“Opfer müssen gebracht werden!” Translation from German: ”Sacrifices must be made!” -Otto Lilienthal, German Pioneer of Aviation
As the ‘Old Cajun Man’(as he is credited) in Joe Dirt once said, “Home is where you make it.” There is something in that. Not just about home, but about how the situation you are in is only as bad as you let it be. Of course, things are out of your control but your mindset and outlook is the thing that will dictate how things go the majority of the time.
I wrote yesterday about how your outlook and mindset on a situation and how excessively positive or excessively cynical you choose to be can have a positive or negative impact depending on the outcome.
In the last 6 months, I have had to move 3 times for reasons beyond my control. The first was because I was encroaching on my girlfriend’s space, we were living in an incredibly tiny room (for two people) and I over-stayed my welcome. I moved from there into a spare bedroom at a friends apartment. I lived on a couch, in a room with nothing but a few cabinets and a chair. I am incredibly thankful that I was able to live there for a low rent that allowed me to have my own little place in Germany to be alone and do my own things. But from there, I needed to move because I was not able to work from there, I needed to be nearer to a large airport so that I can travel to meet with clients more often. Then finally, I am currently moving because the person I was renting from decided he wanted his girlfriend to move in so I needed to move out by the end of the month. Luckily, I have found a place, it is closer to friends and still near an international airport so that I will be able to travel as necessary for work.
I always try to be positive, no matter what happens, in my work, educational, or personal lives. I always try to be happy and be positive, if not for myself, but for the people around me or the others involved. I like to focus on the possible positive outcomes, because getting bogged down in the negatives really set you down a path you shouldn’t follow. Negative thoughts lead to negative actions and negative actions lead to the negative consequences more often than not.
I have now been put in a rough spot with my career, personal life, health and friends but I am doing my best to stay positive and figure out the best way for it all to work out in the best possible ways for all of them. I have to sacrifice a little from one to get a good positive response for the other. In the past, I have sacrificed things from my friend/social life to take care of what I needed from my educational life. It worked out well, I missed out a lot of things, parties, dates, concerts etc but I worked hard and luckily I was able to get the positive outcome from my University education, graduated with honors, and was able to chase my dream and move to Germany and experience a new world.
I think right now I am sacrificing my personal life/education and a bit of my personal health to make sure that my career and my friends/interpersonal life are doing as good as possible. I am talking to my friends more often, trying to keep the connections up since I have moved away and now can no longer see them regularly to keep up my interactions.
I am sure that this is not healthy as a sacrifice such as these are not going to make my life well rounded but it will help stabilize something that I deem more important currently. The goal is that I can soon level out the attention to all of these things so that I can return to a more well-rounded life as is always the goal.