The incapacity to just 'be'

'It is better to strive to achieve, than to sit in better regret'.

Since I was about 16, this has been my motto. I read it somewhere and found it to be the most inspirational sentence I'd ever seen.

For the most part, it worked. It made me more confident. Finally, I started to sing in other places than the bathroom, had the guts to talk to boys, and, a little later in life, it got me two master's degrees.

The only problem is that I now seem unable to do anything but striving to achieve. I want to be the best editor and writer, the best singer, the best girlfriend and so on and so forth. It has begun to take it's toll.

Because when do you stop with the 'bigger, better, faster, more'-thought? When have goals been achieved? I have a nice job, but I could at least try to become editor-in-chief. My band is great, but we've only played one gig. Shouldn't I want to have a record deal? Our house is a home, but never spotless. My friends and family are so close to my heart, but shouldn't I try to spend more time with them?

It has left me with a complete inability to just 'be'. Lying on the couch watching a movie without at least thinking about 'achievements' has become a rarity.

And then a couple of days ago, it hit me. Is my boss a happier person than me? Maybe, maybe not. But she is not happier or unhappier than I am because of her job alone. Are those musicians I look up to happier than me? Again: maybe, maybe not. But it is not just what they do for a living that makes them happy or unhappy. Just as in my life, there are so many other factors that influence their happiness.

You can be the CEO of the world's most succesful company, or the best musician that ever walked the earth. If you or one of your loved ones is sick, or if you are lonesome, or insecure or whatever, I can't imagine the fame or fortune taking the pain away.

It's time to just try to achieve to be happy. Anyone got a manual?

(Rat Race-picture: richgrad.com)

Puss in boots

When we are not home, our cat Donder practices in front of the mirror to perfect his 'Puss in boots'-look:

The Grinches who hate Christmas

"I hate Christmas. All those obligations. Pretending you're all merry and stuff. I'd rather hide under a rock for a couple of days", says one of my collegues.

"Never liked Christmas. It's so sad", says one of my friends.

"What's the use", says another friend. "I don't believe in Jesus."

I think you're all a couple of Grinches, and you should stop stealing my Christmas spirit.

Christmas is not about Jesus, unless you want it to be. Christmas is not about fulfilling obligations. It doesn't have to be sad, although melancholy is a big part of it.

Let me tell you what Christmas is about from my point of view.

It's the time of year when there are pretty lights at night everywhere.

It's the time of year when you reflect about what you've done, seen and experienced in the last 360 days.

It's the time of year to spend hours in the kitchen making the best christmas cake ever.

It's the time of year to be happy that you have a family that loves you, and for once accept all of their 'meddling' as having an interest in you, and to realize how lucky you are to have them.

It's the time of year to embrace Disney and watch Home Alone, The Grinch and Mickey's Christmas wearing a huge knit sweater and drinking cups of hot coco.

It's the time of year to drop the attitude, stop being so incredibly mature and just enjoy the nice decorations, lovely smells of cinnamon, chocolate and vanilla coming from the kitchen/bakery/gift shop and lights in the christmas tree.

Get it?

Tricked by my scale

I weigh myself every morning. This is supposed to be a very unhealthy habit. For me, it is the only way to keep my weight in check.

A week or so ago, I had all of a sudden gained two kilo's. I'd just returned from a week in Poland, where I had seen a couply of restaurants too many from the inside. So I thought the extra two kilo's would disappear if I would just eat normal again and maybe went to the gym a little more often.

But the extra kilo's kept appearing on the screen of my scale. Maybe my metabolism was bailing out on me, I thought. I reduced the size of my meals. No result.

I started wearing my 'fat clothes'. I even ordered some new t-shirts and sweaters in a bigger size. I was convinced I was going to have to accept that I would never loose the weight.

Until my boyfriend stepped on the scale. He's had the same weight for over ten years now. Guess what? Two extra kilo's!

Still it didn't dawn on me.

Suddenly, while calculating my body mass index on a dull moment at work, it hit me. It was the scale! The damn thing had been flooded with water from the bath tub so often, the chances of it being broken were very high!

With a big smile, I bought a new scale. And lost 2,5 kilo in an instant. The extra half kilo I lost being a bonus from being tricked by my scale.

City of love and doubt

Gdansk is a beautiful city. I've visited my familie there every year for at least a week since I was two years old.

In those 27 years, the city has grown from a typical grey and gloomy socialist town into a colorful, vibrant and modern metropolis. We sort of grew up together.

The latest visit was filled with strolling around, visiting museums, making a boatride, shopping, going to the movies and eating a restaurants. (Tips: go to Sopot to take a walk on the pier and have dinner at U Dzika (pierogi) or Primitive (stekosaurus) - both on Piwna street in Gdansk's old town)

I loved the Nightwish-cappuccino they make at 'Mon Balzac', and really want a license plate with my name on it, too.

There still was a gloomy part about the visit, though. As a kid, I didn't notice, but as a grown up, I can't help but feel the distance between me and my Polish grandmother and uncle. They still seem to live in the Gdansk of 1982, while the rest of us are in the Gdansk of 2009.

That, combined with my almost non-existent Polish language skills, makes it difficult to really keep in touch. No matter how many miles we flew to see them, we're still miles apart.

Doomed twice around?

For more than two centuries, newspapers have been key in spreading information. For even more centuries, music was something people would pay money to hear.

In this day and age both news and music are goods that are easy to come by for free. You read the news online, and you don't buy new albums, you download them. I'm guilty of both.

I don't have a newspaper subscription and for the last couple of years, I've only bought about twenty cd's. The other 300+ cd's in our house were bought before roughly the year 2000. Or I got them for free, because I used to work as a music reviewer for an online music magazine.

All of this is remarkable, because not only am I a journalist, I'm also the singer in a band. With reading free news and listening to free music, I'm robbing myself.

Or aren't I? These may not be the easiest times to be either a journalist or a musician, these are interesting times to be a part of both industries. People are frantically looking for new ways of making a living out of spreading news, or out of making music. It's like the search for the Holy Grial.

All we know is that the old days are gone. Even the people who make the news and the music aren't willing to pay for either one anymore.

But what if the Holy Grail doesn't exist?

The place I hate to love

I love the place I live. And I hate it.

We moved here when I had just turned 14. We used to live in a village with about 10.000 to 15.000 inhabitants, and the new village was just as small.

However, in our old town, my parents, sister and me were only six kilometers away from the third biggest city in the country. The place we went to is in a far more rural area. I can't tell you how shocked we were to go to the local bank and see and neat row of clogs in front of the radiator. The farmers were inside the building, on their thick wool socks. I felt like I been flung back in time. To the dark ages.

So I swore I was going back to the 'big city' as soon as I could. I told everyone who wanted to know - and everyone who didn't - that I hated this hick town, the way people dressed, talked, behaved and how ugly the houses were.

A lot has changed since then. Even though I was the one yelling the loudest about "getting out of this place", there is only a handful of people out of my senior class in high school who are still here. Me being one of them.

What the hell happened?

I fell in love, that didn't help. My parents are still here. The houses here are so much cheaper than in other parts of the country. Being one of the very few highly educated people who stuck around makes it easier to find a job. Stuff like that. Plus, I have to admit, the village grew, and that did do a lot of good when it comes to the really ugly parts of town. Almost all of them are gone.

But I think that the only true reason I'm still here is that we found the house where we now live. It's pretty, it's big enough, it's quiet, there's a pond with a fountain in front of our house and we both feel so comfortable here. Never change a winning team!

The need to be 'we'

Being in a relationship is generally considered one of the basic things a human needs to be happy. Why?

Is it just because this is the standard set by society? Or is it a more basic, primal urge to be part of a twosome? To be part of a 'we'?

More and more often, I hear and read about especially female singles who claim that being a bachelorette is being free, able to do what you want and with whom you want. That others would like to see them have a boyfriend or maybe even a husband, is in their eyes unwanted pressure to fit the mold.

I'm not just talking about my own girlfriends and other women, this complaint about a society unaccepting of so-called 'happy singles' is very often discussed on tv and especially in women's magazines.

For me, being a part of a 'we', is an essential part of being happy. I love being able to share my experiences on a day to day basis, with someone who has been and will be an observant and participant in my life for a long time.

You could argue that singles have friends and family to play the role of interested, long term observant and participant. But in my experience, there's no one on the face of the earth who knows me better than the one person I talk to every single day. If wanting that for my friends is a crime, than I'm guilty as charged.

Battle of the sexes, kitty cat style.

About a week or two ago, we picked up our two new little kittens. Their names are Donder and Bliksem, which means Thunder and Lightning. We couldn't have picked better names for the little buggers. The score so far:
1 pair of sneakers ripped to shreds
1 figurine smashed to sharp little bits
1 vase that underwent the same fate

All the destruction aside, they are quite funny to watch. Their little tiny furry bodies are full of energy, they run around chasing each other, toy mice, leaves and whatever they can find to chase all day long.

Today I noticed that they nicely illustrate the difference between men and women, young and feline as they are.

Donder, who is a boy, purrs as soon as he sees a human being approaching. All he needs to purr even loader is food, cat milk, a human who throws his toy mouse for him and/or some TLC. And he doesn't care who scratches his tiny little ears, as long as they are scratched.
When he experiences something he doesn't enjoy, like getting his ears filled with anti-mite cream or a pill shoved down his throat, he forgets about it in about five seconds.

Bliksem however is a different story. She only purrs if she thinks something is worth purring over. Cat milk is very often worth showing her appreciation, but only if she's in a good mood.

She loves a little TLC every now and then, but does prefer some daily 'me-time'. Which she spends grooming her grey velvety fur or just sitting somewhere and observing her empire (formerly known as our living room).
When someone puts something disagreeable in her ears or mouth, she most certainly will not forgive and forget. The perpetrator has to make his or her way back to being tolerated by offering gifts (like a really big leaf) or candy (liver flavoured preferred).


The funny thing is that my boyfriend seems to get along better with Donder, and I myself am better friends with Bliksem. Go figure ;)

Crazy broad

So my boyfriend's newest pet name for me is 'gek wijf', which translates roughly as 'crazy broad'.

He calls me this at both logical occasions as well as completely random moments. Contrary to what you would think, he actually looks at me with great affection when he calls me a crazy broad.

Even weirder than that; I like this new pet name. It's proof that he finds me funny, at least at times. I'd like to consider myself a person with a well developed sense of humor. Plus, I'm not one of those girls who just likes to laugh about my boyfriend's jokes, I actually like to make him laugh once in a while, too.

So that's why I've decided to consider my new alias as an honorary title.

Added bonus: he doesn't call me 'smurf' as much as he used to. It sound sort of cute at first, but after a while the joke sort of looses strength. ("I know, I know, I'm short!)

Stage fright's a bastard

Stage fright really is a sneaky little bastard.

In a couple of days, my band Beyond Violet is supposed to go on stage for the first time. There's just on little problem: my vocal chords decided they weren't up for it and quit working.

I've had almost no voice for over a week now, and it's starting to get on my nerves pretty bad.
It seems stress can impact your body in many ways, and in my case, this time it felt like messing things up for me.

Having no voice sucks for a couple of reasons.
1. I can't sing. It isn't until you can't sing that you realize how much you do sing all day long.
2. I can't talk. I'm a journalist for cryin' out loud.
3. Freaking out over not being able to sing with an important gig coming up, makes my throat tense up even more. Which can't be good...
4. People can't seem to leave me alone. I tell them I can't talk, but almost every single person that calls is like "Oh right, well could you just tell me about this one thing blablabla"

Which is why stage fright is such a sneaky bastard. It's the deadliest link in this vicious cycle I'm trapped in. Being nervous is bad for the voice, it can make you loose your voice, and when you've gone hoarse, you get even more nervous, which doesn't help getting better.

The advice I get from fellow musicians is to not sing, talk or even whisper, eat loads of honey, drink tea and most of all to chill out. It just so happens that I can do all of the above, but the chilling out part... well, let's just say this is a real test of character for me.

Picture: Beyond Violet by Fabio Valiante

The Art of doing absolutely Nothing

As a teenager, I had perfected it to a form of art: doing absolutely nothing but watching tv or reading a book for hours and hours and hours on end.

The last couple of years, however, my hours of just 'being there' and nothing else, have drastically diminished. Jobs, a house that needs cleaning, groceries that need to be bought and things like that obviously need to be done when living in 'grown up land' are partially to blame. But there's more.

Friendships, for instance, were a lot easier to maintain when I was still in school. There's no better way to see your friends every day when they're taking the same classes at the same school or university.

Nowadays, trying to get together with a friend involves a lot of emails, texts or phonecalls before a date, time and place can be determined. Those who become parents almost always slowly fade, until only heard from by means of christmas cards.

When in a relationship, like me, there's one more complication to your social life. Having a significant other also means that you get an extra family. For free!

You'll have to pay dearly for it, though. Not in euro's or dollars, but in time. Because all of a sudden, there's more birthdays, wedding aniversaries and other family events to attend. On average, about twice as many, I reckon.

And ofcourse, being an adult simply cannot mean becoming a drag. At least, not in my book. So I go to concerts and parties, making a huge fuss about the right dress, hair and make up. Invite friends over for home made dinners. Demand romantic evenings with my boyfriend. And let's not forget, every thursday evening I live my rockstar dream, rehearsing with my band.

You can imagine that sometimes I long for the days when I could lie on my parent's couch, watching Oprah or some cartoon, perfectly happy doing absolutely nothing useful.

I guess the thing is, that I could always rest easy, knowing that my future would be filled with a great job, great friends, great parties and great music. The problem is that the future my 16 year old self saw is now my present. The future is hard work!

Giving my heels the boot

For the last ten years - minimum - my feet have been subject to severe torture on account of my refusal to not wear heels.

Given the fact that I'm a Dutch girl, I'm not very tall: 1.68 meters, or about5.5 feet. Sadly, most of that length consists of torso, not leg. Ergo: since I was 18, I've been wearing heels. Mostly high heeled boots, but also pumps, peeptoes and all of the other gorgeous but painful footware out there.

Recently, we went to the zoo with some friends. Because I didn't want to uncomfortably try to rest my feet every 5 minutes by sitting on the small walls enclosing the animals' habitats, I bravely decided to go stumpy legged for a day. So I put on the sneakers I normally only wear in the gym.

What a fine day it was! I felt like I could keep on walking all day. While driving back I even sort of missed the burning sensation I normally would have had after a day in the zoo. Or mall. Or at work. Or wherever. I would even wear heels to the beach. For real.

The zoo was about a week ago now. The sneakers have barely been off my feet. It's a shame I'll have to get back to wearing high heeled shoes again.

Because in the end, pretending not to have short legs beats comfort's ass everytime.

(Picture by tcindustry.com)

It's in the little things

Sometimes it doesn't take much to remember why life can be pretty sweet. It's the little moments of uncomplicated happiness that make it worthwhile.

The last couple of days, I've had quite a few of these happy little things happen to me. Here's my top three:

3. Driving up to my house after work, where I see my boyfriend rolling the emptied trash bin back to the house. Without me asking him to.

2. Opening the back door to throw away an empty muesli box in that same bin in the backyard, to find myself part of a true Disney-moment: ridiculously colorful flowers, a lovely spring scent in the air and tons of bird singing their little hears out.

3. Taking the freshly washed towels out of the dryer, and holding each and every warm and clean smelling towel to my face before folding it.

Simple, but very very effective.

Hallelujah, Lisa!

Lisa Hordijk is a 21-year old Dutch girl blessed with a powerful and beautiful voice, full of character. She just won the Dutch talent show X-Factor. A minor miracle indeed. I think it is the first time someone who can really, truly sing won a show like that. Yay! Go Lisa!

Now Lisa is not stick thin. On the contrary, she's a big girl.

One of the X-Factor judges, record label owner Stacey Rookhuizen, managed to make my skin crawl with just one incredibly stupid remark. I'm sure the little twig didn't mean to, and I'm curious whether I'm the only one who picked it up.

Here goes. Here's what she said: "Lisa, you're an example to so many ... girls." She literally paused before the word 'girls'. She did!

Maybe it's my personal agression towards the ridiculously thin, but I can't help to think that what she really wanted to say was "You show other fat girls that they cán be popular."

Lisa only flinched for a nanosecond. In that nanosecond she still gave the twig a killer look of death though. Or maybe that was my imagination.

The thing is: who cares. It's so great that such an impressive voice will now be heard. I actually bought the mp3 of Lisa's first single, a cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. It's one youtube already, ofcourse:

Thin people: listen up

Thin people like to tell me what I should do to loose weight. As if I don't know.

Just yesterday, I told someone that I needed to loose about 10 pounds if I ever want to fit in a beautiful pair of black pants I once bought in a moment of overconfidence. This someone has the figure of a supermodel. "Well", she replied happily, "you just need to eat right. Have a good breakfast and...."

As if I don't know, haha. I'm not huge or anything, but definitaly NOT shaped like a supermodel. More like a woman Rubens would paint, the only difference being that my boobs do match my butt. And ofcourse, I have tried to get the body of a supermodel. I can tell you exactly what to do to loose weight.

I have lost weight. Pounds and pounds and pounds. And always gained them back. This has two reasons:

1. 'Bad' genes. My grandmothers are both blessed with a stout figure, most of the women in my father's family have huuuuuuge derrières.
2. I looooove food. I love eating it, I love being in the kitchen.

Actually, my eating habits are not at all bad, I'd like to believe. Plenty of fruit, vegetables, grains and loads of variation. Allright, and an extra spoonful of mayonaise with my french fries, on occasion. But my diet looks so much more healthy than some of my skinny friends'. One of them just doesn't eat for a couple of days if she gains half a kilo.

So please, you lovely looking skinny ladies, don't judge. There's no skinny person inside of me trying to get out, there's a Rubenesque woman feeling trapped inside when I'm going through a skinnier phase. Believe you me.

What the hell are those soccer hooligans thinking? It seems to me that calling the rival camp of idiots on their cell phones to meet in some pour guy's bar or in some town where people are trying to sleep is nothing short of the poorest excuse to have a war éver.

No, I don't understand sports. Yes, I am a woman. If men enjoy watching other men (in shorts!) running around on a field while chasing a little black and white ball: fine with me. It keeps you fit. I like my men to be in shape. No problems so far.

But when it comes to men using a soccer team as a replacement of their own identity, as I have witnessed them do, I just get sad and discouraged about the fate of mankind. Grown men with tattoos of 'their' soccer team, who are nervous about the next game days in advance and heartbroken when their team loses. I don't get it. I just really, really don't.

To me, it is the most unattractive thing in the whole world if a man lacks an identity of his own in such a way that he just adopts the identity of a sports team. Or that of a political party, corporation or band.

But the epitomy of sad is when he combines this lack of self with an overdose of testosterone, and invents a little war between 'his' team and the other. All in order to feel like a man for once.

It just makes me sad.

Spongebobbing

There's a Spongebob-episode in which Spongebob has to study for an exam. All he does, however, is think of reasons not to study. All of a sudden, his kitchen needs immediate cleaning. Or his pet snail Gary needs a new bowl of food. Stat!

This has led to a new verb we use at home: 'Spongebobbing'. If it were in the dictionary, it would say something like 'to procrastinate doing what truly needs to be done urgently by imagening other stuff that needs to be done even more urgently.'

I'll give you one lucky guess as to what I'm doing right now... Bingo! Although, in the office, there's no pet snail, no kitchen or such things, there's enough I can think of that is easier and more fun than doing what I'm supposed to be doing right now.

Like writing a new blog. Checking my hotmail, gmail, myspace, facebook and any other email or networkingwebsite I can think of. By calling my boyfriend to whine about how I'm spongebobbing my day away. Etcetera ad infinitum.

*Sigh* OK fine, I'll get to work!

The horror of buying pants

A horrible experience every single time: buying a new pair of pants or jeans. Especially with a butt like mine.

About a year and a half ago, I went into a local store to buy something very basic, let's say a t-shirt or something. While skimming through the racks of clothing, I came across a pair of jeans that looked kinda nice. Wearily, I went to try them on. Miraculously, it fit!

The girl behind the counter must have been happy with me, because not only did I buy a t-shirt, I left the store with 2 identical pairs of jeans.

Normally, for me, buying jeans means trying on about 20 pairs, a lot of cursing, swearing not to eat a single scrap of food ever again and occasionally even some tears.

So you can imagine why, when finally finding a pair that fits, I bought 2.

Here comes the bad part: both pairs are now in jeans heaven. They were totally worn down, and I can't possibly get away with wearing them anymore. Where's the 1990's when you need them?!

If grunge were still 'happening', I wouldn't have to go through the horror of realizing that the time has come to go out, keep my head up high and walk into a store to ask the size 0 girl for a jeans in my size.

Who am I kidding? Chances are that I'm going to order a stack of denim online, choose the one that looks the least bad, and send the rest back. Thank goodness for online H&M!

Sakura, baby!

Although I had been planning to get a tattoo since I was about 12 years old, it was still quite the shocker when the tattoo-artist I had 'chosen' texted me last monday. He'd had a cancellation, and was therefor able to do my tattoo the next day!

My tuesday was one of total terror. My stomach hurt all day long, because I was soooooo nervous. Was I ready for this? Was I making a huge mistake?

The thing is: all the tattoo-designs I drew for myself in the past decade or so, I kept in a drawer for about three months. My deal with myself was, that if I still liked it three months later, I'd get tattood.

Ofcourse, I never did still like what I saw when I opened the drawer again.

But the cherry blossom always struck me as beautiful, mainly because of it's double symbolism. In China, the cherry blossom is a symbol of female beauty. In Japan, it symbolizes how sweet but short life is. A very pretty alternative to the European memento mori-pictures.

So for the last year or so, I've been thinking about getting these pretty flowers. Not the toughest tattoo, but it suits me. Since I was a little girl, I could not understand why some people throw their lives away, seemingly without realizing that you only have one - mortal - life.

So I took my sketches to the tattoo shop. Before I realized it, three sakura flowers were on my back. I love them!

Henhouse

Sometimes I truly wonder if I really do qualify as a woman. The habits of my fellow women often make my skin crawl with horror and amazement.

I went to the gym last night. Hadn't been for a week and a half, on account of my parents moving. Hauling big cupboards and about a million boxes counts as exercise in my book.

So I honestly had to drag my but to the gym. After about an hour of cardio, I actually felt quite good about myself.

Standing under the shower, I heard that a lot of women were coming into the locker room. It sounded like they were just pleasantly chatting.

Boy, was I wrong. Coming out of the shower, trying to dry my feet whilst skipping over to my bag, I suddenly got overwhelmed by the sound of at least ten grown women talking loudly about their mothers in law, stomach cramps, kids, itching big toes, husbands and other topics. All of this intertwined with the latest gossip.

I felt like a big, fat juicy caterpillar with a headache, trying to get out of the henhouse unnoticed as soon as possible.

No such luck. Mistakingly taking me to be one of them, the women tried to engage me in their clucking. 'What did you do? Did ya take a body combat class? Or did ya just finish the spinning class? Oh, you don't like spinning? You really should try! It's so great for your thighs. I used to be a big girl but...'

Smiling as sweetly as I possibly could, I got dressed as fast as I could. My head was throbbing because of all the high, loud shrieking voices in the small room. 'Well, have a nice evening. Bye now', I mumbled, slowly backing away. 'Bye!' the women exclaimed in one single, terrifying voice.

Call me Bob from now on...

Image (c) Dreamworks