A Trip to the Cafeteria, Trees and Sonatas

Yesterday I received an email from Berlin's press and information office: the press conference this afternoon — about a new report by an expert commission that's looked into the legalities of releasing the biggest private Berlin real estate companies into public hands — is for accredited members of a specific press council only.

This meant that my schedule was lighter, although I was mildly disappointed that I couldn't attend.

After pedalling along a route that was (in stretches) thickly carpeted in yellow and green linden leaf petals with fringes of dark rainy moisture, I arrived ten minutes late for my 8:30 a.m. Greek university class. We had already begun the next chapter and were reviewing vocabulary about the Greek political system on the national and municipal level.

Wednesdays there are always two back-to-back classes. It took almost all that time until I was finally awake...

At quarter to noon I roamed back to my bicycle and was gradually pushing it out of the sheltered area when I saw my mother strolling in my direction on her way to the cafeteria. Are you in a hurry? she asked. — I was not!

So we went to the cafeteria together, each had a bowl of lemon pudding, she sipped a coffee while I had a hot chocolate, and we compared notes about our studies and our plans for the rest of the day. It was a nice interlude!

And then I cycled back home.

I wondered if the lilac leaves alongside the path were truly bigger now that this summer's drought has given way to a few thundershowers, or if I was imagining it. It also became clearer to me that the winds of the thunderstorms had damaged the plane trees along the way: drifts of leaf litter clumped around drains like heavy though small clouds, shattered tree fruits and broken twigs lay underneath and beside the parking cars.

Ge. was at home when I returned, we briefly chatted, and I gulped down a snack before heading off to Tempelhof Airport, where I spent what I think was an hour sorting through a bag of donated children's and adult women's clothing.

There's always a risk of 'looking a gift horse in the mouth,' but I hope it's all right to gossip a bit about the donations:

Many of the children's clothes didn't seem to have been laundered properly, and had a disagreeable smell. I draped them off the edges of huge sorting tables to air, while I sorted the rest. The ones that were still stinky by the time I wanted to go home, I regretfully tossed into the textile recycling bag.

The donation site has also seen a heavy influx of thin, white, disposable plastic boiler suits from the UK. The ones that are smutty and no longer in their original packaging, I threw away. But the rest I added to a pile on one of the 'odds and ends' tables.

After that I returned home and, catching up on email and the news, sent off another job application. In between I played the piano and practiced singing. Feeling quite smug at the job application achievement, I worked well past 9 p.m. on one of my book projects, which is about social history.

But a whole chapter of grammar exercises needs to be done before tomorrow morning's Greek class, which I entirely neglected...

On the piano I've begun looking at a volume of Scarlatti sonatas that I probably only looked at once before. A few sonatas are already in our other scores, since Scarlatti wrote tons of sonatas and they're often thrown together in different constellations. I wished very much that I'd begun practicing the 'new' sonatas when Papa was still alive, as he'd have liked them. We listened to Horowitz's recordings often, though, so maybe he didn't miss out on much.

Here is one of my favourite 'new' ones:

https://youtu.be/Bd0TRy41Fxg

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life?

I've had a few bad weeks. Going to the Finanzamt and learning about the income threshold for freelance journalists put a big damper on the main thing that was making me happy about the direction my life was going in. After my voice coach told me that nobody really cares or tracks if a freelancer earns 22,000€ in their first year, however, hope revived again. And now I feel fit and cheeky.

The weeks were also tedious because I launched a project of reading newspapers across the spectrum from the local kiosk, cover to cover, to study where I could publish my work, which style they publish, etc.

These newspapers are generally ones with experienced rather than beginner journalists, one nature magazine was literally on its last legs as I happened to buy the last issue they'll ever publish, and not a single periodical is asking for more submissions. So all that reading indoors was quite tedious, didn't bring a direct benefit as I also wasn't practicing my own writing during all that time, and I felt guilty for spending money on newspapers when I'm not earning any income.

That said, I might still buy one newspaper or magazine per week because I do find it useful to learn which German newspapers have an editorial tone or direction that rubs me the wrong way or raises a few genuine red flags.

And a few of the articles gave really useful insights into topics as far-ranging as Türkiye's elections through independent farmers in Brazil to Guatemala's judiciary. So I took lots of notes, and I enjoyed the well-written reports.

On Thursday I went to the local library and saw that they don't appear to stock journalism manuals. They did have one relevant book in the information technology shelves — I've forgotten if it was about social media or data in journalism — but I felt that doing anything computer-sciencey again was Too Soon.

I feel that the best self-education (besides just reading news websites that I enjoy) comes from Google Books previews and YouTube instructional videos about how to interview people, the economics of freelance journalism, what investigative journalism is, and so on and so forth. Those are worth every minute, and the best use of time when I am too exhausted to cycle anywhere, or the weather isn't cooperating, or I'll have an engagement that would overlap.

In-person reporting is even better.

***

I've also set up a schedule, to prevent the blurring of work into personal time.

From the moment I wake up in the morning, except on Sundays, this is work or university time. I breakfast, go to Greek classes or do homework or both, research and apply for jobs, work on my book projects, check my email, read newspapers or magazines, watch livestreams or tutorials, take notes, work on articles, practice typewriting — anything like that. In the early afternoon, a lunch break. And then I keep going until past 7 p.m. unless I'm feeling tired or sick. After that, it's leisure.

***

What's also surprised me is how much I adore taking photographs.

It's something I can share easily, which may be more reliable than any written description I can offer, and that's likely much less boring to the reader. It prevents any inequality of information between busy people who don't have time, and leisurely people who do have time; between people who happily read many books and those who can't; and people who might be distracted or depressed and people who have peace of mind.

I also adore taking photographs in the moment: narrowing in on a motif, trying to frame it in a novel or traditional way, making lots of split-second decisions about which details to include and not include, maybe also pondering what atmosphere or emotion I'm going for. And then uploading the photos to my desktop computer and cropping them down to their essentials afterward (although I run a lot on instinct here, and the cropping doesn't work as well if I'm tired or not in the right mood). I always ask myself 'Which details do you need to tell a story?'

But I don't feel very interested in barging into professional photographers' terrain.

I also feel inhibited about being part of the massive photographical overproduction that's rife on the internet.

For example, I'm willing to have an aesthetically shoddier product if it means a more ecologically-friendly sized file that's still a decent quality. Not everything has to be museum-quality.

Also, while I crop and adjust pixel size, there's no way I want to meddle with saturation or anything else.

I think that we can embrace honest ugliness rather than overlaying it with a filter.

And I'd rather have one really good photograph than fifty shots that might not be worth the pixels.

***

That said, I've slowed down because my Greek classes have been overwhelming. Sometimes the job application process, or the paperwork around being unemployed and not officially a student, also drags me down.

It's not often that I have enough energy to go out in the evenings to interview people, cycle somewhere, or take photos.

And the other problem is that not being in a real or virtual workplace with others means that it's harder to bounce ideas off of other people, but easy to get caught up in brooding thought-spirals.

***

What I should add is that it's still an immense privilege not to be working at the former company any more. Everything from my sleep, through my happiness about no longer needing to implement people management policies that make me feel like a terrible person, and the opportunities I've had to see friends and family without shuttling back and forth between them and work meetings, to the amount of time I spend playing the piano, has improved drastically.