Far From Perfect
Wow, it’s been a minute since I wrote something for this blog! I don’t know if there’s anyone left to read this but I should start with telling you how I’ve been, I guess. Strangely enough, ‘How are you?’ has been a question that I’ve found difficult to answer, even when it comes to replying friends and family from back home. There’s just so much I’d like to get off my chest that I have absolutely no idea where to begin. For the sake of brevity, I’ve always replied with ‘I’m alright’ (which is true to some extent) and some brief updates. However, that hasn’t really done much for my well-being. So here’s my unedited answer to that:
I’ve been struggling with how my life here in Paderborn has been far from perfect. After 3 digital semesters holed up in my apartment, I was looking forward to finally having classes on campus. I imagined that things would simply ‘click’, that I was going to start making good friends right off the bat, just like how Laura built up her own circle in Göttingen over time. Unfortunately, there were too many barriers, both within me and without, for that to happen. Because of the lack of human interaction, my ability to spontaneously converse in German has greatly deteriorated. Now, I take much longer to form grammatically perfect sentences in my head and often find it hard to understand someone that I meet for the first time. It feels as though I’m trapped in the body of a mute, which is extremely frustrating. Coupled with the fact that most of my classmates would naturally prefer to speak to each other in their mother tongue (even in seminars conducted in English), along with this new lack of confidence to speak in German, I find myself feeling very much alone at university. I’m very sure that I would be able to handle myself well if I had been attending physical classes all this time but now, I don’t know how I would ever be able to catch up to the actual speed at which conversations outside of a language course take place .
When it comes to music, things are even worse. Being older and all, I assumed that university would be a piece of cake for me. I expected that every day would be like this: uni in the morning, music in the afternoon, and more than enough time to relax and spend with Laura in the evening. I couldn’t be more wrong! University takes up a lot of time, especially if you want to do well. That is the case for me because I know not everyone gets a second chance to study. That has resulted in me having perhaps two hours a week during a semester to work on the songs for the Terrible Luck album (add link). I do have time during the breaks once I submit my term papers but to be honest, by the time the songwriting muscle is properly reawakened, the next semester has already arrived. I simply don’t have the capacity to find shows, do social media, and the like. After all, what’s the point of booking a show if I can’t bring enough people to a venue? I’d probably be ‘blacklisted’ after performing to an empty room save for the sound engineer. To add to that, there are no open mics here in this city, which means that I’d have to travel 2 hours to the next one closest to me. Without a safe place reminiscent of The Pigeonhole etc, I don’t know how I could get things going here.
Still, there is a lot to be grateful for. Firstly, I’m doing really well at uni. At the time I’m writing this, I’m just about to start my 5th semester and my GPA is a freaking 1.0! Also, I now have a part-time job at the English Linguistics department and have a great boss and wonderful colleagues. Even though physical classes ran for only 5 weeks before Omicron arrived, I managed to get to know a handful of awfully nice classmates. My mum still has her job and is healthy. Laura and I have mostly got the hang of living together. Most importantly, we are healthy and safe.
You could say that I need to consciously practise gratefulness and focus on what I have. While there is some merit to that, it seems like some sort of psychological trick. I’m not saying that what I have right now is not precious but I think it’s not right that I should feel guilty about ‘complaining’. Sure, a glass of water can be seen as either half-full or half-empty but it doesn’t change the fact that more water could be poured in. What’s wrong with being a perfectionist? What’s wrong with wanting more?
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