Dealin' With Myself

I got a job! It ain't a beautiful one, it ain't sophisticated, it ain't a lot of things. But it is a job. And I needed one. There's nothing wrong about it. I actually enjoy working with those machines and because of targets, I end up speeding through the eight hours of my shifts almost without noticing time passing. I work alone, with red buckets and an automatic machine as company, you can see more of it in the first seconds of this video . But I so miss to work with people and making art! At the same time I was struggling with the absence of a job, feeling guilty for not having prepared the transition to Holland so well, dealing with all questions and doubts about my work and my practice, mixing everything in the same bowl: guilt from mistakes in the past, the desire of doing things that I didn't know how to market and sell, etc, etc. This post got messy. I got a job, and I needed to celebrate it.

Still without a job. Still on a career crisis , although in a bit of a different position than I was a month ago. I have started to take Dutch lessons and making an effort to avoid panic . I managed to get some distance from the overwhelmingness of the whole situation, some distance from my thoughts and things seem to start to clarify a tiny little bit. I must hold on to that little bit and feed it. So I decided to put up all the possibilities of work that could come to my mind. On one side there's all the undifferentiated work I can do without speaking Dutch, on the other, the things that I am quite good at and want to do more, some of these things are also possible to do in English. The question now is: where to start? I think it will be to try to get something to pay the bills, even if that means to wash dishes in English, while I feed the right hand side columns.

When you arrive in a country and you don't speak the language, you start discovering a few things about yourself and your own practice. I entered a career crisis ... Because of this crisis, two things happened: 1 - I got panic. So I went for just anything I could. I know now that a better use of my time would have been to have intensive language lessons when I arrived, almost instead of looking for a job... 2 - I asked for help. I asked around for contacts of a coach who could help me pull myself back together. Yesterday and today I was working as a cleaner. I was told I didn't need to speak English so I took it. A bit of a tough job. I might write more about it later, but today I want to share an advice I received: "here in Holland, when you work in places like this, look around and do what the others do - if they are slow, be slow; if the are running around like Foon Foon Foon, do it also". I had already been told to slow down and take it easy a couple of t...

Yesterday I published a list of the things done since I'm in Holland . Once the list was in front of my eyes, I noticed how much I had left out of it! I also noticed how much some of the entries weren't written in the best of ways! For example: - " Learn Ducth " - this is misleading, even for myself! I have been learning Dutch since I arrived! Each day I listen to it, I read words, I add words to my vocabulary, I understand a little bit more, even if it's only for Duolingo's sentences or small sentences on flyers ! - Same goes for " Get a Job " - I do have a job next week, I will be working as a cleaner, but that's a job, that's an opportunity to feel useful, to enter the job market and to generate some income. So I am happy I decided to create a second list where I put down even more stuff done in less than 2 months in Holland ! Next list: lay down as many options and steps/tasks to follow the Learning of Dutch and Getting a Job.

I started this blog when I was feeling stuck in my career and struggling to find a job . I felt the need to share with others what I was dealing with, inside myself. Most of this struggle comes from the fact that I spent many years fighting with myself and only recently I discovered that I have ADHD, and I that there are ways of dealing with it. One of the ways is Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy . I won't write much about it. I will just say that I discovered it in the last months in London, so i need had the chance to try it. I was reading a bit about it though. I decided I would give it a try at some of the principles. I always made a big effort to remind myself of what wasn't working in my decisions and actions, after reading about CBT, I decided I would try and show very clearly to myself what WAS working. This is a non extensive list of what I needed to do while moving from London to Arnhem. The list shows a certain obsession to find a job (not so helpful) but it als...

A special attention to the musicality of the sounds around me, or just another great procrastination opportunity?

Have you ever played that very simple, yet difficult, game? You lose it when you think about it. That's it! When you think about this game, you lose it. I don't know who was the brilliant mind who created and spread such a simple concept, but I would love to meet that person! The Breath Game I have been trying meditation . One simple instruction that appears on each session is something like: observe your breath, without breathing in any special way, just noticing! Yeah right!!! This one I can never achieve. As soon as I start noticing my breath, I simply can't stop myself from breathing actively in some sort of way, or many ways to be accurate... As a professional didgeridoo player  I work with breath. I have been breathing for 37 years. Yet, if there is something that I struggle so much with is to simple observe my breath, while I'm doing it. When I'm not thinking about it, I breath naturally, the moment I think about it, I start breathing in funny ways.