little miss flipping positive

nothing seems to be able to annoy me much anymore. No, let me reformulate - I don't take other people's (negative) reactions personally anymore. Reading Rosenberg's book on nonviolent communication helped. I lent it to Anna, who is full of preconceived ideas against NVC - but that's only because she doesn't know what it is yet. She's on Karlshof right now, and the unexpected positive side-effect of my leaving the book with her is that some people in the collective borrowed the book and are reading it too - which is definitely needed. I think several of the people in the collective are frustrated mainly because they don't express clearly what their needs are and how they can be addressed. But anyway.
I was on karlshof again last weekend, again with Ev. I was looking forward to a bit of time with women, after a week of receiving more male attention than I wanted to take. Didn't quite work out that way, but all the same enjoyed spending all of Saturday outside picking apples with a bunch of other people, tasting all sorts of different apples, and seeing hundreds of geese and ducks fly above our heads. Seeing the birds travel away always brings a little knot in my throat, somehow.

After the network meeting on Sunday, went off with Anna to her former House-project (A Houseproject in German is basically a building that's been taken over by a hord of people who want to live collectively and cheaply - usually also a tad chaotically. A lot of them are legalised squats.) A room will be free there on the women's floor soon, and I chatted a bit with one of the women to see what they were looking for. I'm still thinking about it - living on the women's floor means that I can't really have male guests hanging around in the kitchen there - but there are other floors and other communal spaces in the house to hang out, so that I assume it shouldn't be too much of a problem. And in a way, I feel I need to spend more time with women and would enjoy a social space nearly exclusively for women - at least for a while. The Houseproject is very chaotic - as in: very very. Anna said it would be a good excercise field for nonviolent communication. All of this doesn't necessarily make it sound great to move there, but I don't think it's actually that bad. It's cheap, it's a big mix of lefty people, it's a new experience.

I'm slowly making progress with all the steps I want to take - sent an email today to the personel manager to say I'd reduce my work hours to 60 a month as of 1 January - started making contacts with offices at uni to get my administrative situation all cleared to register for the final thesis in January - have started looking for a cheaper place to stay. And one goal that guides me: last station in Berlin before freedom.