Setting the scene: It’s a very rainy Sunday in Berlin today and I am in my new apartment. I can’t believe I have not yet written one of these here, it already feels like I moved ages ago. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting this long!

Musings

Lunar New Year is behind us now too so I officially feel like I can no longer ignore that a new year is here and I need to deal with it. I think this is the first weekend since I moved that I don’t have any big plans and finally do have a bit of much needed space to reflect and regroup. The move itself was very easy since I only had a few suitcases and a couple of random items to transport, but it did take quite a bit of time and energy to get the rest of the space set up over the past few weeks. I’m mostly set on furniture now and there is ambient lighting and art on the walls, so for the time being I want to take a little break from thinking about this apartment too much. I might have used my never-ending apartment to-do list to distract myself from how I was feeling for a little too long. I do genuinely have a hard time focusing on anything else when my space doesn’t feel functional yet, but at this point I’m optimizing such minute details with so much unfounded urgency I should probably take a pause.

In general Berlin in February is a pretty rough time. I haven’t really been leaving my neighborhood too much because everywhere I need to go is usually nearby. I still don’t have a good read on this part of the city; the location itself is great for day-to-day stuff (office/gym/grocery stores/bars and so on) and it’s very international (I hear English spoken in the streets more often than not) but I don’t feel very connected to any particular part of the crowd here yet. I think this is mostly a reflection of how I feel internally though, because most of the people I interact with regularly are kind and friendly and not at all unwelcoming or anything. I have some friends that live nearby, there’s a pretty active group chat with all the people in my building, the couple I’m renting from came to my birthday party, I have a new guitar teacher that I like a lot so far, my neighbor trusted me with his keys while he’s on vacation, and I also randomly joined a new hockey team that is mostly just meeting up every week to go ice skating at the moment but everyone involved there is really great too.

Somehow I still feel more unsure of myself than I ever have, but I’m trying to be gentle and patient as I navigate all this. I’ve only been here for a few weeks, it’s the middle of winter, I started a new job, and I’ve been busy most weekends so far. If this was a friend I would tell them that that’s a lot going on already and if anything it’s maybe too much happening too soon, but of course when it’s myself I feel strangely behind and like I’m not doing this right. So once again I’m trying to refocus on the basics: make sure I get enough sleep, work out regularly, and intentionally reserve some time to rest and read and practice the guitar.

Anyone else feel like hobbies have lost so much depth and meaningfulness now that everything can just be AI generated? I already had a hard time dealing with perfectionism before but now it’s worse than ever. I’m trying to keep this kind of tech out of my personal life as much as possible but there’s still this looming feeling of “What’s the point?” when I try to do anything now. And I am rationally aware that simply doing it is literally the point in itself but it’s very hard to internalize. There are a lot of people in the hockey group that grew up skating and are therefore a lot better than I am currently, and then I get frustrated so easily. But it would be so boring if I could immediately do it all perfectly! About a month in I had a moment where I really felt like I was making some progress and it was so rewarding specifically because I had to work for it. And yet every week before practice I spend an hour arguing with myself about whether or not I should even go or just quit altogether. Not sure this will ever get easier.

Somewhat relatedly, we had a retro at work this week and everyone on the team specifically called out a proposal I worked on for being thorough and helpful, and my manager said he usually wouldn’t ask someone so new to lead a whole initiative but I’m basically already doing it so if I’m comfortable he’d be happy to assign it to me. And then I had a music lesson where my teacher mentioned upfront that we’re going to start a new piece and we definitely won’t get through it all that day, but then we did move through it pretty quickly and got all the way to the end. So I am getting all this explicit feedback that I’m doing well and everything is fine, and still I feel like I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing ever and everyone is going to find out soon. I read somewhere that gratitude is the antidote to anxiety because it shifts our focus from perceived threats to positive, present experiences, so maybe I’ll just keep a gratitude journal on me at all times moving forward and see if that helps at all. Next week we’re also supposed to get a whole day of sunshine and much warmer weather and I’m hoping that will make everything feel a bit less tense too.

Recap

So much has happened recently. I moved of course, and I started my new job in January. It’s been pretty good so far, probably as good as having any job can be. Onboarding was slow but structured and there was very little pressure to jump into anything immediately. I also really like my team, everyone is from a different country and we’ve already had a couple of team outings and days together in the office that were fun and collaborative. I specifically work on search now so both the team and the scope are smaller than before and I appreciate that. There’s still a lot of work to do and interesting problems to solve, but without the constant fear of getting moved to a different project tomorrow or laid off altogether.

After corporate America I’m still frequently amazed at the culture at my new company. Outside of scheduled meetings people almost never talk about work at work. They talk about life and learning instruments or languages and travel plans they have coming up. They also actually seem to care about you as a person and not having to constantly perform a made-up corporate work persona feels strangely restorative. On Fridays we have self-allocated time all day where you can work on whatever you want outside of regular tickets. There’s a big community lunch every Thursday and a lot of resource groups organizing events all the time. I’m having to unlearn a lot of bad habits from previous jobs where I was always too burned out to perform consistently, but having so much agency and work-life balance has been pretty motivating to do that so far.

My mom came to visit for a weekend in January because she wanted to see the new place and also go to this big trade fair that happens in Berlin every year. It’s always in January when there are a million birthdays in our immediate family so the timing never worked out before. I’m glad she was able to finally experience it and that we got to spend some time together away from her usual responsibilities at home. I went back to my parents’ the weekend after to celebrate my aunt and my grandma who both had round birthdays and it was a great time. My older cousin and his family made the trip down from the coast and one of my little cousins came up from Munich where she’s studying. My grandma’s dance group dropped by for a surprise performance, and my uncle played some live music with his band. It’s very rare that we get everyone together like this (especially since I was also so far away for so long) and I really enjoyed spending a whole day with all my family like this. My brother was here last weekend too and helped me fix some more stuff around the apartment, and then we had a chill evening just catching up and a nice brunch the next day before he drove back.

I also turned 33 last month but I barely had time to have any feelings about it. These days I oscillate a lot between feeling like I’m always running out of time, but also feeling very overwhelmed by how much life there is still in front of me. Next year I’d really like to plan a trip again around this time to get some sun and a little break after all the holidays and birthday celebrations so close together.

That’s all for now! I can’t promise it won’t be another few weeks before I have something to share again, but please send me random texts or photos or voice notes any time in the meantime. I miss you all very much! I will for sure be in New York in late July/early August so hopefully I can catch a lot of you then. I also have a lot of space in my new apartment and two couches ready to go so feel free to plan your visits.

Tuning in

It’s been a while so I have double recommendations for you, depending on what you’re feeling.

This tiny desk is getting me through the winter months again and I can only dream of having as much style as these guys one day.

I’ve also been enjoying these guitar meditations a lot. I got a classical guitar recently so this is both inspiration for me to keep learning as well as an instant boost of tranquility whenever I need it (which is often).

With love,

Melanie