Author Archives for Ellen

1 July 2025
I’m sitting on a bench in front of a sustainable furniture shop next to Spirit and Gimsel. People are walking, biking, driving by. Today it is warm, the warmest day of the year sofar.
It all looks calm.

I just had lunch at Spirit. While I am writing this someone sat besides me and asked me for money. I said no.

2 July 2025
A warm day once again. Until five o’clock. Then the rain started, with a little bit of thunder and lightning. I put the window to the garden open. Outside it is cooler now.

I just had a talk with my friend and house lord. He is not sure I can stay here until 31 December. It is making me anxious. And it is all my own fault of course. Selling my house just like that. It is difficult. Damn.

4 July 2025
I have this knot inside me. I am thinking about what i will do next, and i do not know. I read. I watch the new season of the Sandman, i play wow, the prepatch for Mists of Pandaria. But it is all just a distraction.

But i keep going on. I don’t let it defeat me. Not yet.

I still haven’t given up. It is tempting though.

6 July 2025
I am still not sure which way is the best to go. I need to go through this anxious feeling i have. Joyfulness is so much nicer!

I walk in town regularly. Twice a week, or more. I look at the people passing me. Most are simply happy shopping. Some are not. Just rushing through town to get what they need. Or think they need. Or whatever.

I sometimes get something i need. Or want. Just this last week i bought an eyeshadow from Kiko’s. 10 Euros. It’s the shiny silver grey photo and the top of this post. I like it.

This week i asked a woman begging for money in town why she was doing it. It was at the supermarket in the center. She said she was from Romania, that she had come here for her children. She had no BSN-number. Begging was the last resort. I didn’t get to hear the full story. Of course not. But i’m happy i talked with her. I gave her two euros. A pittance. I don’t know what to do for them. Apart from donating money to some charity, like the Paulus church here. I might do that.

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Hey, i just did that!

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I made a new friend! Someone i met in the launderette i get to every other week. First we got talking, helping each other with folding our laundry. After two months or so i visited her house, close by. Then we went out for lunch. We talk continuously about all sorts of things, some world stuff, some personal stuff. We now go out for lunch after we met at the launderette. Good!

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My house boss is moving out. He has Parkinson, he is walking badly, very slow and hesitant. I need to find something else in a couple of months. I hope i will find something decent.

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Well that is it for now. I will go back to making weekly updates. I am sorry for the break. It did do me good though.

Salute!

The day the time went ahead one hour. The day i went out for lunch at Donner. As i do usually on Sundays. The day i walked through town, observing people walking by. The day i went to the launderette and got the laundry of my landlord. The day i mopped the floor upstairs.

The sun is shining. Some trees are blooming. The pink blossoms are already fallen down.

The past week i felt not good. The work i do currently is good, yes. But not to my liking. I want to be free. I want to be free to work on my website, to make videos, to photograph, to make drawings. To write about the world.

It is not so.

Yesterday i felt i should give up working. To just leave it behind.

I won’t do that – not suddenly, not without something to go towards.

But it does give me something to think about. For three years i have been doing this work. Just as an in between phase. To learn something. To work for people who need their houses cleaned up.

The past week i thought about my life. My earliest memory which came back to me in a dream. The drawings i made in 1986. The same drawings i gave to Green Gartside in 2016.

My life isn’t a straight line story. I sold my house seven years ago. I felt so stubborn at that time, so determined to make something of my life. So full of this work, here on this website.

I don’t feel the same way. I have changed, my life has changed. The world has changed. Everything is changing the whole time.

But the core of me is still the same. I don’t know what i want to do. I don’t know how to get ahead. To move into a better life for me.

Something in me keeps holding on to the dream i still have. The dream of finding something better, finding someone to love, finding friends with whom i can have talks about the world and the people living in it.

The world feels cold. I hope i can manage to find some warmth. I hope i can manage to make my life worth something more than it does now. To me, my life is all i have.

Salute!