The City

Behold! Shining skyscrapers of the future, conquering the skies. Tram lines, metro lines, waiting lines. Out through the window, I see the spectacle unfurling. People rushing, people running, people walking. Businessmen, artists, workers, students all blending below me. They all know where they are going, they all have control over their lives. Their purpose is clear, their goals are set in stone. There is no reason to reflect, as reflecting means standing still in the middle of the rush, and there’s no time to waste. A job interview here, an exposition there, an advertising about the latest technological advancements on a screen in the middle of the intersection. The cars and the pedestrians play a game. One waits, the other goes. The other waits, the rest go. Gone are the days of having all our animals in the city for nourishment, in a show of shit, bad odors covered with perfume and deadly plagues. No, the animals are far away now, in large farms for the better feeding of mankind. I take a deep breath of air mixed with car exhaust, to remind myself that we have reached the pinnacle of civilization and that we are far away from the age of savagery.

            I walk around the city center. I am fascinated and overwhelmed by all the flashing lights, by all the glowing neon signs from the shops, by all the noise. I am part of a concrete organism and there is no clear way out. But only a fool would want to be out of the city, where all the action is. Where could one find bars to drink in for hours, internships at top international companies, media centers, shopping malls and more outside of the city? The only reason I would ever imagine wanting to leave the city is to visit my parents in our small mountain town, or perhaps taking a stroll through the woods. But even in those moments, I know I would be missing out. The city is busy forever transforming, and not being there means being excluded. And that is not an option. The city owns me and I belong underneath the shadows of the buildings. It is the factory that elevated me out of poverty, and I am the faithful worker. I keep my eyes straight. I do what I am told to. I do not bother anyone. I don’t litter the ground with trash. I pet and feed every dog I see. I have to admit that I do feel lonely sometimes. In certain moments, I look through the window inside a café. The people there are laughing and seeming to have a good time. I am not concerned, however. I know that if I do my job right and walk between the narrow lines set before me, the city will reward me with great wealth and personal achievement.

There are parts of the city I do not go to. I have been told not to go there, because the people there are different than the people I know. The drug addicts, the insane, the homeless, the immigrants, the others. I do not like the others, because they ruin the city. They ruin the beauty with their ugliness, the balance with their instability. One day, I had the misfortune of walking down one of their streets. Unlike the normal people, who stay in their homes, minding their own business, the others sit on the street. I was surprised to see them laughing and being cheerful, as their children played in the middle of the street with a ball. But they stopped being joyful when they saw me. And I know they knew I was not like them. And I know they hated me for it. I could see it in their eyes. I don’t want to hate them, but they give me no choice. They do not work. They complain about everything. They litter the ground. They make 5-6 children despite clearly not having the financial situation to help raise them. They are the architects out of their own misery. I cannot stand such people. They distract me from my goals. I do not want to see them, it makes me angry. They hate me, but only if they knew the great struggles I have been through. They do not know the sleepless nights, working in a gas station. They do not know the stress of the countless job interviews. I never complained. I kept doing what I was supposed to be doing. I did not look left or right, to get distracted by vices. I’m a racing horse and the finish line is my only purpose. I have nothing to share with those who complain about their current situation, rather than trying to work for their betterment.

There are moments when I walk in the park to feed the ducks. There are these peculiar thoughts that occur, as I am looking at the ripple of the water. And the more I look at the movement of the water, the more I get mesmerized, the more I slowly start to get lost. Everything starts to slow down around me. The people walk slower, the clouds remain static. The car honks become distorted as they reach my ears. My heartbeat gets lower. And for a moment, everything just stops. I stay in the moment for what feels like an eternity. And then, suddenly, it all collapses. I start feeling very heavy. I become overwhelmed by this feeling of profound sadness. I do not know where it comes from, but it causes me extreme discomfort. It almost makes me hate the city, the people and myself. I need to sit down because the feelings are dragging me down. The ducks got scared away by my sudden movement towards the bench. I take a deep breath. I say a short prayer in my mind that my mum use to tell me when I was a child. I repeat as many times as needed until I regain some form of equilibrium. I do not want to seem odd to the rest, because then I would also become like the others. And then the good crowd will no longer accept me. And that would mean losing everything. I have to confess, I really wish I had someone to share that feeling with. But I doubt anyone would understand. I hardly understand, either. Besides, giving myself so much importance to even believe someone would stop to listen to me, when we are all so busy in pursuing our goals, is an act of extreme arrogance. I need to keep going. I need to work with what I have. There is no other way.

The sun’s rays gently enter through the curtains, playing on the wall of my apartment. I get up and go towards the window. Outside, the city lights spread through the morning smog. A new day dawns over the city. I need to keep going.

The Village

When we left everything behind, I was 8 years old. We left in a rush, during a rainy morning, in the hopes of finding a better life elsewhere. While we might be better off financially, I feel very out of place and I can’t seem to fit anywhere. I still remember fragments of how it was. I remember how close the stars looked like on the sky, in the lack of any light pollution. I remember waking up to the roosters singing, first thing in the morning, as dawn broke. I remember being in my grandfather’s lap, as we rode in a horse drawn carriage to the field nearby, in time for reaping the harvest, while he sang to me the songs of the elders.

It’s been 20 years, and I have finally decided to return. Needless to say, I am scared. I am scared of what I would find in the village, as many left and few returned. Only some old people stayed behind, as detaching for them was too hard and too painful, their entire life being spent down below in the valley. I drove the car atop the hill and stopped there for a while. It’s misty outside and far away, the Church’s towers are rising above the fog. The birds are singing and I hear the delicate sound of the water stream nearby. I brace myself for what is about to come and I get back in the car. I arrive at the outskirts and decide to continue the journey on foot. I walk around and my senses are overwhelmed with fragments of my memories, of the smells, colors and sounds of my childhood. Most of the houses I see so far are slowly crumbling. Some have their roofs collapsed, others are just a singular wall, persistent in not falling apart in the face of neglect. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to see this, but I couldn’t stand my life anymore and I wanted to start again. I was tired by the constant noise, by narcissistic bosses, by the constant rush, by all the empty people chasing ghosts. In a way, I am also chasing a ghost, but I hope that will give me some sense of peace.

To my surprise, down the alley comes a child carrying a bag. He looks at me with curiosity, and approaches timidly. He opens the bag and asks me if I would like some elderberry that he harvested earlier this morning. I am both bewildered and touched, and I pass on his offer, asking him where his parents are. He does not say anything, but he points up the alley. And up the alley I go. As I reach the top, where the center of the village is, I start noticing construction material everywhere. Lumps of wood, old doors, paint, glass. I look around in a state of confusion, and I am awoken from my state by the sound of someone singing. On the porch of the house in front of me, a young woman is singing a lullaby. She is carrying a vase with a flower in one hand and is holding the hand of a young girl with the other arm. The image is surreal, feeling as if I slipped through a glitch in time and space, being taken back to a moment when we were all there together. She looks at me and she smiles, and the intensity of the gesture makes me feel like fainting. She quite clearly sees my discontent and invites me inside the house. I am greeted by her husband, a man in his 30’s. Carpenter by profession, he also wanted to escape his own life. So, he left everything behind, took his family with him and found the village. He spends his days restoring old wooden doors and craving motifs inspired by nature in wood. Soon I find out that he is not the only one to come back. 5 families came in the last 2 years, for similar reasons as the ones that pushed me to return to my birthplace. Guided by the elders that stayed behind, they moved into abandoned houses and started to revitalize them. Slowly, human life is returning to the village. I tell them about my own plans, of wanting to renovate my grandfather’s old house and moving here permanently. They both smile and tell me “with the work that we all do collectively, we will reshape this place and re-purpose our lives.”

As night comes, we all gather in the courtyard of the Church, around a bonfire. The elders are also there and they entertain us with stories of bygone times. They tell us about the myths, the legends, the dances, the music, the rituals. I let my mind wander on the images they create in my mind. I see it all, my grandparents, parents, the old home, the joy, the fruits, the hardships. It all comes back to me and for a moment, I finally feel connected to something bigger than me. I open my eyes from the dream and I feel calm on the inside. I look at all the brothers and sisters around me, and I finally feel appreciation for what I have. There’s no internet connection, but the connection I found here goes much deeper. And I see it everywhere I look, in the smiles of the children, in the geometric shapes of the flowers, in the fire, in the pale moon above us.

It’s been a year since I moved back. I sit on the porch of my grandfather’s house, after handpicking some apples from the orchard. Time goes by so slowly here and I finally have the chance to think and reflect. The sun is setting and it’s time for me to go sleep. There is no rush to go anywhere, because everything is already here.

On the beauty of decay and abandoned places

As a teenager, the field of exploration goes deeper than it was when you were a child. You explore further your environment than before, going deeper into the city, exploring parts outside of your comfort zone and going down the streets your parents told you not to.

            This is how urban exploration became a passion for me, as it drove me to find the hidden layers of the place where I was living, the spots full of history that many forgot and left behind. For some brief context, privatization and inheritance in the aftermath of communism in Romania combined with people emigrating left a lot of buildings abandoned. The country was, in that sense, ripe for urban exploring, as palaces, mansions, individual houses, factories and even entire villages were left unattended, inviting whatever traveler would happen to discover them while exploring. The type of people attracted to these kind of places is also diverse, ranging from squatters, thieves who steal the entire steel structure to sell for scrap, urban explorers, vandals, drug addicts, graffiti artists, the curious and the adventurous. Therefore, entering such places is, as they say in that one movie, like a box of chocolate, you never know what you get. In the worst case scenario, you might encounter people inside that might not be so happy about you entering. Besides that, you are more than likely trespassing into private property, as well as entering buildings with structural damage, which can easily collapse. But if all works out well and you get the chance to explore, you can stumble on the most surprising of things. I remember well the excitement and shock of finding a series of interconnected caves on a hill close to the city center, only to find inside hundreds of objects, from briefcases, clothes, toys and much more. The people living inside probably numbered over 50 and it seemed like they left in a hurry, leaving everything behind. All of this happened detached from the outside world, while the people in the streets nearby went on with their lives. These kinds of places start to have a cycle of their own, in a bubble, separated from the interconnected world next to them, the moment the lock is put on the door and they are forgotten. I have been in my kindergarten, which became abandoned shortly after I finished it, only to find syringes in the toilet and ouja boards in the basement. I have been in a crumbling cinema in the center of town with a friend, debating whether we should jump down an almost 2 meter hole to the basement, which we knew beforehand had -3 levels underground. In hindsight, it was a very stupid idea to do such a thing, as we might have easily gotten stuck down there with no way to get out. Thankfully, we got scared by a sound and believed the police came, and quickly escaped through an opening in a wall (there was no police, but good we didn’t jump in the hole).

            What is really enticing about these places is their energy and what comes with it. They reveal themselves out of active observation, and they draw you in to their entrances. Inside, the energy is static. The vibration is usually peaceful and unusually quiet. The people that gave these places life are gone now and this can be felt throughout the place. They leave behind traces of their memory, their laughter, joy, tears spent there. Another type of life appears. Vines climb inside through the broken windows. Small plants and flowers emerge through cracks. Sometimes even small trees make a home among the ruins. The cycle of the world repeats itself. The elements become decomposed and become one with the source. You are reminded of the fragility of just existing. Nothing lasts forever, nowhere is that as obvious in a place that meant home to someone and now is disintegrating. That fragility is very touching, because you too, at one point, will reach that moment. It is melancholic, but it is also joyful. It is joyful because it is just merely reintegrated back to where it comes from. And at that point, when you are sitting in the middle of it all, you are the life. Everything is put into perspective, and you stop being yourself. You become one with the place and you are revealed the intimacy of the passing of time, of belonging somewhere, of home, loss, forgetting and remembering. It is human and it is universal. And when you go back in to the world, you carry the place with you in your memory, prolonging and tying its existence with your existence.

Yours sincerely,

-Vlad

On leaving home for the first time and being alone

Before coming to the Netherlands to study, I had lived in the same city for the entirety of my life and in the same house since I was 5. Home was therefore, clearly defined, and I can clearly visualize every nook and cranny of my house. Home is more than just a physical space, but rather a complete package, a warm place where you can find you family, friends and the feeling of belonging. It is comfortable and you are sheltered from the dark of the outside world. Yet this comfort is also what pushed me to want to get out of it. Initially, I planned to go to University to Bucharest, but I was afraid that I would stagnate in comfort, in the familiar. I chose to go to the Netherlands, without visiting it before and not having the slightest idea what I was getting myself into. I knew of tulips, of how it was flat, of how marijuana was legal, of high-speed trains. Little did I know that I was doing more than simply moving physically in another spot. I was permanently altering myself, my perceptions, my knowledge of who I was and what I believed, in ways I am still discovering today, one and a half year later.

            One of the most vivid moments was when I was lead to my room and the door closed behind me. That was the moment I realized the following things. First, I was truly alone for the first time in my life. Second of all, I had no idea what I was doing. Third, I realized that I had no idea of what was necessary for one to sustain himself on his own. This manifested itself in the small things, such as not having any cutlery, any kitchenware, interior decorations, god damn toilet paper. Fourth of all, and probably the most relevant thing, is that I realized that when you are alone, just you with yourself, silence becomes very, very loud. Incredibly loud, deafening loud. And the noise followed me everywhere, as it was in me. It was hard to sleep at night, because the thoughts wouldn’t stop coming. I started on the wrong foot by isolating myself, by finding reasons not to go out, and when I did go out, I tried my best to avoid any people or social interaction. Living in a building with 400 other people certainly did not help, and I ended up putting myself in the most absurd of situations, such as being anxious over small things like “If someone’s door is open on the corridor, do I peak in and say hi as I am walking or do I keep going?”. And so, I created some very unhealthy patterns of anxieties, of closing myself off, of punishing myself for reasons that I did not really know.

            Sadness is addictive and comfortable, as it does not require you to take action. All it demands of you is that you do not get out of it. Gradually, I lost sense of who I was, or rather who I believed I was. It became clear that all the knowledge of who I was and how my personality is were given by circumstances back home which were no longer in this new, unfamiliar land. The question of “Who am I?” followed me for at least 6 months, and the more I sought the answer, the less I knew what the answer was. I desperately wanted to go back home, to be back to something I knew, to something to give me some comfort. And home I went, during winter break. I expected the answer to become clear, but everything became even more fuzzy. My grandmother dying in the break certainly did not help in me finding any resemblance of balance, the noise becoming even louder. And so, I returned back in the Netherlands, even more confused. Answering that it was “good” in the break became an automated response to all the people who asked me how it was, as I knew that actually giving an honest answer probably implied me having a breakdown right there on the spot. I did not have time for breakdowns anyways. Grades were needed to receive financial support, and I had to be functional. I could not afford to worry about my existential dread. So, on and on I went, half functional, half anxious, through the remainder of the year. The noise started to slowly reduce its intensity, but the pressure was still there. I was looking forward for summer break back home in Romania, hopefully managing to get some answers to my questions.

            I did get answers. None of them were pleasant, but all of them have been very helpful in my process of healing. I expected to come back and see the same old things, but I was very wrong. While I was busy changing in the Netherlands, my friends, my family and Romania were also busy changing. What I was looking for simply ceased to exist, metamorphosing into something else, the same way I did. Home and belonging disappeared the moment I boarded the plane, yet I held very hard to these concepts as I knew them. All that accumulated in a year wanted to burst out, and so it did, at a very appropriate moment during a music festival. It was probably the most emotionally intense and heavy feeling I have ever felt, and an incredibly releasing experience.

            I’ll skip other details and I’ll jump straight to the conclusions, which I believe are applicable to most people. Being with yourself is not easy. But it will be the only thing you will ever have. Do not confuse being alone with being lonely. Being lonely is you missing human interaction and isolating yourself. Being alone is something you always are. Even when with people, you are alone. Even in a relationship, you are alone. That does not mean that you cannot have connection with other people, or feeling like you belong. But before you start looking for these things in other people, look for them in yourself. If you rely on friends to give you validation, you will have a hard time. If you hope that those around you can give you the love that you need, you are setting yourself up for future disaster and misery. You might disagree with me by this point, but you know very well how it is when you have a problem with yourself, and you hope that someone else can fill in the gap. They might fill the gap, for a while. But the problem remains. And eventually the problem will hit you again. And it hits you again because the entire approach is wrong. You cannot hope for the outside to solve your inside. The other way around is much more insightful and enriching. Looking for the external solution is a temporary solution to a much deeper problem. Do not get me wrong. Exploring your inner-self will confront you to some unpleasant things. It will bring back bad memories, bad experiences. It will reveal to you the whole extent of the pain you carry within yourself. Embarking on this journey is arguably much harder than relying on external help. But the more you explore, the more you will surprise yourself. Your intuition will become sharper. You will no longer be bothered by being alone. You will realize that who you think you are and your personality are in no way fixed, and you can change them by working with yourself. You will stop being so stiff with fears, and you’ll learn how to flow. And the noise, the great deafening noise, will revert back to true silence. This is something I am still working on, as last year still comes to me sometimes. But whenever I get anxious now, I know not to take it too personally and not to overthink a feeling. Feelings are to be felt and thoughts are to be thought. They do mix, and at best they complement each other, at worst, they amplify the negativity. Try drawing the line carefully. And for God’s sake, stop hating yourself so much. You wouldn’t burn down the house you live in, why would you burn yourself?

Until next time,

-Vlad

On being young in a loud and confusing world

I was born in 1997, the first years of my life in Romania were quiet and peaceful. The country, which just came out from under communism 8 years before, was like a time capsule, in many ways still stuck in the past, in both good and bad ways. The internet was still a legend when I was a child, something to be used in very specific instances and with big waiting time. There were no smartphones or gadgets to play with, and as children, the fun would be derived from whatever our mind would come with and usually involved exploring outside. 21 years later, today the world has become, especially in places like Europe a very different world. Besides all the technological advancements, there have been conflicts, wars, and economic crisis just to name a few. So far, nothing new compared to what humanity has been doing since the dawn of its existence.

            What is new, however, is all this background noise. And there’s a lot of it. And you know what I am talking about. It’s all the beeps and sound notifications, it’s all the flashy screens, targeted advertising, news outlets and many more. All this information overload is not something our brains our accustomed to, and how it has taken a toll on our cognitive capabilities is quite obvious, if one looks at aspects such as the rise of attention deficit disorder. I think out of most inventions, the smartphone is the most defining and the one that bothers me the most. Besides the fact that you are carrying a portable recording device that collects data on everything about you, what you like or don’t like, what places you visit in order to sell you ads (for now), it also quite clearly affects everyone’s ability to interact face to face. And this is of course, the great irony of social media, the fact that it makes people interact less and feel lonelier, as we slowly drift apart in internet personas. Back in the old days, one couldn’t just escape social interaction by sitting on their phone. But here we are now, avoiding what is uncomfortable by evading in a screen that is personalized to be your best friend. A bit dystopian, isn’t it?

            I’m a Millennial, which means I’ll have a great time not really having financial security, a house and chances of raising a family. When my grandfather was my age, he already was married to my grandmother and had my mum. Back in the day, communists came and seized all the land. My grandparents and mother, which were born in a small village in central Romania, had to leave everything they had in order to find better living in the city. They did so with only the clothes they were wearing at the moment, with no education or money. My grandfather’s efforts payed off, as I managed to go, 70 years later, to the Netherlands to study. Every generation has their struggle and what my grandparents went through is much harder in different ways than what my generation is going through. Blessed but stressed is an expression that I feel describes well my current predicament. And in a way, my grandparents were freer. Yes, they couldn’t leave the country. Propaganda was high, and living standards modest. But they had each other, they had genuine connection, and they didn’t have to worry about what was outside their sphere. Today, we have a much better access to education, better healthcare. I have floor heating in my room, which for my grandparents it is something out of a sci-fi movie.

            Yet our generation was thrown in a very weird point of history. The effects of climate change are becoming more and more clear. The economic system forces us to be very competitive and that makes people take themselves way too seriously and neglect their health in order to get extra hours of work done. And then there’s Trump, the biggest internet star, as social media turned Politics from something serious into a bad soap opera we have no choice but to watch. It’s quite clear that politicians do not know what they are doing in order to stop climate change, and there’s a general consensus that there’s a lack of consensus on almost everything. While older generations accuse us of being entitled, complaining and all in all bad people, they can sit down comfortably on their sofa as they are approaching old age. They will be gone soon, and the mess they have made is what we will inherit and have to deal with. It’s quite easy then, to see why our generation is scared, prone to anxiety and panic attacks, which are made even worse by being amplified by all the noise on social media.

            What is there to be done to still be okay with life is something I am still trying to figure out. What has helped so far have been reflections of an existentialist manner. After all, I have been thrown into this context without consent. The cards I have been dealt with it have been good, just being able to write this article and think about these things is a privilege not many people have. A great source of inspiration has been my grandfather, which managed against very hard odds to work, get educated, and provide for his family. I try to focus on what really matters to me, connecting with people, creating with them, being joyful and playful. What the future will hold for me, or for any of you, is anyone’s guess. And in a way, it does not matter that much, as we are here right now. And the now is the only moment there really is, so feel free to remove yourself from the front of the screen, go outside, paint, sing, do a silly video, or whatever floats your boat.  Being able to detach from the noise is important. Don’t worry about missing out, you already know what you will find if you go back to the noise, it’s the same old story every time. Be more worried about missing out on your own life, as the streams of information passing next to you distracts you from what your really want to achieve, do and feel.

            Until next time,

-Vlad

On Thinking Patterns

We go on with our days under routine and habit, with the occasional outbursts of chaos, spontaneity and surprise. Whether we choose and plan our routine carefully, or whether it develops in a certain shape out of inertia can lead to very different kinds of outcomes. Certain elements of the routine, like waking up in the morning and having breakfast, going out, doing what we ought to do, relates more to our interaction to the external environment around us. However, at the same time with our external patterns, we have our thinking patterns which often blend or stand in contrast with our day to day lives. The kind of thinking patterns we have can become very messy if left to their own devices and managing them is hard to say the least. Observation is a good step in getting a better understanding on the way you think about things and your general approach to what’s around. As you probably know yourself, dear reader, is that we tend to overthink many aspects of our life and do a pretty good job at overcomplicating the simple things. We get drawn in imaginary stories about why things happened, attribute values to events that do not reflect the actual happenings, as well as also finding a way, one way or another, to justify why we have failed, or why we were awkward in a specific instance. It usually goes into blaming the other person or an external factor for the misfortune, or fall in the other extreme, of self-blame and self-sabotage, low self-esteem and other such delightful thoughts. All of these thoughts function in a patterned way. We get triggered by specific factors, which usually lead to the same kind of repeating behavior to further amplify the feeling given by the trigger. To exemplify, you probably were in a type of situation in which something hurt you, bothered you, angered you, in any case eliciting a strong emotional reaction, usually negative. Chances are that then you resorted to a certain kind of routine. You sat down and played your playlist of sad songs, you relived, re-imagining what caused you pain over and over again, and there you are, sitting for 3 hours, in a state of inertia, tormenting yourself and feeling anxious. You surely weren’t there for the first time. Odds are that you know too well that dark corner. In a way, you feel attracted to it. Even worse, you will probably go out of your way to get to the trigger that causes it. And you know it is not good for you. But still, you persist in going there. In your worst moments, you might even ask yourself why do you deserve all this pain, despite blatantly doing it to yourself in a quite systematic matter and with great precision. After all, the sad song playlist didn’t invent itself, and nobody is forcing you to click on it.

     Breaking out of this is never easy and it can take months, to years just to be able to modify the kind of patterned dark thought processes you have. I am still struggling myself, after banging my head against the wall and wondering why I have a headache for a long period of time. How this relates to our tendency to seek out suffering is something I will write about some other time. These patterns developed as ways of structuring our interaction with the world in a way that our comfort seeking mind can get some rest. The fact that exactly the opposite can happen is a different story, related to our traumas, bad moments, unpleasant memories and so on. Fear is paralyzing and anxiety is one of the most willing friends who want to get to meet you in your minds. But in opening the door to accept her in and letting her make you feel uncomfortable, you have much more control than you think you have. The problem is not necessarily in opening the door. If she is to visit, she will come, with or without your permission. The feeling will be there, either way. However, what you attribute to it, the value you give it and the complicated story you build around it, either to justify its presence, or to justify why the bad things she tells are true, is where your own control and initiative comes. This is also the point where you can develop different kind of patterns when interacting with her, but you also can choose to take the energy she gives you and create. This is of course, easier said than done. And for those of you who have a chemical imbalance in the brain and diagnosed with all sorts of personality disorders or depression, the situation is much more complicated, as you know on your own skin. However, I do firmly believe that there are methods of working with it, working with the sudden rush of energy and emotion and being able to bring something positive and/or worthwhile out of it. One shouldn’t get angry in the low moments, as that will add even more layers over something that is already negative. In the moments when I go in the dark corner, I laugh at myself, because I realize the silliness of my thought process, as well as reminding myself that I have been here many times before and that what I think is in no way real. This does not remove the emotion itself, but in certainly helps in easing up the process. Removing the trigger completely is not something I believe is possible, but how you relate to it is something that can be worked on.

     This is it for now, I’ll add further remarks in further writings. This is of course with the positive assumption that someone even made it this far in what I wrote. Maybe you still are, in that case, I hope you enjoyed. If you aren’t, at least I know I will entertain myself 20 years from now, looking back at these thoughts and seeing if anything changed or not in my way of approaching these issues.

Blessed week to you, dear reader

-Vlad

An Introduction

I guess I have to begin somewhere.

This is not a personal blog per se. It's more related to my personal reflections on universal subjects in our lives, from managing emotions, understanding oneself, dealing with patterns in day to day life, existence, loss, curiosity, exploration and many more. It will be a mix of things I have learned on my own, with others and from them, personal experiences and conclusions. Odds are that many of these thoughts have been thought before, do not be surprised to find elements of different philosophies, psychological studies and so forth. I'm hoping that by putting my thoughts down somewhere, it will help me better understand what I think, as well as potentially anyone who reads this. I've been practicing writing in the last couple of months and this gives me some space to write in a way that is not as rigid as the kind of University deadlines I'm going through. I am in no way qualified to give "expert" advice or anything and this blog should be taken as it is: the reflections of a 20 year old living in an age of uncertainty, trying to figure the world around him out and having a good of a guess as the next person. If something I wrote is in any way helpful or relatable, then one of my goals is achieved. . If you enjoy the ideas, feel free to share and/or reach out to me and share your own thoughts and insights. Feel free to also disagree, this is a conversation, not an echo chamber (hopefully).

Don't take me too seriously. Don't take yourself either.