Overenergetic

I have too much energy. I don't know why, but I often look like I am on some exciting drugs...instead, it is all natural...a lot of people envy this surplus of energy and I agree that it is a useful tool, because I always manage to do million things in a day....the thing is that I also need to manage this surplus of energy very well, because when I don't use it, I risk to get very down, very paranoid, I don't sleep well and I get agitated, very stressed, and nervous very easily....

Of course, in general I have a life-style which allows me to burn all the energetic surplus. I wake up and I do abs and push up, then I walk very fast to and from work (20 minutes each way), then I work a lot, and in the evening I always dance a little at home or I do some other activities...anyway, in general managing the overenergetic me is not a problem. I do a lot of sport and everything fits well in place..and I can smile at the world.

The problem is when I am in holidays or when I don't have my own life.

In the last 3 months I have been living either in hotels or at some friends place. And while I am very thankful to my friends for having hosted me and I am very happy for my trip in Costa Rica, it is also true that it was much more difficult to have a routine to avoid building up too much stress and energy. Plus, I had too much time to think during my holidays alone in Costa Rica.....and since for me thinking too much always ends up in some kind of paranoia, I really needed a lot of sport to keep myself under control and in a good mental shape....

In Costa Rica, I hiked a lot, and tried stand up board paddling. I had plenty of occasions to do some outdoor activity. It was very easy. The problem was when I got back to Portugal, and in Montpellier after and now in Italy. Fortunately, I brought my running shoes with me.

I went running tonight and I am so proud of myself. Not only I was impressed of still being in a good shape, I ran very well and my mood improved in an incredible fast way. Sometimes I get so down and stressed that I forget how badly I need sport to keep myself balanced.

Anyway, my wish to everyone for this new coming year is to have a very healthy 2012.

I have to keep in mind to hit the road regularly, no matter what the weather outside is, to be in good mental and physical shape!

Happy 2012!!!!

..and life keeps going on...

I couldn't have believed this if someone would have told me.
I couldn't even imagine it.

A month and a half ago I left Montpellier crying to move to Portugal. I spent a week there before leaving for Costa Rica and then another week there before coming back to Montpellier for a few weeks. And I miss there already. I was sad to leave Portugal and I didn't feel I was coming back to a familiar place by arriving here in Montpellier, where I am now. Of course, I am happy to see my friends here, but it doesn't feel like I have been living here for three years. And I liked here. I just think to like Portugal more. I just feel that I could maybe be even happier in Portugal than here. Of course, everything seems so good in Portugal that I am scared....it can't keep being so good all the time...can it??? it would be too good....

Yes, I have a problem with my apartment and the day I left there I woke up to find my kitchen full of water on the floor. Yes, I am not settled there fully. But still. I like there. I love to be on the Ocean...it reminds me of a very very small version of Ocean Beach in San Francisco. I love the food. People are nice. People at work seem nice. Yes, the economy there falls apart....and still, I am optimist.

It feels so weird.....a month and a half ago I felt like I wanted to keep my life here in Montpellier and now that I am back to Montpellier for a few weeks, I don't feel any specific attachment to this place, except the attachment to a few people who live here.

Maybe I move so much from one place to the other, that my body automatically learned to adapt to a new place and make a life where I am living at the moment. I still think that it is very weird. It never happened so fast. Beginnings have always been very difficult for me.

Anyway, I am slowly back to blogging...I have to write down something about Costa Rica too...

Sad, sad, sad, sad......

I am sad. I am definitively very sad. I spent many hours yesterday just crying.
The day of my departure from Montpellier to Portugal finally arrived.
And I cried, as expected of course.
I am going to miss some of the people I met and got close to here. I am going to miss them a lot.
I wish I could have a life in a place where I like and where I can also have a job and that all the people I miss who live around the world could come there and spend a lot of time with me.
I love sharing things with people who mean something in my life and once I move, it is never the same. Distance sucks. In friendship and romantic relationship. It just sucks.
I hate moving because of all the people I grew attached too and I have to leave behind. I bring them in my heart with me, but certainly it is not the same.
Every time, no matter where I live, it is always very painful to leave.

Costa Rica

Planning, planning, planning. But this is fun.
I spent a couple of hours looking for scuba diving places and parks in Costa Rica. Thinking of what I would like to see while there, what I can't miss, how to get around, etc. It is very exciting and I am very looking forward to this trip......The more I read about, the more I feel I should stay there for some months, not just for three weeks....ok, three weeks is a beginning....but it looks like there are so many things to see and to do....many things that I would like to see and to do and the nature must be so beautiful there.
I am really enjoying this part of planning where to go and what to see when I will be there!

I am fidgety. I always am. I don't even know how to find some peace in myself for longer than just some minutes. For that, I need to be in a forest, on a beach staring at the sea, in a place without obstacles to the view, maybe in a desert. I need to be walking along Ocean Beach in San Francisco, or bike without scope, goal or a place to go in Holland. I am re-reading the book of Jovanotti "Il grande boh!", which is quite in line with the way I feel lately and right now and with the way I feel about this lonely trip to Costa Rica.

I think that I will take my bike and bike for some hours along the river till I will be very very tired but my mind will be more relaxed and clean of all the thoughts that are always there and they never leave me alone.

The first thing I will do when I will be based in Portugal will be to get a good bike to bike around.

I really need this trip

I am looking forward to my trip in Costa Rica in November. It is not only because I am looking forward to see a new country, to possibly see many cool animals, to discover something I don't know yet, but also because I really need some time out of everything, out of what it is my life right now. And not because I don't like it, but because I keep being overwhelmed by not being able to even rest and enjoy a place. This moving to Portugal is shaking me to the bottom of myself. I can't find a way to be happy and excited as I should be. I keep thinking that I don't want to leave here and my life here. Because even if my life here is not perfect and there is a lot of room for improvement, overall I like it. It makes me feel comfortable. Maybe in a couple of years I would be bored and I would like to move, but for now I feel that I just started feeling home here and I have to leave.
Of course, I could stay here and find whatever job. But then why here? why here versus somewhere in Holland or in San Francisco, which are certainly places that I love more than here. Beside, I invested so much on my work that right now it would be completely stupid to throw everything away to stay here for no reason except that I don't want to move again. If I would have a relationship with someone, there would be at least a personal deep connection here. But there is not even that. I just don't want to move. Simply that.
I don't want to have to think about it, I don't want to get nervous the more the time passes by and I think about all the things that I would like to do here and I am not doing for various reasons. My life is magic and wonderful, but all this moving is making it also very very difficult. It is difficult to keep friendships or relationships with the distance, it is more and more difficult starting over again and again in a new country in a new place and having to re-make a new life there when my old life here is not so bad after all.
I can't get used to the idea of moving and this trip to Costa Rica hopefully will help me to have some time for myself out of everything that now is a source of stress and a lot of thoughts for me.

Emotionally unavailable men

I am 36 and even if I do not have large experience when it comes to relationships and men, I can say that I have a bit of experience on this subject and that my experience is based on a sample size coming from many different parts of the world.
I had few very important relationships in my life. Two with someone from Italy, one with someone from Holland and one with someone from the USA. Plus, I base what I am about to write also on the experience of my girlfriends and sister.

Where are all the men/men gone? I am not talking about the dominant, bossy men, of course.
I am talking about men we could rely on and build something with, without them having a crisis and leaving us, without them not knowing what they really want, without them not being able to decide when it comes to important matters, without them not being able to distinguish between deep love and infatuation.

Of the four important relationship I mentioned before, three of them were with very good, incredible men. And I loved all of them very deeply, even if in a different way. I am someone for whom freedom is one very important value in life. I am someone who not easily gets into a relationship. I am someone who doesn't easily fall in love, and even less is willing to commit. I am complicated and I am very independent. I understand that I am not the ideal "couple" person. But when I am in a relationship, I am 100% in there. And I try, even if I don't always succeed, to work my issues with the other person.

What I am coming to realize lately is that most men I have met, my sister have met, my girlfriends have met are emotionally immature and when it comes to relationships they have no idea of what exactly that means......I think that "us", women, we are more aware of how we feel for someone and what we would like to have with this person. Them...I am not sure. They can love you very much and still not being aware of that or still feel that "it should be different" or still have many doubts on what being together means. I have met a lot of men who are afraid of feelings and strong feelings. And it didn't just happen to me.

I wonder what it is the right strategy to deal with these men. I am not the kind of person who would convince them to be with me or on how they feel for me. I can't be in their minds and know how they feel. And I have too much self-respect to be with someone who is not sure if he wants to be with me or what he wants. But I keep finding myself being asked to invest more than them, running the relationship not as a team but as a carrier, me being sure of what I want and them not being so sure about me/us (and they never know why that). This till the moment the relationship is over and then they suddenly realize that they can't live without me or they want me back. By that time, I am almost always saturated of their insecurities and I am never fully able to trust them that they got emotionally "more mature". I am also very very tired to feel the psychotherapist of every man I am with....because they all have issues......

I have issues too!!! a lot of them, believe me!!!!

But the thing is...if I have issues (or my sister or any of my girlfriends) is "us" being too demanding, irrational, putting pressure on them (men love this!!!!), & company. If they have issues, we have to understand. Or anyway we end up trying to understand because we love them. We have this sick spirit of saving the world.

I admit that I am very good in making relationships difficult and probably most of the women when they love someone feel very insecure (well, me for sure!) that the person they love may leave them. But the thing is. It is many many years that I am having distance relationships (which honestly suck!!!!) and for sure I wouldn't know from where to start if I would have again a "normal"/ in the same place relationship, but I often end up with the feeling of running away from a relationship and just think about myself in a very selfish way because I am sick of the situation and the fact that all the guys I have been with ended up not knowing what they wanted from me and with me.

So, what I got to wonder is: does it exist out there a man who is man enough to know what he wants from the person he is with and honest enough to admit it to himself and tell her? And how come most of my girlfriends, my sister and I keep meeting men who are sentimentally totally immature?

A colder end of August day

I went to the beach yesterday evening. I am trying to enjoy as much as I can the things I love of here. I biked to the beach in the evening. I saw a stork and many many flamingoes...I am going to miss the bike path that goes to the beach so much!
I was colder at the beach. Windy. And this morning seems to be a perfect fall day, sunny and a bit chilly. It reminds me of the season I loved most when I was living in New Haven. The beginning of the fall, when the temperature started to be a bit colder, and the air in the morning was crispy. I loved to walk around when the weather was like that and I especially enjoyed the East Rock Park in the fall. I have so many nice memories of so many different places around the world.

my stuff is moved

Vila do Conde...day four of this road-moving-trip.

I feel very uncomfortable in being in a country where I want to interact with people, I understand the language and I can't speak it. It doesn't happen too often, but when it does, I hate it. I got a book on quick sentences to learn in Portuguese to get around. It is a start. Then as soon as I will move here, learning the language will be one of the first things I will do.

Last night I had a bad crisis. And today too. I cried for some time without stop. I am not ready to move and mentally I guess I realized only now that I am seriously going to move my life to another country again. Yes, I have friends here, even a very good close friend here. Yes, there is the sea and hopefully I will find an apartment just a few streets away from it. Yes, the working environment is very stimulating. Yes, people of Portugal are generally very nice....yes, there are a lot of positive things and I can see all that. I also feel lucky in having got the grant to work here, possibly for long time, on my own project, when the economy is going worldwide so bad. I can see all the good things of this. It is not that I am ungrateful. But still. I am not ready to move. I am not ready to leave my old life behind. I am even less ready to leave the people I got attached to in these years. I know, there is skype and sms and emails. But it is not the same. Nothing can replace the real time spent together with someone I love or I am close to. Nothing can replace a real hug. In my life I found a few very good huggers. People who are able to hug me and make me feel part of something, not alone, as if I just got home. I have met one of these good huggers in Montpellier and I am sure I will miss hiding in his arms when I need. And then there are the people I shared these past three years with. They have been with me trough the break ups and the ups and downs of my life in these years and the surgery I had and the bad and good news at work. They have been with me, especially one girl. A few days ago I was very down and I spent an entire afternoon with her. We talked and then she showed me the pictures of her last trip. I felt connected and I loved it. The people I feel connected to are very precious to me.

I don't want to leave all this now. No matters what I will find here next. I am just not ready. I have many more things to live, share and experience in Montpellier before leaving. And yes, there are plane connections that are not too expensive, and it is not so far....but it will be not the same once I move, unfortunately. I wish I could live in a place I like where I could also have all the people who are important to me. I already know that this can never happen.

Today, to ease my being so agitate and sad, my mom and I went for more than a two hours walk along the beach and then this afternoon we relaxed at the beach, just reading and swimming in the ocean. It was good. I liked it....but it is weird and sad that right now I am not able to fully enjoy it. I am happy because I know that this is something I will enjoy of my life here, but I can't fully enjoy it now because I am aware of the fact that my life here will mean the end of my old life in Montpellier. And I don't like the idea too much.

moving- part three

We finally got to Vila do Conde, in Portugal.
From Burgos to get here we had to go up and down, up and down, up and down and so on for an infinite time across many mountains.....We had the same exact scenario for many hours....and unfortunately also the same music as we only bought a few cds of Zucchero and by now we listened to all of them many many times (and none of us likes radio very much)....I will need a detoxication from Zucchero after this trip.

The car was fully loaded with my things to move to Portugal. At the end I couldn't fit everything in there, but we managed to move a lot, the most important and heavier things for sure....now they are all in my friend garage, till when I will have my own apartment here.

I had a nice welcome as soon as I got here from a couple of people with whom I will work.
I also confirm my first impression that people of Portugal keep being very nice and drive very bad.
I miss Montpellier and the close people I have there....Today I passed from feeling home sick to being excited for this new life.
My mom's reaction after seeing how far is the place where I will be working from where I would like to leave make my mood dropping to the floor.....she didn't seem too happy about this change in my life....at the end the important thing is that I will be happy here...and I hope so, even if for now is difficult to leave people I grew attached too and my apartment and the things I like of Montpellier behind.

moving- part two

I am in Burgos right now.
Today it was a full, complicated day.
We drove in a pooring rain...we....my mom actually drove...she doesn't let me drive...never...
Anyway, the rain was pooring.
My mood was in full pms mood...
We stopped for lunch and we got ripped off.....The price we paid for lunch was higher than the amount we paid for one night in the hotel included breakfast for two people...
We got to Burgos and we got lost trying to find the hotel.
Immediately after I got a phone call from my bank in France telling me that for security reasons they had to block my atm card because it was among the cards that were possibly be used for frauds...fortunately I have with me another credit card, otherwise I would be without money....
Then I got a bad news about work.
Then I got my period, I went to buy some pads and I bought something gigantic, which I realized only too late that it was for people with bladder problems...

Then we finally set off my mom and I and we enjoyed Burgos, which is a very nice town with amazing monuments. We strolled along the river and it was relaxing...fortunately....but I guess not relaxing enough to stop my brain from thinking in a scattered nervous way about many things.....

Tomorrow we will head to Portugal, where I will leave my stuff.....

moving,moving,moving

I am writing this post using my mom's little laptop....very cute, but my fingers are bigger than each of the letters, so to write every single world I need about 3 minutes of writing, deleting some additional letter that shouldn't have been there, writing again, etc. etc....basically, writing a single post will take me an hour :-(

I moved. Not definitively, but I am moving most of my stuff to Portugal already. Yesterday I felt very blue about it. No more pictures on the walls of my apartment, no more board on which to mimic the surfing, no more rollerblades, or books, or many summer dresses...not many things left in my apartment in Montpellier. All these things will spend the next months closed in boxes and left in a basement of a friend of mine in Portugal.

My schedule for the next months includes the following crazy trips across countries:
- Currently, a road trip with my mom to bring my stuff to Portugal. We left Montpellier today and we will be back on the 24. First stop, the one of today, Lleida, in Spain....where we found 37 degrees of temperature to wait for us....no matter what, we went for a long long walk...I needed some movements after so many hours in the car.
- Back to Montpellier till September 25, when I will go to Luxembourg for a week.
- Back to Montpellier again.
- Sometimes during the first two weeks of October, I will spend a long week end in Italy.
- Back to Montpellier till October 15 or 17
- Take a plane to move myself and my life to Portugal.
- November in Costa Rica, with a stop in the USA for a few days.
- Back to Portugal for a few days.
- December 8 I will have to be in Montpellier. I will stay for a few days and then
- Italy for Christmas

My life is going to be a bit scattered around, as always when I move from one country to another. I will miss the few close friends I made in Montpellier. I will truly miss some of these people. And I know that I am lucky because I already have friends where I will go in Portugal. I even have one very close friend there. But every time I move from a place to another, it is always hard to leave people I feel close to behind....I hope that we will be able to keep in touch and see each other, but of course it will be not the same and it makes me very very sad.

I guess that has someone told me recently, this is my life and I should be kind of used to it...but the truth is that every time is painful for me to leave people and things of my old life to which or to whom I am attached to to start a new life somewhere else.

PS. I really have problems with Spanish food...it is so much about meat and I do not really eat meat that much.....My mom and I got crazy tonight to find something to eat.....but we managed.

PPS. Next stop of this road trip: Burgos, tomorrow.

Packing, packing, packing

Here we are.....moving again...don't know if it is for good or not....but this is the way it is....The other day a guy wondered why I am so down about leaving here and moving again, as I should be used to this by now....this is after all pretty much as it has been for me in the last 10 years.
But I am not used to this and moving didn't get easier and easier with time. It just actually got harder. I was just starting to put my roots here. I have some very good friends here (a few days ago, I just skipped one afternoon at work, to spend it all with one of these good friends of mine), I love the fact that my life here doesn't depend on a car and I car bike everywhere, I have my favorite bookstore (which is a very important life essential for me), my favorite bakery, my favorite beach place, I like the people I am working with, and even if I am not totally crazy about Montpellier, I do like it here and I did like spending the last three years here.

I am a bit blue in these days because of this moving.

And I hate, deeply hate, to see all my books in boxes. I have a very few material things in my life, exactly because I keep moving all the time, and I developed a profound attachment to these material things...my books are among these things. And I hate to have them in boxes, it makes me feel like if a part of me was in a cage.

I am also excited about starting a new life in a new country, learning a new language, spending time with some very good friends I already have there. But still...it is a change that I would have honestly avoided right now. But the job market is currently so bad, and this new job may represent a good opportunity for me that I can't be too picky. I will have to come here often, as I will keep collaborating for work with people here, and to visit some of my friends, but it will not be the same. And I will miss my apartment. I really like the cozy nest that I made for myself. It is just me and when I step in here, every time I truly feel home. I was the same when I was leaving in the USA. Leaving my apartment was very very hard, as I liked a lot and I loved living there.

I will be ok and I am sure that I will find things to love about my new place and my new life, but it is always hard to leave people I love and my current life (as it has been in the last three years) behind and start new again. For sure my life is never, ever boring, as it changes so much, all the time!

In love

Gosh! Today I had an epiphany. I love the way I smell. I may be in the process of becoming nuts, but I discovered that I truly love the smell of my skin. I think that if I wouldn't be me, I would fall in love with myself.

I think that from feeling very insecure in my past relationships and my work, now I am going exactly at the opposite end and I feel very much in love with myself. I guess that as long as I don't become self-absorbed or very arrogant, it may not be a bad thing. Especially since I struggled so much and for so long to find my self-confidence back. I just hope to not lose it again, especially if one day I will be in a relationship again.

The world is at the feet of self-confident people

I was supposed to go to a birthday party tonight. Instead the party has been cancelled because one of the friends of the guy organizing the party decided to have a dinner with most of their common friends at his place. I thought that it was very rude, but this is just my opinion.

This story made me thinking about something.

I know a lot of people and I am very close to a few of them. Many of the people I am very close to are not that self-confident, even if they would have all the reasons to be. It had always be part of my role in life (and I don't why) to open the eyes of these people to let them see how great they are and how many good, fantastic qualities they have. Me, finally, after many years of struggling, I got most of my self-confidence back. Not all, of course I still have many insecurities here and there, but for sure right now I care very very little about what others think of me. For sure it helps that I am alone, without a boyfriend....I always lose self-confidence and self-respect when I am with someone, unfortunately...I guess that it is because I always put the other person and the other person desires in front of me.

Anyway. The point is that when someone is self-confident he/she can convince almost anyone else of how great he/she is and attractive, and interesting, and the rest of the whole "I am cool" package. On the contrary, when someone lacks self-confidence, it doesn't matter how great he/she is, he/she will be the first to put him/herself at a second place and either follow what other people think or do or isolate him/herself. It is very sad. Because all these people that I know who lack self-confidence are actually very cool people, they are probably just different, they just probably don't fit in and they didn't find their dimension yet, but they are wonderful, amazing people, who cannot see how valuable they are because they lack of self-esteem. My ex-boyfriend was and in part still is like that. And this always made me very angry. The world is so judgmental, we are so judgmental (and of course I include myself in this statement) that if someone doesn't conform to what it is generally considered "cool" or if someone is just slightly different, then he/she doesn't deserve attention and the investment of time to be discovered as a maybe wonderful person.

When growing up I had many problems because I felt different, I have always been interested on different things than the majority of people of my age, and in general I rarely felt that I fitted in. Fortunately, instead of becoming a very self-insecure person, I don't know why, but probably thanks to my mom who always encouraged me to just be me and follow what I like and want to do, I grew up liking myself very very much. Again, I have my insecurities, but overall I like the person I am and the way I look. I am proud of myself. But I do know how difficult is to interact with people when you are even just slightly different. You can feel immediately wrong or not interesting enough. I had times in the past years in which I thought I lost my self-confidence forever and it was very hard, because I felt incredibly insignificant, invisible, and unimportant. And it was horrible.

It is amazing how much importance we give to the people around us and how strongly we let them influence our lives, who we are, and the opinion we have about ourselves.
We should all get a course while growing up on how to be just ourselves and on how not to be afraid of not fitting in and being alone, because after all it is better to be alone and be ourselves, than being surrounded by people who actually don't know the real you or are not interested in knowing it.

I feel lucky

I feel extremely lucky. I know very wonderful people. Interesting and wonderful people. I just had two very close friends visiting me and I had a great time with both of them (too bad that when I am having a good time, it runs away so fast...). One of them lives in Portugal and I always stayed at his place when I went there to arrange things for my new job. His house is always open for me, as well as his heart when I need someone to talk too. I have met some really wonderful person in my life so far and I feel very, very lucky for that. Good, interesting, loving people. I am always positively surprise by the good heart of people, because it is a very rare and a very precious quality and I highly value people who are not just absorbed by themselves.

My plan is to take a road trip with my mom and drive with most of my stuff to Portugal at the end of the summer. I will leave my things in a garage of a friend. And this friend is another amazing person. I cannot believe that at first I had an horrible, horrible impression of him. I thought that he was very arrogant and I immediately did not like him at all. And it didn't matter if other mutual friends kept telling me that he is actually a nice person. I needed to see this with my own eyes. And I did. Fortunately, because otherwise I would have missed out a very altruistic, nice guy. I keep being impressed by how helpful, friendly, altruistic he is.

I have to say that I don't know why, but the best people, the most helpful and less selfish people I know are all men.....and they are not just very nice with me because they have some second goal, like sleeping with me, they are just naturally very good people. I feel so lucky in having met them! Truly good, helpful, altruistic people are so rare that they represent a treasure to me.....