Category: Personal Announcements

紊乱💥

2020 has been an absolutely chaotic year. It’s been a continuous rollercoaster with no end in sight. Or maybe that’s just life. It feels like 2020 is the life lesson. We are such vulnerable creates in the face of nature. Yes, people bring destruction, horror and pain to each other and to the world we all have to share. But nature bitch slapped us all into a global halt. And even then, some people still want to prove they’re stronger. I don’t blame them. It’s not exactly human nature to be submissive to anything. That’s most likely what got us here in the first place, anyway. But what does seem crazy to me, is this apparently incessant need to be better and to escape a perfectly chaotic world as it already is, and continuously causing more destruction.

上海，祝福你，你永远在我心里🎵

I am rather annoyed. This year has been perfectly chaotic for me, too. It’s thrown my whole life upside down, and I also felt a continuous need to prove myself and that I am capable to adapt, too. I up and left Shanghai on January 27th, escaping the virus in China. By that time it had partly shut down the country. Especially Wuhan of course, but also Shanghai started measuring our temperatures before entering clubs, flights started cancelling, and I lost my job. Well, I still had the job, but I had no working hours anymore, and no income. I did, of course, have rent to pay. And so it seemed like a good solution to come back to The Netherlands where I hadn’t been for nearly 3 years. Setting off with just my one suitcase, I left the rest of my stuff in our shared apartment in Shanghai, feeling rather excited for a holiday to Europe. Turns out that China did a much better job at handling the virus than the rest of the world did. About a month later, the country announced foreigners weren’t allowed to enter the country anymore. And so, here I am. To stay.

（从）东（到）西

All the rest of my belongings arrived just two weeks ago, after having waited for 5 months since they got packed up by a terrible company that did zilch for reassuring me my stuff would actually arrive one day. My awesome friend did try and comfort me by saying that I could just buy clothes again. Which is obviously true. They don’t hold too much value to me, other than some sentimental pieces. But my diploma, diaries, notebooks, presents from my adorable students, those are irreplaceable. But I am skipping ahead slightly. What happened in the meantime was actually rather exciting. I applied for a MA degree in Conflict Studies and Human Rights, and cried happy tears when I read the email notifying my admission had been accepted! What a day. I still had to show them proof of my diploma, though, which I couldn’t do because that, along with my other stuff, was still somewhere boating on an ocean.

Now we live in October, 2020. The degree is proving itself to be very difficult and I’m wondering if I can cope and make it to the end, I live in a most amazing apartment in a gorgeous spot in Amsterdam, and my parents are only a 20- minute drive away! We haven’t lived this close, hell, even on the same continent since the last 7 years. They’re coming for dinner tonight, and if we wanted to, we could see each other again tomorrow, next week Wednesday, or next next week Friday. That’s been fantastic!

累死了🥱

All in all, chaos. The good and the bad. A lifetime fit into one year. Madness and happiness. And quite frankly, I’m rather exhausted. I still count myself lucky: I haven’t lost anyone to COVID-19, and although The Netherlands is seeing virus-related ignorance and a huge rise in COVID affected people, we are still free to roam and bars and restaurants only close at 22:00. Plenty of time for a meal, a good chat, and at least two glasses of liquid courage (liquid motivation at this point).

拜拜👋

Can we all just try to be a little better, a little kinder and a little more gentle towards others and the world around us? Can we wake up just a little bit more and take care of the planet and our friends and family? I am exhausted, and I find myself leaning more and more towards these things that I find make my day just a little bit better. It’s just nicer to feel better than to act and feel like shit.

Both exciting and scary times are ahead. I am about to graduate from a degree I was so enthusiastic about starting. Naturally, in my case at least, that calls for some reflection. It seems like just last week I was notified that I got accepted to Fudan University in Shanghai. The degree is called Chinese Philosophy, and it came at a time in my life when I desperately needed direction. I am now seeing a glimpse of the new coping mechanisms it has taught me, in order to deal with trauma reaching dark depths I could never have imagined. Through an internship with Freeland Foundation in Bangkok, I learned too many things about the shaded side of humanity that I wasn’t exposed to before. Freeland works on the frontline, combatting illegal human and wildlife trafficking. I have so much respect for my colleagues from that time who fight this exhausting battle to this day.

My sensitive personality couldn’t cope with what I now know to be the extent of the dark world, which sadly is created by other human beings. If you think I may be too sensitive, too involved, too caught up or too weak, I ask you how anyone who doesn’t contribute to this suffering but tries to help it, can feel otherwise. And if you feel the need to judge me on my ‘how’, I strongly suggest you give this information a try and immerse yourself in it. The fact is that it is extremely distressing and awful, and different people cope with it in different ways. At times I am able to see and feel the humbling side of the bad experiences. I have learned about the fucked up part of the human world. It is both a blessing and a curse. I couldn’t and wouldn’t have known what would come after this experience, either. From my side, it is a cauldron where feelings of disorientation, loneliness, fear, sorrow, and anger are mixed and are often actively boiling. But I am not able to pour it out of this massive pot and give it a place, and so it sits there. And I am continuously stirring it with a tiresome effort to not let it boil over. I couldn’t have known how it would affect those around me either. They saw a sad pile of a confused girl not able to put into words how horrified and small she felt. I needed my family and friends to pull my strings like a puppet and show me again how to be a human being in this human dominated world. Only I couldn’t tell them, because I didn’t know.

I think using words such as darkness and light is rather cheesy and cliché, but I can find meaning in what they represent. Especially how it relates to so many things I have learned in the last 2 years. Dark and Light. Yin and Yang. Two opposite forces that flow from the one into the other. It is because of the one that the other one exists. I don’t quite know yet how it fits in with what I’ve experienced and learned about the dark, the bad, the negative. Perhaps I need to be another light to balance out the dark. Perhaps we all need a bit of both, so that we are yet another balanced unity that participates in the balanced natural world that already exists outside of us. As I am about to graduate from this degree I feel grateful for it and I am afraid that I will miss it. It opened up my eyes to a segment of knowing people who maybe knew of or experienced the same or similar things as I did. Or who speculated and theorised. Or simply assumed this truth. The knowledge I have gained and books I am reading have provided a framework for me in which I can puzzle together a healing process for me now, and a framework with which I can continue to shape the rest of my life. I am so happy and excited to continue learning from these great minds and their realities.

I feel quite safe, sharing this with you. I didn’t think that I would, but I have done a lot of work to accept my own reality. And regardless of you fully understanding me or taking me seriously, I am happy to know that in the very least I am still trying to better myself, and positively contributing to the people and natural world around me. The reason I am sharing this is in part because I need to push myself on a little bit towards a more joyful and peaceful existence and by writing this, I am holding myself to a promise.
Some weeks ago after talking to my friend, my fellow intern at Freeland, I felt empowered again for the first time in a long time. Together with many other personal attempts and attempts from my loved ones, I have started healing. I want to thank you, Cha, for being the person you are and sharing your strength and love with me. I hope my words do you right, too, because you are on your own journey and I want to send you nothing but love and strength in return.

I started listening to podcasts about one year ago and I’m amazed at that medium, which is why I often refer to podcasts and certain episodes. Likewise, this blogpost is inspired by a podcast I listened to in the (very) early hours of today. I’m a morning person. My best routine so far is waking up early with a coffee and a podcast. You know what they say: You win the morning, you win the day. 

On today’s episode: A Better You by the TED Radio Hour podcast.

Whilst sitting in my chair, this podcast motivated even the little hairs on my toes to go out into the world. I’d really advise you to give this episode a listen. But in a nutshell, it discusses ways in which you can get rid of all the useless mind-fluff and bring your good ideas, intentions, and actions to the forefront. The two ideas that attracted me the most were:

1. The Rejection Challenge – A 100 days of seeking rejection so that you can get comfortable with this otherwise uncomfortable feeling, which so often stops us from doing and achieving what we want! (Don’t go all crazy and load yourself up with heartbreak or nightmares. Ask someone if you can paint their front door orange or ask someone to sing you a song.)
2. The 30 Day Challenge – Try something new every 30 days and practice it every single day until your new challenge starts. Always wanted to be an artist? Pick up a pencil every day for the month of March (you’re still on time!) Want to build a boat? Read a bit about the how every day for the month of April. And then build it in May. Take some of June, too, if you need it. 

You might not struggle with rejection all that much, which is awesome. The point is that most of us have something we struggle with and could improve to make our own lives easier. Maybe even the lives of others. This challenge seems like a pretty slick strategy to get comfortable with the uncomfortable.
I absolutely love the latter challenge. I’m always up for trying new things. It’s a good excuse to do the things I’ve wanted to do but didn’t. I often expect myself to do it the best and do it forever. This approach makes it much more fun, and temporary. Of course, if I do love it or if it’s really good for me, I’ll simply just continue it if I can.

Another strategy that I learned about and have incorporated into my life already but which was not included in the Podcast, is the Tiny Habits strategy. Find out which things you do every single day as part of your daily routine. Brushing teeth, changing from your sexy llama pyjamas into your work suit, eating breakfast, drinking coffee etc. Then, figure out what you want to do more of in your life, or something that you want to learn. Divide that into smaller steps. Done? Now divide into smaller steps again. Done? Repeat this step again. The point is that we want to create a habit out of this, and get you to achieve your goal in small steps at a time. What would otherwise seem daunting, now you are perfectly capable of doing EVERY SINGLE DAY! Isn’t this wonderful? I’ll give you two examples of tiny habits that I have now: Say two affirmations in the mirror after showering, and do two squats after peeing. Yup.
If you need to get into the habit of getting into the habit, Tiny Habits provide free guidance for a week! (Linked above.)  

As I’ll be sitting on the plane or waiting at the airport in two days to head back to Shanghai after an AMAZING long-ass working holiday back at home in South Africa, I’ll be figuring out what my next 30 Day Challenge will be.
Are you with me?  Hayoooooo! High-five. 

I made this random list of things that would be cool if they happened one day, but they don’t necessarily need to. Why, you ask? I don’t have a particular reason, actually. However, today I was very aware of the idea that it would be cool if I was one of those extras in a movie that has a beer at the table next to main actor, or stands in the queue at the airport three people behind her, or eats at the same restaurant in the background pretending to have serious conversations and then burst out laughing for who knows what reason. Then I thought, I often have these random things where I think: that would be cool. But I don’t pursue them. Simply because I don’t have to, or don’t even want to. Nevertheless, I can appreciate and enjoy the idea.

So, my that-would-be-cool-but-it’s-not-a-must-list:

1. Be an extra in a movie. Preferably Bollywood. (No idea why, that’s just how it popped into my head).
2. Write a book. This probably belongs to the ‘I want to’ category. But I don’t HAVE to.
3. Do a voice over for an animation character or something. Or record an audiobook. I’m not sure whether my voice has the necessary smoothness to it that’s comfortable to listen to, though.
4. Do some aerial yoga.
5. Take a kid out for a day to play. I have two reasons for this: 1) I really enjoy playing kids’ games 2) Wanting to know what it feels like to have a kid (and not yet be responsible for it forever).
6. See a bubbly volcano.
7. My family and other friends once went camping in the Okavango Delta, and we heard hippos walking around our tent at night. That would be incredibly awesome to do again. But I can still appreciate the memories, too.
8. Reach some certified level of PTK (Petiki Tirsia Kali, a Filipino martial arts).
9. Have my own brand of hippie style clothing.
10. Take women-empowering photos, specifically of my beautiful friend Jesse in Mother Nature.