A little update, for anybody out there who might be reading. Who knows, maybe somebody is. (Liza? Is that you?)

I am sitting on my bed, exhausted from the week I've just had. I think I'll go for a walk soon. I was at the Venice architecture biennale last weekend and then flew back to Berlin in the early morning on Monday and went directly to work. I had things after work every day this week, as I do most weeks. I really need to work on that. Every time I intentionally leave an evening open, somebody pops up and asks me to hang out and I end up telling myself I'll spend some time alone the next week. I never do. Today I am having a day (mostly) to myself and am mostly just thinking to myself "wow, I'm exhausted," but I also wanted to finally get some online stuff done. Nothing big and important, but for the longest time I've been meaning to set up an RSS reader, so I'm doing that now. Of course, I haven't kept a list or anything of the websites I like that have RSS feeds, so I'm on a bit of a hunt. Oh well. 

It's been ages since I really made a post about my life. Going back to the one from January, titled "I've behaved a bit oddly." I can inform you that T and I are still dating and that I am quite in love. Going back to the post two before that, titled "After a week of being all by my lonesome, I am being social again!" I can say that I am still friends with those people and feel as though I've sort of begun to find my niche in Berlin. On the one hand, I'd like to stay here for a very long time and really be integrated into a community. On the other hand, I don't actually intend to stay here for all too long and don't picture myself settling down in a big city in the long term. T is from east Germany and has said we can remain near Berlin without being in Berlin, but I'm not entirely sure I want that. Most of my family is in the west. Or in the US. Luckily, I've got all the time in the world to figure out what I want. Hopefully, it will find itself and things will fall into place. I feel as though this is already sort of happening here in Berlin. 

The Venice architecture biennale was extremely interesting and inspiring and for the first time in my life, I am actually considering grad school in more of a real and meaningful way. I feel a bit stuck in my job at the moment and would like to be doing something where I feel as though I'm at least trying to be a part of the solution to some problem. With my background, trying to fight climate change feels most natural. 

I'm taking a Japanese woodworking course! I'm thrilled about it! I've made my first object. 

I've also begun blogging on another blogspot blog as sort of a living portfolio/archive of leaves I find and flowers I press. It's called staring at the sun. 

I'd like to make a new portfolio website. I had one I made with squarespace, but I let my subscription lapse because I have a job and am not looking for a new one right now. Plus, if I were to, it would be something distinctly different from what I'm doing now and the portfolio that was on there was very tailored to the job I'm at now. I also have a portfolio pdf that I made in indesign, so it didn't serve any purpose other than to be a link to click from my linkedin, which I doubt anybody every clicked. I would like my portfolio site to have the feel of a personal site from the '90s or '00s, so I'd like to code it myself. But I'd also like it to feel polished and nice, so I'll need to learn to code better. The question of where to host it remains. I was, for a while, keeping up a site on neocities, but that ended up sort of just being a blog and so I migrated back to here. I do think there was a brief period in time when I was using both, which was a bit pointless. Of course, the neocities site had more traffic than this ever has. At this point, I think this is sort of just an archive for myself. 

Liza, are you out there? I miss you! I wish I had your email address, because I don't want to go back onto twitter to contact you through that. Do you even use twitter anymore? Does anybody I follow? I don't know. A lot has changed since I last logged on, I think. 

Is what people give me all they are willing to give me?

I am not very good at asking for more from people or at expressing my needs to people. I am learning to be better at it, but I do have this deeply held belief, I think, in spite of knowing better, that what I receive from people is all they are ever willing or able to give to me. I feel as though they will be unwilling to give me what I ask for, if I ask for more, and that I will be left with nothing in the end, somehow. I'm wondering if there's a way to train myself out of this, but I don't even know what I want from people! Often, all I want is some time alone, but I'm not even willing to give that to myself. I schedule too much in advance. Oh well. I think I'll go make some nighttime tuna salad now.