on journaling; process, materials and example pages

[the rough script of my video on journaling to enable you to read up on things or just access the by text, if that’s what you prefer. if you want to see me flip through a bunch of my journals, click here. or here to peak behind the scenes of how my spreads come together through my journaling highlight on instagram. happy journaling! and in case this post inspires you and you feel comfortable sharing, I would love to see the spreads you create, so feel free to tag me in your posts or send me photos through direct messages!]

2022 is going to be my fifth year of journaling, so I wanted to talk a little bit about how i started and what i generally do. just a heads up from the beginning – I don’t bullet journal. i keep a normal calendar on top of this. the kind of journaling i do is more like a creative version of a diary.

How I started – I kept a very random diary that I wrote into on and off when I was about thirteen or fourteen, even earlier than that, but it never stuck. I would pick it up and then not write for six months. my first attempts of the consistent creative journaling that I do now, I made in 2016. I glued down photos and wrote down quotes from books and then kept a little travel diary on my trip to london with my family that year. after that, at the start of 2017 I set the intention to journal about any kind of days that felt special to me from every month with photos and writing. but then school stress got the better of me and I stopped in April. but even over those four months I had already developed a style of journaling that still suits me to this very day.

How I set up my journal – at the start of each month I open a little note on my phone and then over the course of the month I write down things that happened, favorite songs, foods, clothes, things, shows, books – anything that’s important to me in bullet points. I then copy that monthly overview into my journal as the cover page for each month. even with nothing but this list you would already have something quite detailed to look back on. what I do after that page changes all the time. mostly I do more detailed pages on specific things or events from that list: like a diary entry from a specific day with photos or a page with quotes from a book I read or my current playlist. sometimes I just brain dump my thoughts to let go of something that’s bothering or exciting me. I also often glue down tags of things I buy, receipts, photos I took that month which I collect in an album on my phone. I just experiment with different kinds of paper and stationery – literally whatever I come across or am in the mood for. that’s generally what I do. In my last two journals from 2020 and 2021 I also did some things like mood and habit trackers whenever I wanted to or basically any other tracker. sometimes I also make general spreads like writing down a lists of books that I still want to read or buy or writing down goals or resolutions or collecting accomplishments from the whole year on a double page. just go on pinterest or instagram and get inspired a little. the possibilities are genuinely endless. just start with whatever moves or inspired you and experiment around with different things.

a reminder – something that took me a while to learn is to not give up when I don’t have as much time as I would need to get down everything. i’m the kind of perfectionist that is team all or nothing so whenever I didn’t manage to journal about two days that were important to me I would almost certainly want to give up. sometimes now I don’t journal for a month or two or three. life just gets busy like that. but, that doesn’t mean I’m not consistent. I still keep the list of events from each month on my phone and collect photos in an album. sometimes I even make a note in pencil on a page in my journal to remind myself that I wanted to journal about a particular day or event. then when I have the time, I sit down and even if it takes a few weeks or months, I always catch up. I just go through my camera roll and calendar and revisit the events in my memories and get them down when I can. even if it’s only a day or two per month. whatever. just something. be forgiving with yourself. journaling every day if you keep a creative journal like this is highly unrealistic. I never journal every day.

materials I use – I’ve been using the dotted Leuchtturm 1917 hardcover journals in size medium for the past two years. before that i used the squared paper softcover notebooks from moleskine two years in a row. I love them both equally. basically there is no right or wrong to whatever kind of notebook you use. the leuchtturm ones are a bit wider than the moleskine so there is a little more room to the sides and the pages are numbered which I really like. the thickness of the paper isn’t perfect, with both black ink bleeds through a little, but you can only really tell, when you leave the back of a written on page blank, which doesn’t usually happen so it’s not something that bothers me. I buy washi tape and any other kind of post its or stickers around local stationery and bookstore whenever I see something I like. my photos I just paste into word and put a border around so it looks like a polaroid and then print them and cut them out. I often use this light brown lined paper from Muji. same goes for pens. I write all my text with the basic black gel pens in size 0.5 and 0.38 from Muji. for headlines I use a couple different copic multiliners that I’ve had since back in 2016. they’re size 0.3, 0.5 and 0.8. I recently also got these two gel pens – a white one to cover up mistakes and write on dark paper and this golden one. they say gelly roll, sakura. sometimes I will use envelopes or packaging from things I buy and just all sort of things like that. I keep it and then wait to see whether I end up using it. 

and that’s really all the magic.

paging from chapter twenty-one to twenty-two

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thinking about this past year, chapter twenty-one, brings tears to my eyes in the best way possible. the past year was something I never imagined it could be. a year ago today I was petrified, frozen in my fears of the future. my equation was made of nothing but unknowns and everyone expected me to find solutions where I saw nothing but problems with no starting point. I was staring into a black hole, feeding my anxieties with uncertainty, dissolving in my own mind. I was resting for a while, but my head was on fire. whenever I slowed down my fears would reign. overthinking in dizzying circles, spinning around myself, caught in constant vertigo. the first half of this year my fears were eating me alive. I was afraid of being afraid. double disaccord. thinking about nothing but how scared I was, scaring myself sick. but somewhere in the mess of my own discomfort I did things I have never done before. and I have never felt so alive before. it was a revelation. it was overwhelming. it was absolutely groundbreaking. but in simple ways. somehow twenty-one changed me in ways I never thought possible. I mean, I’m still the same, my head still rests somewhere deep in between raging burning and breathtaking emptiness. I’m still scared. I’m still clueless. I still feel childish and I still feel a hundred years old at the same time. but this year changed something even though I can’t quite explain what except that the fire feels different now. different in a good way, I think. because the tears burning my cheeks right now have meaning. they aren’t empty salt in the sea, they reach the shore. they let me float above water. without even realizing what I was doing this year, I lived. I felt more alive than I possibly ever have. in the quite moments just as much as in the astonishingly loud ones. it roared around me, all bright and dark at the same time, so loud in it’s simple quietness. fireworks without sound but with all the colors. it was like finding a part of myself I didn’t know I was looking for. and it was confusing. but surprisingly it felt good.

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but he felt lighter somehow. like he wasn’t paint blending into the wall. he felt real. he felt present. almost like he could be seen.

from The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

at the start of this past year I was somewhere deep down. choking on my own perfectionism over writing yet another term paper. the tears were so bitter. I felt no purpose. I put so much into words I didn’t mind writing without knowing what I was writing them for except for the grade they would get me. the end of my studies sitting at the back of my neck cutting off my air, constant need for justification of what I was doing and why. that internship. that bachelors thesis. so in february, out of sheer petrifying pressure I applied for a job posting for an internship. something my mind had been overwhelming me with for almost two years. I didn’t have a resume. but I made one. I cried over it, once again lost in my own expectations, hopelessness, pressure to be perfect, to not let on a mistake, unable to accept there wasn’t one right way to do this. I sent it out. a couple weeks after I had the first reply. then a second and third. three interviews that all felt like a death sentence in my head and heart. the fear was overwhelming, crippling. I didn’t get my hopes up. my mind told me lies of how relieving it would be to be declined. to not have to do this. but after all I was accepted and cried tears of dread. something deep inside of me told me that this I wouldn’t survive not with a head on fire and my speeding heart. I spent months in anxious disbelief. soaking my life in my fears. I didn’t do much in those months. busied myself with university. ignored it even in the face of it.

there are moments in your life, moments when chances have to be taken. it’s scary because there is always the possibility of failure. I know that. […] because once upon a time I took a chance […] I had failed before. I was scared. I was terrified. I thought I might lose everything. but I wasn’t living, then. the life I had before wasn’t living. I was getting by. and I will never regret the chances I took. […] I made my choice. and you’re making yours.

from The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

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important things hurt sometimes.

from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

and then july hit and even though it was intense in an overwhelming way it made me function. it burned my anxieties down to something I could control, something that didn’t feel as all-consuming, more limited. I had a purpose. and it was exhausting and frustrating and tiring and draining but I was alive; evening bookstore runs, early morning train rides to Mitte, coffee to go, music in my ears, book in my hands, Friedrichstraße, Oranienburger Tor, Café Neundrei after work, walks by the Spree, seeing friends after a day at the office, laughs shared, evening sunshine, museumsinsel, weekend trips to the baltic sea, going out to eat, taking the bus so see my family, hopping on the train to be someplace else, but doing it, no matter the work, the university assignments piling up along the way, all the new people, the new surroundings, but still being there. picking up a new craft, making resin jewelry and sending it around the world, taking my chances and spending a couple nights in Paris with a friend after crying over my indecisiveness and fears for a whole day, late nights on trains, festival evening work shifts, coffee past six pm, a constant heavy tiredness, low on sleep high on adrenaline, so many books, so many writers, nights spent in tents, months behind screens, tests in patience and endurance, living in a state of work exhaustion, Dussmann every other day, tired and stressed to the point of hysteria, laughing it off feeling relief, halfway on the brink of insanity, but so many good moments, seeing one of my best friends in the whole world for the first time, meeting several times thanks to fate, coffee, lots of sweet buns, spending a week home alone, spanish cook shows, caring for myself, soft sea breezes, painfully early sunrises, thinking in poems, waves washing my heart clean, so much writing, days spent journaling, then falling out of routines, left hanging in the air, helpless, accepting of my sadness, endings of chapters that felt like they would last forever, falling back into university, to drowning, paper after paper, perfectionist insanity, lost in a life that used to feel so familiar, learning to fall in love again with academics and finding my way back to my passions. my internship changed me, in the best way. I can do so much more than I think. there are so many hours to a day. sometimes it’s all about just starting, just doing your best.

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these things happened. sometimes it might sound weird but sometimes life is like that. sometimes life gets weird. you can try to ignore it or you can see where weird takes you.

from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

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this past half year has been the definition of life to me. a liveliness that I never expected to find in being twenty-one. all I felt was dread a year ago. and now I’m here. and I could not be more thankful for the experiences I got to live this year. all the hard, deep conversations with friends I had, I am so grateful for the people close to me, that I share my life with daily. I would not have had the year I did if it wouldn’t have been for you. I’ve gotten first work experience, earned first pay, made my first online purchases, almost all the classes in my bachelors degree passed with good grades I might have worked harder for than I should have but still and a potential topic for my bachelors thesis that my heart is beating out of my chest to work on. I have never felt so passionate about my studies as I do thinking about putting them to use in the way I plan to, bringing one of the novels I feel most strongly about together with the area of literature studies that has always lit the brightest flame in me. so here I am manifesting it. manifesting that kind of unexpected aliveness for chapter twenty-two. writing that bachelors thesis. an absolute rollercoaster of emotions. finishing my bachelors, starting masters. and I know I wrote the same last year, but for this next one it will be true (I will not accept anything different), I will have my poetry out there. I have been carving words from my soul like I never have this past year. never have I written so many poems, have written so consistently. and never before has it felt this natural yet this hard at the same time. my pieces have never felt rawer to me than now. I spent several months writing and sharing my works with the world every single day and it has been the most overwhelming feeling but I have never felt more at home in my work. it’s so easy to doubt my writing.

the doubt comes to me far more easily than the appreciation, but I am learning to just let the words go. they are what they come out to be and they are imperfectly whole in whichever way that is. life has always been more fiction than reality to me, nothing much more but coffee, books and berlin — sliding through time, blurred monochrome walks through tired streets and inevitable fits of fear and I could not be more grateful for the life I lead, on and off the page, always between chapters, typing, thinking, talking with my hands on paper, a keyboard, into the vast entity on here, always losing and finding myself at the same time, eternal identity crisis in constant definition of myself with framework too strict. but this is what I am; always half made of words on paper and screen. and I’m glad I’m becoming the story I always thought of writing. I will write what hurts, what scares me most, always. just writing. anything. always. even when I’m in pieces. force out some broken words, not swallow them, the pain, fears, spitting them out, letting the paper soak up the blood. I won’t let myself be cut by what was never meant to be in shards. I am whole in my pieces. and even though I am still scared I know I am safe in this body and world. no matter whether my mind tells me differently. anxious thoughts have always tasted like lies anyways. so, this is to standing up for what makes my heart beat this next chapter, despite the anxiety and the overthinking and the doubt and the hardships. I can’t let that stand in my way anymore. so here is to being patient with myself, but also knowing when to push myself. knowing when it’s my fears talking and when it’s my brain actually making sense. here is to chapter twenty-two being exactly what it’s meant to be, even if that meaning lies beyond my understanding for now. here is to being twenty-two.

what happens now? he thinks but almost immediately the question leaves his mind. it doesn’t matter. not right now. not here in the depths where time is fragile. for right now this is his entire world. starless and sacred.

from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

this is not where our story ends, he writes. this is only where it changes.

from The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

sometimes, he thought to himself […], you were able to choose the life you wanted. and if you were of the lucky sort, sometimes that life chose you back.

from The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

twenty-one years

We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. […] Let’s occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever. Yesterday I knew I had no future, and that it was impossible for me to accept my life as it is now. And yet today, that same messy life seems full of hope. […] Will my life be miraculously free from pain, despair, grief, heartbreak, hardship, loneliness, depression? No. Do I want to live it? Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.

– from The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

As per usual I don’t know where to start this, but I know for sure this is somehow becoming a tradition – a rambling textual monologue whispered into the vastness of the internet with every lap around the sun. So, twenty-one. I cannot believe how twisted time felt this year, even more so than anytime before. It seemed to have been going extremely fast and yet slow all the same. It makes my head hurt a little, or a lot, thinking about time.

As I keep saying, I don’t think it does us any good, thinking about time. In April, when everything was shutting down all around the world, I felt like I had time. For the first time in years I felt like I didn’t have anywhere to be or anyone to meet or anything to buy. I felt like this was going to be the year I would finally learn how to calmly watch the sand in the hourglass steadily run through. Not worrying about all the things I wasn’t doing, as I usually do. But I didn’t. The feeling lasted for about two weeks. I started my next term at university, online by the time of course, and I instantly felt I was drowning again. Because suddenly everyone was expecting of each other to have free time to spend doing whatever it was for them. A global pandemic became this ultimate productivity challenge no-one was fit to come out of unharmed and there I was; someone obsessed with overthinking locked into her childhood bedroom (not that I ever left, but you get the point) with assignments to do and a language to learn and exams to prepare and this book to publish and the world coming crashing down over all our heads with nowhere to flee to but books, and believe me I escaped into many this year, and eventually it made me come a little cleaner with myself. I had to, really. Because I had to sit with it all. And it made me realize even more how uninterested I am in some things I break my head over every other day. I have talked a lot about how little sense age-induced stereotypes make last year. One of them being the social convention to have at least had one relationship, more likely several or one longer one, in your teens. Maybe you know I didn’t. Here I am, twenty-one, having never been in a relationship or had sexual encounters of any kind. And I’m starting to be less ashamed of admitting to not want to at the moment either. I’m not interested in one. I’m not looking for anyone. And most importantly, I want the pitying to stop. It’s toxic. It makes those growing-up believe they are abnormal if they don’t date. It might pressure them into unhealthy relationships. It might impose one can’t be happy when they aren’t with someone. None of those are true, so make it stop. I can’t hear it anymore.

73. No one will understand you. It is not, ultimately, that important. What is important is that you understand you.

– from “The Humans” by Matt Haig, Advice for a Human

All that made the constant empty passing of time a little easier this year. It didn’t stop me from feeling like I had wasted it all away though, watching friends move into apartments and start relationships and publish books and the whole internet on top of that encouraging things like losing a ton of weight or studying a new language or rearranging and renovating an entire house or picking up a whole new incredible hobby. It didn’t prevent me from feeling like a failure. Because everything I did every day felt so ordinary and useless to me, it felt like I was doing downright nothing even though that isn’t true. I didn’t outgrow my personality this year. I thought this would be the one I would challenge myself to do the terrifying things that just don’t sit well with me, like going to a club or trying drinking or traveling more. But I’m glad I didn’t. Because there are a lot of things I hadn’t and still haven’t quite understood about myself. Assigning labels to individuals can be endlessly toxic, I know that from experience, but looking at them from afar and holding them up against your reflection in a mirror can make you realize things you have been blind to for too long. There were months this year when I was so completely mentally unwell it was hard to know where I had my head. I didn’t want to assign labels to myself I didn’t fit or take anyones space, but knowing that this wasn’t something that was wrong with me but more so something that a lot of others experienced in very different ways made it a little easier to accept how I react to certain things.

The point was also to forget meaning. To stop looking and start living. The meaning was to […] live inside the present. Past and future were myths. The past was just the present that had died and the future would never exist anyway, because by the time we got to it the future would have turned into the present. The present was all there was. The ever-moving, ever-changing present. And the present was fickle. It could only be caught by letting go.

– from “The Humans” by Matt Haig

(Little but important heads-up: in the following I talk, even though very vaguely, about some of my struggles with food, working out and mental health. In case you feel you could be triggered in any way by hearing someone struggle with things like that, skip this paragraph. I love you and am proud of you.) And looking back now, beyond all the stress I put myself under and the darkness, I am finally able to celebrate the things I did do, the ones I am starting to be more and more proud of even tough they appear quite ordinary to others and even to myself sometimes. I overcame a bunch of food fears and eating perfectionism I had spent years unconsciously building up. No-one properly understood them, I didn’t understand them myself half the time. There were foods that in my mind just didn’t go together and so couldn’t be consumed within the same day. So I spent a long time planning out whole days of meals to eat foods my mind thought went well together. This year I threw a ton of those rules out the window. I’m not saying there aren’t days I fall back into those habits, but that’s not the overall point. I made big progress with food. Because besides abolishing some of my “rules” I ate more, more than I have in years, I think. And that too makes me proud. Because there were times I ate far too little. I’m rather sure I gained weight this year. But to be honest, that was actually the plan. I can’t say for sure, since I make a point of not stepping on a scale, but the point is that I’m not restricting myself the way I was, say two years back, and that I finally learned that carbs are friends. But enough with all the food anxiety. I am proud of myself. Just as I am proud of myself for trying to work out more regularly and for the “right” reasons, which for me are, preventing back pain due to a lot of sitting and my scoliosis and calming my overheating brain. I can’t say I always met those two goals when working out now and then. I try to get in at least one each week, which doesn’t always happen, but that is still okay. I not only made made progress with the more physical part of my health (which seems to be rooted in my mental struggles all the same, but you get what I mean) but also with my mental health. I have already hinted at this here, but I want to repeat it again: simply by educating myself more on what I feel and what others who struggle similarly feel and I started talking to a handful of very close friends about that. It seems small, but felt huge and feelings are valid.

Maybe that’s what all lives were, though. Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty. Maybe that was the only meaning that mattered. To be the world, witnessing itself.

– from “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig

Something else I need myself to be incredibly proud of is what I have achieved at university these past two terms. I work so hard for my studies, harder sometimes than I maybe should, and yet I always feel like what I do is so ordinary. It doesn’t feel like I’m getting anywhere in life, because in the end I’m just doing what I should be doing, right? Wrong. I do way more than I’d have to. I’m just so used to it, I can’t see that. I’ve always been that way academically, a high-achiever and perfectionist all the way from middle school. I can’t say it didn’t take it’s toll on me. When the best grades possible are ones own personal norm, a lot of studying turns out to be more stress than pleasure. In my degree, I’m a literature major, it should always be more passion than pain. Oftentimes I forget that, I realized this year. School has taught us so intensely how grades are the only thing that really matters, that I find I can’t forget it, which makes things very difficult at university because there are few, yet important grades. And there isn’t really any right or wrong anymore, at least not in literature. That sounds nice, but is extremely hard to grasp for my brain. I have to do things right. I am terrified of making any kind of mistakes. But this year, more than ever, I was reminded of the fact that they don’t define me the way I think they do. They don’t deserve that kind of power over me, over anyone. And yes, it’s normal to have to work hard to get good grades, but working hard doesn’t mean crying twice a day for weeks, because your term papers argumentation doesn’t feel like it’s quite right to you. I have done that at least twice this year and I got an A on both of them in the end. Yet it didn’t quite feel like it was worth it even though I would have been heavily disappointed if I would have gotten anything less than that. And even though I seriously should not have pressured myself like that, I couldn’t help not to, and I deserve to be so proud of my work this year, because I did incredibly. It isn’t ordinary, I poured my everything into all the assignments and ended up with great results. That is not nothing, it’s a lot. On the point of academia, I learned a new language this past year! I dreamed of learning Spanish ever since I first saw an episode of Gran Hotel on German tv, even more though when I started reading the works by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, and this past year I did. I passed two exams and am officially an A2 speaker (but more like listener, because my writing and speaking I am still heavily self-conscious about, which is natural, after a lot of learning at once over the course of only a year. I can say, it’s been a big, exhausting but extremely successful second year at university.

That brings me to something else I am quite proud of – I started / watched a handful of new tv shows! That does not sound like an activity one would talk about like this, but I struggle watching things I haven’t watched before, because committing to big things like that makes me anxious. But I did! And I loved every second of it. I finally watched “Friends” and it’s so precious. I also watched a Spanish comedy series called “Como Sobrevivir Soltero” and the first season of the Spanish mystery drama “Alta Mar”. Another something on the list of things I achieved this year is finishing another round of editing on my to-be-published poetry collection. I have to admit I was pretty disappointed with myself for not getting to publishing this year, as I had planned, but university got in the way and I didn’t have the time and strength to do the research. So here I am, with my book still nothing but a word document on my laptop. I felt so guilty about this. I lost faith in my work for a couple months this year, doubting wether I should even still publish at all, after not having gotten to it now. But I sat down, opened up the version I had last looked at almost a whole twelve months back and worked my way through the document until I felt proud of it and excited to get it out there again. So, I’m manifesting, whatever may come around this year, I will get this out to you all. You and I have been waiting for this too long already, four endless years. It’s ready. I just need to figure out this thing that is the mess of self-publishing. But I will. I might just need some of your help. Because I know we can do everything together. Especially now that I spent all of November writing new poetry, daily, sharing it with you. That’s another something I surprised myself with. I didn’t think I would be able to do it, but I did.

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Overall I am still so thankful for this past year even through all it’s hardships. I am so thankful to have had my friends by my side, even if often only mentally and not physically. There have for sure been many cups of coffee enjoyed, many strongly appreciated hours spent tucked away reading for my life or chatting with soulmates a plane ride away. There were many nights I poured my heart onto an empty page in a golden notebook that means the world to me and many others loving and longing for my beloved walks through Berlin. An uncountable number of days spent with my family, a stack of take-out receipts almost as high.

and so she made herself a promise; for her twenty-first lap around the sun she would forget time a little, she thought to herself, absentmindedly rubbing the small gold-pendant between thumb and ring finger, a nervous habit, the sun-pendant a reminder of warmth and the promise she had made to herself last year: to see light in times of darkness; and even though it had been the hardest year in every way and for so many, it had taught her, that in the end, maybe, time was just another concept ruling her, another toxic habit to break.

– twenty-one, a poem I wrote about a month ago

And so here is to the year I finally conquer time. The year I stop racing after things I’m not sure I want, the ones society preaches through blue light screens. Here is to the year I embrace watching the sand run through the hourglass smiling, making quiet memories. I have been in a fairly good place mentally this past month, for the first time in years, it feels like. Working passionately for the few classes I am taking this term, having seriously underbooked my timetable. Because maybe, this is my sweet spot. I’ve always known I thrive with as little tasks to focus on as possible since I pour so much of me into every small thing. Maybe it’s okay to not do as is expected of you; to take less classes than you should, to fill yourself up with all kinds of different memories, the golden ones just as grey ones. I’ll be reminding myself of this all through this year. This won’t just happen miraculously. I will have to actively direct my thoughts to make sure I don’t go sliding off into a blind race again. So I got myself something to remind me of this, every day from today, something to go with the golden sun I wear around my neck. Twenty-one will be the number to remind me of this forever. It is inscribed upon a tiny ring I’ll hold close to my heart in my very own revolution against time.

the aesthetic diaries – the evil in comparison and our concept of time

[Introducing this new series of blogposts to you, that accompanies several videos on my youtube channel. It’s all about aesthetic filming and prose-like texts on topics that keep me awake at night. Since I thought some of you might prefer reading those texts instead of listening to them, I decided to share a written version of every future installment of this series of videos on here. This is the very first episode of my aesthetic diaries. I hope, you enjoy it! In case, you’d like to watch the video to this text too, click here. Xx]

Every single day, I feel behind in life. I feel like I am one of the most inexperienced people on this planet. I feel like a fraud almost everywhere I go. I don’t think I will ever catch up. I constantly feel like I should pressure myself to do things I have no interest in doing. And it’s crippling. It makes no sense.

We are so used to having this image of people experiencing certain things at a specific time in their lives. People have their first encounters with alcohol and parties and crushes and kisses, maybe even drugs, in their teens. They start jobbing, travel, go off to college, move out, graduate, find themselves during their twenties. People settle down in their thirties and forties, have a relationship, a job, maybe children, a house. And this is ever so ongoing. And it’s toxic. Either way. If we follow it due to societies expectations without realizing it is really not what fulfills us. But it hurts just as much when we stand out, because we will still feel that constant pressure to bow to what is expected of us.

A while ago, when I was reading “Notes on a Nervous Planet” by Matt Haig, I came upon a paragraph that depicted this inner struggle I keep getting terribly caught up in better than anything I’d read on the topic before. – We are too aware of numerical time and not aware enough of natural time. People for thousands of years may have woken up at seven in the morning. The difference with these last few centuries is that now we are waking up because it is seven in the morning. We go to school or college or work at a certain time of day, not because that feels the most natural time to do so, but because that is the time that has been given to us. We have handed over our instincts to the hands of a clock. Increasingly, we serve time rather than time serving us. We fret about time. We wonder where time has gone. We are obsessed with time.

And we are. At least I am. I feel bad for sleeping through my alarm on weekends, just because I meant to get up earlier. Some days that gets me in such an awful mood, I torture myself about it mentally for hours. I feel unproductive and lazy, like I’ve run out of time I didn’t even have in the first place. Like I missed something mayor, even though I did not. Even though I was up until one in the morning, feeling bad all the same, because I couldn’t make myself go to sleep before midnight like “every other normal human being”. Even though I obviously needed the sleep. And if I look at it this way, it’s the exact same with the very much society-made time concept of a whole life. A lot of us do something in life not because it feels right at the time, but because it’s a widely accepted and supported action. And while that may be great and rather helpful when we get lost and feel helpless, not knowing where to go from the point in life we are at, it’s insanely misleading. No life can ever be compared to another. It simply can’t. Yet we keep doing it, killing ourselves. Bending, cracking, breaking in the process of trying to fit a stereotype we were never supposed to narrow ourselves down to. But we keep comparing. We are conditioned to. Everywhere we look and everywhere we go, we compare, maybe not consciously, but we do. We tend to look around ourselves to see whether we have accomplished something, whether we’ve made progress even though we should be looking back at ourselves. Because it is only in the context of our own path that we should decide where we are in life. And taking that into account we can never be behind. We can never be behind on our own path. Being a teen doesn’t necessarily end when you turn twenty. Nor does it mean being behind having never drunken a drop of alcohol or been to a party or kissed someone at twenty-one. Even though many others that age have and even tough a large group of society likely suspects just that. We can not be behind or late in our own lifes. There is still time. A lot of it. And we cannot keep living like we’re late everywhere we go. We get there when we do, with grace, because we were meant to and we will be just on time.

twenty years; two decades worth of life

I don’t really know how to properly start this one, but I’ll just give it a go. If you remember that a particular blogpost I shared two years ago, you will have a rough idea what this one will be about. In case you don’t, let me quickly say, that this is a rambling, emptying-my-mind-of-thoughts kind of mess of a piece on growing up or coming of age, that has become a kind of continuous series on my blog. If, like me, you struggle with comparison and time passing and all the things you think you should be doing but aren’t, I know how that feels. You are not alone. I have been struggling with those feelings for three years now and I don’t think I’ll overcome them anytime soon, but that is okay and I want you to know that.

A whole decade will end at the end of this month. We all will enter a whole new one in January. To me that change feels rather unimportant. My new chapter of life starts today. Because today, December 9th, is the day I turn twenty. Today marks not only one, but two decades worth of life and I cannot believe it. I cannot quite grasp how quickly time has been passing, rushing, running through my fingers like sand, while I’m desperately trying to hold onto it. It feels like yesterday that I was petrified of turning eighteen, that I graduated high school, that I started university. It all still feels so close yet so far. Time is massively messing with my head these days and often all I feel is overwhelmed even though deep down I know that time should have no meaning at all. Time is a made-up concept we have become so dependent on that it is literally dictating our entire lives and it’s killing us, it’s killing me. It forces an idea of comparison on us, that constant question of what everyone else our age is doing. There are things you “should be doing” in your teen year, things to do in middle school and high school, at university, in your twenties, in your thirties and so on. There are so many of those things predicted for certain ages I haven’t yet done. I have never been to a club or party, I have never had alcohol, I have never been in love nor in a relationship of any sort. And yes, society predicts that those are all things I should have “accomplished” by now. But I haven’t. And if you think that doesn’t bother me, you could not be further from the truth. Sometimes I spend hours wrecking my brain with things I should be doing. I should be studying somewhere else than Berlin, the city I have spent my entire life at, the city I love with all my heart. I should be applying for internships, should take on a part-time job to earn money. I should move out. I should go abroad to widen my horizons. I should kick my ass and go clubbing. I should connect with new people. I should travel the world on my own. The list goes on for a while, but these are some of the main things that trouble me every other day. The problem is that most of these things I am not even interested in doing. Yet I feel like I should, because they are things many people my age are doing. I never wanted to leave Berlin, partly because I didn’t feel I was ready to move out, but also because I simply love my city. I simply have no time or nerve to be doing an internship or a part-time job alongside my studies and I definitely don’t have the money or will or opportunity to move out. I don’t feel the need to go clubbing. And then there are some things I truly want to do, yet I think I’m too afraid to.

I have come more and more aware of that tendency in myself this year. I believe myself easily scared, often too antisocial and shy to go to gatherings, to connect with strangers or to travel without my family. But I cannot keep using that as a constant excuse. And even though during this year I felt particularly insecure and stuck in my head, constantly doubting my every choice, without really being aware of it at the time, I have accomplished great, great things this year, things I can be truly proud of. Here are some of them…

I finished my first year at university with decent grades, but more importantly, in one piece.

I spent a whole week at home on my own, while my family was on vacation. [In case you haven’t seen them yet, click here, to watch the first of two weekly vlogs I filmed during that week, documenting my first experience of living on my own.]

I lost my Instagram account to a hacker, but I moved on and created a new one.

I swam in the ocean again after years of not doing so, because I was so insecure. [Some calming, summer impressions of that trip can be seen here.]

I flew to Luxembourg by myself to visit my dearest friend Lucy. [Tap to get some insight into the whole experience.]

I finished the draft of my poetry collection and sent it out to the first beta-readers.

I spontaneously booked and went on a trip to Barcelona with my friend Ophelia. [Impressions of the whole trips to Barcelona can be accessed right here.]

I may not have done all the things one might “usually” do in their teenage years, but they were bittersweetly beautiful, as teenage years tend to be, nonetheless. They were excruciatingly hard at times, so hard I didn’t think I’d get through them, but they were incredibly memorable at the same time. In my teen years, that last decade of my life, I got to do all the things for the first time, that now define me most and that I love so dearly, I want to spend the rest of my life doing them – This past decade I had coffee for the first time, one of the most comforting and happiness-provoking beverages for me. I also found my true, true passion for reading. I had my first obsession with a book series, The Iron Fey series, that also got me into writing. I wrote hundreds of handwritten pages of fan fiction and then spent years crafting dozens of my own ideas for a young adult novel. I also started my Instagram this past decade, which over the years took upon a life of it’s own and grew to be one of the things my whole existence was centered around. I got to know myself so much better through it, I perfected my English, a language that, thanks to that, became the language of my deepest emotions. It was through Instagram that I got to know people from all over the world. People, who I felt closer to than I ever had to anyone in my entire life. Two of them, Ophelia and Morgaine, are some of my closest, most dearest friends today. It was also in this past decade that I found my passion for photography. I inhaled at least a dozen poetry books and then started writing my own pieces, that will sometime soon be a book themselves.

I have accomplished so much in that decade, even in that past year. Yet I cannot help but think of all those things I haven’t done, even though I might not have had the chance or wanting or time to do them. I, and you out there struggling with time the same way I do, need to remember that everyone takes a different amount of time for different things and that is more than okay. You are just as valid. Or as Matt Haig puts it in “Notes on a Nervous Planet”…

“We are too aware of numerical time and not aware enough of natural time. […] Increasingly, we serve time rather than time serving us. We fret about time. We wonder where time has gone. We are obsessed with time. […] Remember, feeling you have no time doesn’t mean you have no time. Feeling you haven’t achieved enough doesn’t mean you haven’t achieved enough. Feeling you lack things doesn’t make you less complete.”

Sometimes our mind and thoughts deceive you. Sometimes you deceive yourself. Growing up is one of the harshest challenges everyone faces in life. Growing up doesn’t really end. It’s so hard to imagine, what this was like for our parents and so easy to assume that with twenty or with thirty or forty, you’re grown-up, that you are nothing like your teenage self anymore, that you won’t be questioning your life choices anymore. But the truth is, the you you are now, will always be with you. You will most likely always question yourself, always struggle with the question wether you are truly an adult now and that’s okay. That is the burden of life everyone has to carry. It’s your choice though wether you let it wear you down. Wether you spend years of your life contemplating time and it’s meaning and what the past held, what the future will bring. Maybe you won’t be able to free yourself or that completely, I know I won’t, but you can slowly, step-by-step learn how to deal with those thoughts. And that is the one thing I will challenge myself to achieve within that new decade of my life. I want to be able to witness time passing without it being terribly painful. I want to live right now, without worrying what everyone else might be doing and without troubling my mind with concepts of an unknown future. Here is a piece of prose by Najwa Zebian named “A Little Wiser” to remind you of all the important lessons growing up…

“With every year of your life, you will realize the following. […] You may own more things, but less things will own you. You will be the master of your emotions, and only you will be able to expose them. The older you get, the more of your childhood innocence you’ll appreciate and retrieve, because children think of the result before they think of the consequences. […] You will realize that you are unique in your thoughts because, most times, you will feel misunderstood. Because you refused to allow the world to mold you, you will always struggle to stay true to yourself in a world of people striving to meet the ideals that society has created. A one-size-fits-all that you refused to live up to.”

No matter what age you are, it does not define you and it never should. Take care of yourself. Do the things, that make your heart thumb a little louder, a little faster. And remember, you are exactly who you were meant to be.

All the love, Anna Louise Xx

my perfectionistic self – opening up about mental health

It’s 10am on a Sunday, start of August, and I am sitting at my desk, iced homemade matcha next to me (because honestly, coffee would just make writing this so much harder), and I have not the slightest idea how to do this and yet I want to, need to. People all around the world are starting to speak up about what they are struggling with mentally and still there is rather little known about mental health in our broad society. We all can change that, little by little, step by step. You probably know by now, that sometimes I get downright personal here. This is another one of those pieces. But don’t be fooled. This does not come easy to me. I have hesitated a long time until I finally sat myself down in front of my laptop to write this. I am downright terrified of making it public, but maybe, just maybe someone who struggles with just the same things I struggle with, stumbles upon this and feels less alone or maybe even picks up the courage to speak up or seek help. Another important note before getting started – I am no psychiatrist. I have no idea what is going on in my mind and I am not diagnosed with a mental illness. But yes, I struggle. Some days I struggle hard. There are several reasons for that (some others I talk about towards the end of this piece), but one big one is my perfectionism and I need to set some things straight about being a perfectionist / constantly striving to be, to do things “the right way” and always being downright terrified to be “wrong”, to make a mistake. I wasn’t always as perfectionistic as I am these days. There are two main roads that I assume got me this far. The first is linked to academia, the second to social media.

 

– the academic path –

In primary school I was never one of the top students. I was the absolute definition of average. I had to work so hard to get the results some were getting without having to study. Then, after sixth grade, everyone changed schools. I changed to a school none of my friends went to and I was so miserable, because for the first month I didn’t have any friends there. In all my classes I almost instantly went from average to top of class though. I became the know-it all. Suddenly students and teachers were expecting me to get excellent results. They started to compare me to other top students, which, over the following four years, made me start obsessing over my academic standards. It got worse though. In 11th grade a lot of the other students knew me as top of class and when classmates scored higher than I did, it was talked about for days. A-levels were only just coming up and I felt drenched of all energy. Those last two years of school my academic perfectionism got to the worst it’s ever been. I spent day and night studying, only sleeping five hours a night.

But I survived. I graduated High School a year ago. I got into the university major I’d dreamed about, literature and journalism. But even though I have left school behind, the academic pressure is still with me. It hasn’t left me ever since and it’s gnawing at me every day. I worked so much during my first semester at university it was basically self-destruction. I was so exhausted, I wasn’t in my right mind. I wanted to do well for myself so badly… and then after all those month of slaving I had put myself through, I got back the grade on my first ever term paper and I broke down. I was so downright disappointed by that 2.0 I saw only little worth in what I had achieved in all that time. It hurt me so much to hear all the people I had gotten to know, receive a 1.0. It felt like the end of the world, but it wasn’t. Life just kept flowing on and here I am, having reached the end of my second semester in one piece, doing okay. But deep down I’m already so downright afraid of the results of this semesters papers. I am downright afraid of how I’ll get through next semester, downright afraid of drifting off into self-destruction mode all over again. Because when it comes to academia, I play 100% by rules. I don’t take any risks or chances. I map everything out, plan to perfection, because I’m just that afraid of making a mistake, of being told I’m wrong, of being uncovered and found unworthy and stupid, because really that’s what I feel like I am most of the time. But my perfectionism in academia was only where it started…

 

– the social media path –

I’m not here to criticize social media. Instagram is my home. It helped me through so many hard times, but yes, it demanded something from me in return, whose deep effects I’m only starting to uncover day by day and most of them are fatal to my mental health.

The aspects of my life that my academic perfectionism didn’t win over, Instagram did. The aesthetic and personality type labelling on Instagram raised me to perfect every single aspect in my life. Every single thing. Yes, Instagram helped me find my style, it helped me define myself, but it also made me just abandon characteristics that “didn’t fit”. I used to play video games from time to time a few years back, it calmed me, but these days even though I sometimes feel like playing, it feels like a waste of time and I make myself spend time with something more valuable. I stopped painting and sketching to limit my past time activities to photography and writing and reading. I abandoned music. Day after day I am more and more becoming a “perfect” person from the perspective of my followers. Over the years I actually abandoned all the clothes that had an actual color from my wardrobe. It’s all neutral now, not a single tiny piece left in color. Yes, that’s my style and yes, I like that style, but sometimes I spot clothes in stores that I actually like, but they have the “wrong” color and so I don’t buy them. Simply because they do not fit the whole theme. The same with any accessory or room decor or just random things. If they don’t fit the theme (even though I might not even plan on showing them online) I cannot buy or own them. But most fatal is that I do the same thing with food. I eat by rules I don’t even understand myself. They don’t make sense, but a lot of the time I just cannot break with them. I can’t eat bread and pasta on the same day, for example. My mind will just scream at me that they don’t fit. Or coffee and yogurt. Or rice and potatoes. There are so so many others. This is what makes daily life hardest. I feel like such a burden, when I prepare extra food while my family is eating something together. And I feel stupid. I know that all of these filters make no sense. I hate them, I hate that they’re there and that I can’t just turn them off. Sometimes I get so mad at myself, other days I just get really sad. I am working on them, I really am, but it’s such a hard fight on my own and when you don’t really know what you’re fighting. Honestly I don’t even know if I can rid myself of this on my own. But I also don’t know how to seek out. It feels surreal that I’m putting this out here like this. Because even though I am struggling and even though I know it’s a mental issue that could probably be overcome, it feels so stupid and minor, just too irrelevant to seek help to me.

 

– other mental struggles –

These two main paths made the spark of perfectionism, I’ve probably always had inside me, explode into a wildfire. I don’t have it under control most of the time. I know it. I know just how much of the forest it has taken hold of, but just the knowledge of that doesn’t help me win it back from the flames. But perfectionism is not the only thing I struggle with mentally. Another main issue of mine is my body. I’ve been through all kinds of problems with it and am still struggling to accept myself as I am every day. I’ve already come a long way, but there is also just the same distance to go again to reach some kind of acceptance and maybe contentment. (But I talk all about that in detail in another piece of rambly writing here.) I’m also an incredibly stressing and anxious person. I get terribly afraid of the most simple situations; making a phone call, going somewhere I’ve never been before and a handful of others. Social situations are especially hard for me. I simply cannot speak up in class in fear of being wrong or saying something stupid and being laughed at. In big groups I fall silent, sometimes even among friends. I have an incredibly hard time with change and new surroundings and meeting new people. A year ago I had several mental breakdowns leading up to my first day at university. After my first week, kind of a getting-to-know-each-other-week, I felt incredibly drenched, because I was so anxious constantly that it burned up all my energy. I care so much about what others think of me and how they see me. Sometimes that’s all I ever think about. Often I can’t turn off my thoughts. Then they spiral and spiral and go to all the places and topics I know will make me miserable, but I can’t grasp them, I think of them all at once and they’re just that constant humming and busy feeling in my head.

Please know, that there are so so many people mentally struggling. It will never make you less worthy. Never. So, if you are too, you are never alone. And even though it feels like no-one will understand what is going on in your head (I think that about my issues too), I promise, there will be at least one single person who will, you “just” have to seek out and find that person. I know it’s a long and never straight way to feeling better and overcoming our mental struggles just a little, but opening up about them to whoever, will eventually make you feel better, even though it might feel terrible and deeply vulnerable at first. We all feel that way. And if you do decide to speak up or if you already have, if you are getting help, then let me tell you, you are so strong. You are so courageous and admirable. Take care everyone. You’re all loved.

Happy Sunday, Anna Xx

finding the spirit of Berlin – travel guide by a native

it was a sunny morning,

the city was buzzing,

and she had a thousand

things on her mind.

–

she let the city streets,

pulsing veins of life,

carry her,

unimportant where

they would take her,

because more than ever

she felt

that it was not the aim,

but the way that mattered.

–

it was this,

that made her feel alive,

that made her take another breath

and as long as each morning

the city reached out to the sun,

she would stand her point.

–

I have written far more than a dozen poems like this, all about the spirit, my fascination with the city I was born at, Berlin. To me, this is far more than a travel guide to the city, that is the home of my heart. This is a love letter and deep ‘thank you’ to Berlin. A city, that repeatedly welcomes me as a stranger each morning. A city, you can be a nobody in. A city, where a native can choose to wander the streets anew every day, pretending to be a tourist, and still find something unknown each time. A city, where the whole world melts into one home. A city, with scars so deep, you cannot move without tumbling over yet another gravestone. A city, where slow and rushed lives co-exist. A city, you can fall for so hard for in a day without noticing, you cannot help but wish you’d be able to stay awhile.

But enough now with the rambling, let’s jump right in for those of you, who are in a rush to make travel plans for the summer. The plan is the following – I will first introduce you to some of my favorite coffee shops and english bookshops in Berlin. Additional to that, I will then describe to you a short route for a stroll through the very center of the city, that I go on at least every few weeks. It indeed includes some typical sights, but that isn’t really the point of it. In my opinion, when you take your time (the distance is actually really short) you will be able to sight and feel that particular spirit of Berlin. How it has that buzz and business, how you get swallowed up in a crowd of all the strangers of locals and tourists and easily become nobody and yet could be anybody, how multicultural it is, how many things there are to see, how there is always a place to rest at, how green and how great it’s architecture is. Every time I go on that walk I feel all of that all at once and I fall head over heels for Berlin all over again. It moves me so deeply, sometimes, when I’m in the right mood, I get so overwhelmed by a feeling of admiration I’m close to tears. Nothing makes me feel more like I truly belong than when I am on that stroll through the city …and here we are again, drifting off into prose-like rambling. I promise, I’m actually starting now.

 

– Favorite Coffee Shops –

• Books and Bagels / Shakespeare and Sons

Books and Bagels is both a coffee shop and english bookshop. It’s only a few train-stops from Alexanderplatz and my personal favorite of them all. It’s absolutely international and multicultural. The staff is incredibly kind, obliging and fluent in english. Prices are pretty fair – a latte is usually 3.10€ and a cappuccino 2.90€. It’s open from 8am–8pm, except for Sunday, when it opens an hour later. Shakespeare and Sons / Books and Bagels is located at Warschauer Str. 71 in 10243 Berlin. Additional to coffee they have a wide range of all kinds of Bagels and excellent pastries (recently they often have a gluten free chocolate cake and it is absolute heaven). They also often have carrot cake, great cheese cake or Chocolate Chunk Fleur de Sel Cookies. The atmosphere is simply breath-taking. At Books and Bagels you can enjoy great pastries and bagels, coffee or tea, sitting in the middle of hundreds of books.

 

• Café Neundrei

Café Neundrei is a coffee shop very close to the train stop Hackescher Markt. At first sight it looks quite small, but there is a staircase leading into an extremely cozy basement. There are several tables, candles, a couch, plants, pillows and armchairs. The cappuccinos are absolutely excellent. But really special here are the pastries. They are all baked by the staff, look and taste stunning, just google and you’ll find a ton of photos. Café Neundrei also has great smoothie bowls and sandwiches. It’s open Monday to Saturday from 8am–6pm, closed on Sunday. The staff is very kind too. Café Neundrei is located at Monbijoupl. 2 in 10178 Berlin. Overall very great place for a cozy break with a good cup of coffee and special pastries.

 

• Pure Origins

Pure Origins has two locations at the center of Berlin. One is near the train stop Hackescher Markt and one near the train stop Friedrichstraße. Both are unique though. The one at Friedrichstraße is usually much busier, but they have great lunch options. A daily soup offer, avocado toast, scrambled eggs and different salad bowls. They have good coffee, pastries and sandwiches too. The one near Hackescher Markt is freshly renovated and has a very modern and dark interior design with a lot of wood, naked light bulbs and many plants. The staff is extremely nice and the place is usually not crowded at all. The one near Hackescher Markt is located at Litfaß-Platz 3 in 10178 Berlin and the one near Friedrichstraße is located at Georgenstraße 193 in 10117 Berlin. The latter one is open from 7am–10pm and the first one from 8am–8pm on weekdays and 9am–7pm on weekends.

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• Zeit für Brot

Zeit für Brot is the place to get about a dozen different kinds of cinnamon rolls and all kinds of fresh bread. It’s a bakery / coffee shop close to the train stop Eberswalder Straße. Friendly staff, bright place. Lots of windows and natural light, white walls, plants. Usually pretty busy though. But the cinnamon rolls truly are one of a kind. They’re available with white chocolate, pecan nuts and maple syrup, cherries, marzipan, chocolate, poppy seeds and many many more. They’re always fresh and soft. It’s open 7am–8pm weekdays and from 8am–8pm on Saturday, from 8am–6pm on Sundays. Zeit für Brot is located at Eberswalder Straße 26 in 10435 Berlin.

 

• Funk You Natural Food

Funk You is kind of a coffee shop / smoothie place. They have a lot of healthy options for lunch. Poached eggs on Avocado Toast for example. The smoothies are all excellent and the staff friendly. It’s a pretty small place, but very beautiful. White walls, lots of plants. White tables in the front and other tables and couches in the back. The coffee is good too. Sometimes it’s very busy, but other times rather empty. Prices are a little higher than usual, but the food and drinks are absolutely excellent. They’re located at Rosenthaler Straße 23 in 10119 Berlin and open 9am–8pm from Monday to Saturday and 12pm–6pm on Sundays.

 

• House of Small Wonder

The House of Small Wonder is a little wonder itself. It is a kind of coffee shop / brunch place with a bit of Japanese inspired kitchen. Just walking around the city, you probably wouldn’t notice this place. Most of the customers find out about it through bloggers on the internet, so it’s still highly crowded! Sometimes, you will have to wait in line for a table. To prevent that, just make sure you’re there when it opens at 9am, then there shouldn’t be any waiting time (I did that the two times I’ve been there and never had to wait for a table). What’s funny is, that when you enter, you don’t directly enter the restaurant. You enter a small room with lots of plants and a staircase heading up, leading to the actual place. The entrance is a very popular photography location among bloggers though, but then again, it really is stunning. Another tip- make sure to not just pick a table as soon as you’re upstairs. You’re seated in this place. Why I went there in the first place was a certain dish- House of Small Wonder has something called “French-toasted croissants” and it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s just as delicious, served with fruit, some whipped cream and maple syrup. The coffee is excellent too. They even serve a little pitcher with syrup to sweeten iced coffee, which is something I’ve never seen anywhere before. The House of Small Wonder is located at Johannisstraße 20 in 10117 Berlin, near the train stop Friedrichstraße. It’s open 9am–5pm every day.

 

– Favorite (English) Bookshops –

• English Bookshop inside “Dussmann”

You’ve probably already heard about Dussmann in Berlin. It’s very close to the train stop Friedrichstraße and a giant building with four floors. You can buy DVDs, CDs, comics, graphic novels, all kinds of stationery, thousands of german books of any genre, books in almost any other language, some kind of fan stuff, travel guides and educational / textbooks there. There are lots of areas where you can take a seat on chairs or a couch. The English Bookshop has a whole little two-story area for itself and it’s pretty easy to find: when you enter through the big main entrance, just walk straight ahead to the other end of the building. The entrance to the English Bookshop is on the right. Novels and Crime / Mystery are downstairs. Young Adult, Fantasy, Poetry, Classics, Kids, Biographies, Lifestyle and Comics / Graphic Novels are upstairs. Prices are a little higher than usual here though. Dussmann is located at Friedrichstraße 90 in 10117 Berlin and open from 9am–12am weekdays, 9am–11:30pm on Saturdays.

 

• Saint George’s English Bookshop

Saint George’s English Bookshop is a mostly used / secondhand english bookshop and absolutely perfect if you feel like digging around a bit for a while. The atmosphere is very cozy and the staff incredibly helpful and friendly. Prices are really low, even though most of the books are in perfect shape. Couches make this place even more relaxing. Saint George’s English Bookshop is located at Wörther Straße 27 in 10405 Berlin and open from 11am–8pm weekdays and 11am–7pm on Saturdays.

 

• Books and Bagels / Shakespeare and Sons

Since I’ve already talked about Books and Bagels as a coffee shop, I won’t say too much again here now. There are all kinds of book genres available, all english books. There is even a not too small section of secondhand / used books in the back of the shop. Prices are higher than usual, except for the used books. The atmosphere is great, aside from the books and the nice staff, the smell of coffee and pastries adds a beautiful touch. For opening hours and address, just scroll back up.

 

– My Favorite Wandering-Through-The-City-Route –

I start my walk either at the train stop Friedrichstraße or Alexanderplatz. I’m going to describe the version where I start at Friedrichstraße in the following. You should exit the station to the side on which Dussmann is located. When you exited on the correct side of the station you should be able to see this looking straight ahead, when the station is to your left.

Turn so that the station is now behind you and walk straight ahead until you pass Dussmann on your left side. Go inside. Take a stroll around. After that, continue into the direction you were headed before until you arrive at a big road with at least four lanes. Turn left and follow the street for a while. You will pass one of Berlins biggest universities, the Humboldt Universität. It will be on your left side and looks like this.

If you want to, have a look inside. Or just dig around in the secondhand books offered in front of it’s gates. Also keep your eyes peeled for street art here. Sometimes there is a painting on the floor. Always continue to keep straight on. Admire the beautiful architecture all around you. Eventually you will arrive at a bridge. Cross it and look around yourself. You have arrived at the Museums Island. If you want to, take a seat on one of the benches under the trees or on the grass. Turn left after the bridge and walk alongside the water until you arrive at the next small road. This is what you should see.

Cross the street and turn right. You should be walking in an outside corridor like this and seeing this to your right. This is my favorite place at the whole city. Look around yourself. Take a break on the grass to your left. Admire the architecture. Listen to what it sounds like. Is there a street musician performing nearby? A violin? A trumpet? Can you hear the birds chirping? People chatting? What hue does the light have? Is it golden yet? What are the people doing around you? Can you spot a blogger doing a fashion shoot somewhere close by? Are there any students reading on the grass? Anyone having lunch? Is there a turkish wedding having a photoshoot? A class waiting in line to visit the Alte Nationalgalerie? Listen and look. This is Berlin through and through.

Keep straight on until you find yourself on another bridge. Cross it. You should be able to see this, when you turn your head to the right. There are lots of tours by boat you can take around the city from here. Wave to a boat passing. Passengers love that. We natives do it all the time. People will wave back.

Turn right immediately after crossing the bridge and keep straight on until you reach a road, then turn left again. Walk straight on without crossing any streets until you get to a huge crossroads. Turn right and cross the street. Then immediately turn left and cross another street. You should be very close to the television tower now. You should be able to spot, or at least hear, a fountain, the Neptune’s fountain, close by, after crossing the street. Go there. This is what it should look like. Have a seat on one of the benches and watch the water glistening in the sun. Watch the people. The children running around, splashing around in the water. Tourists taking a hundred photos in different poses.

Turn your back on the fountain and walk straight on in the direction of the television tower and the station Alexanderplatz. There you go, you’ve reached the final destination of this walk. I hope you liked it as much as I do and feel like you got to know the spirit of Berlin a little better. In case you still want to see more of Berlin, check out this or this one of my YouTube videos or any other one basically. I always share a ton of clips of the city there. Be safe! Pay attention to pickpockets on this walk. Have a good trip. And maybe, just maybe, with a lot of luck, you might as well just walk into me on this walk, since I go on it that often. In case you actually do, please say Hi, I’d love to give you a hug for being here.

Lots of love from Berlin, Anna Xx

challenging myself.

Returning to continue my series of prose-like, rambling blogposts on coming off-age. I’ve felt a peak, in finding who I am, approaching over the past few months and was hit by it on the train ride to university this morning. So I started writing and I thought the result needed to be shared. I hope, that in case you’re going through somethings similar right now, this will help make you realize, that yes, a lot of other people feel the same way. You are not alone. Xx

This summer I’ll make the leap. I’ll do things I didn’t think possible before. I’ll fly on my own, travel to a place I’ve never been at, without my family. Get to know strangers. Maybe try and taste wine for the first time. Go to a club with some of my closest friends. Walk around in shorts without caring and wear a dress outside. Learn french with mother-tongue speakers. Maybe learn a bit of Luxembourgish. Properly vlog for myself. Not plan ahead for days. Forget to wash my hair every two days. Not wear makeup for days without caring. Take a dip in the ocean without thinking about what I look like. Eat without thinking about it. Cry with people I love. Wear tank tops. Dance in public. Go to the bookstore late at night and drinking iced coffee. Watch a dozen suns set and then rise again. Talk through a night without sleeping. Bake and cook with friends. Go out late with my sister. Write a poem a day. Edit my book and work on publishing it. Sign up for spanish class. …and probably so many more things that seem challenging to me.

I’ve been desperately trying to form a perfect personality without making any new experiences for years. I have never taken a risk or challenged myself. Never gone out, never tasted alcohol. I fully plan the day ahead almost always. I never let life just take over. I’ve been trying so so hard to be a perfect grown-up, student, person in general, without ever getting out of my comfort zone, if I wasn’t forced to do it. I’ve been trying to get to know myself without doing and trying things out that I didn’t think I’d like. Judging them. Shoving them off for apparently not really fitting into the picture I tried to paint of myself in my head. I’m suppressing so much of myself to become the person I feel like I want to be. I’m nineteen years old and have never truly changed. I thought I had, but I’m just letting myself be that insecure little girl I’ve always been in a more and more extreme way. Every day I tell myself that I am shy and insecure and self conscious. I take that as an excuse for everything I feel I can’t do.

But I can. And I’ll have to. Because if I go on like this, I’ll never know who I am or who I’m thriving to be. So this summer I won’t just try. I’ll force myself to give a shit about what others think of me or who they see me as. I will have to try things to form an opinion on them. I’ll have to prove myself wrong. I’ll say something kind to a stranger every day. I’ll smile at people on the train. Exchange a few more words with baristas. Try to break the fucked-up image in my head, of that perfect self I’ve been desperately trying to make myself be for the past years. I am making this summer the one of all risks. I’ll go out with friends. Go meet friends of friends. Do a photoshoot with any stranger that feels like doing one. Meet someone I know from social media without being afraid of them not liking who I am behind the screen, in raw. Maybe work somewhere for a few days. Maybe get bangs again like back when I was three years old. And so many more.

In these few upcoming months I’ll force myself to turn off the filter in my head that usually tells me- don’t do it, it doesn’t fit the image of yourself you’re trying to create. How could I have been so sure of that up until now? How could I judge experiences like that without ever having made them? How could I let my life be taken over by the idea of a certain aesthetic in my head that might not yet really be who I am? So this summer I am letting go of all my own inner critics and judges. I owe myself a few months of not judging who I am at every single minute every single day. I owe myself and everyone around me. I’m not changing myself. I am rooting out who I want to be by trying something new, for the first time in years. I am starting to become the person I’m thriving to be for the next dozen years, maybe for the rest of my life. But before I can, I’ll have to find out who that person is.

So this summer I challenge you all to make brave choices. Do things you’d usually decline. Bloom. Grow. Flourish. Because I know you can.

Anna Louise Xx

senior year advice & thoughts on starting university

Look, another personal one. Well, I hope it’s one you end up being a little wiser after reading. I have absolutely no clue if that will be the case (or if it should be that way, since I definitely don’t know if any of the stuff I have to say is to act upon). But before you skip this one right here, just let me say, I lived and I downright didn’t think I would. So, that’s something.

I’m a natural worrier. I over-think a ton. I’m also a perfectionist. Yet, a lot of things don’t come easily to me. I’ve always had to work a lot to do well. To some gifted humans out there it’s all quite natural, they can do well in all different kinds of fields without making the greatest possible effort. I’m not one of them. My special field is languages, no matter if it’s my mother tongue, which is German, English or French. I have a sense of feeling to rely on there, but I still worked so much for them, yet that was more due to my sense of perfectionism and wanting to do more than just well in assignments, exams or class in general. But no matter whichever type you are, if you have a special field or if you don’t, senior year can be quite overwhelming. I’ve been there, but I lived. Here’s what I believe helped me get through in one piece:

• Don’t study with the same notes you wrote in class. I know, this might sound strange and sometimes there isn’t enough time to do it, but at least re-write your notes for an exam. I will never stop talking about how much more effective this is. If you study with the notes you took in class, you don’t have to think about the content again and you’re likely to just learn the words by heart. If this is what you do, then it’s possible that you don’t fully understand a topic, even if you’ve studied it several time. So, if a bigger exam is approaching, take the time and go through your notes again. Think about what knowledge you really need for it. Collect it, rearrange it, if it makes more sense in a different order (yes, that can happen!!). Read about it in books and on the internet to widen your knowledge or solve problems you might have with the topic. I’ve been doing that all the way through middle school and high school for almost every exam in all kinds of different subjects. It really helps. I promise. It gets you to a whole new level of understanding.
• But I have another tip to add here. Everyone studies differently. There are people who memorize information best by listening, others by looking at it, …and far more than only these two kinds. Try to figure out which study-type you are. At the very start of high school a teacher of mine had my class turn the information of a text into little pictures, using as little key-words as possible to support them. I still have the sheet from that class and it was only a little later that I realized I was that kind of visual type. When I studied for an exam with my class notes I’d often know how the paper with the information looked like or where on the page it was situated, even if I could not remember the content. But not only do I still have that sheet of paper, I still remember the illustrations and the information they stand for. Visualization makes me study more effective, a lot faster. I need a lot of time to remember things, normally. I have to start studying far in advance to even have a chance to really get the knowledge through to me. Often times that time is simply nonexistent during A-levels. So I got back to doing doodles and it saved my life. Never would I have been able to pass my advanced history exam without it. The trick behind it is simple and you really don’t have to be a talented artist. The little symbols you come up with to remember content are for yourself and yourself only. Strangers often aren’t going to figure them out and they don’t have to. What’s important is that you do. The illustrations are something your mind can cling to while reproducing the knowledge during the exam. There are three steps to take when you want to study like this. 1) Make up the doodles based on the key-information. 2) Repeat the information to yourself only by looking at the symbols. 3) Repeat the information in your head only, going over the symbols in front of your inner eye …and there you are. (If you have any further questions about this, sure let my know and I’ll do my best to help!)
• Take time off (even if it’s hard). I can’t say I really mastered this myself, but I highly recommend you to at least try. The point I’m trying to make is that breaks can be more effective than studying straight on for hours. Sit yourself down and tell yourself you’re going to take on one topic for thirty minutes and power through. Get something done and then go for a walk. Or read a few pages. Do whatever you enjoy, but find something that relaxes you, that takes your mind off things for a bit. My go to options during A-levels were taking a bath, going for a walk, journaling, napping, going out for coffee, meeting a friend or doing yoga, but it can be anything. Just maybe make sure to stay away from your phone, because when you spend all of your break scrolling through Instagram feeds of people doing anything except for studying that’s not going to brighten your day. Actually do something during that break, act like you’re not going back to work in a few minutes. Then sit yourself down again and study actively for another short amount of time. If you feel like you’re in a zone, keep going. You’re doing an amazing job xx.
• Try not to over-think and don’t dwell on what belongs to the past. It’s that nudging feeling going out of an exam that didn’t quite go as we would’ve wished it would have gone and then thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it. Then crying. Then thinking some more, going through all the What-If-Situation. “If I would have studied even harder, stayed up longer, this might have gone differently.” Going through all the questions in your head, counting points, googling answers. I’ve done this. Several times. It’s definitely not healthy and it doesn’t help your overall progress. It gets you right to the academic bottom you never want to hit. All you can do is write it off. It happened. You tried. You did your best. Move on. Just keep going. You’re still going to get there. It’s all going to be okay and believe me, one exam, maybe even one whole subject, or two, are never going to give your certificate the death blow you imagine right now.
• Get organized. This is one of the basics, but it just had to make this list, because planning and organizing and writing a hundred To-Do lists partly got me through too. I even got a little note pad that says “I love lists” and I really do. To make it easier just get a nice calendar or planner you will enjoy carrying around and writing in. Keep track of everything going on. What you want to do (to relax), what you want to do if there is time (school work only due in a week, for example), what has to be done (school work due the days ahead) and what you need to do (like cleaning, going to an appointment, ect.) for example. Get it all mapped out. Make lists. Tick things off as you go. Feel achievement setting in as you get things done.
• Take naps. Yes, I know, there’s not much time for sleep, but if you are tired take a nap in the afternoon. When I came home in senior year I took a nap every single day. Half an hour already helps. Even twenty minutes would help and if it ends up being an hour, so what? You need sleep. I was really sleep deprived during my last year of school. I only got to bed between 0 and 1 am and had to get up at 6. It was great fun, but yet, here I am. Thank you for getting me through, naps! This one goes to you! Which brings me right to…
• Always carry coffee and food with you. Fuel your brain, fuel your body. Don’t skip eating and no, not even breakfast. Breakfast is where it all starts. Yes, I get the no time thing, but then have something simple. An apple, a banana, yoghurt, cereal, juice, toast. Or have something ready the night before! There is a genius thing called overnight-oats and it’s really good. I’m serious, please eat. And don’t get me started on coffee. I don’t think I would’ve graduated without coffee (I’m kidding, a little). No, my point is, if there is something that can accompany you while studying, that you’re passionate about then that’s to you what coffee is to me. Sitting down to study with a cup of coffee always felt better than sitting down “alone”, if you get what I mean. This brings me to my last tip…
• Create an atmosphere you feel motivated working in. Keep your desk clean, but make it a little personal too. Decorate it, if you feel like it. Put up photos, line up your pens, whatever. You name it. This is your space. This is where you’re going to get that work done. Make it yours. My most loved study-setup will always be Ava (my dog) sleeping beside me, a cup of fresh coffee, a crisp breeze coming from the open window, a lit scented candle. Some people love studying in pajamas. I’m not really one of them. I’ve definitely done it, but if I have the time then I prefer getting a little more “ready”. I don’t get dressed up, definitely not, but putting on a fresh shirt and a comfortable jeans already does a lot for me. So, figure out which kind of person you are, what you need to have with you to get you behind that desk to get some work done.
• But also remember that a change of scenery can do wonders if you are stuck. Or if there is just so much course work and studying to do you don’t really have time to take breaks and you’re in that non-stop working grind. I liked moving out to coffee shops once in a while. Though I was usually most productive behind my desk at home, going out to a café and taking some work with me at least helped me feel less guilty about leaving the house (yes, I was that deep in the zone). And hey, coffee shops serve coffee and food! What’s more motivating? If that still doesn’t do it for you, invite a friend. Have a study-date. I’ve had a few during A-levels and I really recommend you to do it. The presence of another working human next to you sometimes is all it takes to get you going too. Try it out.

But senior year is far more than just the studying, the tons of assignments and important exams. Because suddenly there is this unknown darkness lurking at the of the tunnel, the future, that time after graduation. I’ve been there, god, I probably still am in the very mid of the whole transition. Graduating was hard for me. It was an emotional rollercoaster. The day I had my last real classes before leaving to prepare for finals I lay on my bedroom floor and cried. It only took me two days to start missing class. The first Monday after I wanted to go again. I wanted my routine back, I wanted everything to go back to normal. But there was no going back. So I immersed in studying for finals. I studied and studied and then they were there and a whole month had passed. The day after my last written final I started preparing my oral one. I went all in, studied every single day for another month. The moment I walked out of that exam I was ready to burst into tears of relief. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. I took a weekend off from studying before going right back in, because I had signed up to do DELF B2, but I was downright exhausted. Time was running. A week from there I finished DELF and all of a sudden it was June with only a few more weeks to graduation and prom. I expected the emotions to hit me, but they didn’t.

It took me almost another month to sink in. There were so many tears. I just missed class (I still do) and even though school often brought me to absolute rock-bottom I was desperate to go back. Not everyone feels like this, but this is what graduating was like for me. I just couldn’t imagine how life was supposed to keep going. I was afraid of letting things go and changes and breaking out of routines and leaving familiar surroundings. Graduating meant all of this. I’m still afraid, but I’ve come to the point of accepting that there is no going back and that it’s okay. I’m still afraid, but I know where I’m headed towards. I’m still afraid, but I know I’m going to be okay. I know that I’m going to love studying at university. It’s what I’ve always imagined myself doing. I know that I’ll grow to love the surroundings university provides, even though they are entirely new to me now. I know that it will take me some time to get there, to stop being downright terrified about the change, about having to meet a ton of strangers, getting lost trying to find a class and being late. I know that I probably won’t make the transition without shedding a couple of tears, may it be out of fear, panic or stress. But I know that I’ll get there. I know that I’m going to be more than just okay. I know that university will take a special place in my heart. I just know and I can’t wait for the adventure this journey provides. I thought I would never be ready for it, but sitting here finishing writing this, tears are stinging my eyes and just like that I know. I know that I’m ready for this.

May you live bravely.

Love to you all, Anna Xx

the reason behind why I do what I do online

There are a ton of reasons behind why people do what they do on the Internet, but self-staging plays a role quite often and I genuinely hate that. The Internet has become, or rather always been, the one and only place where everything can easily be faked; identities, lives, looks, personalities, relationships and things far beyond my knowledge. But even if we stay realistic, most people only tend to share the positive and I can downright understand why they do. We want to share our happiest moments, memories, our best selves for the world to see, blending out the negatives. Fact is, those negatives are part of our lives all the same. Flaws make us human. Life consists of ups and downs; it’s never a straight graph. But that’s not what people see when they scroll through their news feed on social media and I, among quite some others, want that to change. That’s my reason number one behind why I do what I do on the Internet.

Ever since I started Instagram roughly around five years ago, it has been my sanctuary. I probably don’t have to go into detail about being unpopular in middle and high school, but it is what it is. It’s not really the others fault though, I guess I myself am to blame here. Growing up I became more and more shy. I was quite straightforward as a kid, always talking, always longing for attention, blabbering to complete strangers, making friends anywhere. I don’t know what changed, but I have never been that way again since I was about seven. The years around 7th and 8th grade have probably been among the hardest ones of my life up until today. I had immense trouble opening up to classmates. I didn’t behave childish, but since I have always been among the youngest, I felt I didn’t belong. At that time I would go straight up to my room when I got home from school and cry. It was only about a year later that I set up my Instagram account. After some getting used to the platform I went all out. It was the first time in a while that I felt understood. I started publishing short stories, joined group chats about books and eventually started photography. That took me about two years, but I was happy. I had people who truly appreciated who I was and what I was doing. My follower count was at 500 by then. I wanted to scream it out into the whole world, but it was a close-kept secret. I didn’t want anyone near me to know. But my account kept growing and I kept going and then I hit 1000 and I felt like I was going to burst if I didn’t tell my family and closest friends, so I did. The support was immense and I started to be downright passionate about what I was doing online. I shared simple photos of books I took with my phone, captioning them with personal words and stories or my opinions on books. After four years my follower count hit 5000. I was over the moon, started using an actual camera. Within only another year that follower count doubled. Roughly another twelve months have passed since then and here I am. Through it all Instagram has been my sanctuary.

So yes, the selfish reason behind why I do what I do on the Internet, is because it was the only place where I felt like I belonged, felt safe enough to open up. I am more than just thankful I took this step all those years back. It helped me find out who I am, and who I wanted to be all along. But that’s only the reason behind why I did what I did when I  first started my journey. The Internet, and the people behind the screens all over the world, has done me a lot of good and lately I have been trying to give something back. Which brings me to the reasons why I do what I do on the Internet today.

The reason why I do what I do on here is to make the world just a little better, a little kinder, day after day. I do what I do on here to raise awareness; no matter if that awareness is about body image issues or social media perfectionism or mental health. I do what I do to spread kindness. I do what I do to motivate, no matter if I motivate to study or to read or to be creative. I do what I do to make the world, a few peoples lives, just a little better. I do what I do on here as a kind of thank you, to help others reach what I reached, am still reaching; self-acceptance, self-confidence and self-love. This community helped me see the power of kindness, helped me realize the value of all the small things in life. But most importantly this community was able to teach me what everyone I know personally, failed to assure me in, and that is just how worthy I really am. I do am, and always was, endlessly loved by the ones close to me, but sometimes that just isn’t enough growing up. Sometimes you’re just so lost within yourself, so uncertain because of all the people who don’t seem to be okay with who you are, you can’t believe the ones closest to you. This community had the power to prove me wrong about myself. Strangers behind screens from around the world were able to teach me that I deserve to be loved, that I deserve to love and respect myself. They showed me that there is beauty within me. I am who I am and where I am because of them, because of you. I am writing  because of you. Without this community, I would have likely lost all faith in myself during this past year. You never ceased to support me and I wish I could do every single one of you as much good as you did me. Thank you. Thank you for making me all the things I haven’t been before. Braver and bolder and kinder and even more sensible, because I swear I can feel all of your hearts beating, can see your dreams hidden inside of them. Let them out, share them. Be braver and bolder, but above all be kind. Because kindness has more power than hate.

But before I end this, let me show you that there do is hope for the Internet. That there are people alongside me, who are doing what they are doing online for very similar reasons and the world deserves to see that. We are not alone and we are willing to be here for the long run. Love, Anna xx

“I do what I do to try to be kind, to share my passion with people, to show them what I think is beautiful, because it’s always better to share beauty than to keep it for yourself, to feature the little details of life, the ones people might not always notice, and I do what I do to make my little Internet place a safe and kind and accepting place.” by Zoé Hoibian (lechoixdezoe)

“The interner is my source of self expression. I want to share my story and I want to share with people what it feels like to be a real human, what it feels like to love and give love, what it feels like to be kind and a good person. I want people to feel connected or at least like they’re not alone in this world because there is someone who goes through the same things. I want to share what it’s like to feel deeply, to feel everything. And most importantly, what a blessing and a curse it is to be human. And also to inspire people to never give up on themselves or their lives because we all have bad days, but we can start over the next day and make it even better than yesterday.” by (fromjupitertomars)

“This little corner of the Internet is one of the few parts of my life in which I don’t feel self-conscious being entirely me. I started this account without telling anyone I knew, so everyone who’s turned up did so because they appreciate what I create, not because of any sense of obligation, and that’s quite a special thing! I feel valued for my words, thoughts, and photography, and that means the world to me. I also love how easy and encouraged it is to leave nice comments or send messages to make people smile. With only a few moments of your day you can improve someone else’s, and that makes me so happy.” by (meandmagnolia)