From yesterday afternoon I was having intermitent issues with the internet. Psychological torture style. It was working for like 5-10 min perfectly and then 5-10 min – even 30 min, not working at all.

So, now, that it seems to work decently and I’m pretty calm and in peace, I decided to write about all the things I hate. An astrological reference for the connoisseurs: I have Mercury in Capricorn square Mars in Libra. I think everyone with a square to Mars has or has had anger issues at a point in their life. And disclaimer: no, trying to make someone confront them intentionally is not a solution, is just plain stupidity. So, I admit guilty as charged.

One. I hate it when I keep getting interrupted, when I am concentrated on something and someone/something keeps bugging me. When I was working in Bucharest in open space, there was a guy who was passing by our area from time to time and each time he had something with me and he was shouting my name, apparently just to say hi.

One time, I was very concentrated because I had an additional task with several more complicated steps and I had to make sure I’m doing them all correctly, from the first time. I was having my headsets on, to neutralise the background noise. This time he came by and besides shouting my name he also shook my chair intentionally to distract me. And I screamed at him and said some bad words. My team-lead was just next to me and of course, I was the one with “the issues”, not him, nobody saw what he did, while passing through our project area where he had no business.

When I moved to Prague, he contacted me on the internal messenger and complained that I didn’t give any signs of life after I left, that I forgot about the Bucharest people. I felt so much disturbed and irritated that I told him he is an idiot.

That’s why I like it so much to work from home. From 2014, I have never missed the office space. What I like the most is that I can sing to de-stress myself and nobody has nothing against it (because nobody is hearing me).

Anyway… Now, I know, I am a mom. So I’m sucking this up… when the baby is in my care, I know I will never be able to concentrate on anything…

Two. I hate the keyboard of this smartphone because I hate it when I want a letter but my finger is touching a different one. I hate it when I’m trying to post something on Facebook but the button to publish is right over the keyboard area and it always gets pressed accidentally when I have just half of status written.

Three. I hate it when things fall. I desperately hate when I’m hanging a towel after drying my hands and it falls. Or everything else that I’m putting somewhere up and then it falls. In my head. As if something is intentionally throwing it back at me. I’m comforting myself with the idea that is the Earth’s rotation force that is making things, in apparent balance, to fall out of the blue.

Right about two years ago, my parents came to visit and meet the new baby and mom brought us 3 jars of zacusca made entirely by her. I opened one and put it in the fridge when I was done. Then I wanted to take a pot out from the fridge and somehow it took the shelf with it, which fell down with everything, so the zacusca jar broke and we had to clean all the pieces and the mess. The next day I opened another one. Guess what? Exactly the same thing happened. That was when I literally snapped. Rage everywhere.

The cause? I had washed the fridge and apparently I put the shelves buttons upside down, because I didn’t know they have a way to be put. Before that, Leo was helping me and I was washing and drying them and he was putting them back and he knows how, because it’s his fridge. So of course, the rage came from guilt, from blaming myself that I’m not even capable of that simple thing.

The next time when they came, I was sitting in the office chair and I was swinging and leaning back when I was talking with them. My dad kept telling me that I will fall with the chair. There was a thing, actually, it was not supposed to go that much in the back, someone must’ve tried to do something to it. And eventually I fell with it. And I fell with it, backwards, right over my left arm, which I almost broke… My luck was that I didn’t hit my head on the margin of the door from the pantry.. Rage? No… the pain was too much this time, that it absorbed it completely.

The previous weekend I broke the bathroom window, while trying to release the rage through closing it. I was very lucky that absolutely no shards jumped on my hands or on my face, but I spent 3 hours on a sunday morning cleaning it up… I then consciously suffered for the whole week, letting each emotion pass through me when I was seeing that broken window.

Four. Any type of loud repeated noises when the baby sleeps: machines of cutting grass, dogs barking, people talking loudly around (at the phone), dishes bumping in the sink, our shower robinet when you turn it on and off several times in the same session (I’m not exaggerating, it’s making this horrible low vibration resonance noise)…

Now the things that calm me down. The instant relief, 100% success rate, is if someone is telling me a good joke, so I brake by laughing. But it has to be something not related to me, you cannot say something that would screw a knife in a previous wound because it would make me even more angry.

Another relief is if someone else takes the anger for me. If I see that there is someone else next to me angrier than me, I instantly take the role of the comforter, to calm the other person down by lowering my voice and opening my arms wide to hug her and provide love and understanding. But I first need to see the rage outside of me, I cannot calm myself down by this method.

Methods that would calm myself down… depending on the level of irritation that I have, like for how long I have been boiling it up inside, and if the cause is just mental and/or also organic (insulin spike, PMS, migraine, congested nose) or physic (I’m extremely sensitive to cold) I try to detach from the triggering issue. If it’s not a life/death situation, in which case the adrenaline would kick in and force me to act first on the most urgent thing, I try to just freeze and breathe and literally imagine how all the tasks that have been crowding in my mind are slowly separating from eachother, in order to tackle them calmly one by one.

If the level of irritations gets too high, like full blown rage, usually in the late evening when I am also half-asleep… I… I honestly cannot share this on my blog. By letting it out I may have destroyed some things and said things on a very loud voice that I’m not at all proud of. And I would usually hurt myself than to hurt someone else, like hitting with the fist on the wall or intentionally making a very loud powerful noise, like intentionally letting to fall on a marble floor a metal pot cover.

And I totally understand and I support everyone’s right to ask for help. Please ask for professional help, if you have no friends or family available and capable of providing the needed help. There is no shame to ask for help, recommended before you do things that you would regret.

I understand that 100% of us had a different version of the parent that they would be, before they actually had kids.

When we created those expectations about ourselves we didn’t take into account this acute lack of sleep, that turned into post-traumatic-stress, accumulated from the time when the baby was waking up screaming for food every 1.5/2h day and night, this never-ending guilt that no matter what we are doing we would never feed our kids the best foods on the market and provide them with the best educational entertainment or with enough love and attention that we think they need.

I would offer myself to help and send energy to whoever needs it, but 99% of the time is the baby who needs it from me and most of the time this is just a one-way street, until she learns how to express herself. We are making significant progress everyday to understand each others needs, she is now at the stage when I ask her what I think she would want/need and she is shaking her head like yes or no. But she cannot resist jumping in a good muddy puddle no matter how nicely dressed she is.

So five: that muddy puddle that is forming next to our gate each time it rains and we were not yet capable of properly covering it up.

Have you ever tried the exercise of taking responsibility for absolutely every decision and every step you took in your life? I know it feels overwhelming. It can make you feel like laughing and crying in the same time, realising the control was always in your hands.

But most of all, it can make you feel. Sometimes we need to make decisions also on our feelings.

There is nothing wrong with us. We are just normal humans who get tired. Let’s fight less and smarter. Let’s remove the words “procrastinating” and “laziness” from the vocabulary. From time to time we need also to not do anything at all.

How can we function properly if our batteries are always depleted? Just breathe and listen. And you will be two step closer to your destiny.

I think the best legacy that we can leave on this Planet is to be happy. This is the only inspiration that anyone needs. That’s it. As easy and hard as it comes.

Dear daughter, today you are 2 years old!!!

And to make this day (even) more magical, mommy bought you something that will hopefully pay for your college education, 16 years from now. Can you even imagine how the world would look in 2037?

I discovered it barely last night and it literally took me 8h today to figure out how to buy it, through several platforms. I mean, it had to make 33, this is what triggered me. I really couldn’t resist it. I was searching for one month for one to make 33, but I guess I was searching it in the wrong places.

I would like to write more about the exact series of events that eventually led me to its discovery, but I’m not sure I’m able to put everything into words.

Anyhow, in the worse case, I cannot lose more than what I already paid for it and I paid for it just about as much as Amazon took me last week, behind my back, for one year of prime that I’ll probably have no benefit from.

So yeah… Happy Birthday and Happy Easter!

PS:

You realize how hard it really was barely when you stop… and allow yourself to smell the roses. And allow yourself to feel.

With passing also the Audit and Assurance exam, I completed my Advanced Diploma in Accounting and Business, which is a degree equivalent in study time, effort and knowledge with a Bachelor Degree in the UK System: 9 exams (one I had exempted) plus one Ethics module. I passed all these exams from the first attempt, while studying all by myself, with no tutors or classes held by a study provider.

Another Degree, 100% in English, all alone, my first exams ever in English, with no English studied in school, 15 years later after the one in Commerce, Tourism and Services in my natal country.

How I really did it? Well, for the first 4 exams I studied in the evenings and weekends, after a full-time job, while playing Hearthstone. I didn’t even have a printed book, I had the study material only online. And having that game running with a timer, kept me alert and focused, otherwise I would fall asleep or even start daytime dreaming, while pretending to study.

And the last 4 exams I did them during maternity leave. By reading from my phone while breastfeeding and between changing diapers, by rehearsing the topics in my mind in the dark while putting baby to sleep at night, by begging and negotiating with my partner for few hours of baby-time in the weekends, by literally falling asleep over the book or over the computer at just 10 in the evening. By levels of stress you cannot imagine and I don’t wish to anyone. All by myself alone, each with a 700+ pages Study Book and an Exam Kit just as big, with the pencil, eraser and pocket calculator, being driven by all the emotional unfulfillment that I lived in the past 10+ years, trying to prove to myself that I CAN do it.

Last year in August when I had the exam for the Czech Language, for Permanent Residency (it was not mandatory in my case, but I wanted to do it, so I can have a motivation to study more), while waiting between the written test and the oral test, a part of me was wishing to fail it.

Why? Because when you succeed all the time nobody sees how hard it really is for you, they just see success and expect even more success. When I left from there at 4 in the afternoon with the “approved” paper in my hand, starving and wondering how I haven’t fainted yet without lunch, the last thing I was thinking was how proud I am… I was just feeling guilty and ashamed that I left baby at home with her dad, while he had also a full-time work day and now I am eating all alone at our favourite restaurant while waiting for the bus to take me back home.

When I wrote on Linkedin that I’m very proud about my part-qualified ACCA diploma, and describing some of the stuff I stumbled upon along the way, I was actually not feeling anything at all. There were no more feelings left in me. I got over 900 likes to that post and over 50 connection requests, majority from other ACCA students. I couldn’t feel anything.

Yes, I know I still have 4 exams until getting my full ACCA Qualification and I wanted to do also Strategic Business Leader in June, the first one from the equivalent of Master Degree level. I was very diligent, I had a lot of drive, I read almost all study book and made my own notes, in just one month. I had so much drive and, barely now I realize, so much naivety.

When I started to study the specimen exams and the previous exams for this paper, I decided to also type everything down from the answers, to learn the correct spelling for more words, and I had a shock with how much I actually have to write in this 4h exam and how much I have left to study to feel confident about passing.

Suddenly the idea of doing this exam was causing me claustrophobia. I was literally feeling like drowning and I couldn’t gasp for air. There are times when acknowledging the effort implied by a big step like this is bringing me higher energy, excitement and the necessary drive to jump on the other side, but this time I had to face the fact that the hole is just too big. Suddenly I lost all confidence on all the English I know and I had the impression that everything I know is wrong and everyone will be judging me only by my mistakes. By all the mistakes I did during all my life. And no achievement what so ever, as great and hard as it is, can erase those.

So yeah… I take a break for now. I had even booked the exam 2 days before the deadline, just to cancel it in the very last day…

Aside from moving baby into her own (still unfinished) room and closing breastfeeding (proudly celebrating 10 days now papani-free), changes which also caused me a lot of stress, I am planning to make even more significant ones in the days/month to come.

Just for my future reference, I am currently facing the transit of Saturn square my natal Ascendant + Venus + Saturn and Sun + Mercury + Venus + Uranus conjunct Descendant.

Too much said spring, it’s 7°C outside and feels like 4°C even if it’s sunny..

Yesterday I had my ACCA remotely invigilated CBE session exam for Audit and Assurance. With baby and daddy upstairs… because baby is sick and day-care is closed anyway for 3 weeks due to lockdown.

As for the exam, either I’m too naive or I really did study the best for this exam (I mean, I did start studying for it in October..) because I finished it with the feeling that I did everything, I mean, I don’t know of anything that I did wrong… but for an ACCA exam if you think you did everything you should reasonably expect a 75-80% result… besides, it was the most narrative exam, zero calculations, and I didn’t have the time to check again everything for spellings and I’m painfully aware that my English grammar is not perfect…

So, in order to tie my knowledge-loose-ends I’m adding to my to-do plan for 2021 to take some English classes and pass the IELTS exam with a C level.

And I also want to resume my Czech classes, after passing the language exam for the residency paper last year I remained with a slight aversion for the language, but now I just installed an app to help me study further.

I’m putting aside the renewal of the driver’s licence and the buying of another car… because I need to prioritise my health. I mean, my weight. I mean, my weight loss… so I need a more fat-burning solution… like finally putting a baby-seat on the bike, I think this year she is big enough for one.

So.. baby started kindergarten in mid january, day-care level… she supposed to go 3 days per week for 4-5 hours a day… but after just two weeks she came down with the pox. Some very small ones… but she still needed to stay home for 2 weeks.

Then, she started again but after just 2 weeks she caught something else, this time with industrial quantity of buggers and coughing and breathing issues… So she is not going again. Both because she is sick and also because all schools and kindergartens are now closed.

I’m also not feeling at my best, I have congested nose and a slight cough and I need industrial quantities of sleep.. but yeah.. I take what I can. Last night I was exhausted, I went to bed at 21 and slept until 6 when baby woke us up (and by woke us up I mean jumping all over us, pulling our hair and asking for attention) and then I started working in the bathroom, in pajama, while brushing my teeth… as I took vacation last week, because my stress level achieved an ATH, I had a lot to catch up, even if I’m supposed to work just 2h/day.

Now I’m writing this with baby watching YouTube videos in Spanish on my chest and literally coughing in my face and stabbing me with her elbows in my boobs.. Welcome to mommyhood..

Thankfully she eats well.. this morning she ate her bowl of cereals and then she ate half of mine also.. she was like… “you are not eating it anyway, you are too busy… working over the breakfast table”.

Last week we had two days with over 15°C when I hanged laundry outside and played with baby with chalk on the pavement, but in the night of the 2nd day she woke up literally pink, coughing her brains out, with 39.3 fever. So yeah, guess whose guilt level also achieved an ATH!

Wait she got pissed off by something and she threw the phone. Perfect mommy’s daughter.

Long story short.. after about 10 days I finally got also my smell back and my energy. For the past 2 nights I even went to bed at 22:00 and I felt rested and eager to start the day in the morning.

I even went back to read from my Audit and Assurance book.. That would be the last exam from the Applied Skills module, this is what motivates me…

Otherwise, I don’t know if is the fact that now I have time to study barely in the weekends when baby sleeps (because during the week I work), the covid or my personal attention deficit disorder (not officially diagnosed) but I still don’t understand much from this topic, because I didn’t have any contact with audit or assurance before… Maybe after I finish reading all the chapters I will be able to make more sense out of it.

And to procrastinate even more, yesterday I ordered the books for my first topic from the Professionals module: Strategic Business Leader, because I couldn’t resist the 30% off Black Friday discount. Ok, it was Saturday. Did you know that this exam is 4h long? Anyway, I saw in the contents preview that it has some chapters on some topics I am curious about. I mean, more than audit&assurance.

And what else… not much really, I don’t feel myself in much mood to write lately. And I hate this new blog writing tool/interface from wordpress. I could just daydream all day long. Except from when I have to parent. And work. And cook. And do laundry. Ok bye for now. Today in her 1.5h of sleep already, I barely read one page and remember not even 10% from it. It snows so peacefully outside. Day-dream mode I told you.