

Ofc, I wanna stay on. But if I don’t, things are a-changing. I’m going to move.

I’ve been learning the language for the past 2.5 months now. It’s going well. I’m going to keep going. It’s my thing. I can’t not try. I can’t not know what life will be like.

I’ve been cooking.

I’ve been doing lots of bodyweight exercises everyday.

I wonder what life will look like by the end of the year, and by next year April 7, 2021. Never have things been more uncertain, but I’m so used to uncertainty now that I’m kind of excited.

Shrugs.

[astraltraveller]

Was about to post something...

And found the facebook screenshot I posted from August 15. Goddamn. I feel like I came close to that a million times but to no avail. Def made me tear up. 

Anyway, this is what I wanted to post:

I forgot that I used to use Tumblr a lot to express myself in these times. I have a handwritten journal now that I’ve been writing in for half a year, everyday. Crazy eh? 

Funny because I think I’m on the tail end of this thing now... Germany was interesting.

[astraltraveller]

T. H.:

The camera has truly changed my life and opened up my world. I am very self conscious and an introvert. Travelling by myself or even going for a wander to explore an ancient woodland always made me feel a bit… well, a bit of a loner. As soon as I had a camera in my hand, my travels and my wanders had purpose! The camera was the missing piece of the puzzle. All of my anxieties about being out for no reason were gone. Of course I couldn’t see it then, but I see now that I simply wanted to be outdoors and exploring.

[astraltraveller]

 The decision whether one should stay or leave is one of the most consequential and painful any of us ever has to make. On any given day, many millions of people worldwide will be secretly turning the issue over in their minds as they go about their daily lives, their partners beside them possibly having little clue as to the momentous decision weighing upon them. The choice is perhaps more common now than it ever was. We expect to be deeply happy in love and therefore spend a good deal of time wondering whether our relationships are essentially normal in their sexual and psychological frustrations – or are beset by unusually pathological patterns which should impel us to get out as soon as we can. What films or novels we’ve been exposed to, the state of our friends’ relationships, the degree of noise surrounding new sexually-driven dating apps, not to mention how much sleep we’ve had, can all play humblingly large roles in influencing us one way or another. Awkwardly, it seems that no one else actually really minds what we end up doing, which gives the decision a degree of existential loneliness it might not always have possessed. Historically, the choice was in a sense a good deal easier because there were simply so many stern external sanctions around not leaving. Religions would insist that God blessed unions and would be furious at their being torn asunder. Society strongly disapproved of break-ups and cast separating parties into decades of ignominy and shame. And psychologists would explain that children would be deeply and permanently scarred by any termination in their parents’ relationship. But one by one, these objections to quitting have fallen away. Religions no longer terrify us into staying, society doesn’t care and psychologists routinely tell us that children would prefer a broken family to an unhappy one. The burden of choice therefore falls squarely upon us. The only thing determining whether to stay or leave is how we feel – which can be a hard matter indeed to work out for ourselves, our feelings having a dispiriting habit of shifting and evading any efforts at rational clarification. In the circumstances, it might help to have a set of questions, devil’s advocate in nature, to fall back upon, a check-list to dialogue within one’s mind in the silent hours of the morning from the chill vantage point of the spare room couch: – How much of our unhappiness can be tightly attributed to this particular partner – and how much might it, as we risk discovering five years and multiple upheavals later, turn out to be simply an inherent feature of any attempt to live in close proximity to another human? – Though it is of course always essentially their fault, what tiny proportion of the difficulties might we nevertheless be contributing to the discord? In what modest way might we be a little hard to be around? – Consider the annoying traits in all previous partners we’ve had and people we’ve known that our current partners happen not to have. What do we manage not to fight about? – Probe at new infatuations and crushes: by getting to know them better. – Observe closely how many sexually available and intelligent people the single types around us, especially those hooked up to new dating apps, manage to encounter day-to-day. – Try to have another conversation with your partner in which you do not accuse them of mendacity and instead simply explain, calmly, how you actually feel and how sad you are about quite a few things. – Reflect on how you would really feel as a child if, henceforth, you were going to have two tiny bedrooms, two new step-parents and possibly a few more new half siblings? Compare with the scratchy reality of the current set-up. – Question how normal it is for any couple to have great sex after 22 months together. – Ask yourself if you are ready to face the risk of perhaps achieving no more than exchanging a familiar kind of unhappiness for a new and more complex variety? Wonder whether you really want to choose hope over experience. Then, if you still have the impulse to leave, with the chances of subsequent regret lessened at least a touch, with a heavy heart and a cautious mind… leave.

[astraltraveller]

[astraltraveller]

[astraltraveller]

It’s okay

Better to be single and feel happy that I'm no longer settling, than feel happy because I'm dating and there being good things, but knowing that the upper limit of my happiness when I'm single is up to me, rather than the upper limit when I'm in a relationship being reliant on him and his actions

Work is the most important thing right now. Plan, be safe, be efficient, know who’s working what swap. Think on your feet. The good thing is I know how to be focused and in the zone, and I never get drawn away from that at work.

Remember when I told myself how funny it is that something/someone always comes up to distract me, either a friend or companion or someone I end up being with? It’s really really weird timing.

SN -> PK -> Gerick -> AF -> burger guy (like the day after) > Vasily moved into the office -> Connor -> Marc (the SAME DAY) -> Lucas -> CC -> HA -> Hendrik

[astraltraveller]

On feeling empty

I feel glad that I didn't write an entry the day it started bc I know it would really really hurt me to have to read it now

I was so happy, I remember for the first time I felt like things were going right romantically and that I found someone who understood what I was going through, who was genuinely nice, who I thought oh his gf would be lucky, someone who was as talkative as I was, someone who had a really good personality, who was so forthcoming, the way I was asked out, the trepidation and honesty, .

All I think right now is that I can't trust when people are nice to me anymore. It's like with Lucas, where one day he'd say the nicest things and I'd think everything is okay in the morning, and then by the evening it's all changed

I always have this suspicion that people are only genuinely nice some of the time and that the rest of it is just for show, just to keep things going

I guess it just is really sad to see someone describe somethingas fizzling and not meshing very well. I agree, but it makes it really sad to see it written when just the day before everything was fine

It just makes me feel like I can't find someone and it makes me scared to really commit at all or even invest emotionally because it never seems to work out

I really really thought this would be different because I almost deleted my tinder for it, and I completely wiped my bumble pof and okc

All of which I've never done before

I just feel more betrayed than anything at my own ability to trust people emotionally in romantic relationships

It's almost like what I thought doesn't mean anything, the other person will do what they want

It's like that mentality I had before I got back into dating, which was that relationships are tough because it's not just you relying on you anymore

Here we go again

No more dating April-June

[astraltraveller]

:(

I genuinely didn't think I'd have to write this this soon, but so it goes

I honestly just feel right now that I can't do anything romantically right

I thought I was doing things properly for once and that, idk, for the first time there was something of value, something different than before

I remember the day after we made it "official", I was so excited, so giddy, and just felt like things were maybe gonna work out for the first time

I remember how happy it made me to talk to someone who was just different, someone who just made me feel like I was being listened to, who cared about how they were portrayed and who made sure they came across nicely, someone who was so straightforward and open, so candid and had so much to say

I really thought they meant it when they said that sometimes good things happen when youaren't expecting them to and I thought maybe this was mine

Part of me is just glad as well because there are some things that I know I wouldn't enjoy, like hanging out with his friends or stuff like that, pool stuff etc

And honestly, the sex is not great, but that's not something that'd be grounds for me to leave for

I just think it's so early for this drama

No matter what, I won't let it affect work. I know this is my ultimate priority and nothing will come between me and it