Major update

It’s been a while since I meant to write this.

Closing this site I wanted to reflect on what this phase of blogging meant to me and why I’m changing the virtual residence for my thoughts residence. 

The most important information I want to place on the top of this post in case you don’t have time/willingness to follow the whole track of my Gedankenzug (love this german word - train of thoughts) 

First of all: I’m really grateful to everyone who decided to subscribe for the notifications of new posts. Your quiet presence meant a lot to me. I doubt the value of my writing all the time, thinking that my wordy texts are too chaotic and bring nothing, but disturbance. Knowing that some of you have decided to keep updated on my new posts was itself very encouraging. 

This website supposed to be a kind of an open diary. Eventually, I’ve realised that looking at the world and describing it from the position of “Ich-Erzähler” (it’s how I learned this term, in my course on German literature and literature analyses) - first person narrative perspective (if I’m not mistaken it must be called in English this way) isn’t helpful. As a result, I decided to focus more on the journey itself, learning to look at the characters of the play, most importantly at the protagonist of my life story from the position of “camera eye”.

That’s how the project Life as a Quest was born. It means for me more than just a website, but it’s now still in the kind of balasana - child pose stage. 

The new website does not include automatic notifications for now. En revanche, you can get in touch via Instagram or Twitter, where I’ve started to share my reflections on the go.

Here is my new "thoughts residence" with links to the socials on the right top corner of the page: https://www.lifeasaquest.com

Here you can find recent reports on chess events written from the perspective of an observer: https://www.lifeasaquest.com/chess-events

This current website will remain online for one more week. After that, it will disappear (I guess) since I’m canceling the renewal of the yearly hosting payment. 

That was about the most important information I wanted to share with all of you who were willing to keep reading my contemplations. 

Below is a piece of reflections on the most recent experiences. In case you’ll leave now, I want to thank you for your interest and time.

Reflections or “…and spring again”. 

I meant to write this in the beginning of autumn. I’ve postponed till now, the end of winter. Hopefully it will be not only a calendar’s but also in the symbolic sense an end of winter.

I didn’t write because I was concerned that my depressive feelings might come through. I didn’t want to burden anyone with it. Anyway, implicitly I already wrote it mentioning metaphorical "nigredo stage" and "camera obscura" in my most recent posts here.

Depression has been accompanying me most of my life, including those "successful years". This strong feeling of darkness walking nearby intensified my willingness to search for light.
When we met with my husband we united our efforts, as this perception of reality was something we had been fighting against on our own for many years. 

Of course it got easier together, creating a space of an inner world we could better counter the challenges of the outer. 

However, in the last few years I’ve started to feel gradually worse.
I love to study, but academic requirements made me forget my authentic self.
The famous conflict between nature vs. nurture I experienced first hand. Adaptation felt like mutation. 

I’m still studying. On the faculty of languages. Finding myself incapable of communicating with others. What an irony. 

Ongoing challenges, particularly the fact that we haven't been able to regularize my residency permit in France for the past 16 months, have had a devastating impact on both my mental and physical health.
I know I should have been stronger and exercised more mental stability, but I collapsed.
This realization only makes me feel worse.

Three weeks ago, I decided to play for the team in Germany again, hoping to earn something. It seems I need to view this event as another 'investment.'
I didn’t make it to the playing venue, I was taken off the train by the police and ended up being locked in a cell while they checked my documents and my explanations about not having the required documents updated.
When the paperwork and the "photo session" for the file was over they walked me to the bridge that links Germany and France. Fortunately, I had some preparation in the study of mythology, which helped me soften my feelings by focusing on the symbolic meaning of the bridge and trying to understand what this passage might signify for the future development of my life story.

I'll try to install new settings for my inner operating system:

Curiosity over fear;
Creativity as a form of resistance.

In practice, this means focusing on the journey and the movement rather than dwelling on the past, and accepting that there isn’t a path more aligned with my nature.
Every path will have its friction, and I need to learn how to turn that friction into a tool for peeling away layers of ego (at least the outdated ones; the identity crisis is still here, intensified by the administrative struggles to legitimize my presence in this moment).

Will this spring give us some useful springboards?
Surprisingly, I’ll be returning to some ‘board’ activities: chess and skate.
Both symbolise for me practice of resistance and hope.
A springboard would come handy for a leap of faith.