It's been a year!

When I left home today, I was going to find some peaceful spot in the downtown and a cup of coffee, so I could focus on perfectioning my job application. I ended up cooking delicious Thai food and drinking wine with two strangers. You know, strangers who become your friends in a split of seconds, because something just clicks and suddenly you realize that it's almost midnight and you are passionately discussing about rockabilly skirts and Prussian doctors. That's the magic of CouchSurfing I guess.

I found them on the steps of church in Plac Zbawiciela. First we were proof-reading my job application and then Cole asked Justyna if I can join them for a dinner. I guess that it's the adult version of "she followed me all the way home, can we keep her?"

When I was leaving the apartment of our lovely host Justyna, I felt something. Maybe I felt it just because I just had a great meal and a decent wine in a brilliant company. Maybe it happened because it was one of those balmy nights, when air smells with magnolia and cherry blossoms and birds are singing like crazy. Maybe it happened because it's Friday night and a colorful crowd was filling the streets. Or maybe it's because of a bottle of cat tranquilizer, that my other CS stranger, Cole, claims to always carry on him (he was a chef, I was just chopping, who knows what he poured into coconut milk). I don't know. But I felt like suddenly everything got to where it belongs. That things are going into the right direction, that I'm young, I'm (I like to think so) pretty, and I have whole life ahead of me. Yay.

This reminded me the last April. The time when I started Ten Awesome Years. I was staying at my friend's apartment, cat-sitting. I was alone and the cat was vicious. I was scared, I was overthinking, I felt like my carefree life ended and like I'm trapped in a life I didn't want. All newspapers were writing about crisis and unemployement, particularly unemployment amongst young people, especially those educated in humanities. I was struggling to keep a relationship that had no chance to survive, I had panic attacks and I was PARALYZED with fear. I was so terrified, that for weeks I was having breathing problems, I felt like there is something constantly sitting on my chest, not letting me take a deep breath. If your body tells you that there's something wrong with your mind, you better take it seriously. In the middle of this I decided, that crap, I'm not gonna live this way. No way. I'm not gonna let stupid newspapers itimidate me, I don't agree on having a low quality life.

I didn't know what to do with my life. I knew what I didn't want to do with my life. I sat down and I wrote down all the things that I wanted to do before I die. And then I thought that since I work well under the time pressure, and a whole life is a terribly long time, I should make it shorter. Like... ten years. Ten awesome  years. And that there is a chance that if I make it public, I'll feel like a looser quitting it at some point. And here we go! After I made a decision to have an awesome life, things started to work again. I owe you guys a brief summary of what has been happening in the past year, but it has to wait till the morning. It's 3:32 am, I'm super sleepy and those goddamn birds are still there, singing like there's no tomorrow.