Angry Randomness

There is a severe icy gap inside, which, now you are certain will never be fulfilled, no matter where you are, what you do and who you are surrounded with. It’s fate, disguised in your character to be as close to you as possible, to smirk when you live through hardships and to be proud when you are somewhere upper your limits.

Yet, you feel like a 16-year-old again, full of mistrust, resentment and hopeless transparency, not even angry, but furious as you refuse to take the fact that what you strive for never exists in this one of the worlds. It is medieval mummer’s farce, where to keep your individuality you need to be faceless and locked inside yourself, and “to be happy” is an expression from childhood fantasy book. It means to experience joy and feel content for a lengthy period of time. That is - almost always.

The system closes on you, blurring your perception of the time waves, and one day you just open your eyes and feel as if half of your life has passed and what you have done is naught: a couple of degrees, some fixed assets, nice family and friends, a beloved one if you are lucky. Yet in an instance people come and go, and the summer rain washes off all the bad memories, like pale milky spots from the window glass. Is this all what you wanted? The molecular dreams and aspirations, fed on stereotypes and common values, which are not to be questioned… ? And even those, who dare break it, are they better, calmer or maybe madder, than you are?

What if all the standard mindset is a madman’s raving? Artificial, skillful and with steady roots deadly embracing your brain? Its grasp is so firm, that you will never doubt it’s the one and only righteousness, you will never detour.

There is something missing in there, something  that makes you feel as if you live in a dream, which goes on from a fairy tale to a nightmare and the vice versa. You just cannot wake up, while the life passes by. The restlessness grows overwhelmingly, and what you stubbornly fight for  (in your dreams?) turns into worthless trifle the second after its yours.

And then what you want is to crawl out of your routine like a cat, turn your face to the sun and absorb its motherly warmth. You want to burn all the worldly mundane from your skin, color your eyelashes with the unbearable lightness of being and drown yourself in peace.

Cuz nothing else is left to make you feel sincerely alive. Nothing else, except for the day’s crimson anger.

The rest is duty.

Welcome back.

New Era

Only now, when I am sitting in a small studio apartment, which was hosting me for the last two months, and waiting for a car to move my luggage I clearly realize that this is the end. The end of something and the beginning of another, probably, the one called a mature life when you are totally exposed to the elements somewhere very far from home, when all your friends leave the place one by one and the beloved ones keep on being associated with green button on the left bottom side of the Facebook screen. Green buttons that keep you going when you want to break into 10000 pieces, be defeated and live in peace. The green buttons that chase me all my life...

My best friend says I always get what I want, it is just a matter of time. Looking back at my path of the last 3 years I can say he has a point. I wanted a good education, wanted to live and travel in Europe, wanted an interesting and decently paid job, wanted love.I have all of that now. Even more, I have and I have always had people around me who care about me and whom I care about FRANKLY, not just on words and smiles. There were even times when I was feeling absolutely happy, a precious feeling probably because of its short glimpses.

They say, the more you want in life the less you will be happy. When you get all you want, you keep on raising expectations, you get addicted to testing yourself and asking for more, you lose the realization that the peak is no longer reachable, because it is simply fake. You become a gambler, playing with life, something you will never defeat simply because you are temporary and it is not.

And I am right in the middle of this road now, moving forward with the maximum amount of uncertainty and insecurity in life, with a huge missing feeling inside me called KAROT in my mother tongue. And I am simply interested to count my steps, to see how far I can get in this game, as I know I will never win all the stages of it. And I will never stop until I reach a deadend...

The higher you fly the more dangerous it is to fall down. Am I scared?
Fear thou not; for I am with thee...

I am not religious, not at all, but I know there is something very powerful up there. I can't understand it, and probably I do not even want to. But I can feel it wants me to get a lesson, which is very soon to come. Very soon, because my next objectives in life are a bit contradicting each other, so there will be choice, probably the most important one to determine the next detour of my way. And there will be a real sacrifice, a one to live with for the rest of the life.

I do believe, I never change, I simply become more myself. Someone wise said it. And I hope I will not lose or betray my principles of staying humane. It is just a new era for me, where I would need to survive.
Once again.

Time to move on. Happy Easter!

Unfreeze

I lost my only file with the typically naive poetry, which I used to write in my teens. Nothing significant, just another part of childish me is gone. Most probably, it got deleted with other useless items that, I had supposed, were overcrowding my laptop. It is beyond retrieve.

We are used to crumbling the bricks of past to be able to move forward. I never do this on purpose, but it miraculously happens to me quite often. As a consequence, only academic files about business and management live on my hard disk now. They are smartly structured into family-folders, which never get messed up, as before. They are ruled by hierarchy and perfect order. Very similar to my consciousness.

I am crystal clear about what I am doing and for whom: it helps me fight the pressure out of my emotional system and survive. The clock is ticking, the progress is being made. There is an endless race between me and time, because I have no patience and because, among other things, I lost the ability to enjoy the everyday trifles. Those used to be the essence of my routine, as if drinking a very precious wine in the smallest possible sips so that one can admire the bouquet as long as possible. Sophisticated? Not really. 

The days flow through me, as if they are made of a pure liquid and I am a ghost from the indefinite future. 

But every morning I am getting on the yellow train, which takes me from Schiedam Centrum to Den Haag through the milky vapor floating on sleepy fields. It so happens that while I am pressing my cheek against the frozen window glass, the perfect circle of the glim emerges from the horizon, and I catch myself smiling. Slightly, not as a madman, but very much like a naive teen writing poetry at nights. A teen, that learnt a bit of Dutch and can understand some French, but, what is more important, still possesses the secret of translating enormously rich feelings' palette into simple words or melody.

.  

I need my euphoria back. 

Term 1: On The Edge

6 weeks are gone. I feel like it was only yesterday when I arrived at RSM. Honeymoon is over, I no longer care about under-eye concealer and coffee is my best friend now. The stronger, the better. Seems like I inhale every morning with the everlasting alarm melody, which wakes me up exactly at 8am, and exhale only when I hold the pillow late at night. A few seconds trying to remember what was going on during the day, then everything starts to fade: the brain just switches off.

I never expected this much of a teamwork. Diversity, which we strived for before coming here opened his arms and embraced us. I could hardly imagine anything more diverse and hard at the same time. Six people in a team, six different opinions and perspectives on the same subject. Everybody is trying to be a team player and a leader, to be uniform and unique at the same time. Coming from a monoethnic society, it is really hard for me to overcome the difference, because every word or move or even a glance is a challenge, as I never know what the cultural difference prepared for me as a surprise. I am learning from people around me.

In spite of this, the biggest challenge for me so far was the ability to listen to people. I did not even suspect, that I need to develop patience. If I fight this out, the first winning point is there. 

RSM became home.

Pre-Departure Thoughts

New Year's Day passed like another desktop wallpaper, changed by an unknown user.
Two years ago this holiday was just disgusting to survive, last year it was a pure expectation and now it is nothing more, but a background. All my inner resources, rational and empiric, are extremely sharpened as a predator's ones and directed to my next step: arrival to Rotterdam, where my MBA at RSM starts on the 9th January. As a common human being I need to admit: I am anxious. Not scared, but anxious. The change I was striving for is materializing in front of my eyes: I've already said goodbye to my beloved one for a few months at least and I'm going to miss him like hell. My mom never gives me even a hint, but I can sense her restless thoughts about my departure: actually, I am leaving her alone in this city for the whole year. My best friend was trying to hide her look, but I had noticed her eyes getting watery a few seconds before that. This list is long, but...
There is always a balance between what you gain and what you leave. That is some sort of an investment, which, if calculated correctly, definitely gives the expected feedback, sometimes doubled. I am sure I did all right. But no one escapes this part.

Once more, I found out how important is being active and involved once you are admitted. Thanks to our Facebook group (Varun and Markus, waving to you!) I more or less interacted with the majority of my MBA batch fellows, found a lot of bright wits (selection is really tough in RSM) and online friends there, who soon will become real ones. All the essential information is always circulating more in the social network groups rather than in official pages: the discussions are sometimes off topic, but really helpful to get to know people one is going to spend the whole year with. Plus, later, when we need to form teams for assignments and competitions, interactions go easier.