Part-Time Presence

Back to school after a while. It feels like I am constantly coming and going. On Monday evening, three people of my class knocked on my window and invited me out to the Faluche, the most popular bar of my university. I had no plans to go out that evening because my home is my cathedral. I eventually still decided to go because socialising is important. At about midnight we were thrown out of the bar and after a few pints I felt like the show must go on. I decided to invite people over. I do not know how but the next day I got to class at 8 o’clock even though I hosted an afterparty.

The workload for this week was low. I only had an English exam and a chemistry practical work exam. The latter means that we were firstly graded on how well we knew our lab equipment and chemical reactions as a theoretical part of the practical work. Secondly we were graded on the work we did during one and a half hours of experiments to determine the composition of a liquid. Every group was given a differently labelled vial named from X1 to X5. Then we had to make a final decision based on its density, the boiling point and once crystallised (made solid) its fusion point. We had already done this experience once before and it is one of the coolest ones because there are a lot of very different techniques used.

Last week I was posting all the video previews of previous week's mixes. Even though I have been writing blogposts weekly for the last half a year I still felt anxious about putting these videos out there. It seemed alright to throw your thoughts out there as just text but it felt way more personal to be directly talking to an audience, even through a screen. Furthermore video is a media output that is a lot more popular than any sort of writing, especially in my age group, so I exposed myself to a wider audience.

Since Friday I am on holiday, again. In January I attended classes for only two out of four weeks. I went to school for one week in February and boom – 2 weeks of holidays. These holidays I am going skiing with my sister and her family. I see this as meditative getaway. We shall see about that since there are four very cute under eight year olds with me. The trip to the mountains started nicely. There was 1h30 long traffic jam about half an hour from our starting point, after about eleven hours we arrived. That evening I fell asleep like a baby.

I find that the reason why we go on holiday is because it gives us an escape from routine. It is a time where we try our hardest to be in the moment. In those moments I personally like to reflect on how I even ended up in this place. What led up to this specific trip. Usually it ends up being a very philosophical thought-train. Overall a change of location grants us a certain self-awareness. But what if we could just favour this same self-awareness in our every day life?

Minimalistic Guide to Self-Awareness

As humans we are lazy, we love routines. There is a bright side to this, if we manage to alter our routines the way we want to, we can get a lot done. On the other side, even though we enjoy a certain repetitiveness, we crave novelty and we need that novelty to grow. Self-awareness helps us prepare ourselves for this novelty thus avoiding a rough blow when life inevitably changes. Here are a few suggestions to try and improve your self-awareness:

• Meditation

It sounds scarier than it is. Most people see meditation as something for monks or for weird “find your inner-self” yoga guru’s. The goal of meditation is to become aware of your physical being which usually has a side effect of calming your senses. It also helps us to take a step back, recharge your batteries and get going again with newly-found freshness. I can try to sell you meditation all I want, but the only true way to know for sure if it is useful for you is to try it. Here are some apps to get You started:

Insight Timer (My personal favourite)

Calm (Has great reviews)

Headspace (What got me started)

• Journaling

Journaling is another under appreciated practice. To be able to express one’s thoughts out loud and/or in writing is synonymous with understanding oneself. Forcing our brains to condense ideas into words and sentences is very difficult. The way to be more at ease is to make it a habit. It does not need to be in the format of a personal journal, it can be a gratefulness journal or a journal about work or anything really. It is about putting into words things that happen around you and within you to give yourself awareness about your existence. For journaling I highly recommend to use a physical notebook because when writing manually there is a better connection with the text. Otherwise there are note-taking apps that are great:

Notion  (My personal favourite)

Evernote (Has great reviews)

P.S. Writing out your thoughts is not only useful for the Present-You but it is also awesome for Future-You to look back on how much has changed.

• Trying new things

This is something that I need to constantly remind myself of. I enjoy the idea of trying new things but when it gets down to practise, it is very different. I have this problem of not wanting to be wrong. Ever. This means that I will try to avoid at all costs doing something that I am not comfortable with since it would mean that somewhere along the road I will be wrong. It is very childish and quite a difficult character trait to have as a person thriving for life long learning. That is why I try to do everything to humble myself by taking small steps and also making mistakes. I dare You to do something today that You have never done before!

Have a whacky week!