Is love still the answer?

 Dear future hubster,

I know it's been a while. Not sure if I  have to explain why, with your being entirely a product of my imagination, I guess I also get to decide what you already know, but yeah, new country new job new life etc. Having to learn where the best/cheapest/least crowded supermarket is, and how their checkout process works, and deciding if I'm willing to put up with their less than ideal workflows. Having to learn the metro directions (why does every big city have a weird circle line that can get you to the same place in 14 or 40 minutes depending on which way you go?), and to  not rely on Google maps when it comes to the tram, and rather using the local transport system's app (I don't want to download another app, please, and don't even try with your QR code menus). Having to navigate keyboard distributions that are contradictory, while 4 languages are being spoken around me, 2 of which I speak and 2 of which I kinda understand so I can't really tune them out. Alternating (rollercoastering) between "oh this is actually interesting cool work that I am passionate about" and standard imposter syndrome routines of " how is this relevant to anything that matters, and even if it is, am I doing it right?". Taking two months to make it to a yoga class and then wanting to cry at the opening om because that's not how I'm used to doing it and there's only so many adjustments I can handle.

Having to make new friends. I don't want to do the work, I just want new friends to magically come to existence, like they actually often do in my incredibly privileged life; they just pop up and bring their magic. The magic I want and desperately need, we all do, the laughters the hugs the crys, the ice cream the coffee the fries, the music the colours the light. The simple, quiet presence, when all else fails.

Because, dear future hubster, honeybun, bebe, the world is on fire. Disasters and numbing crises one after the other on top of each other; unspeakable horrors right before our eyes. It's not often that I can't find words; nowadays, I am completely at loss. Nothing in any language I speak can do justice - justice, in particular, seems to have lost meaning. My usual way of processing things, good or bad, is talking about them, so what do I do now that the words don't come?

Jason (one of my many musician boyfriends as you know) has always said that love is still the answer, and... I don't know anymore. Maybe he's right, but... maybe we just don't know how? 

How do we love in this world?

How do we live in this world? 

We can never know what to want

 Dear future hubster,

today I am going to be one of those people I usually find annoying, saying great things about somebody who's just died, not having mentioned them or their work's impact on my life in the recent or not so recent past. And maybe I am also one of those cliché girls, swearing on a book that changed their lives.

Many books have changed my life though. Today's story is about The Unbearable Lightness of Being, of which I own multiple copies in at least two languages - I thought I'd read it in 3 but I'm not so sure anymore.

I also distributed many more during the years to people as a sort of parting gift - if you ever meet somebody who received one from me, please tell them that it means that there was a time when I felt so close to them that I wanted to let them in on a revelation; that I wanted to share with them something I thought I'd understood about life.

That revelation, understanding, interpretation, simplified to a motivational poster length because I haven't read enough Nietzsche to be more elaborate, is that there is no control group. Any decision we make is going to be the first and only of its kind, and there is no way of knowing how other decisions would have played out. The "other option" isn't actually real. 

For somebody like me, often worried to extremes about getting things wrong, this - not being able to compare possible outcomes - is unsettling. Sometimes dowright scary. I am just learning to see it as beautiful too, liberating, for the absence of the right choice also makes The Right Choice non-existent. 

Ironically,  I've been wanting to be The Right Choice for so many so often - and when I wasn't, when they made a choice that didn't include me, or couldn't make one that did because they were held down by their own what ifs, scared to choose me for fear of having to un-choose everything and everybody else, scared of throwing away the other option that might be better, well, then I gifted them a copy of this book, thinking that seeing the brutal beauty of this lack of second drafts and revisions, control groups, comparable other options, will change their lives too. 

Happy new year I guess

 Dear future hubster,

if there was one good thing coming out of the lockdown misery of the early pandemic days (erm, first two years), then it must be the reduced occurence of bra-wearing, and my attitude towards free titties (my own, mostly). 

I now give fewer fcks when venturing outside without said clothing item (while, I  need to clarify for historical records, I do wear other clothing items) - the number is not zero yet, but it is lower. 

Who knew.