Today some good, good things happened:
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I moved from the desk where I sat for the last weeks (next to my boss Brian) to the desk where Livia sat for the last past months (also next to my boss Brian). I really liked this old desk, but there was an annoying fan right over me which kept me from getting comfortable there. The new desk is more awesome! Because, no fan! The colorful post-its Livia left there reminded me of the huge desk I had as a teenager, and it felt like home. Tomorrow I will put up postcards and images.
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I had a monthly check-in call with the other fellows! I love these calls with the other fellows. They make me so, so happy. They brighten my whole day. They make me smile and whistle for multiple hours after the call.
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I went to my first Tiny Desk concert! Tiny Desk concerts are tiny concerts (3 songs), given by great performers at a desk from one of the music people. NPR employees can attend, for free, and it’s a great break from your daily business. They happen every couple of day, I think. I feel like today’s performance was good-average….but there’s just something about live performances that makes every one magical. Artists are amazing. They just do…art. For me, art is on higher level than the rest of the world, and everybody who brings some of the art stuff down to our real word needs to be admired. Or, as my mother taught me: Always applaud musicians. They deserve it.
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My first thunderstorm in DC! I like it. It’s happening right now. It’s a proper one.
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Aaaand I signed the sublease with my landlord. YEAH.
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Also, today I missed Weimar a lot. Weimar is the city I studied in. 60,000 people, Bauhaus town, academic disneyland. Full with green, wild parks. And terribly small. I lived a 5 minute walk away from the city centre and the cinema. Everybody lived a 5 minute walk away from the city center. And the library. And the ice cream. Ok, 15min walk. 15min meant you lived in the suburbs.
I thought about Weimar a lot lately because of I thought about a) the orange sky in the night and about b) routines.
a) The orange sky is something I never understood when I lived in Weimar. I remember walking home my 20min walk from my friend’s place (who lived in the suburbs) to my place, crossing the entire city center. It was often after midnight, and the sky of this small small town was so bright orange, almost noisy, that it seemed like constant sunset. I stood alone in front of the national theatre and looked up and wondered: “Why is the sky so orange? It’s such a small town, the light pollution must be almost non-existent. I’m supposed to see the milky way!”
But I never saw the milky way in Weimar. And during the coming years I asked a lot of people. Every time the conversation came to speak about light pollution, I said: “Listen, I studied in this small town….”, but they never had an answer.
Until, one day, I met somebody who had the answer for me. “That makes sense,” he said, and he had my full attention. “The clouds reflect the light from the city.” he said. MIND BLOWN I was. So obvious! I had never thought about it that way.
But I do think about it nowadays, a lot. From the windows in my flat I can see many miles, and the sky over these miles is often orange during the night. Now I know why.
b) The second reason why I think about Weimar a lot these days is my routine. During my last semester in Weimar, my schedule looked like that: Get up at 8am and walk to the university. Start working at 9am. Walk to the canteen at 12.20pm, sit on the stairs and wait for my friends until 12.30am, eat with them and be back working at 1.30pm. Work till 6 or 7pm, then have dinner with a friend. Work from 8pm till 11pm (while watching a movie, sometimes). Write a daily blogpost until 11.30pm, walk home, sleep at midnight. Get up at 8am.
Good old times. I liked that schedule a lot. I loved working on my Master’s Thesis. I felt productive. I had lots of success moments. It was great. And I especially liked that I worked on the exact same schedule every day. There were no meetups to attend in the night. Weimar is too small for meetups. All I was doing was working. Aka doing exactly what I loved to do.
Since I’m in Washington I already work far more than I did in Berlin. Which makes sense: I don’t have so many friends yet, who I would normally meet during the nights, or have brunch with on Sunday mornings. I haven’t found so many awesome meetups yet. So I work instead. Which reminds me of Weimar. And which I like. I don’t mind working more here than I did in Berlin. I kind of missed this work-heavy time in Weimar. Maybe DC is my new Weimar.
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Input? 4
Output? 4
Learnings?
Reference books are great because you don’t feel guilty if you don’t read them.
Copy editors are higher than Line Editors and Slots are higher than Copy Editors.
People at NPR are very happy to solve your problems. If you come to them with no problem, but just a plea for data, they don’t know what to do with that. Which makes sense.
7pm is the worst time to go to supermarkets in Columbia Heights. The WORST.
Questions?
What are my interests?