Right, let's get a little life streamwrite out of the way before starting the next phase of my life.
I am officially back to work after several months of break. I have to admit that I'm quite pleased about how I'm back at the old place, working with the people I know and like so well. While I've been away, absolutely nothing has changed in the company. It's comfortable because I know what to expect. Too comfortable, perhaps? We'll see.
Only four days ago I was relaxing at a tropical island with my girlfriend. We spent the whole week doing non-supervised scuba diving at the various dive sites of the island. It was pretty amazing. The perfect ending for a long period of holidays.
But everything must end, and everyone who is not filthy rich must eventually go back to work. My life always seems to be in either a self-actualized, enough-sleep, learning-new-things kind of holiday or semi-holiday period, or in an utter grind to level up and earn more money. There seems to be no middle ground. I can already feel myself slowly descending into grind mode. Self-awareness helps to keep yourself in the holiday mode for a bit longer, but it never last forever.
Some events can easily push you over the edge and make you lose self-awareness. In my case, I only barely caught myself at this yesterday. For the whole summer my home had been quiet, relaxed and peaceful, but yesterday all the housemates were back from holiday, and they were being noisy, instantly making me regret the decision I had made in quieter times to not find a new apartment but save up to buy one instead.
This place, where I live now, is absolutely not where I want to spend the rest of my life. But it's comfortable enough to serve as a temporary base of operations until my girlfriend and I get enough money to buy our own home. Given that we are living and working in London, with some of the craziest house prices in the whole world, that is not an easy task. Given that I am committed to living here, the fact that I am powerless to affect my housing situation for the better makes me lash out and try to blame anything and everything. My housemates for making noise, my landlord for the rent price (even though he's the nicest and most reasonable guy I've ever met and I like him a lot), the entire country for being so politically fucked up that they can't do anything about this, and so on.
But at least I have an out. It's a steep climb and it will take time, but there is a way out to reach a situation that I would be ultimately happy with and could find no fault with from my current perspective. Many people here don't even have that chance because they simply will never earn enough money to buy a house.
It's going to be a tough period before the winter holidays. It's like that every year. But I've found my direction. I know what I'm aiming for, I know how to measure my progress, and I know that I can make it. Perhaps that's enough.