My keyboard is set to German.

At first, I did it to be quirky. But, it turned out to be a really convenient quirky setting. I use the German letters such as ä or ü far more often than I thought. There is one drawback though. I can´t seem to figure out where the 'at' symbol is. So everytime I need to use the at symbol, I switch the keyboard language back to English, make the at symbol and then switch the keyboard to German again. I figure it is a small price to pay for quirkiness.

I talked to my boss last week for the first time in months and I think I like us being in contact. Up until last week I enjoyed knowing that I had a boss, but that it never got in my way. Some people see their bosses almost everyday and that was never really necessary for me. But, I do find it really interesting to talk to her once a week now. Unfortunately, she asked me to think about what I want to do (when I grow up). This is the same question that gets thrown around at work functions, mostly because no one else knows what they want to be either. I can´t just answer 'I don't know...uh...ballerina?' A. I have no aptitude for it. B. I don't want to be one. So, Ì am going to try and come up with some tentative ideas before our next meeting and see if they can be grown into a job. Basically the point of doing my job is to put myself out of a job. Funny, right? But, it´s true. The better and quicker I can work on my projects, the faster I put myself out of a job. It has been the point of the job since I started and the reason for me to stay on my toes and shoot for the next assignment because if I set myself up correctly and play my cards right, I can do whatever I want.

On a completely different note, I might try to make bread today.´ We'll see if I make it out of the house, to the grocery store and back to my house again. Oh distraction...it always happens.

I am currently reading Not so funny when it happened. The book is unfortunately not so funny now, after it all happened. It´s a book of random travel stories, but even I have some funnier travel stories. Meh, what can you do?

Ich druck immer meine Daumen darauf.

I have been feeling a real pull to travel, lately. I talked to a friend of mine in Germany a few days ago and I feel like I am a world away from everything there. It´s as if I have been ´away from home´ and I have to work to keep up to date. I do not understand how I can be homesick for a place that I didn´t grow up in, and yet wish I could be there all the time.

I started subscribing to podcasts of the news in DE so I can at least hear German on my train rides to and from work. I feel it is an improvement from not hearing German at all. And, the woman I talked to about German classes on the Upper West Side never sent me the brochure and registeration like she said she would. Work has been a bit crazy, though. So, I don´t know if I would have made it anyway.

In relation to my New Years Resolutions I´ve got this podcast thing going, and I am reading Harry Potter auf Deutsch. I don´t know if I can read it fast enough or if I´ll even finish. But, it made it´s way into the competitors circle so I´ll see how it goes.

Back to work, my co-worker who just left had to do an exit interview before she was officially done. And, she told me I needed to watch it because the HR lady told her that 10 out of the 10 people she interviewed that day all said that they did not have a life-work balance there. I can totally see how that can happen. I live it. But, moreover in NY I´ve noticed I hang out with my co-workers here more than I have anywhere with any job I´ve had. Even as an intern, I was able to get all of the interns together once to go out for drinks and that was it. Once. So at least in NY, we get all up in each others´ personal lives and work invades life and life invades work. At the same time, I really like what I do and I never thought I would ever be able to say that. I am really luck to do what I am doing and I think every once in a while how I really got a lucky break. The timing was right, the job turned out to be fantastic and I get to meet and work with some of the most facinating people around the world. At the same time, when will the luck run out? At any rate, I am going to ride this luck as long as I can and see where it takes me.

I am getting old and I don´t travel enough. That is the quick and dirty. If you don´t have time to read the rest of this post, you more or less know the whole story with my first sentence. If not, keep reading.

I am getting old. For the past few months, I always thought I caught a glimpse of a random white hair when looking in the mirror, but could never find it when I tried to investigate it closer. Well, this weekend I found multiple white hairs. I am old! I made various promises to myself over the past few days- to eat better and organic food when I can...to drink more water...to sleep more...to do yoga regularly. I am hoping this little concotion of life altering methods will help curb or at least postpone my white hair. But moreover, the white hair is simply an indicator of my stressful and work-focused life.

After meeting A. a couple weeks ago, my aspirations in Germany started to creep up on me again. I have started thinking about grad school, timing and locations in Germany as well as what I want to be doing in 10 years. Overall, I have come to no conclusions. That is to say, I want to live in Germany again. I constantly fear my German skills are slipping, but I don´t have any sort of advanced skills in my job which would help propel me in any sort of direction if I went there. So, grad school would definately be a consideration since it would give me a visa to go and stay there as well as a purpose and degree for being there. But again, no real direction as to what I would study. I´ll consider all of this for the next few years.

That all sort of leads into my not traveling much. I do little bits of traveling here and there, but I haven´t been on an adventure in a while. Like a real proper adventure where I hop on a plane or train, end up somewhere and wander. The world is too big for me to stay in one place. I need to move. I thought about going back to Germany for a couple of weeks. Perhaps, I´ll consider that. We´ll see where the year takes me.