Saying goodbye to the life I could have lived - Why I choose a slow life over success.

Hello everyone! Can you hear these beautiful birds? Today is the 20th of March, our spring equinox and our new season is officially here. This time is so special to me with the Easter holidays coming up which have always been my favorite. While the temperatures usually dip again in April or May before summer actually comes, I always felt like there's this magical touch around the beginning of spring. With my move being only 10 days from today, my life is surely the most chaotic it has been in a while. Nonetheless, I wanted to take you along my lunch break, visiting my favorite spot in our forest, perhaps for the last time. This little clearing surrounded by hills has been my anchor point in my time here. I saw deer, boars and so many geese over the last year. I spent the last week crying so much, it felt like grief honestly, like grieving a life that I could have had or the life of potential success that I'm leaving behind. A part of me is definitely ending right now and the road ahead isn't all that clear. There's so much uncertainty and not a lot of tangible plans. I've never been forced to trust and surrender as much as right now. I've been so emotional but I knew that nothing could help it except for letting it all out, crying through the actions that will move me forward and sitting with my feelings in silence, with no intention of fixing them. It's alright to do things we know we have to do while we feel sad and scared. I believe that we can both grieve and celebrate life at the same time. You guys, the weather today is just incredible. Oh my gosh, I'm so grateful. I have a bit of a lunch break right now before I need to be back at home because I have even more marketplace pickups to sell even more of my furniture, which is wonderful. And then I'm working for the rest of the day. I'm teaching German and English tonight, which is great, but I'm so happy to be outside a little bit and get some vitamin D. Oh my gosh, this is my favorite season and I'm enjoying this transition so much. But I brought my sketchbook because I primed a really gorgeous canvas last night, quite big, so I want to make sure I know the composition and I want to do a bit of a color study so I know the direction that I'm taking with the canvas. So I thought we can do that together with the birds and the beautiful yellow butterflies that are out everywhere at the moment. I am so, so, so grateful and I'm just soaking this up because currently my life with this move is a mess, but I'm embracing the mess and I know it's all fine. But still, this weather definitely is giving me so much strength and joy. So let's paint a little bit together. I've been thinking a lot about my younger self three years ago when I moved to the city in order to make something of myself, to hustle and pursue a career and work harder than ever, pushing myself into things and circles that I never wanted to be in. I lived so much for external validation. Literally, my job was centered around convincing people of my worth and abilities. I went down a long, long spiral of OCPD and even after making my way out of it, the desire to be seen and validated by others for how we live our life is so natural and rooted so deeply in us. The fear of straying off the beaten path is a fear on an existential level. When we grow up, there are all these regulations around our time and what we have to do and be to be good. School, college, uni, jobs, there was always a rulebook to follow for me and I worked quite well that way. I was such a perfectionist and overachiever and now that I'm cutting so many ties, for the first time in my life, I am really free. I could go anywhere in 10 days and I could do anything because right now I don't have much and I don't have any responsibility other than myself and that's scary but also beautiful. I'm a very sensitive person but now I see all my emotions as superpowers that help me navigate life and trust my intuitions, especially in times of change. A life that could have been everything I dreamed of as a teenager is ending right now and this act of letting go is difficult and it hurts to leave. But I'm no longer that person. My priorities and wishes have changed and I'm choosing to trust myself and my path and God more than my fears of regretting this decision. I know that in the end, all that matters is the experiences we collect, the joy we feel, how we grow, how we love. I no longer want to hold on to superficial ideas I had for myself years ago because I am a new person and this is a new life and I think that every day we can start fresh. If you have too many boots, I don't think so. It's a little bit of an obsession.