It's QLC, Bitch!

Pretty much everyone around me has been low in one way or the other for quite a while now. Or at least frustrated with how things are going. Which is what I am.

I've enjoyed not having to worry about an upcoming exam, but it's 2 1/2 weeks now and I've been avoiding to REALLY think about the specifics of my next steps. Of course I'm always thinking about it, but I haven't really sat down to work on it. Instead I've done everything else... apart from reading Perez and other internet gossip sites and watching TV series for hours online, I've cleaned windows, the oven and even defrosted the refrigerator. Currently I'm planning to chuck out my carpet. I think it might be no longer me, I'm tired of having to explain why I got it and our vacuum cleaner is too broke to properly clean it... and that is starting to disgust me. Now I think about cutting the carpet into pieces and take it out part by part (though left whole I might be able to sell it) because I can't move all my furniture out of the room. That could give me another day of avoiding stuff.

The truth is, I don't really know what I want and that is a bit scary. All this reflection is annoying me...

So while doing some little research earlier this week on some new TV show, I stumbled upon something I had heard about a while ago, but sorta forgot and I thought "this is so true": Quarterlife Crisis (QLC) ... I wikipedia'd it and though I can't "tick off" all symptoms, I can say "check" at enough to say I have a mild form of it.

I thought being at this point now, I'd be excited no end ... and I am, but I'm also worried in a way. It's not the same excitement and buzz I felt in my last year of school when I knew I would go off to Berlin and study, which I had been looking forward to for over a year. Yes, I am excited to do something new and I actually can't wait till I can move on, but it's a lot more real this time. It means growing up and taking over the last bit of responsibility for myself... and it won't be easy to find a proper job.

I gotta find out what I want to do now. I changed my interest from journalism to PR during my studies... which was a normal process of finding who I want to be I guess ... maybe that was like 50% of the way I had to go and now I'm facing the next 50% or at least 25%. Or actually ... nothing stops me from turning around 180°. Ahhh...

While I was in England and during the last year I've constantly reflected on where I wanna go and what I wanna do. I have at least half a plan... which is good, I guess. But it seems like the options are endless... it's a freedom that feels kinda suppressing.

I'm so looking forward to finishing my degree this year. It feels like I have already moved on inside... I've kinda developed twisted feelings towards my degree as I have become slightly disenchanted by it over the course of the last few years and at the same time I'm immensely proud of it.

Anyway, I just have to think about where I wanna take it for the last few steps of the way. I am quite optimistic it will all just fall into place somehow, but it is frustrating to go in circles with my thoughts for over a year now. I'm scared to make wrong decisions and then I think that this is stupid and that there are no wrong decisions and it's all just a part of the way everyone has to go. It's hard to describe really... but I think frustrating and confusing pretty much does describe it in the end.

Anyway, it's just a phase and calling it Quarterlife Crisis makes it feel okay and less scary to me.

An Energy Drink Broke My Metatarsal

That would be todays headline, if I was writing for "love it"!

And actually there is an "almost" missing, but that wouldn't have sounded half as dramatic!

Now, what happened: Well, I'm testing this "energy" drink at the moment. And I opened one of the packages containing 4 bottles. Being me I ripped the whole thing open and the bottles went everywhere... one dropping directly on my right foot. Now, it's not a big bottle, but the free fall added to its impact and I swear it was aiming directly at my metatarsal! It HURT!

Now imagine if I was a famous footballer and the bottle had indeed broken my metatarsal ... in my right foot. How dramatic ... and unglamorous!

But back to the real me, am I able to sue them? I mean this packaging is kinda dangerous ... so it is definitly their fault! This could pay for all my living expenses for ... forever. I could be a kept woman ... without the old rich husband!

And I wouldn't just do a service to myself ... no, it would be a service to mankind. I could save us from a nation ... no, wait ... a planet of broken metatarsals!

Mugshot

I had to get a picture taken for my passport and identity card yesterday. Under the new laws it is strictly forbidden to look good or actually anything like yourself in the pic that you will have to show airport officials for the next 10 years.

I know, no-one looks good in those pics and I think the result could have been worse, but in a way it is insulting! The lighting is sooo bad on purpose, that your skin looks absolutely horrific.

I was assured by the miaudonna that these pics are simply bad whoever takes them, but maybe I should have gone somewhere else than I did.

I wanted to go to a proper studio to get them taken, but then shortly before I left the house my Mom called and so I ended up being very late for a meeting with friends to stalk my german celebrity boyfriend on screen at the almost local cinema. I originally wanted to take the pics at a studio close to the cinema but then I was so late that I decided to just get the pictures done in the first shop I saw.

So before I got on the underground I popped into this local shop (Porst) and I should have been warned by the "atmosphere". It wasn't even a studio. It was basically a place for people to drop off their films or cds to get their pics developed. Although they try to make naive people believe they can take pictures by having 6 horribly assorted portrait pics of spotty teenagers and little kids on their wall. They couldn't trick me though, the facilities clearly showed they hadn't taken proper pictures for years (no space, no backgrounds)... and that the guy was photoshopping stuff on a computer was just pretending of the worst kind, I can do that.

So yeah, I could have gone to a better place ... he took 2 pics while I was sitting on a chair in a tiny open corridore kinda thing with white walls. Meanwhile the shop door was open and everyone could see me getting my picture taken. I then asked him whether I could look at the pics before he printed them and when he looked at me suspiciously, I thought I'd play a bit dumb to make him comply "I mean is that possible? Digitally?" ... he nodded and let me choose. Actually we agreed... the first one was really bad and the second slightly less bad.

I paid 7,95 Euro, which is a good deal and now I am in the proud possession of a passport picture that overwhelmingly reminds me of Lindsay Lohan's and Mischa Barton's mugshots. Bad light... very bad light ... I might not look as if I've partied all night, but I definitly look like I've just committed a "Driving Under the Influence"-offence...

Well, it could have been worse though.

Now there's hoping that the council won't send me back to take a new picture coz my "pretty" mugshot is not correct. My eyes are free, but my hair covers my forehead a bit and I was told by a friend that she had to put all her hair out of her face for the pic. Great, if I have to do that, I will look like Britney when she got stretchered off to the hospital ... no, no, no!!!
So fingers crossed!