I'm late, but I'm back!
home for a month and a half, persisting uninspiredness & old hobbies
hello!!
I didn’t write a post last week and feel so out of the routine now!! Ahh!! Hopefully, coming back will be smooth and easy again.
On Sunday, I landed back home, and I’m going to stay here for a month and 3 weeks. A new environment which, even though familiar, still requires some adaptation. Different routine, different ways of doing things, different spaces, even different habits. Since moving to Germany, I’ve had to adapt and readapt to these two places I should call home.
Going back home is exciting, but it’s also hard to adapt back into a culture I’ve recently had no practice interacting in. Not just cultural dynamics, but also family dynamics.
Although the change and initial adaptation, it’s obviously great to be here for a while too.
My lack of inspiration has not yet passed. Maybe it has to do with autumn and the coming winter, maybe it has a bit to do with the fact that my creative energy almost involuntarily gets spent on university projects, which I fail at not caring enough.
This semester I’m taking a signage course, which so far seems to be something I enjoy and could enjoy doing in the future too. It combines both my interests of graphic design and organization. Throughout the semester, we have to build a signage system for a space, I’ve chosen to invent a festival (based on yet more interests of mine, duh!) for it. This is a subject that I do actually want to spend more time on, because not only can I enjoy it, but I know that, unlike other subjects, I’ll actually learn practical skills.
The other two subjects, however, are a bit more on the think-y side and not as creative (if at all), but they still take more time than I’d like them to take.
My mind asks me for a pause, it doesn’t want to force it, even though it works sometimes. It tells me, “if you don’t feel inspired, it means you need to do nothing until you feel inspired again”. But I do struggle to believe that that’s for the best.
If my mind asks for a pause and I give it to it, is that self-love/self-care? Or should I push myself to ultimately help myself, so that’s self-love? Are both true? I’ve been following the first idea more, but maybe it hasn’t worked too much. Because when I do a pause, it’s not like then I don’t do anything, I’m unable to do so. I quickly fall into something else, another hobby of which I had previously taken a pause from.
This time it’s languages. I’ve recently had the urge to dedicate some time to nurture my lacking German. Pretty low effort with my old friend Duolingo, though. But my obsessive self couldn’t contain herself (not that I’d want to, haha) from (re)starting Greek and Japanese lessons some days a week, just for fun and cause their alphabets/writing systems are interesting.
And I feel crochet is slowly making a comeback too, mainly because I want to finish a beanie I started a pretty long time ago (beginning of 2022? Maybe) for my mom, and want to give her before I leave.
Writing this does feel like a form of self-care, it can be a moment of reflection and act a bit like a diary. It’s one of the few places where thinking out loud about myself, my work & life isn’t being self-involved, because this is my space, it’s literally for me and about me.
In these two weeks I did the illustrations for more months of the calendar!
What is self-care for you?
Do you have ‘backup’ hobbies'?
Any ideas for the November illustration?
This week’s Pomelo
This video on how to have a conversation (Psychiatrist's Guide to Conversation). Not what you could expect. I learned a lot.
I laughed so much with this video. If you ever played Wii Fit, I recommend a watch
I understand you when you talk about adapting, hoping it'll be as smooth as it can get for you <3
PS the Wii vlog had me feeling incredibly nostalgic hahhahhah
Thank you for the shoutout, Núria 🫂
I’d love to see you draw trees in November!!