When I was in school, I dreamed of being an adult, because it seemed to me that then it would be EASIER. At that time, I thought that school was taking up a lot of my free time, because after all, there was homework, tests, midterms, and other exams, and it all had to be combined. I was convinced that once I finished school and college, I would finally have plenty of free time because I wouldn’t have homework or tests. Well, I was wrong, because I didn’t take into account the fatigue after work or the days when you have to stay longer at work, the laundry that has to be put in, the shopping that has to be done, the apartment that has to be cleaned, and the dinner that has to be cooked. My boyfriend would say c’est la vie.

Nevertheless, there is one thing I have been looking forward to and that is inviting friends over, meeting people in general. When I was a little girl, my parents would often go out somewhere with their friends or invite them over, and I loved it. I always imagined that I would do that too! And that’s what I do now 😊

I have a lot of fun inviting friends over for dinner, or for brunch on the weekend, or for coffee and cake! I always think then that this is the mini dream I've been waiting for and wanted to realize in my "adult life".
And for you, what did it look like? As children, did you also have any ideas/expectations of adult life? And did they fit into reality? Let me know in the comments!

It's already been a year since I started working at my job, and I thought that it was a good time to gather my thoughts and maybe write down and share what has happened so far. First - the huge process of learning a foreign language, which caused my ups and downs in terms of feeling integrated in the department but also in terms of creating new relationships. In addition to that, knowing a language also has a huge impact on feeling like a member of a group. During this year, I've had many moments where I felt like an outsider in some situations because I didn't fully understand what was going on.

Secondly, I realized that often relationships at work remain only relationships at work and nothing more. Many times I thought I was forming a new friendship with a colleague at work, then a few days later, I got the feeling that it was all superficial and would rather remain just a work-relationship. I had to get used to this new situation that it is not like in school or college anymore, where you meet new people and want to do something with them, spend time with them, and maybe create lifelong relationships. At work, you often meet people and “leave them at work,” because after work, you have your own world, and often you don't want to bring the people you work with into it.

And finally, it takes some time to get used to work, so it’s actually obvious that all your routines may change or stop existing at all. But at some point, I noticed that I was waiting for that never-coming-perfect moment to get back to my routines - to yoga, to writing, to creating. The truth is that this perfect moment will never come; you just have to start and slowly get back to what you want to get back to. Well, yes, if you did not work before, then you had a lot of time to do what you want, and now working, you have much less time for those things. But if you want to return to sports, or to reading books, or to anything that used to be your routine, then you have to get back to it, without waiting for “that perfect” moment.

I'm curious if some of you here have recently started working, or maybe you've already been working for a good few years, but remember what it was like for you in the beginning. Let me know if you've had similar thoughts as well!

with love

Basia

I've been having a lot of different thoughts lately, and there's a debate going on in my head all the time about life. Since I have these thoughts and need to get them out of my head, I decided that I would just write a post about it and maybe you will find it helpful, interesting, intriguing, or... simple. Whatever they may be, I invite you to a post from a series "pouring the stream of my thoughts onto the keyboard".

Attention please, you weren't expecting this, but life is hard :') sometimes it comes to me as if someone is whispering in my ear, and sometimes it's a bit like being knocked against a wall. I've been on a job search lately, and it suddenly came to me that this is unlikely to be a scenario where I get my dream job overnight, where they offer me super salaries and I can start right away. I sent a dozen emails to various companies and so far most have thanked me. There was a day when I sat down a bit resigned and said to myself "why is this so hard?", to which the answer in my head immediately appeared "no one said it would be easy". But despite the fact that life is difficult and sometimes even hard, it...

I don't mean here blindly pretending that it's ok when it's not. It’s more about smiling a lot when life smiles back at us. By this metaphor, I mean the familiar appreciation of the little things, noticing the developing leaves on the trees, tasting the coffee/tea/fresh breakfast/delicious bread/dark chocolate/chips flavored with green onions... these are such small things, but they really help. Recently, on my way to work, I saw developing buds on the trees and I felt such a wave of joy that I walked halfway with a banana on my face.

Or to be more specific, I choose how I want to feel in a given situation. I can choose whether I want to get entangled in thoughts about what someone thought of me, whether it was very stupid, massively stupid or tragically stupid, whether I am this or that... OR I can choose that "it was, it's gone, so I let it go". Recently I had such a situation at my internship, and at first I took the first path, and when I started to feel unpleasant discomfort in my stomach I had a moment of enlightenment and said to myself "hey, I don't have to feel this way, I can choose another path".

I'm about to make big changes in my life related to moving out and moving in, and I've started to feel stress, some fear and anxiety. At first, the mechanism from last year, when I still didn't know how to handle fear, i.e. "fear = danger = run away immediately," appeared, but after therapy I now know how to deal with the fear and, above all, how to calm the panicking Basia. Fear is normal and it's normal to feel it before new/important/big things. Sometimes it can indicate threatening situations, but most of the time it doesn't, so inhale-exhale and slowly move forward.

All that I have written is already common knowledge, but I have a feeling that we need such reminders, because even if "carpe diem", gratitude, "life sucks but romanticize it" we have already heard somewhere, it is worth refreshing it to ourselves from time to time and relive that delight of discovering this truth anew ;)

Sending you lots of positive vibes and hugs!

with love

Basia

Last year in November I returned to therapy - mainly because of my excessive thinking. I had reached a point where my thoughts were becoming unbearable for me, and the amount of energy I was spending on not-good-enough strategies to throw out these thoughts was exceeding my energy resources. I told myself that this couldn't go on and that this was the moment to ask for help. And this was a very important and necessary decision.

This is my second therapy in my life - the first allowed me to understand that what I thought was wrong with myself, was actually 100% normal and could be so. For that moment it was enough for me, so I finished the therapy. Now, as I wrote earlier, I am working on my thoughts. Overthinking is a problem. Maybe not a psychological disease, but it can make life difficult and have an influence on bad moods and various situations, hence my decision for therapy. Now I'm learning about my mistakes and thought traps, and also how to recognize them and not to get into old patterns.

Although my therapy is not over, I have already learned a few things. Or maybe I should say that I got to know some stuff, learning how to use it in a daily basis is the next step. First of all, I learned that a thought is a thought, not a certainty. There are a lot of types of thoughts, sometimes they can frighten us, surprise us, astonish us or disgust us, but they are only creations of our mind, not reality. They aren’t emotions neither - a thought can generate emotions and some behavior, but in itself it is not an emotion. And even though they come freely to my mind I can still control them. Pushing out my thoughts from my mind is not the best strategy, because they will come back stronger, but choosing whether I want to follow them or not gives better results.

The second thing I've learned is all the thought traps I fall into automatically - catastrophizing the situation, seeing only the negatives, generalizing that if something happens to someone else, the same thing will happen to me. Even though I might appear as an optimistic person - and indeed most of the time I am – my head is full of negative scenarios and the number of them is far greater than the number of optimistic ones. My therapist always asks me to give the worst-case scenario of a given situation, then the best-case scenario, and finally the realistic one, which is somewhere in the middle. And suddenly the situation becomes... easier to understand.

And the last thing I've learned is that change needs a decision - conversations with my therapist give me the knowledge I need to change, but now it's up to me to make the decision to change what I want to change. It takes work and energy plus I need to constantly remind myself of new strategies and aids, which is not that easy. But it is doable.

Therapy is not always easy, but the fact of going to therapy is already a huge stepto your better mental health. Sending hugs to everyone - both those in therapy and those before! And to those who are after, congratulations, because you've come through a great process. Crossing fingers for all of you guys! You got this!

Let’s start at the beginning of this month – I came back from my beautiful vacation and, not gonna lie, it was a shock for me, especially when it comes to weather. Then, the day after I came back, I went to Lodz – the city where I have my studies now. It was a really fast weekend. New beginnings are difficult and so my first days in Lodz were very stressful. I didn’t know the city and I felt like I was on Erasmus again but this time I was still in Poland.

Od początku, chronologicznie – wróciłam z wakacji i przeżyłam szok temperaturowy i pogodowy, plus od razu, kolejnego dnia, wyjeżdżałam do Łodzi. Wyprowadziłam się do miasta, którego w ogóle nie znałam, Początki nie są łatwe, zwłaszcza w zupełnie nowych dla nas miejscach. Czułam się trochę jak na Erasmusie, jedyna różnica była taka, że jednak byłam w Polsce, a nie z granicą.

Let’s be clear guys – new things are terrifying, old things are comfortable. During the first week I felt totally lost. I was coming back to my flat from uni and feeling overwhelmed with everything – even silence was too much for me. Even though I was telling myself that it was okay to feel lost, it was okay to feel scared, I couldn’t let go of those feelings but I knew that they would go away one day.

In the beginning I was counting days to the weekend because I had plans for every weekend – trip to Poznan, trip to Vienna or my boyfriend was coming to see me. But then I realized that I couldn’t discover the city during weeks because of studies and during weekends because of my trips. So Lodz has become ‘a city for studies’ and nothing more so far.

My calendar started to be full of trips – I’ve become a nomad, staying in one place just for a couple of days. It’s not like living with one suitcase but I’m coming back from one trip and just after I'm preparing myself for another. It’s not a big deal but at the same time there’s no place where I can feel like home. It was strange at the beginning but then I said to myself that it took time to get used to this kind of life.

To all of you who decided to take the big step – congrats guys, you’re brave! To all of you who are still struggling – I’m crossing fingers for you, you’re brave enough to do it.

The story of my Erasmus was mentioned a couple of times and I already told you about the impact it had on me, how it was organized and all that stuff. I also talked about international friendships and relationships in general, and today I would like to go deeply into this topic.

To be honest, I was afraid that after Erasmus was over, my friendships would be over too because of the lack of things to talk about. I was afraid that after all I wouldn’t have lots of international relationships. In the end it turned out that my fear was unnecessary, but it doesn’t mean that it is easy to keep the contact, it needs our energy and effort to exist. Is it more difficult to stay in touch with people from abroad than with people from the same country/city? I can’t answer this question, because keeping in touch is in general a thing that needs our effort and we can’t take it for granted.

When it comes to international friendships, it happens that there are thousands of kilometers between us or even time zones but it doesn’t interfere in keeping in touch, it just makes it a little bit more complicated than usual. First of all, we need phone calls. If there's a difference in time zone between you and your foreign friend, make a special appointment for that and precise hours. Spontaneous phone calls aren't a good thing because then we can call somebody… at 2AM by accident.

Second thing is the fact that it’s not easy to go out together, especially when your friend lives in another country. But it doesn’t mean it’s impossible! For example, I go to Berlin for a weekend or three-four days to meet my German friend, who lives in a city near to Berlin, so this kind of trip helps us to meet and spend some time together.

Another aspect is staying in touch. The things I mentioned before are bigger and need to be planned earlier, but you always have a simple chat with your friend. For example, I write to people and ask them what’s up, what are their plans for next days, how they are feeling and all that stuff. It works not only with foreign friends but also with people who we don’t see very often like friends from childhood.

Coworking is the key. Putting energy and taking effort in a relationship in which only one side works for this can become very difficult and too hard. There’s no point in forcing ourselves to keep a relationship that doesn’t work well. Once I heard from my friend that there are people who leave our life to make space for another person who will have a better influence on us and who we create a beautiful relationship with.

I decided to talk about this because recently I met Tina, my German friend and I have to say that for a long time I hadn’t been as happy as I was during our trip! Those meetings and trips are even more exciting when you haven’t seen somebody for a year or more, even though you stayed in touch with this person by chatting. I came up with an idea for this post and then decided to write it to share my thoughts with you hoping it would be helpful for you, no matter if you have foreign friends or not.

with love

Basia