For the first time in very long, I overslept. Waking half an hour too late, I sat up in not a panic, but with the guilty realisation that I probably needed that extra moment of mindless bliss. It’s been a busy couple of weeks and more to come as I am trying to make the best of my time in Bremen. But everything comes at a cost, and it seems that the fatigue of my overworked mind morphed into my body that gets no exertion whatsoever.

It’s an odd contrast to read a book about Zen-Buddhism that is encouraging me to live mindfully, to avoid falling into the trap of “habit energy” and to cultivate sensing rather than doing, while simultaneously drowning myself in work in lack of a more stimulating endeavour. After work, I spend most evenings meditating, rather than socialising, cultivating and creating. Looking inwards to the self rather than outwards to the world. Knowing myself to get energy from external experiences, I’m not sure if this is who I want to become, but it keeps my frustration under control.

I’m not sure if all this is due to the boredom that’s born from the lack of physical and emotional stimulation stemming from being on lockdown in a foreign city where meeting people and doing activities are prohibited; or if it’s the desperate attempt to distract myself from my uncertainty that the ongoing developments in my life are for the best; or if it’s abstract ambition towards a career goal with undefined borders that’s once again materialising after a healthy slumber.

What I’m sure of, is that my stress levels are elevated, my feelings are irritable and dull, and, without any better way to say it, I’m graciously bored by whom I’m becoming. Is this really the best I can accomplish with all the many blessings I have been given?

Yesterday I met up with my one and only person in town I know not due to work or living, and we took a bike ride in the harbour area here in Bremen. A surprisingly beautiful area with that industrial touch that makes you feel like everything is business as usual. Only, on the inside I feel like I am changing, slowly dying, and I’m not sure who is taking my place. Like melting ice, my change is by growing smaller. My only hope is that the metaphor holds enough for me to also become softer. I wonder if the transformation is an improvement or if I am losing touch with myself. Forced into a continuous situation that does not correspond with my own twisted perspective of who and what I am, I am very tired of maintaining positive hope.