turning 3(0)

The evening before, I spent my last hours as a twentysomething cleaning my apartment, washing the dishes and planning my special day.

For my birthday itself, I’d taken the day off from work—a wish that was granted by my team lead to my surprise, since I only started the job a month ago.

I wanted to shower myself with presence and attention.

Make art, work out, buy something nice, wander around.

the morning

I lavishly slept in until 8 am on a Thursday. Upon waking up, I immediately decided against a fully packed day with activities and chose to spoil myself with silence, slowness and solitude.

I did my usual morning routine with tea, journaling and praying. Skimmed through the ‘Vein of Gold’, another creative workbook by Julia Cameron.

A passage about telling our own stories caught my attention.

It reminded me of this post I published some time ago at the beginning of my writing journey. The same yearning for creative expression has been planted into all of us and it is our choice to find an outlet for that yearning through our preferred medium. The way Julia describes this gave me goosebumps.

Writing has been one of my main companions on my spiritual journey. With every word I rewrite the story of everything I know to be true while inventing and living out new stories.

the gym

I arrived at the gym shortly before noon, later than I expected. Especially in Berlin these days, I’m learning that being late is actually being right on time. How many times have I found myself in an exciting elevator conversation with a colleague I haven’t met before, just because I was a few minutes later than planned.

Today was no exception. When I arrived at the functional training area to start my calisthenics session, I noticed a woman equipped with resistance bands, weight belt and chalk. I immediately approached her, asking if it was her own equipment since I couldn’t find them stored anywhere at the gym. She kindly replied she partly borrowed them at the reception, partly brought herself, but that I could use what I needed.

I gratefully accepted and over the course of the next 1.5 hours we continued chatting, exchanging skill tips, hyped about our shared calisthenics passion. It’s rare to find women in the space who really take it seriously. We both wanted to meet again to work out together and she shared about a calisthenics group she would like to invite me to.

Meeting her was a wonderful gift, given the fact that I was looking for likeminded people in the Berlin cali scene anyways.

the kinky store

On my 18th birthday I went on a city trip to the Netherlands and bought myself some nice lingerie. To this day, those are the most expensive pieces I own.

On my 30th birthday today, after the gym session I found myself in a kinky store.

Is feeling sexy and comfortable in your own body sort of a rite of passage?
I absolutely think so.

There will be a festival-themed summer party from work the next day, and I still needed an outfit.

I blame the energy of the city for this, but I was longing black, glitter and extravagant. Something experimental, out of my personal comfort zone. Very basic Berlin, I know.

In the party invitation by HR they encouraged people to go all in with their outfit choices.

‘Do you have something nice, that’s still safe for work?’, I asked the sales person who opened the door to the underground store for me.

‘Follow me’, she said.

In the following hour I bombarded her unapologetically about all the products they had in store and she came to my changing room about 20 times to hand me new pieces, with the patience of an angel and a sweet smile.

Rave music blasted in the background and I got completely lost in the world of leather, vinyl and mesh.

In the end I bought a cute body with a sewn-in choker, gorgeous cutouts on the side, a long mesh skirt and a mesh top to cover up some skin.

(It probably won’t come as a surprise to you, if I told you that out of the 100 guests the next day, I was the only one with a slightly more spicy outfit—even though, there were colorful or skin revealing choices. Most people wore what they’d wear in the office. I felt embarrassed in the beginning, and didn’t take off my long blouse for the rest of the evening. However, I loved my glitter make up and my hair tied into two pigtails.)

There will be plenty of other opportunities to wear and show the outfit shamelessly in the future.

the evening

I ended my day with delicious Moroccan food and a short stroll around Tempelhofer Feld. The inoperative runway has sparked my curiosity for a long time, but the windy weather followed by rain wasn’t the ideal condition to explore, so I went back home soon.

I read through some birthday messages, grateful that without social media a few friends would still remember me and had a short call with dad. Mom sent me a long email written in Chinese and I already teared up by reading the first lines and postponed the rest to another day, especially because I’d need more time with translation.

my blog turns 3!

Happy 3rd birthday to my blog! 🎉

Unfortunately, my first ever blog entry got lost during the move last year, but I still have hope to find it one day. It was a very simple ‘omg, I’m writing my first blog post’ and I remember spending hours on the right color palette and WordPress theme.

I learned so much in the past three years of my blogging journey, gained a lot of confidence in my voice and became clearer in what I want to express vs. what I think people want to read.

From a commercial point of view, you could say that the hundreds of hours (maybe even thousand at this point?) invested in this blog has been a waste of resources, because by standard business metrics it is far from successful.

But holy sht have I grown. Writing into the void has been the best practice so far. Alongside not scrolling on social media anymore, having no one to compare myself to and creating focus hours where I’m completely alone with my own thoughts.

My capability to independently think and creatively combine dots has increased immensely.

I haven’t created even 1% of what I imagined I’d create and am somewhat constantly dissatisfied with my blog, but still, I’m very happy that I started in the first place and have shown up consistently over the past years.

With every post, I’m getting closer to my unique expression, my style, and I’m determined more than ever to keep creating and staying true to myself.