I’m at home surrounded by photo albums, a bag, empty water bottles and a bit of a dirty kitchen. My table still has my plate on it which I just ate from. Also,a puzzle. A puzzle I’ll probably never make. Maybe I am set in my ways. I am always hasty if I have to be on time, I watch English shows, before bed and sometimes during the day, I read occasionally but only will finish a book when I am truly interested.

I listen to music a lot. Like now I’ve put on relaxdaily on YouTube. I recognize it from years ago. It is nice and calming. A nice way to start the day. It’s cloudy outside and I am curious about those hot tempuretures that are supposed to be coming this week. I am lying on my soft blue sofa with a red blanket. Red and blue. Maybe one day I’ll like other colours.

I am a bit tired. I usually am when I write and writing comforts me. I just had to teach yesterday and the day before that. I find it exhausting. Thrilling and fun too. My students gave me gifts which is absolutely cute but mentally it is very tiring. I am going to email my manager telling him I don’t want to teach that extra hour on Monday. I am going to be busy the upcoming weeks working from 08:45 to 19:00. Long days. I’ll have some rest on Monday and a bit on Friday. Sounds like a good idea.

This morning I woke up. I thought about relationships, sex and love. I thought about friendships and about family and the thing I wanted to write about was age. I just feel like now I am from a different generation. I am getting older and I am aware that the generation above me is going to go at some point and that I am next. My generation is next. It’s going to be weird to miss the generation above me. Parents, older friends, aunts, uncles. I wonder whether it is lonely. Maybe being old is lonely? Maybe it depends.

Maybe I’ll have wonderful neighbours, a good friend, a dance club, maybe I’ll go to concerts? Maybe I’ll have a gardening club? Grandchildren? Grandchildren that barely visit? I mean, my own children or my grandchildren don’t necessarily have to live in the same city. Why am I worrying about being lonely when I am old? Maybe it is a misconception of being old. That everyone around you dies and you don’t work anymore and you just wither away at home. Maybe life can still be fun, that you watch your favourite shows, cook your favourite meals, go out for dinner, go on a holiday, go for walks, talk to people whilst at the market, try out a new hobby…

I think I am so social, there will always be someone in my life and honestly if I find a show I enjoy such as yesterday, I don’t mind spending the evenings on my own. Especially when I am tired. I really like the show called ‘Dish’. It’s a show where people eat and mostly talk about food and a little bit about their relationships with each other or about their work. It’s pretty relaxing and it makes you hungry hahaha.

I’m glad my mother was such a colourful person, always talking to everyone, flirting, very open, wearing weird colourful clothes, went abroad, learned a new language, made friends all over Europe, travelled to see them, brought me and just laughed with so much conviction.

I’ve made friends abroad, I teach another language, I speak to strangers, I sometimes wear colourful clothes and I can be open and flirty and I surely laugh with conviction.

I also have to other mothers who love to cook and have a love for knowledge and sport, are close with their neighbours and like to garden. They are funny and active. They work a lot and they do volunteer work and give to charity, they keep in contact with their family and they take care of a dog.

I like to get to know my neighbours and organized a get together, I can enjoy humor, I am very active, I have done volunteer work and I have given to charity, I vote, I love gardening and I did find a certain love for food and sometimes for cooking. Especially for others.

I don’t only learn from elders or parents, I learn from therapists, from friends, teachers, complete strangers on a listening line, exes, neighbours, and students. I think I listen to the people around me and my therapist once told me you pick up on the good. The good things, I take them with me. A friend is very generous. I see him as an example. One of my mothers is very assertive and I learn from here. I am surrounded by many people and at the same time I do spend time alone. Maybe I learn myself things too.

I’ve learnt to be disciplined, to show up, to go through fear, rather than hiding from it. Are there truly things you just learn on your own? I mean I can walk. Okay, I’ve leant how to garden. I don’t buy plants that die within a year and I have the ambition to possibly buy plants that are organic and I want to be able to cut certain plants such as my rose and my budleia in the correct season. I guess I learnt myself how to wash my clothes and clean and take out the garbage. I mean a friend had a good influence on me by showing me the dedication to separating the garbage which hopefully is better for nature in general. I don’t clean that often, but when I do, it’s just from buying a bottle and a cloth and cleaning a surface. I fixed certain things in my home and once I asked for instruction but the rest I did on my own. I get to know a lot of music just by playing it or buying it. The same goes for films, series and books. Rarely to I read, listen or watch something because someone else told me to. I mean, I did become a fan of jazz because I inherited the LP’s from my grandpa.

Sometimes when I go to a gardening centre I will ask for advice but I also like to spend hours there on my own looking at plants and pots and deciding on my own what I will bring. Very different to buying clothes. Somehow then usually a friend joins me and sometimes the day will just end in me buying fries and no clothes at all. I mean especially on my own. No one pushes me to buy anything then and I don’t really enjoy clothes as much as I do plants. They are relaxing. Also, sometimes I like the heaving lifting of a heavy plant or pot. I don’t know why, I guess it is something to do. As if it is sport. Calming to the brain and body.

No one gave me that much rules growing up. I just somehow socialized myself. My therapist helped me later in life with a bit of boundaries. For the rest, I guess I just went along with it and picked up behaviours from a lot of people along the way. Maybe that is why I don’t have such a strong philosophy about pedagogy I guess. Maybe some things you just figure out along the way. That is what my philosopher friend tells me anyway. That you don’t get a map, a lot of things you have to figure out on your own. He’s a big fan of taking charge of the steering wheel. Maybe I am too but I also feel like there is maybe a certain unfolding to do as mindfulness says. A discovery along the way. That you can’t plan everything in advance.

Though I must say I was very happy to hear that a friend of mind possibly wanted a family and that he is on dating apps again and that he considers emigrating. Finally, some movement, some wishes, something is going on with him.

I wish too much. Sometimes I feel like I live in the future and forget how lovely life is now. At the same time what would be wrong with making a board filled with wishes and goals. Possibly wishes that might come true. You never know. A board of hope. Is that so wrong? Possibly not. As long as you don’t lose yourself in the future, you can plan for it. That’s what I have learnt from mindfulness.

Two women just knocked on my door wanting me to know more about the bible. I shook my head and told them I wasn’t interested. I didn’t lose my patience, I didn’t get mad, I didn’t say it was too early in the day, I didn’t say that I wouldn’t come knocking at their doors telling them to do mindfulness, I didn’t get in to why I wasn’t interested, I just declined their offer and they were interested in my language teaching, wished me the best with that, which they saw from a flyer on my window and they left. I thought it was an okay interaction actually.

I don’t see myself as a buddhist or a mindfulness practitioner. I might be the last one. But I just do it every morning. Seldom I skip a day. I try to learn from it and I try to relax. I just feel like I start the day differently and it carries out into the rest of my day.

Maybe one day I’l be a gardening mindfulness practitioner. I guess I am already now. Maybe one day I’ll spend more time gardening or doing mindfulness or yoga. Who knows. For today, I am going to help someone with the language Dutch.

I hope you are doing well wherever you are and until next time! X