It’s warm today. Hot and not really humid like Florida, but still so much worse because it’s not like this is a country where we have AC. I couldn’t do anything I wanted to after coming home from work, could barely stand because it all just suddenly hit me and my body’s never been good with radical temperature changes. I was just laying on the couch, not doing any of those productive things I had planned and felt bad about it. But then I was thinking about how much grace I would’ve had upon myself had I for example been sick. Yet there are so many other situations that actually affect me worse than ‘normal sickness’ but where I don’t allow myself to be excused. I think that for some reason – when analyzing myself or my situations – I look so much inside of me that I generally isolate myself from my circumstances. But we live in our circumstances. We shouldn’t be victims of them, but not acknowledging them leads to self pity in a different way. It’s good to sit down and feel what you feel. Disappointment over something. Fear about something else. We need to know our starting point and own up to ourselves, otherwise we can’t go to where we want to be – or even be where we are.

My friends from Germany came to visit me and we were very cute.

(Had some good days.)

The other day I made a homemade retreat, by basically going up to our cabin in the forest by myself for three days.

It was quite nice and quite not lonely, my friends came to visit (I mean I asked them to) and we went swimming and rowing and drank hot chocolate by the fire.

And then I went hiking. 

I walked with my headphones on most of the time, listening to a new album I’d looked forward to. It’s the kind of thing it’s easy to judge yourself for, like “we’re not supposed to use technology when enjoying nature” or whatever. But we could also just not judge ourselves and have fun and take our headphones off when we feel like it and put them back on when we feel like it.

summer hugs

Tonight I didn’t really feel like going to bed, and didn’t get tired – just more awake – so I saw the sun set and then saw it rise again. It’s 4.37 now and well technicallly the sun is not up, I can just see the gold behind the trees, but the sky is already a light blue. I went jogging a while ago, at like 4. The birds were being so loud. The forest really smelled like forest, the grass like wet grass. Everything was a bit hazy without my glasses, a bit cool toned without the sun, but the bright and clear and lovely. I put on a wool sweater because the time right before the sunrise is always the coldest. The wind still blew through it when I ran, but when I stopped I was wrapped up in the warmth of the forest. We’ll see when I get up tomorrow. I think I’ll just take a nap now, but we’ll see. Goodnight.

(I slept until like noon.)