Me, cold turkey and the night

It is funny how sometimes you feel like the tectonic plates of your personality are shifting and your fate is being altered, but it is so hard to say anything that feels as important as the process you're experiencing. Describing it  feels like catching fish with bare hands in a turbulent river and then juggling with it while being attacked by a crocodile at the same time...

Because I recently committed myself to Cold Turkey and my phone is impossible to charge, I decided of just writing here loosely and pretending this is like an "actual" Facebook conversation. Cause the morning Elga thought it's a perfect idea to block all the social and fun homepages till 10 this morning. Good decisions.

I am currently taking a break from reading about ethnopolitical discourses and acculturation and , despite that it is actually starting to get interesting, I kinda realized that this year my research project (GP) is gonna be even tougher than it usually is. This year's research seems like a 3D version of the projects from all the previous years, which means more work in the same amount of not enough time and would usually get me crazy stressed. GP or "gada projekts" translated from Latvian means a year project, by the way, and I have a little less than a month now to write it. 

Which has basically made me lose it every single year except this one. 

Not this year, GP, we're gonna have different fight this year! For a long time I have been more or less overlooking the fact that the goals and results I'm aiming for have harmed my health and well-being, and it all seemed to be temporarily okay - as long as I passed, kept my scholarship, finished studies and so on I ignored anxieties, messed up sleeping patterns, problems with breathing, not paying enough attention to my loved ones and so on. 

Like the time we had to finish several multimedia assignments last year and I hadn't slept for two nights in a row, came home from the final presentation of all the work and still had to do the last stupid assignment while feeling totally drunk and miserable from sleep deprivation. My absolutely favorite person in the world was visiting and not only couldn't I pay attention to her, but I think I was also barely able to talk or understand anything at all.  

Now this didn't come easily. When you finish working for a project you have to present the next day and are left with half an hour for a quick power nap instead of some real slumber the feeling of waking up dead is bad enough, but then there's also this free spirited voice inside stating "this is inhuman, a person should not live like this, you are missing some basic human rights in your life and it sucks that you let this happen!". 

Having the same crazy dedicated attitude as in my home university at the time when the first exam here was announced I was so stressed I got several panic attacks a day. I would be "motivating" myself so much to overcome the increased challenges of studying in a strange new place in different language as successfully as before that the anxiety turned me in a complete wreck from time to time. I would lie on the floor just crying and waiting for the breath to come back and for the panic to end, and sometimes this would take hours. That had literally never happened to me before and I really hope it's never coming back. 

Let me just take a moment to appreciate the way the Swedish education system is designed right now. One big, wonderful difference being that if you don't pass, you have another (free of charge and guilt free-same possibilities for the highest grade) chance to take the exam. This combined with really strong resistance against panicking and worrying has really done wonders for me. 

I appreciate it this much...

Or maybe even a little bit more.

It made me realize that not only panicking and setting success and results higher than well-being was totally unnecessary, it was also unacceptable. No result is ever more valuable than being able to breathe and sleep, and have a sense of self-respect (well, maybe like saving the Earths population of famine all at once forever or providing world piece could be valuable enough. But that is not the point. Nobody does that kinda trades anyway these days.). Grades should  be a byproduct not the central focus of education. I think I'd never come to this conclusion hadn't I been exposed to the clash of cultures and lifestyles Erasmus has provided.

I am siting in my bed with this multi-faceted, difficult, challenging and a little bit annoying quest of a year project, and I am not freaking out. I am calm because I know I am and have been doing the best I could most of the time. Life is happening apart from the main five years goal of finishing uni too, and I am living it to the fullest. It is important to learn new things, take as much as possible from studying, have a degree and hopefully do good with it afterwards. But it has also become clear that it's as important to be healthy, satisfied, strong, loving and ALIVE in the broadest sense possible. It is important to reach goals outside professionally oriented world, such as becoming more accepting, forgiving, confident and grown up. Having a balance I'd like for the people I love to have. Being as good to myself as I'd wish for others.

I realize now that the presentation of this year's research project might be more embarrassing than it usually is. I might get a 7 out of 10 (overachievers will get the horror of this happening). I got a G not a VG in Swedish I already. In the craziest-probably-not-gonna-happen scenario I might lose the funding that allows me to study for free in Latvia because of not meeting the deadline or something. The old me would be scared stiff only thinking about this for a second, but as I write it right now, I am okay. I traded perfection and predictability for some peace of mind, and believe everything is gonna work out just fine. It is probably not going to be as steady all the time and get a bit rockier closer to the deadline(s), but generally I have faith in the future and in myself.

So thank you, Erasmus.