Highway to burnout

           First of all I must say that I put my dissapointment with my career down to my utter lack of vocation for it, so I bear no grudge towards the company which gave me my first job. Working there I earnt a good sum of money, for that reason I'll always be grateful to them. Sure it was a good money but the hours were ridiculous. Furthermore there were no young people to talk to and gradually I start finding the work tedious and boring, as well as really stress-inducing. Moreover it turned out that I didn't have the ability to cope with pressure.

          At first, while I still had a real willingness to learn despite my lack of vocation, my workmates and even the boss would withhold knowledges and were reluctant to update me on the latest treatments and breakthroughs. I soon discovered that there is no such thing as team spirit, so without real vocation and any support I completely lacked the tools to deal with my dissatisfaction with the situation and with the profession itself.

         I usually felt I was a small cog in the wheel. Nothing I did really mattered. I had reached burnout and I lost all the interest for that work. I gradually became more and more careless about it; I was sort of trying to get sacked. Finally, not being able to cope with that weird atmosphere I had contributed to create I quit the job and, for the first time in nearly 5 years, I felt free. Despite still being on the dole, it was worth leaving, otherwise I would have gone crazy.

Sniffing scents

          When I worked, at the end of the day I usually went to see my dog and played a little with him before going to bed. He would always sniff me carefully and eagerly, searching all kinds of scents on my clothes, except when I had touched other dogs, that to my amazement  he would turn away jealous and upset. This behaviour made me think about the importance of this sense and made me aware of the importance of this source of information for dogs. Supposing he were a person he would never ask me the tipical "What about your day? What have you done today?" since it would be completely unnecessary. Simply by sniffing he would be able to gather all the information to work out the answer.



Don't you envy them their smell?



         Human beings are much more reliant on sight and hearing, even though these senses are far less  acute in us than in many other species. Each specie see, hear and smell things in a completely different way, it's like if each of them lived in their own world! For example our sight has nothing to do with dogs', cows', bees'... they can't see colours! It could be said the Earth contains as many worlds as ways of experiencing and feeling it, don't you think so?

When plans come to nothing...

           Yes, guys, my attempts to start working again met with complete failure. Unexpectedly enough, at the last moment I fell flat on my face and found this:
<<<-------------------<<<

        But don't worry, I won't let it get me down, you can be sure of that! Admittedly I was rather upset for several days, but not now! I just wonder why they told me in so many occasions (4 times!!) that they liked me sooooo much for the post... It annoys me to think that while I was hopefully waiting for a definite answer, they were kind of teasing me. If the post I wanted was for another person, they could at least have been straight with me and tell me the truth right from the beginning, could they? They drive me nuts, liar people!

Has everything to come to an end?

       Yesterday I phoned a friend who studied with me at the university and, despite we hadn't been in touch for several months, we didn't have too much to tell each other... While both of us were studying, we weren't like a house on fire, but were certainly quite close friends and could spend hours talking about anything. Then we used to meet every day and we would always have something to tell, even all sorts of nonsenses. Now we scarcely get in touch, and however we quickly catch up! Once we've told each other the major news, it seems like if there wasn't anything else to be said. We both remain silent... and somehow feel uncomfortable. Admittedly, the less you see a person, the less you have to say!

           I think this happens because we and our circumstances change with time, therefore our relationships change too. As long as we adapt to new situations we're no longer exactly the same we used to be, so our ways of thinking and seeing life also change. That's why when we meet up someone we haven't been in contact for quite some time, we usually get bored... Mind you, you're happy to see that friend again, but you feel you're poles apart now, since you don't understand each other's problems as you used to do... There's no doubt that if you're single, with no kids and living abroad for example, you won't identify with someone married, with several kids and living in the same city as ever, will you?

           In short, to our great sorrow nothing lasts forever! :(

Long-lasting brief trips

         What??? Long-lasting or brief? Well..., both in fact! Don't frown like that, let me explain it. Have you ever took a vacation for just a few days, but in your mind it lasted much longer as you remembered it with great fondness?

        This happens mainly with those first trips on your own. I have a pair of good examples:

      My mother's holiday in Schwitzerland
             
             Today, my mum was silent with her typical dreamy smile... So I said: You're in Schwitzerland in this very moment, right? 
- How do you know it?
- Your face speaks for you! :)

          She was there this october just for 12 days to visit my brother and his, by that time, girlfriend. Well, her vacation began the day she knew she was going... Immediately afterwards, started looking for a cheap flight to Milan, then going shopping and deciding what kind of clothes she might need there, wondering what to give them as a present to thank them for putting her up... Even the search of a good suitcase was made with utter eagerness. And once she found it, it was ready almost one week before the departure day!

         No, no, guys! Don't raise your eyebrows like that. Her behaviour wasn't odd at all, ultimately that was her first time doing a lot of things. Her first:
* True holiday.
* Time abroad.
* Flight.
* Time alone for so many days.
* Try to speak and understand a different language. (She's really proud of being capable of going to the supermarket in Lugano and buying all the things she needed) Even now she often asks: Do you guess how "X" is called in italian?  :) That's why I use to say that her brief vacation is being a long-lasting one, as at times she still seems to be there! Her thoughts are always there! She really enjoyed it before it had started, while it was going on and even now, so many months later!

           My english course in Kettering, England



Stratford-upon-Avon

               Its real length was just one month... But I could hardly sit down with anticipation during the two preceding months! And, like my mother, after coming back I would be always going on about it, because that trip was  full of first times too (I was just 17):
* 1st time alone on my own for one whole month.
* 1st vacation.
* 1st time abroad.
* 1st time speaking English almost all day
* I had never met so many people from so many different places...

(No, not that first time you're thinking of! Don't be gossip!!)

        We can make many more trips to amazing places, but admittedly none of them will be quite the same, won't them? For one thing, first times only happen once!!
   

Don't weep around the corners, guy!

       If there's something that get on my nerves, it's narrow minded people. Yesterday I came completely by chance into a post written by an english man living in Galicia. The thing is that in his post this guy moaned about galician language. All right about this... But he complains about galician language being taught at school. Can you believe it?!? If you are living and working in a country, you're expected to be able to speak its language, indeed! We are spanish and galician, therefore we speak and also study both of them.

          If you can't teach your children something you don't know, at least let us teach ours something we do know and even don't know but want them to learn. By this I also mean english. As you'll have regarded, mine is rather bad... However I do want my children to learn it and learn it with the utmost accuracy... I can't teach them properly, so I want them to learn it at school, so that they'll be better at it than me.

         I'm sick to death of being critizised for speaking my language in my land. And even be called narrow minded... ME, who always want to learn everything about eveywhere. NO COMMENTS! What about YOU, who don't learn anything at all about anywhere? Galician people speak galician with each other, but we switch to spanish when we talk to other people so, what on earth do you care what I speak with my people in the place where we live?!

         I really needed to get this off my chest, and a good old moan every now and then is very healthy!

Wonderwoman real story

            My great grandaunt Gumersinda died when I was 16 or so, nevertheless I've not forgotten her. For one thing she and her sister were the two people who brought me up as my father worked in Switzerland and my mother and grandparents were always too busy working at our farm and weren't able to look after me. Today I'm going to tell you her story.

           She was born in 1904 and was orphaned 6 years later, when her mother died after having birth a less able babygirl. So Gumersinda, who had just turned 6, was sent to the priest's house to work as a servant, where she was to stay until the priest died, around which time she was fortyish. In her twenties she had been about to marry a young man, but the damn priest didn't allow them! From that time onwards she wasn't to have any other relationships with any other men and, strange as it may seem, she remained working for that boss as if nothing had happened... Well, not so weird, actually, as she was really reliant on that job since she had no other place to live in. Furthemore she was the only person who cared after her disturbed sister Erundina as all their other siblings had emigrated to Argentina.

           During all those years she had been setting money aside in order to get built her own house, aim which she achieved. Both Gumersinda and Erundina moved into their humble dwell and soon afterwards, Gumersinda asked my grandparents (my grandmother was her niece) to come and live with them. She needed someone who looked after her sister while she was working and, in return, she would help them by sharing her home. Her propposal came out of the blue since they had had a relationship for roughly 15 years, but hadn't married because they were really poor and had neither a house to live in nor the money to get one built or to buy a piece of land where they could work. So they inmediately accepted.

          They went on being a poor family and everyone had to work. My grandfather emigrated to Switzerland where he worked for several years in the railways , my grandmother was a dressmaker, Erundina had 3 or 4 cows, one pig and several hens and rabbits, and Gumersinda had managed to become a great chef while working as a servant, which turned out to be really helpful every time the family had economical problems (too often). She used to work in places that were something like 20 km away and she went there on foot and alone! She left early in the morning and came back late at night... Amazing tireless brave woman!

         A few years later my great grandaunt found a new job. She was to be an important doctor's servant for several years. His wife was a teacher and, having seen Gumersinda couldn't read or write, she taught her for free. The first letter she was able to read made her cry, both with joy (she was truly reading a letter addressed to her for the first time in her whole life!) and sorrow, as she was told to return home as soon as possible because her sister was very ill.

        Take notice she had lost her mother being a very little girl, and from that very moment onwards she had to work really hard all her life. Despite her life was dreadfully difficult, she would always try to help everbody and care for everyone. Having never going to school, while working as a servant for rich people, she perfectly learnt how to look after herself so that no-one could ever cheat her, even being single and poor as she was.

        In a nutshell, working restless she managed to got her house built, paid her social security and her sister's, gave my grandparents a home, and brought up my mother, my brother and me. Was one of the first people in the hamlet who had electricity and running water, helped to dig her own well... By the way, thanks heavens we still have it, if not our farm would run out of water in summer. It never ever gets dry! Still useful and even essential so many years later!

        Last but not least, my parents built a bigger house as the family was growing and Gumersinda agreeded to convert her own old house (which had required so many efforts to be built) into a farm in order we could have many more cows. But she knew it was a great step forward, so... I usually wonder who else would have done that. I'll tell you: NO-ONE! It must have been sooooooo heartbreaking seeing her beloved house being smashed down...  This proves she was a wonderful woman, a real angel, don't you think so?