Category: thoughts and feelings

About external affirmation, mercy and how I want to do things

At the time of my last post, I had an healthier perspective on social media than before but something still didn’t feel right. Not only about social media, but about more.

I thought a lot about the craving for affirmation and appreciation by others for myseld. Not only regarding social media but regarding me as a whole. I believe that because of our genes as a highly social species, we just want to appeal to others and being liked. One lonely human without it’s herd is just not that strong against all the sabre-toothed tigers etc. and because of this we have to make sure not to be alone. But things have changed a lot since the times of these sabre-toothed friends and it’s not about survival anymore (for most of the times). In the last weeks I just recognized, why I’m feeling pushed and stressed when I’m doing things: it’s mainly because I want to make it good so that others like it. Not all the time, but it seems to be oscillating more or less around what I’m doing. And if it’s not so present, I’m very easy in some kind of an flow regardless what I’m actually doing and this feeling is the best for me.

Regarding the documentation of my journey, the beautiful photos and pictures, my thoughts and feelings: I will just do it the way I want to do it in the moment I’m doing it and not think much about what others will think about it.

What is more my internet roaming doesn’t work anymore after being EU foreign countries for four months and because of that I’ve to use local sim cards and with my Greek sim card, I can’t publish reels on Instagram anymore because this feature and Instagram music are not available in all countries. Right now I don’t want to use an vpn tool for this reason only. So my favourite feature is not available anymore to me. That made me think again about being controlled, helpless and being at the mercy of these big social media platforms when using their tools. And I came to the same conclusion as last year: I don’t want to be completely dependent from these platforms. There will never be full control over stuff I’m having in the internet, but I just want a bit of it.

Because of that and because I want to write more and longer texts, I’ll post some more on this blog again, I think.

Writing this post had been really much fun and it felt free and just right. I’m loving it.

The photo just shows one of these wonderful dancing and ever changing clouds and I thought it just fits to this post.

Companionship and solitude

This journey is my first real travel or journey I’m doing on my own. Before I never did even holidays alone. I always went with a girlfriend or friends.

Now that I’m on my way for quite some weeks, I must say, that I’m feeling really good in solitude. It feels like I don’t have to care as much as before. Like if a weight got lifted from me or something. Maybe I’ve got a ‘take care of others and feel bad if they are not happy traumata’ or something.

Before I started this journey, I often thought about having some time for myself and not to look what others are needing etc. And that’s exactly what’s happening right now: at the moment I’m just doing what I want. There are no appointments or other people that are wanting something from me. And there are very few worries and other topics of friends and family that I get confronted with. Sometimes that feels really unfamiliar and sometimes I recognise, that I’m searching for the next thing I have to do or worry about. It’s like a background process running and sometimes it gets into the foreground of my mind. When this happens, I need sometime to become clear again, that there is no next thing I have to do and nothing to really worry about.

But until now I didn’t do nothing for more than an hour or so. Most of the time I’m doing something: watching and experiencing these wonderful landscapes, listening to silence, driving, eating, thinking, writing, drawing, making music, messaging or talking with friends or locals, running, biking, cleaning, working on Rosinante, buying groceries etc. In the past I thought about going to an buddhist retreat of silence where you are not allowed to take anything with you and you are not allowed to talk to others. Just meditating, eating, sleeping, repeat. I never did this because it felt somehow not right for me. I thought, that finding a place in nature and staying there for a week or so and just doing my own retreat of silence, eating, sleeping, cooking, repeat would be a better fit for me. I’m wondering if this will ever happen.

Before I started this journey, I made the plan to start this blog to keep me sane. To communicate my thoughts, feeling etc. to some one or no one, just communicating. Until now, this seems to work pretty good.

Apart from my times of solitude I meet new people here and there. Especially here in Albania it’s crazy. Everywhere are super friendly people that start talking and showing stuff etc. More about that in another post.

In Croatia I meet Tino the smart and clever electricity guy from Germany I wrote about. It’s his offroad van you are seeing in the photos of this post. We meet again in Albania and spent some days together talking about all sorts of topics: cars, electricity, offroading, life, Germany, Albania, mindfulness and everything else and we did some crazy offroading tours together in which I learned a lot. This felt absolutely great too and I had a lot if fun. So it seems, that right now I did not become a crazy solitude guy that hates other people and wants to eat them or something like that. I hope, that I will meet more such nice, smart and friendly like Tino on my journey. And I think the chances are looking quite good.

On a stone planet in Croatia and about “feeling driven”

    Now I’m on this hill on a Croatian peninsula right next to the Mediterranean Sea looking at the sea, the mountains, the sky and the sun and feeling like on another planet.
    The track to get here was really cool and offroady and leed to this wonderful place where I think barely anybody goes.
    The sun is shining on the sky is bright. No human made sounds and it’s hard to see anything human made apart from my stuff, Rosinante and myself. Just the sun, the wind and some insects swirling around.

    When I continued my journey this morning, I said to myself that at the next beautiful, remote spot I will stay a bit and live the emptiness of this place and pause. Until now the feeling of being less driven is the biggest change of my mind.

    It’s difficult to explain what I mean by that. Of course many people know about the benefits to do only one thing at a time, to focus on this thing and being aware of it. And I’m a big fan of this too.
    What I mean goes in the same direction but is more about how the perception of the things that I’m doing is changing while I’m doing them.
    After some weeks that I spent with less and less obligations and now that my calendar has no entries apart from birthdates it feels like I have more energy to recognise more about myself.

    For example I have been optimizing something about the diesel heater of Rosinante the other day. I really enjoy this kind of stuff. I love it. And this is important to get: I find it realy exciting and I enjoy doing it.
    After some time I recognized that I was getting faster and kind of impatient. Some how this thing that I love did become more of a burdan then a thing that I enjoy doing. It felt like something else is waiting in some kind of waiting line in my head and tries to get my attention. But I don’t even know what’s on this weird penetrant waiting line and I’m pretty sure that I did not create it. When I started feeling this waiting line suddenly my mind seemed to come up with all sorts of things and put them all on it’s crazy waiting line.
    At those moments I started to feel driven in the past and this could lead to a growing feeling of indisposition and stress. Now this happens only rarely. Most of the time when I’m recognizing the growing waiting line, I stop doing what I’m doing and enter something like a inner monologue.
    Why I’m going faster? Why is the perception of what I’m doing changing? Why am I enjoying my current activity less and less? Does this has to happen?

    In the past weeks I experienced many many of these moments disregarding what I was doing. And I still don’t know why this happens and to be honest: It’s not important to me that I’m understanding why this happens. I’m grateful that I seem to have learned being aware of myself, my mind and the rest of me over the last years and I’m grateful about this new life and what it will trigger in me.
    And when I recognize that I enjoy the thing that I’m doing less and that I start to go faster and something inside of me makes up a waiting line I stop and pause. After a brief moment it feels different again: the enjoyment is back. And if it’s not, I do something different or pause longer.

    In my believing all of this is applicable to many, many small things I’m doing and what is more, for the big things in my life, too.

    For me this process of recognising and changing my mind is absolutely awesome and one of the best things I learned in my life.

    One could say: for you having no appointments etc right now it’s easy to do it this way but if you have a thousand things to do: work, family, friends, household, illness, Covid, money… then it’s not easy. And I think that’s right. Then it’s not that easy. BUT it’s still possible, I’m sure.