The Perils of Trying to Do Too Much

Last Wednesday I had a job interview. It went I thought fairly well, I happily demolished a slice of cherry streusel cake at a café while we talked, and it sounded like the interviewer planned to get in touch around Tuesday this week. But he also said — as far as I understood it — that it would be ideal if I got in touch, and save him and his hiring colleague some time. So I did, in the early afternoon this Wednesday, rather worried if I'd misunderstood and would come across as pushy. He said that he was eating lunch but would get back to me at the end of it. He has eaten an incredibly long lunch.

Then on Sunday I followed the Berlin half-marathon. It was enjoyable but, as I covered over 6 km in about 2 hours, so tiring the day after that on Monday I wasn't good for much.

Nonetheless I had a check-up at the dentist's on Monday; the surgeon was out, and it wasn't clear if everything was OK or not. In one and a half weeks, the next appointment should reveal all.

Since the course of Ibuprofen to handle any pain and swelling related to my dental surgery ran out, I've been having intense dreams (but also sleeping more soundly). All my life I've almost never had nightmares, so waking up after dreaming that I'd fallen off the side of a ship and was about to hit the water was a little alarming. A few hours afterward, of course I wondered if I was dreaming in metaphors and felt that something was off in my life, or if this was purely physiological.

So altogether I'm nervous if everything's OK, medically speaking.

Regarding the choir, I finally sent a frank email to two of the organizers when they asked why I hadn't been showing up regularly and if I was OK.

First of all I mentioned that the job search and trying to apply to university were still in progress and that my life is a bit of a mess.

Secondly I mentioned my worries about the summer concert: that singing an Israeli song that wasn't explicitly about peace, and not singing an Arabic-language song alongside it for example, was depressing me a lot.

We quickly came to an agreement that it would just be explained at the concert that we weren't singing the song for political reasons, and that the song had been planned for the programme far longer than 6 months (which I hadn't known before).

So I no longer worry as much that I'm going to become a cheerleader for famine and 30,000+ deaths, and that resolved some of my choir- and Weltschmerz-related woes. (Although I still feel that the public stances of the Berlin city government, the Green Party, the way the RBB evening news is reporting the conflict, and for example the Free University are kind of pushing me into a corner: if I claim any Jewish heritage whatsoever, I have to position myself as a victim of anti-Semites — who are supposedly always immigrants of Germany 'of course' because evidently Germany's Vergangenheitsbewältigung has been suddenly completed — and stand together with Netanyahu policy. It's not an identity I long for, and to me it couldn't be further from the multicultural, inter religious/inter-creed, and rational ideals that my Mendelssohn ancestors held. And I know it's not logical because it's really not my fault, but that as well as the discomfort I feel also about the lot of civilians on both sides in the Middle East, is still eating away at me.)

Either way, the energy required for the choir in general is still really costing me, also literally.

The whole of the weekend after this one, I've agreed to attend the bi-annual rehearsal retreat at a cost of over 70€. An organizer had offered to reduce my costs given my unemployment, but paradoxically they were also disappointed that I didn't choose the more expensive overnight stay option. That retreat will prevent me from relaxing and/or going on revitalizing journalistic excursions for those 2 days. The day after that weekend, there will be the important Kant event.

Turning up weekly to the regular choir rehearsal, instead of skipping it, is also adding pressure.

At the same time, I'm still volunteering and I enjoy seeing the people there when I go.

But I flaked twice when I was invited to join an iftar there, during Ramadan. I did send an excuse each time, and the second iftar clashed with the choir rehearsal time, but it still felt rude and I still feel uncomfortable about it.

Besides, living in a neighbourhood with Muslim families, I'd been longing to be invited to an iftar for years because it seemed nice, and I'd been delighted when it finally happened.

On Tuesday I spent much of the day baking a cake, in a haze of exhaustion; on Wednesday I brought it along as a post-Eid-al-Fitr treat.

Anyway, today I decided to celebrate the end of the 2 week sports ban by finally picking up a training regimen again that I'd abandoned a while ago, namely fulfilling fitness requirements for firefighter work.

The original regimen that inspired me to make the effort is on a piece of paper that has disappeared into the chaos on my desk. But from what I recall it requires running with a weight, push-ups, and sit-ups — in a certain quantity performed within a certain time.

And for 12 minutes I did running and walking intervals in a local park. Full of people, pets, a duck diving for food, pigeons and a timid young rabbit, aromatic pale purple lilacs, and green leaves, it was a relaxing setting.