Dear future hubster

 Dear future hubster,  you know as much as anybody who's ever met me and paid attention that I spend a loooot of time searching for meaning. Almost as much time as I spend wondering what and where home is , and how I can make it where I am. Oh and also trying to resist the feeling of home when it starts approaching, because complicating my own life should be an Olympic sport.  And I know when it starts approaching, I recognise the signs, and I welcome them every time. Whether it's going to a concert venue three times in as many months, returning to the Christmas concert at the Danish church for the second time (doing anything annual for the second time really), being invited to a random theatre show because people know I'd be around ,  knowing a backup cocktail bar when the first we go to is closed, seeing a familiar face coming out of the metro because I see them on my Saturday morning runs in the park, knowing people at the office party, knowing people at the book ...

 Dear future hubster, you don't need me to tell you that a lot of awful things are happening in the world, more so nowadays than what I think I remember, and you also don't need me to tell you that it's difficult for a girl like me not only because I want the world to be a lovely cozy wonderful place for everybody,  but also because I don't know what to do to make it so. (Now come think of it, statements starting with "you don't need me" don't make it any better either.) So when we're lightyears away from when WTF was an appropriate and accurate response to the things happening, when a girl like me, one who lives and thrives on reading and writing, one who would not ever shut up, doesn't know what to say because the words have no meaning or the meaning they have doesn't reflect the reality we're experiencing, the nagging voices asking what I'm doing here and what for and what the point is are getting all the louder, and the "wh...

 Dear future hubster,  earlier this summer people kept asking me where I'm going for holidays, and depending on the level of small talk-ness of the interaction, I responded in more or less detail that I don't really have a lot of leave days because it's my first year in Belgium etc etc. But then I started thinking and had to admit that even if I had the days, I wouldn't know what to do or where to go. In the past ten years since I left my home by the (Petrusse) river, my summer holidays consisted of The European Tour: a few weeks of couchsurfing between my friends and family, living out of a suitcase that infamously exploded in many living rooms, dropping keys in mailboxes as lousy part-time lovers, forgetting personal items of a great variety, as if wanting to leave proof that I was there.  So when I finally acknowledged that it would not do any good to anybody if I didn't I took a week and did what I do best: got on a bunch of trains and covered a thousand kilomet...

Dear future hubster,  you know that I don't need much inspiration for some self-help wisdom;that I love a good anniversary, that I am a firm believer and a frequent promoter of the "without [insert experience] I wouldn't be here" notion.  So it should be no surprise that this week I've been thinking and talking about The Big Move I made ten years ago this time. When I exchanged Lower Bonnevoie to Tshukudu roundabout, although didn't exchange polka dot heels to combat boots as some people expected. When I left a place I loved and where till present day I want to go home to, took a deep breath and a leap of faith and landed in a place I ended up loving and for which I till present day feel waves of homesickness for.  You might say, dear future hubster, "but love you get attached to every other place and pretty much every group of people you encounter" and you wouldn't be wrong and it's also kind of the point I'm trying to make? That every l...

Dear future hubster, there are moments of grace about living in Brussels. The commonplace ones when it's almost the longest day in the year and you're walking home after a dinner where the small humans of the household know you as Kata from Congo and you're walking because you missed the bus but also because it's one of those mild nights that are not exactly warm - it's still Belgium quandmeme - but it's not cold and for the first time in months you actually guessed the weather right and it's almost 11 and it's not completely dark yet and you can see the light towards the West so the opposite of where Gandalf is to be expected from and for a brief moment it makes you forget about the riot police you saw earlier and that you just foster girlfriended yet another lost boy to yet another safe harbour and you feel whatever the Greeks had among their 7 different words of love for the love of life itself and let's be real the Greeks knew what the deal was, ...

 Dear future hubster,  In this life I have that I might have chosen or that might have chosen me, it's easy to just get in the groove of things and just do do do (as opposed to [here comes the sun] dudududu). And while it's actually kinda often kinda hard to get into the groove of adulting when it's not exciting but rather daunting or just plain boring or involves having to interact with products and services that fail to deliver on the one function they were designed for, it is even harder to let go of the pressure to at least pretend having my shit together at presenting some semblance of order. Worrying about keeping my apartment tidy and my hair neat and my syntax correct and my clothes only moderately quirky because what if I suddenly have to impress somebody or justify taking up space.  And yes yes I know that those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind and all that jazz but first of all it's not always true and then even when it is, it...

 Dear future hubster, Ever since that June afternoon when that guy who knew literally nothing about me declared (not that I asked) "you're not gonna last 6 months", I've been- defiantly,  nervously, angrily - watching the calendar every time I ended up somewhere new. Why he felt the need to share his unhelpful wisdom is unclear,  and by now, frankly,  unimportant.  That I reacted with raised eyebrows on the outside and "watch me" on the inside is no surprise, and that he was wrong is a fact. And it's been nearly ten years,  I do hold on to my grudges.  Since then I've learned that 6 months really is not a long time - I did double that in a place that genuinely made me sick (was not fun, don't try it at home). And that lasting 6 months or a year or 15 is as much a matter of the circumstances as it is a continuous and conscious effort. That there is beauty in being new in a new place, and that beauty and excitement is very much a given, and it is v...