Maybe it is the time of the year, when everything seems a little dull and grey. Or maybe it is just my situation but I am getting frustrated... mostly with myself and my inability to make a decision. Although one decision has been made: I want to work instead of traveling. I need something to do! I tried my best to keep myself busy with short weekend trips and language courses but it is simply not enough. Admittedly I am not 100% behind my decision but it seems like the best thing to do right now. Work, earn money, gain experience, feel needed etc.
And just when I am all in my thought, completely occupied with myself I read the news: yet another suicide bomber in Istanbul and now I am all worried about the dear friends, who live there and pray to God that all of them are fine. All of the sudden so called "problems" seem so little and minor that I nearly feel embarrassed for my meaningless worries. Because after all I still have quite an amount of good things: love, health and choices!
Now I am off to the airport with my mum, getting some nice temperatures into the system in the south of Turkey. Good way also to get deeper into my Turkish language studies and trying my best to apply it.
With 26 the law considers me a grown-up. I often wonder what being a grown-up actually means. Being reasonable? Making smart decisions? Knowing what you want? To take responsibility? This all sounds so vague and some children might actually be smarter and more reasonable than me. It has been more than a year ago, that I graduated. Writing down my CV I realized that up until my graduation everything went pretty smooth, no gaps on my CV, all pretty much exemplary. It is everything that happened afterwards, that worries me. Since 15 months I am hanging in mid-air, only managed to work for four months in a place I kindly describe as "hell on earth" and I quit it to avoid going insane. Searching for a job for more than half a year and ending up in that terrible place, quitting after only a few months shattered my belief in Sweden which is why I dropped everything and left. Now I am back in Germany, back in my old room, back at the start and I wonder how to continue. There are two options: work or travel, which can also be described as the decision-making-process between reason or fun.
I was surprised to find out that my hometown offers plenty of amazing jobs, so much has changed around here or I simply see everything in a different light. However it would seem like such a failure to return to my small hometown after all the beautiful places that I was allowed to see, after all the the amazing people I was able to meet, all those exciting experiences I could make and start working here.
I of course checked plenty of job databases but no matter in which country I want to work, I will always be a foreigner. This is certainly very exciting but Stockholm taught me, that foreigners, no matter their qualification, are not always welcome. (Blimey for taking a little longer to realize this, call me naive) Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that Stockholm people are racist, that is not my message, but in my field Swedish people were always given preference. How do I get that impression? Simple: If a job ad fitted me perfectly well, let's say it required an education in the field of media and communication, some internships as experience would be sufficient, working language English and knowledge in one more language and so on... in the end it would say "Swedish mothertongue is demanded" even if it is not needed while executing the job; meaning: please no applications by foreigners. Even if it might not have been meant that way all the time, it was easy to understand it that way, especially after 6 frustrating months of searching and application-writing. BTW: why was the job ad in English if they could have written it as well in Swedish to exclude people with no Swedish knowledge?
The big question is still unsolved: What should I do now? I don't know if it is a German way of thinking but by age 26 you kind of expect it from yourself and you are expected to either have a family or a career. But is this still a realistic expectation? Why do I have the feeling that all my achievements of the past years are worth nothing just because I hit rock bottom in Stockholm?
Traveling seems like the wrong thing to do, so incredibly irresponsable, I should work instead and get some working experience. What the hell, I only have one life and I should enjoy it and as long as my life circumstances allow me to do whatever I like, why shouldn't I, right? But I also don't wanna travel and suffer from a bad conscience from all the "should's". To feel a little bit better and to trick myself I applied at a few jobs to see my chances on the German labour market. If no one wants to hire me, I can go travel without bad conscience though a little worried.
