I just got a heavy flu. It started Wednesday night and caused me to be a wreck on Thursday. I couldn’t do anything, my total body hurt and I couldn’t eat or drink anything or it would come right out of me immediately as water. Did I catch a virus? I guess so, but that couldn’t be the only thing. I hadn’t been sick for over 10 years and recently got a lot fitter. I ate well and I kept watch on my sleeping habits. Still I got sick, and I figured out why. I was too busy scoring, too busy working my ass of doing all kinds of things and I was to busy to taking a time-out now and then. My body warned me, I was asking too much from myself. Now I paid the price, I couldn’t do my last exam (statistics) today. But hey, life goes on and there’s always another chance.
The thing is, I’m not too sure what to do now. These past few days made me realise that I should really cut myself some slack now and then. For the past few months I’ve been thinking about my life after graduation (Master). Everything had to be done fast, smoothly, planned and finished. Maybe I should spend my final year as a student a bit more relaxed. Cause I’m not too sure what I want to do next year anyway. I’m only 23 years old, should I already look out for work? Or should I take some time off? Or would it be a better idea too postpone my graduation a bit, don’t care about the extra debt I will be in due to extra months of studying and take some more time to do the things I like?
One thing’s for sure, I always do the things I enjoy. Last year, 2009, was a great year for me. I went abroad to Dublin, met great people from numerous countries, made great trips to Barcelona, Paris and Sardinia, met a special girl who I’ll never forget about, found out who my real friends are, lived together with a great friend and best of all, did the things I wanted to and I liked to do.
This year (2010) is all about achieving goals, distinguish myself from all the others so I will be successful in my future career and to get acknowledged for all that. People don’t always see all the things I do, and think because I only get mediocre grades I’m just “one of the bunch”. I wanted to change that, and I hope I succeed. But it should NEVER go at cost of my well-being.
Injuries kept me from doing sports and my dad got a heart attack which made me scared. Not everything has been going so well till now. But I don’t want to be seen as a complainer and I always want to look at the bright side of things. For starters, when I was to sick to be able to do anything, my great great friend Nikki came over and took care of me, even though she wasn’t feeling so well either. And when my friends heard the news about my dad they supported me even though they hadn’t seen me for a while or they were busy at the time. These are the most important things in life: people you can trust, people you can build on and giving back to those people.
For the coming weeks I hope to speak to everybody who are important to me and figure out what to do now and what to do next year. And I want to see and talk to you all very soon, have a beer, or just on Skype, chatting about nothing. Thank you all.
Thursday, 1 April 2010
Monday, 25 January 2010
Dual-Process blog
15 November 2009 I wrote the following:
Winter is coming. You notice because of the early night fall, the decreasing temperature and leafs falling from trees. The most obvious signal though is the sudden entrance of the good-old winter depression.
More and more people I ran into were complaining about life, about uni, about whatever. There was this girl who was sick and tired of everything cause she wants to go abroad but simply got confused cause of all the rules, data and millions of other difficulties. All she thought was fuck uni, fuck life. ,,I wanna quit and leave all the shit that’s called university behind me”.
And then there was that moment I got caught by the ghost of winter depression. It was a crap Saturday and I went out to watch my fav football club DOVO that was playing in Leerdam. They got 0-1 ahead, and the opponent got a red card for a reckless challenge. Still, they managed to fight themselves back in the game and win 2-1. God that sucked, especially cause it was the third week in a row they lost and the third week in a row they were actually better than the opponent. But okay, these things happen, right? So I decided to just have something a eat and focus on the match that Holland was going to play against Italy. That could be good. Well, it wasn’t. The worst game in ages by both the Dutch and the Italian national team, and a total waste of time. When I got in my dad’s car to go to the train station, I remembered I left my iPod on the kitchen table, and there was no time to recollect it cause I had to catch the train. Now this means I won’t have my iPod for two weeks as I was planning to stay in Nijmegen the next weekend. -1 on the happy scale… So you can imagine how I felt yesterday evening. All alone, crap weekend, it sucked. Then I started to think. I don’t see my friends often enough due to everybody’s crazy schedules. Most of my friends are in their master years of uni and work parttime, so there is hardly any time to grab a drink or have dinner together. Besides from that, many of them live outside Nijmegen and in order to get to them I have to travel at least for over an hour by train. And those who live in Nijmegen are busy busy busy.
25 January 2010, I wrote:
It’s 2010 now, still cold and wintery outside. So what’s up today? Well, not much. I did loads of studying the past few weeks. I had to write an essay, a research proposal and a full research report. That brought me to a total of about 20,000 words written in the past three weeks, and so my brains were kinda drained… At this moment I’m working on getting my internship at the alumni agency of the uni accepted as a part of my master thesis. I will perform a small study on the need for an internship- and job databank developed by the alumni desk, and get paid for it, so I can extend my holiday plans for this year ;-). It would be great to be able to combine this internship study and my master thesis, as I will save time by doing so.
Besides this thing I also have two other courses on my plate that include (massive) research, so enough to do in the coming weeks. Important weeks, cause this will decide whether I’ll be able to finish my master programme this June or not. With that, choices for next year come lurking around the corner. I have to think about whether I want to keep on studying in 2010/2011 or start working immediately after my Business Communication programme. I’m thinking about moving to Amsterdam and following some courses there, maybe on humanities or languages. Another option is moving to England, either Edinburgh or London to study Event Management or International Marketing Management. This second option is more expensive though, that’s a pity. And of course, it requires more effort cause I’ll have to move everything I have abroad (again). It is in interesting and eye-opening option though, so I‘ll definitely keep it in mind.
The final thing I want to do this month (February) is making holiday choices for this spring and summer. I would love to go to the United States this year, but I need a travel partner that I can count on. My great friend Alice might be that person, so maybe we’ll go together, just have to see what’ll happen. Another option (and great plan!) is to go “interrailing” with some friends from the Netherlands to Istanbul. I would love to see that city as it is the gateway between Europe and Asia; a culturally rich city that I have to see once in my life. And then, as a final choice, I would also love to go to a few nice festivals this summer. There are great (small) festivals in Easter-Europe and the Balkan that combine great music and great weather with a tremendous atmosphere. I’ll keep my eyes open for that!
Of course I already made some plans. I’ll be joining my study mates on a trip to Tallinn and Helsinki. I’m really looking forward to that, it’s gonna be a great week! I’ve never been to Scandinavia before, so it’s all new to me. We will leave on 30 April (yes, Queensday) and will stay there for about seven days. I hope that gives us plenty of times to combine sightseeing and partying.
Okay, so finally I finished my blog that I started three months ago. Being used to the winter weather and all that, I still hope spring kicks in soon. Anyway, I’m looking forward to my friend Alice coming over to Nijmegen again, my possible trip to Bergen (Norway) to visit Jurriaan and all the parties that I’ve got planned for the coming weeks (Bloody Beetroots, Slagmalsklubben, etc.). I hope you enjoyed reading my blog again, I certainly enjoyed writing in English to all of my friends again. Talk to you again in my next blog!
Oh, the pics I added are from my trips to Hamburg and Berlin last December! Enjoyed that a lot!
Winter is coming. You notice because of the early night fall, the decreasing temperature and leafs falling from trees. The most obvious signal though is the sudden entrance of the good-old winter depression.
More and more people I ran into were complaining about life, about uni, about whatever. There was this girl who was sick and tired of everything cause she wants to go abroad but simply got confused cause of all the rules, data and millions of other difficulties. All she thought was fuck uni, fuck life. ,,I wanna quit and leave all the shit that’s called university behind me”.
And then there was that moment I got caught by the ghost of winter depression. It was a crap Saturday and I went out to watch my fav football club DOVO that was playing in Leerdam. They got 0-1 ahead, and the opponent got a red card for a reckless challenge. Still, they managed to fight themselves back in the game and win 2-1. God that sucked, especially cause it was the third week in a row they lost and the third week in a row they were actually better than the opponent. But okay, these things happen, right? So I decided to just have something a eat and focus on the match that Holland was going to play against Italy. That could be good. Well, it wasn’t. The worst game in ages by both the Dutch and the Italian national team, and a total waste of time. When I got in my dad’s car to go to the train station, I remembered I left my iPod on the kitchen table, and there was no time to recollect it cause I had to catch the train. Now this means I won’t have my iPod for two weeks as I was planning to stay in Nijmegen the next weekend. -1 on the happy scale… So you can imagine how I felt yesterday evening. All alone, crap weekend, it sucked. Then I started to think. I don’t see my friends often enough due to everybody’s crazy schedules. Most of my friends are in their master years of uni and work parttime, so there is hardly any time to grab a drink or have dinner together. Besides from that, many of them live outside Nijmegen and in order to get to them I have to travel at least for over an hour by train. And those who live in Nijmegen are busy busy busy.
25 January 2010, I wrote:
It’s 2010 now, still cold and wintery outside. So what’s up today? Well, not much. I did loads of studying the past few weeks. I had to write an essay, a research proposal and a full research report. That brought me to a total of about 20,000 words written in the past three weeks, and so my brains were kinda drained… At this moment I’m working on getting my internship at the alumni agency of the uni accepted as a part of my master thesis. I will perform a small study on the need for an internship- and job databank developed by the alumni desk, and get paid for it, so I can extend my holiday plans for this year ;-). It would be great to be able to combine this internship study and my master thesis, as I will save time by doing so.
Besides this thing I also have two other courses on my plate that include (massive) research, so enough to do in the coming weeks. Important weeks, cause this will decide whether I’ll be able to finish my master programme this June or not. With that, choices for next year come lurking around the corner. I have to think about whether I want to keep on studying in 2010/2011 or start working immediately after my Business Communication programme. I’m thinking about moving to Amsterdam and following some courses there, maybe on humanities or languages. Another option is moving to England, either Edinburgh or London to study Event Management or International Marketing Management. This second option is more expensive though, that’s a pity. And of course, it requires more effort cause I’ll have to move everything I have abroad (again). It is in interesting and eye-opening option though, so I‘ll definitely keep it in mind.
The final thing I want to do this month (February) is making holiday choices for this spring and summer. I would love to go to the United States this year, but I need a travel partner that I can count on. My great friend Alice might be that person, so maybe we’ll go together, just have to see what’ll happen. Another option (and great plan!) is to go “interrailing” with some friends from the Netherlands to Istanbul. I would love to see that city as it is the gateway between Europe and Asia; a culturally rich city that I have to see once in my life. And then, as a final choice, I would also love to go to a few nice festivals this summer. There are great (small) festivals in Easter-Europe and the Balkan that combine great music and great weather with a tremendous atmosphere. I’ll keep my eyes open for that!
Of course I already made some plans. I’ll be joining my study mates on a trip to Tallinn and Helsinki. I’m really looking forward to that, it’s gonna be a great week! I’ve never been to Scandinavia before, so it’s all new to me. We will leave on 30 April (yes, Queensday) and will stay there for about seven days. I hope that gives us plenty of times to combine sightseeing and partying.
Okay, so finally I finished my blog that I started three months ago. Being used to the winter weather and all that, I still hope spring kicks in soon. Anyway, I’m looking forward to my friend Alice coming over to Nijmegen again, my possible trip to Bergen (Norway) to visit Jurriaan and all the parties that I’ve got planned for the coming weeks (Bloody Beetroots, Slagmalsklubben, etc.). I hope you enjoyed reading my blog again, I certainly enjoyed writing in English to all of my friends again. Talk to you again in my next blog!
Oh, the pics I added are from my trips to Hamburg and Berlin last December! Enjoyed that a lot!
Sunday, 8 November 2009
Back again
Let's see what's happening at the moment... Not too much actually, but still it's time for a new blog. Always plenty of stuff to share, and I finally found some free time to write. So let's start already.
Nice weather today, perfect for running to increase my fitness. I'm injured again though, this time I ripped a muscle in my calf that's keeping me from playing football. I'm healing according to plan though, so I can already jog a litte for one week now. I hope to be able to play football again this or next week, but I'll let the fysio decide. The biggest disappointment for me is that I probably won't be able to compete in the Zevenheuvelenloop (Seven Hills Run; over 15k), which would mean that it will be the second year in a row that I can't run due to injury. ah, we'll see, can't do much about it right?!
Last Thursday we had a dropping, organised by the Business Communication association Babylon. That was loads of fun, though it meant being dropped in the German woods and having to walk back for over 10k to Nijmegen, trying not to be caught by the "spot car". We won though, so hurray for us :D. By the time we got in Nijmegen we were all quite drunk cause we brought a lot of beer and booz with us, so even after all the walking we still had a fun night in a few pubs.
Now that I'm almost halfway my final Master year, I will have to think about what to do next year when I finished and graduated. I want to do a second Master, preferably abroad. That would be kinda pricy though, so I have to find a solution for that. One could be to linked to a Dutch university so I can study abroad for less (not the full fees) or just to do a traineeship somewhere in Europe or the Americas. This month I will dive into all the possibilities and make a plan for next year.
In the mean while, I also want to travel a bit during my final year of being a student. I want to visit Alice in Hamburg, cause I miss hanging out with her. Also, going to America and Canada is very high on my list. I never been outside Europe, so I figured it's time to do so this year.
About partying, well, there is one nice thing coming up: Mr. Oizo. Loved the Flat Eric video when I was young and I listened to some recent tracks of the French master of techno, and I'm really looking forward to this gig. Only 10euro, so that's a cheap night!
Okay, finishing up now, gotta go (cause there will be a nice football match between Feyenoord Rotterdam and AZ Alkmaar (ruling champion) this afternoon, and at 4.30 Ajax Amsterdam will play FC Twente (currently first) and as I cheer for Ajax, this game is of massive importance to me. :-)
I promise my next blog will come more quickly after this one than last time!
Nice weather today, perfect for running to increase my fitness. I'm injured again though, this time I ripped a muscle in my calf that's keeping me from playing football. I'm healing according to plan though, so I can already jog a litte for one week now. I hope to be able to play football again this or next week, but I'll let the fysio decide. The biggest disappointment for me is that I probably won't be able to compete in the Zevenheuvelenloop (Seven Hills Run; over 15k), which would mean that it will be the second year in a row that I can't run due to injury. ah, we'll see, can't do much about it right?!
Last Thursday we had a dropping, organised by the Business Communication association Babylon. That was loads of fun, though it meant being dropped in the German woods and having to walk back for over 10k to Nijmegen, trying not to be caught by the "spot car". We won though, so hurray for us :D. By the time we got in Nijmegen we were all quite drunk cause we brought a lot of beer and booz with us, so even after all the walking we still had a fun night in a few pubs.
Now that I'm almost halfway my final Master year, I will have to think about what to do next year when I finished and graduated. I want to do a second Master, preferably abroad. That would be kinda pricy though, so I have to find a solution for that. One could be to linked to a Dutch university so I can study abroad for less (not the full fees) or just to do a traineeship somewhere in Europe or the Americas. This month I will dive into all the possibilities and make a plan for next year.
In the mean while, I also want to travel a bit during my final year of being a student. I want to visit Alice in Hamburg, cause I miss hanging out with her. Also, going to America and Canada is very high on my list. I never been outside Europe, so I figured it's time to do so this year.
About partying, well, there is one nice thing coming up: Mr. Oizo. Loved the Flat Eric video when I was young and I listened to some recent tracks of the French master of techno, and I'm really looking forward to this gig. Only 10euro, so that's a cheap night!
Okay, finishing up now, gotta go (cause there will be a nice football match between Feyenoord Rotterdam and AZ Alkmaar (ruling champion) this afternoon, and at 4.30 Ajax Amsterdam will play FC Twente (currently first) and as I cheer for Ajax, this game is of massive importance to me. :-)
I promise my next blog will come more quickly after this one than last time!
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