I am feeling relaxed like I haven’t felt in a long time. Half a year of inner stress relieved. It didn’t just happen in one blow it took a couple of days to settle. I was always a joyful person, but this work on my thesis bothered me. My motivation was at an all time low. My discipline non-existent. Self doubts were eating me up slowly.
Luckily I have the right kind of friends. I haven’t entered the full-time employment yet but I continued my student job after graduation while exploring the job market. I don’t want to spend my days with absolutely no clue whatsoever. And I enjoy it so much. I have still free days where I can read, meet friends, have a coffee, go for a walk. It is just nice, I have an inner calmness and I am not worried about the future too much. I take a lot of time for myself.
I don’t have to worry about things in my off hours, a freeing feeling I already encountered 4 years ago during an internship in Switzerland. Sure the student life has a lot of liberties; if you study the way I did. You can postpone things, you can do them earlier, you can squeeze in other activities and come back. It is a great flexibility and I probably pushed it to the limits. Here I am now freshly graduated and a whole new world opening up to me.
Working life has a whole other benefit I think. When you are off, you are off. There is no point in worrying what you could do for work when you watch a movie in the evening. Sure there are moments where deadlines are coming up, and things also get messy and stressed at work but from my experience, this is way less of a problem. I am actually also looking forward to some more structure. I’ve learned that I work better if I have a well structured framework and when I have people I am accountable to (other than myself).
As I mentioned, I am reading more again. During the thesis I lost the excitement about reading; papers are just no fun or entertaining reading material.
I started reading mostly novels and self learning books. On the one hand, I want to dive into a new world with each book. To create my own picture of words written by someone else. Creating a world of fantasy which can suck you in. On the other hand, I am really interested in improving myself as a person, to grow and withstand more things that get thrown at me. I want to learn how others solved problems and how they failed. Reflecting over this can also show a lot about oneself. I recently saw a video about how you are the average of the 5 people closest to you. The video practically said to make one of those people a book and your world is open to so much more.
Another part of my life that got influenced by my feeling of relaxation is handball or maybe handball itself is a reason why I am feeling so well. It goes both ways, probably. I am finally back to playing again and I love it. It took almost a whole year of rehab and pause of handball to be fully functional again. And I love it. I feel like I want to overcompensate for the missed time. I am super ambitious and want to push me and my team to the limit. Motivating them, holding them accountable, supporting them. I noticed I got a little older. I am not as light on my feet anymore. I need a proper warm up to come up to speed and proper warmth. However, I think I also got a little more professional in how I prepare for matches and training. I try to focus on myself and my own performance. In the end, I feel I should only complain if I play well myself. And I love complaining to a point where I end up shouting stuff out in German.
All this is also a result of me being relaxed, about feeling good about myself again. It is a bit like when I first started in Denmark two years ago. I am happy. I am consent with myself and I perform well (most of the time). I am still not at the same level but I feel like I am getting there. I know now that I should listen more to what my body tells me, and I will surely push it but will also take more time and not overstretch. My shoulder still itches here and there. The elbow seems to be most of the time alright and the knee is holding up (shit my body is getting old).
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