Author: Li'l Kendie

same lol

and when i walk alone i listen to our secret theme

The summer weather in Berlin has been kind of a bummer. It’s been overcast and rainy for multiple weeks. For a country that has a prolonged winter and minimal sunshine for more than half of the year, we (the people) depend on the sunshine to come through from June-mid September. I’ve experienced a sort of whiplash from the boiling hot days to the chilly wet days with no real in-between. This past weekend was the perfect summer weather, in my opinion. Sunny and round about 80 degrees with the sun still high in the sky until 9:30pm.

I was thinking about incorporating play and spontaneity back into summer. For me, this season always represents a break from school, taking vacations and seeing my friends. I loved the summers as a kid. I would go to the pool, ride my bike, watch movies, play outside, eat ice cream, blast through my summer reading list, visit my grandparents, etc. I was left alone during the day as a kid and found ways to keep myself occupied. Sometimes I’d have obligations like dance practice or a summer camp of some kind but mostly, the days were mine. I operated like an adult as a kid/teenager with my little routine. I’d wake up, feed my cat, make my breakfast, watch a little TV and set out for the day. Once I got older, I’d go to my job at the water park or babysitting. When I had my license, it unlocked the world for me. That’s when the summers got really interesting.

I feel like I lost that feeling as an adult as you do. I stopped treating summers like a break and kept operating business as usual. I didn’t account for a longer vacation or do fun things after work. This weekend, it felt like summer days when I was 16 years old. I rode my bike, bought fresh cherries and ate them outside. I went to the park with my book. I took Russ on long walks. I laid on top of my bed with the windows open and watched a show on my projector. I went to a yoga class and got an iced cappuccino. I wrote a few poems!!

I want to bottle up the feeling of having a responsibility free summer.

i want to start writing poetry again. i used to write silly little poems and translate them into German.

i wish it was warmer and felt like summer but i gotta say…i love a summer thunderstorm.

Yesterday, I went on a 30 minute walk with Russ to get away from my desk and clear my head. On the walk, I decided to listen to a podcast and attempt to stimulate my brain versus numbing it with music. The podcast touched on Nietzsche’s three metamorphoses of spiritual development.

1. Camel
2. Lion
3. Child

In camel, you carry the weight of “Thou shalt” and adhere to societal rules and expectations. Meanwhile in lion, you’re in a rebellious phase, destroying old values and finding out what you subscribe to. I came to understand that in this phase you’re finding out what you don’t like and auditing your belief system. Lastly, in child, it’s the innocence and rebirth of your creativity and establishing new values.

I thought about various areas of my life and where I’m in different phases. The nice thing about camel is knowing you’re on the brink of changing things or shaking them up. Any time I’ve felt stuck or burdened by something, I’m motivated by the fact that the only way through is to change something, even though it will come with temporary discomfort.

In the podcast, the host talked about her own metamorphose as someone who was raised Southern Baptist and dismantled a belief system that had been put in place for her. To me, this topic in particular is deeply personal and one I empathize with. Expectations and oppression surrounding religion, denomination and lifestyle choices are a connector for those who have felt them at any extreme level.

Right after I graduated from college, I was lost and unsure of my path forward. Where would I live? What kind of job would I pursue with my degree? The bigger question: what did I want out of life with everything at my disposal? While an exciting feeling, it was also daunting and paralyzing. During this time I started going to a church but I use that term lightly. To describe it more accurately, it was a meeting of people in a dark little theater downtown where they had coffee and donuts. The music wasn’t religious and the “sermon” was more of a spiritual conversation. It felt like a room of people who felt very conflicted about religion and wanted to feel connected to something greater than themselves. I feel this same energy in a yoga class.

One Sunday morning, the conversation was about unlearning things. This isn’t a prolific topic but it hit me at a particularly timely moment. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment how much baggage and guilt I carried for not wanting to live a certain way. I didn’t feel it was an option for me to subscribe to my own belief system or to explore alternatives. Things of interest had been demonized or cemented into my brain as the wrong way of doing things. In many ways, I view most of my 20’s as a lion phase. I was constantly running from these expectations and myself. I didn’t want to be put into any box (career, religion, relationship, etc.) and I spent a lot of time and energy rebelling against these ideas. Now, I feel that I’ve entered a child phase where things are more aligned to who I am, or who I’m working towards becoming. I feel lighter and creatively inspired with more of a focus on what I do like instead of what I don’t.

Maybe that’s just getting older and having more experience to draw from? I’m not sure.

In Berlin when you go to a club, they put a sticker over your camera to keep places authentic and free. Despite missing my friends and family back home at times, that’s how my life in Germany feels—like having a little sticker over the camera and I can be my authentic self. There’s no pressure for me to be anything except who I want to be. It’s a feeling I don’t want to take for granted and one I’ve been working towards for a long time.

side note: we’ll be entering leo season here shortly… and as you know, i’m the sign of the lion so who knows what will happen.

a list of things that make me feel good in no particular order:

• writing letters to my friends
• watering my plants
• sitting outside with Russ
• starting a new book
• hearing a song for the first time
• going to the movies
• going to a yoga class
• cleaning my house
• going for a run
• fresh towels
• taking a long weekend trip
• riding my bike
• finding a ripe mango
• buying flowers
• wearing earrings
• jumping into water
• writing in my journal
• making someone laugh
• feeling inspired to write something
• getting rid of things I don’t use
• making myself a coffee
• having someone over
• sitting in the sun
• clean sheets
• looking forward to something

trying to do more of these on a weekly basis!!