Preparing my departure

I've been working where I work for close to four years now, and spent about three of those years pestering about work, and the last two years really wishing I didn't have to go there anymore. My feelings evolved between boredom, bitterness, anger and indifference. When I got back to work this week after 10 days of sick leave, my first thought as I switched my computer on and sat down was "I should quit".
Pause.
"Oh. I already have. Damn. Two more months. Sigh..."
I've spent a lot of the moments when I felt most bitter about work drafting stingy departure speeches that would have been held on the little going away snack and drink gathering workers leaving often organise. The bitterness has long left me, but my desire to send in a last message to this bunch of senseless workaholics has increased over the past weeks - I guess in an attempt to show 9-to-19 office workers who perpetuate busy work as a way of life that there is another way of leading a life, while they still think I am one of them (one of us, one of us!)

And so, this is my draft message to all my lovely co-workers and my boss - which I will send only on my last week.

I too go along with the long series of fluctuation mails and loudly and joyfully announce my last day in the office.

I have spent exactly four years here, and in those four years I have changed a lot - which is why I couldn't imagine staying here any longer. My urge to gradually bring my life in line with my principles and priorities (non-hierarchical structures, a lifestyle compatible with the environment, social justice, a slower rhythm and personal development) resulted in me not being able to spend 8 hours in an office, wasting up paper and energy, producing politically uncritical reports, and with the prospect of becoming a researcher and flying round to conferences with "important bureaucrats" - all in the name of the environment.

Of course I am grateful that the company financially enabled me to study, and I learned a lot in terms of precision and work planning. I also developed friendships over the years, which probably held me longer here than I wanted it.

And what will I do next? I will pack up my rucksack again and hitch from collective farm to farm, learn a lot about earth and straw bale building techniques, but also travel east (for the first time!) and document with a friend anticapitalist political struggles (this should result in a book with photos and texts). I will probably never again work for a salary, I actually need very little money to finance myself (solidarity and collective self-organisation greatly reduce commercial needs, and the rest can be covered by punctual translations. I've probably done enough money-work for the rest of the year!)

So then, off I go into a life of self-determination without consumerist slavery and busy work as a way of life!
To those who are staying: I hope you really are at the right place for you.

The original is in German, which has all these nice concepts for which finding a translation is difficult. But nevermind. Compared to the soapy emails quitting co-workers usually send around (Thank you for the lovely team work, I hope quitting was a good decision, I am so sad to leave behind such great co-workers...), it might give a pleasant change. Heehee.

A project

I'm back on my feet now, if a little skinnier at least free of pain and fever and teeth marks on my tongue. And March has disappeared without me taking any notice of it, bed-ridden that I was. So now I'm confused and searching for my occupations again, but those will quickly knock on my door.

I'll be back "on the roads" from June onwards again - or at least I'll leave the city and be on farms or wherever. This time, the trip is open-ended, seeing as I've no job to force me to come back. But as much as I am eager to go back wandering up and down the roads of Europe, I felt like the aim of my trip this time was missing. Last time, I was eager to get to know collective farms, their places, their people, and find out whether I could imagine living in collective structures on the countryside.
This time... I want to go back to these places of course, as many individuals have become friends. But this isn't enough for a trip. I also want to learn a lot about strawbale and earth houses. But this still doesn't seem to be enough. I needed a Project. Something Poh-lee-tik-all.
One vague idea I had was to track down and portrait the political struggles in the places I would end up in. I meant to say, the list of places to visit is long. Way too long. It includes places in Germany, Austria, the Ukraine, Hungary, Italy, France (and as if this weren't enough, my aunt reminded me of a really interesting-sounding place in England). In any case, I tell Johannes about my vague idea and my grumble, and all of a sudden, there is A Project, and we start jumbling ideas together "that sounds cool... just finding out about the struggles will be plenty of work in itself... you make the photos... I write the texts... and we can apply for a grant... a grant? wow, yeah... and then what do we do...? a book? yeah, a book. And an exhibition? Cool ey... Butbutbut... what do we focus on..? and there are too many places, man, we need time... well whatever, if need be we'll take six months... yeah, six months... 'K! I start writing up the project!... Yeah, and I'll look up grant options!... Good! talk to you later!"

I look back to my last trip and remember that then already I would have liked to document the people I met -
Christophe, his battered face, long black hair and twig of a body, who's been living on the road for the past 15 years, wandering from farm to farm and hitch-hiking, after having liberated himself from the slavery of his job, his flat, his car (and, I should also add to be faithful to his list: his girlfriend).

Anna, who has become a close friend, shaved head of an Italian who set off about a year ago to eventually start her own collective project in Italy - but before she finds the right moment for that, also wanders from farm to farm and throws herself entirely in the work, absorbing all the knowledge she can about plants, herbs, gardening and horticulture, bees and honey, or even covering a roof as we end up on one one afternoon, and healing massages as she finds her way into an oriental healer's practice over the winter.

Morgan, genius fool hitching from Scotland to British Columbia, Canada, who learned the medicinal and nourishing properties of herbs, flowers, tree leaves and bark, pitched his hammock tent up in trees, learned how to make natural stoves, and drew portraits of all the people who took him on when hitching, getting each person's views on environmental issues by starting up conversations about the weather.

So many travelers, people who have freed themselves from conventions, external expectations, money worries, time constraints. Incarnations of freedom and radicalism, environmental and political conscience. Those would have been the portraits I would have made last year.

This year, if the two of us are traveling together, there will be less random and intense meetings of the kind - but there will be different encounters, and more work on how to place these encounters in a context. I expect, at least. And a documentation of sorts - not just a "would". It's exciting.

unusually weak health

Some germ or bacteria or virus has befallen me to never leave me again. Or at least it feels this way, as I've been on sick leave on and off for the last three weeks. I have spent the last nights waking every half hour, feverishly and feebly wandering to the bathroom to cool my face and tonsils down and ease the pain, getting a little sleep before being woken up again by the pain and fever. I could not speak for two days - I could hardly open my mouth (so that my tongue now has an imprint of my teeth!) and my vocal cords could hardly be moved.

I even had some form of delirium, waking at five in the morning and thinking I HAD to manage to drink because otherwise the freedom of Iran and/or the fate of the ring would be endangered (I watched Persepolis recently, and an 80s animated version of Lord of the Rings while sick). I also thought the fact that Johannes wasn't awake at 8 this morning would compromise everything. Everything? In any case we would be too late for the Hannah Arendt translation.

Fever is one big damn nuisance. And not being able to talk, another. And constant pain, a third one. And not being able to cuddle up for comfort because I'm contagious, a fourth. Not to mention the fact that I couldn't eat for two days, and hardly drink for one. My voice has started coming back today but remains feeble, the fever has gone down, but the pain is still there, as are the inability to sleep and the need for diversion of any kind (as this post testifies). I managed to eat a little, but I definitely don't look my best after three days of liquid intake.

But it will come to an end soon. Or so we hope.