A friend updated her Facebook status yesterday saying, ‘Wednesday you can kiss my a**.’ I clicked ‘like’ having felt the same after what was my first not-so-great day in Copenhagen. I could put my mood down to the pouring rain last night, or god forbid, something pre-menstrual, if I wanted to keep it simple. But sitting in the Twin Peaks-inspired, The Log Lady Café (http://sister-ray-says.blogspot.com/2011/03/log-lady.html) this afternoon, drinking in comfort via some ‘relax’ tea served by the lovely Henriette (who shall here-on-after be referred to as, ‘Log Lady’), I scribbled in my notebook and explored what was contributing to my unshakeably sombre mood. I had tried to simply distract myself last night by watching the brilliant Inception, but even that didn’t help. It says something that a film that cerebral failed to take a dent out of RG’s ruminations. And let’s not get started on my dreams!
Firstly, mulling over my usual thoughts at breakfast on what I could do with my day vs what I SHOULD do with my day, I felt the pangs of panic slowly creeping in as my thoughts turned to the reality of living costs here, and what it will take to really get the most out of this place. Less than rational questions such as, “How can I make a huge amount of money, NOW”, did get my brain going. I’ll be honest, the panic really came from watching too many documentaries, which always feed my wanderlust. Less than a month in Copenhagen, I’m fantasising about traveling to Vietnam or diving with manta rays or base-jumping into giant caves (I said fantasising…). In other words, the amazing things I could have spent my money on. So I’m left reminding myself why this option was, and is, right (see blog on fish).
I will eventually need to find a job, but first need to learn some Danish (free lessons starting in July!). Of the few people I’ve met (and it is few, to be fair),even fewer maintain anything like a full-time work schedule of the kind so common, indeed necessary, in London. Shops and cafes are relatively quiet and many people here are struggling to find work. Will I be able to find anyone who'll hire me? Can I get that job as a sandwich girl if I can’t say ‘sandwich’ in Danish!?! Someone slap me.
Unwarranted though it may be at this early stage, my ‘always been working’ disposition suddenly felt panicky, mid-toast. It happens. Thus, I spent the time reminding myself that my preparations will see me through and to have faith that I am not, in fact, screwing myself!
Later in the day, my planned distractions-to-be, proved not to be, as hopes to see one friend fell through somewhat elusively, while plans with another were also mysteriously scuppered. In neither case was there any urgency nor obligation to hold fast, but the dissolving of both plans (when inspiration felt most needed) was, as these things go, mildly disappointing. RG was all dressed up with nowhere to go. Thus, I spent more time reminding myself just how lucky I’ve been to have the people around me that I do.
Meanwhile, a friend from Sweden who was to stay in town for the summer suddenly announced yesterday his immediate departure from Copenhagen, for reasons relating to work. He had been offered a better option in Stockholm so was heading back asap. While I have the utmost respect for people of action who wait not for fortune to shine upon them, but seize opportunity as and when it comes, I am also sad to lose a ‘brother-in-arms’ (we were planning to be running mates). So his summer in Copenhagen is sidelined/stalled/delayed, but he accepted the compromise readily for the sake of another kind of opportunity.
It made me think - could I drop all of this for ‘something better’, for all my planning? At any given time, ‘better’ could be defined in so many different ways – professionally better, geographically, monetarily, meteorologically even… some days one reason sounds more important than another. RG keeps having to put her blinders on and effectively ditch her London-esque impulsiveness, in order to persevere with her singular focus: to write.
To live in a new city, but not get too distracted is a bit of a paradox. But I have to do it if I am break this habit of distractability. As Agatha Christie (who clearly didn’t have a problem completing a book) put it: “I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
I get caught up in the details – watching the colours of the rainbow instead of reaching for the pot of gold - and while that is definitely ‘a grand thing’, it still means I’ve yet to reach my pot of gold. I have failed time and time again to get things done! And that’s at the heart of why I came here. To remove myself from my life’s distractions and do something that matters to me alone. While I crave all the little things that inspire my life – the colours - I can see now how vital it is for me to remember to - for the sake of my own colours - claim my pot of gold, or rather, experience the satisfaction of having claimed it. I suspect I’ll always be inclined to choose the colours over the gold, but now is the time to scratch that ubiquitous itch, if only this once.
I think this is what was underlying my black Wednesday mood. With life starting so immediately here for me, I’m anxious I’ll get swept away again and never finish what I came here to do. There's also that dangerous, underlying hope that one of the small distractions will simply blossom into a pot of gold of its own, but I think it’s a mistake to hope for such things. If it happens, it happens, but the ‘relax’ tea and black Wednesday have steeled my resolve and I’m determined to get what I came here for.
Log Lady noted the many things Copenhagen would ‘add to my rucksack’, that other places would not. She also immediately identified the importance of one’s own personal circumstances when weighing the value of one’s choices/actions. “I can see why you would want to come here”,* she said after I explained where I was from. Thanks Log Lady for the tea and sympathy.
Now, it’s time to do some work.
Random Girl
*Surely, she meant “My log knows why…” (Google Twin Peaks if you don’t get it, geez).
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