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Palish

*nods*

Hey, hi, hello!

[2010-2012: the years of Love and Heartbreak]

As I've mentioned in the chat, I'm not just going to cover 2019. I feel like I need to look back at the past decade. I'm not even sure why, but I do. Maybe it's just for me. I like to reflect upon things, and I feel like writing it off of me could help me provide closure and look ahead into the future.

And what a decade it was. During New Year's Eve, a friend asked me how I would rate the past decade. I said that 2016 and 2019 were great and I was depressed for the rest of it. That, of course, killed the mood of the party, so I quickly changed the subject.  And given reflection, I couldn't be more wrong about the answer. Yes, I have not been at my happiest during a large part of the decade, but there were happy moments, happy periods. I don't think I could truly judge a year and say it was bad. All of them included ups and downs. Light and darkness. Whatever you want to call it. 

So when thinking about the past decades, I've noticed some years, or clusters of years, had certain themes to them, and therefore I'm going to divide this retrospective into these themes.

2010-2012: the years of Love and Heartbreak
2010 started out pretty great. I went on a once in a lifetime trip to Hong Kong, and I still believe it was one of the best trips I have ever been on. There was just something about that region that I've fallen in love with. No place I have been to has felt even remotely the same. It breaks my heart to see how the situation has gotten so tense lately over there.

2010 was also when I got into my first relationship. She was my best friend's ex. When they broke up the year before, she remained part of the friend group and we grew closer until we somehow realised we had ended up liking each other. After a couple of months, however, things started turning bad. We got into fights a lot. She couldn't really see things from my point of view, and I couldn't from hers. Looking back now, we were obviously a bad match. I was madly in love with her, though, and was devastated when it ended and for a long time after. To be completely honest, I was obsessed.

That long time after included the time I've dated my second girlfriend. I've dated her for more than a year (mid 2011 to mid-2012), and she was the best person I've ever been in a relationship with. And yet somehow, I was still pining for girl number one. Girl two and her family loved and praised me, and I just felt bad about it, because I knew I didn't deserve any of it. After months of struggling with my feelings, I broke up with her. Completely to her surprise. I still feel like an asshole for all of that.

Three years. Two relationships. Two broken hearts.

2013: the year of Life and Death
I have often said that 2013 was the worst year of my life. There was another bad relationship. We were bad for each other, that's all I'm gonna say about that one.
2013 was also the year I went on my exchange to Madrid, Spain. I have learned and experienced so much during this time. I have met tons of cool people during my time there (though I've lost contact with most of them). It truly felt like a second home, and it was my first taste of freedom and independence after living a fairly sheltered life at my parents' place.

But I was also incredibly depressed and suffered from extreme anxiety.

About two weeks before I went, around the beginning of August, my aunt and godmother had an embolism. She suffered brain damage and half of her body was paralysed. I was able to visit her about two or three times before I left.

She passed away October 30th that year. About two weeks before, she was finally diagnosed with Kahler's disease. I was able to fly back and visit her about two days before she died. I have never cried as hard as back then. Not even during her funeral.
There was also a lot of drama within my family revolving around all of this, but I won't go into detail.

Being in Madrid was in a way (and I know it sounds bad) convenient because I wasn't in the middle of all that. I was able to escape it all. Still, it weighed heavily on my mind. Couple that with the fact that I was the furthest (or is it farthest) outside of my comfort zone that I had ever been, and you could imagine my mental health was not exactly at its best during those times. I had good times with the people there, and I partied a lot. But that was all just to escape all the terrible things that were going on. And I couldn't keep it up. I couldn't balance it with going to classes... so I just started slowly cutting out those until I stopped going altogether. I started having major panic attacks. Multiple times, I'd be gasping for air in the middle of the night, thinking I was going to die. I lost weight. I was not taking good care of myself. I was fucking up school. I felt like I was ruining my life.

I managed to pull myself together for the last couple of weeks and started going back to classes. It was a little too much for me to handle but I managed to at least pass two out of five classes. I passed a third after I returned home. In the end, however, I've set myself up to finish my degree in five years instead of four.

I've only told two people back home about the horrible time I was going through while I was in Madrid. For everyone else, I just put on a happy face and pretended everything was fine and dandy.

But the truth would have to come out eventually.

2014-2015: the years of Anxiety and Stress
I've basically spent these years trying to save whatever could be saved, degree wise. I just ended up getting into more trouble because I couldn't deal with the ridiculous workload I had given myself. So the panic attacks continued.
I played some pretty cool games, though.

2016: the year of Mindfulness and Change
2016 was when I finally was able to pull my shit together and set my course for graduation. But I knew that just getting my degree wasn't going to fix the deeper problems. I've had struggled with my self-image for most of my life. I still really hadn't given all the sad things that happened the years before a place. I knew I had to go into therapy.
I got recommended to do mindfulness and acceptance therapy. I was sceptical at first, but it was probably the best thing I could have done. I never thought I could make myself not feel restless. I never thought I could accept things for what they were. Especially things I was sad or angry about. Meditation just helped with all of that.

It was during this period of therapy and growth that I rekindled my love for writing. Just in time for me to join a couple of people in a collaborative writing project called HySchool. One of those people just happened to be our very own Valkyrie. We got into contact with each other through writing together and that all set in motion everything leading to me being here on CalRef. I'm very grateful I get to interact with cool people such as you all 😊

I landed my first job about mid-to-end of December.

2017-2018: the years that set up the present
I've spent most of 2017 and 2018 feeling aimless. The job I had for most of 2017 had no structure and very low pay. I did learn a lot while being there, though. And I finally had my first taste of change and process management, the career path I'm pursuing right now.
In December 2017, I started working somewhere else. I was suddenly the leader of a project. And I wasn't very good, but tried very hard and was slowly getting better. But not good enough. Eventually, I was stabbed in the back by one of the employees. I was demoted and she got my job. I stayed on the team just so I could keep steady employment. But I felt absolutely miserable, and it started affecting my work. Eventually I kind of lost all motivation. I was let go in late August.

I wasn't sad about it. I finally felt free again. But I was once again confronted with the age old question of what the fuck I wanted to do with my life. I had to look for another job and I didn't really have a lot of options with my European Studies degree given the limitations I had set for myself.

I spent months looking for a job. I kept the cover letters to a minimum. I would mostly apply for jobs that seemed somewhat okay for me. Anything that I could tell I would feel miserable in, I would just flat out ignore.

Eventually, I was approached through LinkedIn by my current employer. They offered me a traineeship. I would be working on a project for two years, helping to modernise an organisation and setting up a new platform for their employees to work in. Meanwhile, I would be doing courses to get a degree in Information & Change Management. Heck yes

Also, 2017-2018 is when I developed my interest for D&D and I still very much love playing that and other TTRPGs.

2019: the year of Acceptance
It wouldn't be until January 2019 that I had my final interview and got hired for the project, though.
2019 was great. I have grown a lot. A lot of my anxieties just slowly started growing weaker. I worked a lot on myself and focused on self-growth. I even started picking mindfulness back up again, though I don't do daily 30 minute meditation sessions. I just try to apply mindfulness to most things I do. It seems to get easier with time.
I don't think I've ever felt so comfortable with myself as I do now. And 2019 contributed a lot to that. I even picked up music again.
And I started talking to someone cool in late December. Who know what that will lead to.

Anyway... this is about 1800 words of rambling. Thanks for reading. I hope you at least enjoyed some of it.

Man, that was kind of a shitty thing to do, what your roomie did, Alexis.

Do you feel like you can talk to them about this?

Ooh, is Osin from Elahána?

I intended her to be from a fairly remote island. It's quite possible that her people and the Elves of Elahána have common ancestry, though.

I guess her version of Elvish wouldn't be so much a different dialect than an entirely different language altogether (albeit in the same group).

I like detailed explanations. Knowing what the basis is and what elements you added gives me a better idea what to change up. After all, Osin's dialect is gonna be a little different.

So there is no need to apologise, you silly goose :p

Is the Elvish a preestablished thing I can look up or something you came up with?

I need to know for... reasons.

I have renamed my post. Not used to giving titles to individual post yet.

I'm really, really enjoying this story, you guys.

Granted, but you can only take them off if you jump up three times and say "I'm a biscuit."

I wish I wasn't single.

Clipping papers
Picking locks
Stabbing
To use as an unofficial mascot
Cleaning watches

Name five YouTube channels that need more love.

And then two

It's like art!

Instruments! 

I play guitar. Been playing on and off for nearly 12 years now. The passion resurged a couple of months ago, and last month I even bought a new amplifier. It's great.

Now I'm mostly focusing on learning simple songs and relearning the basics, because I feel I have built up some bad habits that hinder my playing.

I also like to play the vocal chords, but I'm not great at those either.

Thank you, peeps. I'll take those hugs 

The chocolate sounds tempting, but I'm kind of on a diet right now

None of my stuff was damaged. But I'm gonna have to call my landlady today what to do about the humidity.

Hello everyone!

I'm sorry for disappearing. Life decided to be like "So, would you like to be super busy? Also, would you like the fact that you live in an old ass apartment be a thorn in your side?"

I've been trying to fix up a couple of things, with a couple of setbacks, but I eventually succeeded. Then, yesterday, my upstairs neighbour's geyser decided to break and flooded nearly the entire top floor. I was at home when it happened, and was alerted by what sounded like rain, except it sounded like it was raining inside. I opened up the door to my entrance hall and the water was pouring down the cracks in my ceiling.
We managed to make it stop, but not before water started to pour from the walls and ceiling in my kitchen as well.

So now I've got these damp cracks in the walls and ceilings of my habitat. Yay.

I sure hope you are all having a better time than I am having right now.

Excited to see familiar faces return :)

As for my own upcoming post, I'll see if I can put up something this week. Most likely tomorrow evening or Friday evening.

I mean, if you've got Natalie's permission...

E: Also, it's an absolute delight to see Rylle return :3

Granted, but now you're always so comfortable you get into a trance-like state and are no longer aware of your surroundings.

I wish I had a car.

Sorry if I missed this on my first read through, as I'm at work, but does Arelana have a roommate? If not I've got someone in mind.

Not yet~
I am looking forward to see who it is.