Categories for My story

Eight years ago i started this blog. I update it five updates a week. A maximum of five weeks of holiday a year. I have sold my house and lived on the proceeds for the remainder of the time. The last two years i moved from room to room. The last half year i lived in the house i live in now. For one more week. My money is running out. I have enough only for the next two months.

I am not crazy. I hope so anyway! I acted like this for a specific reason. Truth be told, this process is lasting longer than i expected. Now it is coming to a crunch time. The moment of truth. The point of no return.

I feel i need to pick a public life or a solitary life. That is not true of course, i could pick from a multitude of lives. A life in which i work, a life in which i protest against the current working climate. I could pick anything i want.

But what do i want? I could fall in love. I can sing songs. I will keep on working here. Photographs, dances, write columns, drawings. Or i stay in the hidden depths. Keep on working on myself. Until the day i die.

I just want to mean something to the world. But all i seem to do is loosing everything.

Am i fooling myself with these thoughts?

But what is the alternative? Do we all come in this world with no reason behind it, no story to tell. All a part of the same machinery. The capitalistic neoliberal hyper machine which is fragmenting the stories away from us. Is that it?

I don’t believe that.

What do i really really want? I would love to fall in love with somebody. Somebody who reminds me of me, but also entirely different. Somebody who leads his life as i do, with respect and attention to everything surrounding him.

But this post is not about him, it is about me. I am still waiting for someone to pick me up from this life. And that is not happening. It is as simple as that. I need to get out myself. It is no option anymore to live silently.

I need to quiet myself down, find some rest within myself. The past few days i have been thinking about this post. I didn’t write anything down. Today i feel a bit empty. But what i want to write is on the edge of my mind. I just need to get there.

Last Saturday at the market we had a talk about my situation. I said i didn’t want to get money from the Dutch government. But as one person said, it is impossible to live in the Netherlands without any money. Sharing money is bound by many rules. One example: someone helped another person out by giving her weekly groceries. Once this was discovered the person had to pay back around 10.000 euros. This was finally lowered to 2800 euros by a judge.

I did try and get social security, around four and a half years ago. They wanted to get me to work, so i said no. Around six months after i went to the municipality i sold my house.

So here i am. Almost out of money. Filled with despair some of the time. But not always. This past week i felt really good. Happy. Nervous. I have given myself one more week to see if i can make this website work for me. This is the last post of this week. And i don’t know if i can make it!

Earlier this week i felt so sure about what i was going to write. The bit above about the system in the Netherlands was part of it. But the rest i simply have forgotten. Of course this means it wasn’t a important part. I need to learn to wait until it is clear to me what i want to say.

In the end i want to have peace with all the outcomes. If i need to get a job, if i need to get social security, if i do become world famous. Whatever. Have peace.

I want to stick to the way i live my life right now. Calm. Peaceful. Thinking. Sometimes an upheaval, like last weeks thinking about the Ukrainian – Russian war. About which i am still not sure. I don’t like either party, the West or the East. But this post is not about this war – it is about me. I still hope i will find a place for myself here on this earth. I haven’t found it yet.

My life lately has been difficult. I am scared. My future lack of money, my future descent into nothingness. So it seems. But i am also elated, joyful, happy. I trust myself and my work. They will save me.

I hope.

Today, Thursday, i got out of bed around a quarter to five in the morning. Yesterday evening i felt so happy. It was hard to contain.

I’m tired. But it will get better. Over the past few weeks.

Salute!

I live in this world which is already made up: houses which are build a hundred years ago, streets which are made a hundred years ago. I live in this little piece of land, the Netherlands, the Low Countries. In this world, with those mighty big cities: New York, Shanghai, Delhi, Mexico City, Tokyo. With these suburbs, ghettos, slums in them and around them. People fleeing into the cities, trying to find a way to survive this world. This complacent world going ahead on its course not aware of anything that goes wrong. The insects and fish and animals which are becoming extinct each and every day: 150 species each day. Each single day.

And i am sitting here on this piece of the world, the Netherlands. It is icy cold. You need to work work work to get some money money money to live your life life life as good as you can imagine wish dream. People are happy happy happy here, or so they say.

I try to manage my life here. But my money money money is slowly running out. I still live officially in my old house, i get my post there. There still isn’t anyone else living there, strangely enough. But this will not last forever.

I have these scary thoughts and feelings, but i don’t let them take over me. I want a life worth living. Scary thoughts are part of the life i want. It can all go wrong. Of course!

Stand tall.

Be proud.

Be confident.

I will make mistakes. Of course. But it is not the end of my life. Not there yet.

I am born on 26 February 1964 in Vlaardingen, a small town close to Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

My first memory is a funny one. It was a remembrance dream i had when i was around twenty of a moment way back in time, when i was around one and a half. There was a photograph taken of me by my father. While i was turned towards my mother she pointed to somebody behind me and i turned back. Click. That photograph is real. That i lost it doesn’t matter, i know it is really taken on that warm day in 1965.

That is my first real memory, in which i felt alive, feeling the stones beneath my hands, the warmth of them, the happiness i felt at the time, even though in the photo i look kinda grumpy.

On my way walking to kindergarten school there was a transformation house with a skull on the door. I always walked meters around that door, or i walked to the other side of the road. I also remember walking to the house my mother worked at between kindergarten and the park.

I grew up.

I learned to control my inner feelings. I did go to Technical University and studied Industrial Design, but halfway i decided i was gonna go to art school. I enjoyed that. After school i organized an exhibition together with a friend. I learned a lot, but it wasn’t my thing. After a couple of years i decided i wanted to go and work. For five years i worked at a printer. I learned so much there. About work, about people. The mistakes i made there are a lifelong lesson. Then i was finished there, i walked away. To another job. Which lasted around 10 years, well, with a job in London in between. That was fun, to be asked to work somewhere based on what was seen on my website. Not that it was any good, but still.

In 2010 the work stopped and i went freelance for around five years.

In 2014 i stopped working freelance. I got an epiphany. I had to go back to my website and work on it. I felt it in my heart and soul. There was no way i could turn my back on this. For eight years i had stopped working on it, but now i had to go back and work work work!

And now i’m here. So many years older. Fifty seven years. And i still can not let go of it. I am still living of the money i got from selling my house, which will last me a couple of months more. And against all odds, i’m still not giving up.

This is my final written post for this year. Tomorrow i will post a drawing, however finished it is.

The first post of 2022 will be 3 January.

Enjoy your time.

Salute!

Around 2006, 2007, i stopped seeing my old friends. It was not an anti move, more a too tired to continue to see them one. Some had moved out of town, some others had gotten children, some had gotten a relationship. I felt tired of continuing to try to connect with anyone. I huddled inside and played world of warcraft. Once around 2010, 2011 i met an old friend in the center of town. I almost cried then while we talked. It had gotten to me.

Over the next four or five years me and my old friends met a couple of times. I ate with someone, i came on their allotment, i visited their studio, i stayed over for a weekend. But it didn’t continue. It wasn’t the same, not anymore. We had drifted apart.

I was on the other side of wanting to have friends. I had crossed over. I was feeling good on my own now. Which i didn’t do while i was younger, before 2006, at least not all the time. I felt happier on my own, cheerful even.

Now i have some friends connected to certain environments. Some are friends from the garden. I enjoy seeing them, talking with them. Others are friends from the market. Each Saturday i visit the market around 11 and stay there for two to three hours. We chat about all sorts of things. I usually eat something there, mussels or haring or – eek! – some chips.

But they are not best friends. I am not sure i will ever get a best friend. Maybe that time is past, maybe i have grown up too much to be able to get a new best friend. Even though i do meet new people enough. I am open enough to talk to people i meet and chat about all sorts of things.

I don’t know where and with whom my future lies. I do hope it is somewhere in a nice place.

I wish! 🙂