I just realized that it’s much harder resisting the fomo to buy crypto when it’s finally going up than browsing social media for recent pictures with your crush with long hair. The sad part is that I currently don’t even have a crush.

Damn’it! I’m going to delete all trading and investing apps and lock myself inside just to re-watch Vampire Diaries, for a whole month. Because then we will go back to F-M and reality with all its inherent drama will set back in… And I will have to adult and parent again. No more bunis there to watch out for my baby, while I’m pretending to work, instead I’m dreaming with rainbows and unicorns.

Now I’m obsessed with the Stefan and Valerie relationship. After I have identified myself with Elena for a brief while and then with Caroline for several seasons, now at watching it again, I can’t seem to help it to root for Valerie. She is such a powerful woman. Vampire. Witch. Whatever she is.

The most I like that scene, from “The Philippines. Two years ago.”, where Valerie is heading for a party, all dressed up, with her mom by her side and in the restaurant there are just two free tables left, one in the continuation of the other, each for 4 people. And as they head there, they notice Stefan seated at one of the tables, sad, uninviting, with the face towards the wall. For some unknown reason, Valerie heads there and picks a chair from his table and asks him as if she doesn’t even know him, if the chair is free, wanting to take it back to the other table.

He looks up and with a very intense face, showing a bit disturbed, he is trying to gently grab her hand with his and says “No. Please, stay.” And he is showing her to sit right face-to-face to him. And then she realizes that he remembers her and they both suddenly look so happy and engage in a very loving conversation. And then some more friends show up and he tells her to go ahead, he will remain a bit more with his friends, maybe having some karaoke party and then he will head back to bed, with her.

Yeah, very nice scene. So emotional. So unreal…

In front of the airport, Moon doesn’t accept Jason’s proposal. And Jason takes it.

“Yeah, then I should confess that I just bought 40% of the capital in your company. So, no matter what we are on the personal level, we will always be business partners. I want to lead “The Angels” with you.”

“And you are probably right, by not wanting to marry me. I have noticed I have a weird influence on the women who like me, the more they want me the more helpless they act in front of me and they probably don’t even notice how they change their behaviour. It’s like they are giving me full control over their own lives. And as much as it is very attractive at first, this starts to get me bored, embarrassed and even drain me on the longer run.”

Oh! You finally realized it, Jason! I think you are attracting women with the “learned helplessness” syndrome. On a higher dimension you are acting like a Free-er. Through painful experiences, you inspire these women to break from their past limitations and fears and dare to hope and dream for more. What you need to learn is to set clear boundaries from the start. Learn detachment, but be true to yourself and to them. There is no shame in accepting that you love someone and confessing this to her also. Unconditionally.

And deeply learn how to increase your own self-confidence. Learn that you are also worthy of love. Losing control in a love relationship is the most scary, yet the most rewarding thing. It brings you the chance to re-create yourself. The more you truly love yourself, the less disfunctional relationships you will attract.

“And most of all, learn to stop competing with the object of your affection, because is not a fair competition, as you cannot compete with a part of yourself. You can only be playing on the same side of the team together. Or not playing at all, in this dimension. And it’s entirely your decision if you want or not, to open the gates to the other dimensions. Of yourself.”

Yeah, I lost track with who said what, let’s finally admit that I said everything. And Moon and Jason are just figments of my imagination, for expressing something that I didn’t know (or didn’t have permission) to express otherwise.

Finally I can have shower with the window open and go to bed in a tank top and shorts.

“I wanna sing, I wanna shout, I wanna… […] put it in all of the papers” etc. .. but I won’t…

Ok, maybe a little: today I bought myself a new laptop! Yeeeey!!! I’m so happy. Like, literally, honestly, happy!

Because I couldn’t take it anymore, with trying to do my personal stuff that I’m recently passionate about, on the phone, I killed myself between 456.388.990 and 7.999.304.009 neurons in the past 2 months.

Yes, completely random numbers.

And I also bought like a billion new tokens. Ok, not a billion. Maybe a million.

Ok, maybe like few tens of thousands. Like, I doubled what I had already. I think. I didn’t really count them. Because I couldn’t resist the prices. I discovered you can buy even hope, if you want to.

You can buy literally anything if you want to. I love being able to buy literally anything when I want to. Everyone loves being able to buy literally anything when they want to. (Ok, I watched too much Peppa Pig).

And I was thinking, from last time when I bought myself a laptop, a little over 9 years ago, how much I changed. I remember that time I had to buy it in one year of monthly installments because I couldn’t afford to buy it all at once… at that time I was still living from one monthly paycheck to another. And then I had to leave the country for greener professional pastures and I left instructions to my brother to pay my last two (or three) installments for it..

Today we were having a croissant outside at Iepurasul and I asked mom (more like thinking out loud): “I wanna but myself a laptop. Where can I buy myself a laptop?” And she was like, absolutely no questions asked and no comments added: “At that store, at the other end of the boulevard.”. “Cool, let’s walk there, I said.” And less than half of hour later I had myself a new laptop.

Just so you can understand the background of my current happiness: I was not owning a personal laptop since 2014 or 2015, when the other one broke (hard-drive crashed) and then I bought myself a tablet, which is also very-very sick (the screen is falling off, after I “helped” it one time, when I directed it towards the floor, with all my frustrations wrapped in it).

And whenever I needed something to do on a desktop Leo was borrowing me one of his “prototypes”. And whenever I was coming with the idea to buy myself a new laptop (and a printer) he was like: “have you done market research? how many reviews did you read? have you checked if they have the model at the store or you have to order it online?” etc etc etc.. I mean, it’s not that bad as it sounds, is just that doing all this research in a country and in a language that I barely understand myself in, it’s a little too much.

No! I just want to go to a shop and buy myself a f*g laptop. Like I would buy myself a pair of undies. I will do “the research” on spot.

So yeah. It’s ok for what I need it, is not perfect, but also the price was very good; for exactly what I need it it worked in only few seconds, compared to literally days of torture on the phone.

Such a lovely day.

We are in Campulung, finally. 🙂

We left at 5:30 am from Frydek-Mistek (me after just 4h of sleep) and we arrived at 22:40 in Campulung. Baby was amazingly cooperative… I mean, for what you would expect from a 2 years old. She was so excited, laughing and running whenever she had the chance.

In the way to Vienna she was very nice in her new toddler front-facing car-seat, looking at the wind-mills. We had 2 stops, each after 1h of driving.

We had a 1h delay in Vienna, because, when we got to the bus to take us to the plane, they sent us back up at the gate, because they decided to change the aircraft due to some technical problem. So carry one baby in one hand and stroller and her backpack in the other hand and my backpack in the back, down the stairs, then up the stairs, then down the stairs again… super-mamka.

And then granma and granpa were waiting for us at the airport and we took train and metro until Dan’s apartment in Crangasi.. We were so tired and we said we will sleep there… we ate, baby was changed, I had a full shower and at around 20, when I wanted to put baby to sleep I realized we cannot sleep comfortably 5 souls in 2 rooms…

So pack everything back fast-fast and at 20:20 we were in the car, me with my hair still wet. Baby fell asleep even before we exited Bucharest and she only woke up one time when we stopped at a gas station in Pitesti to change her sweated clothes and I put her directly in pajama. So when we arrived at the apartment we wrapped her in a blanket and I took her upstairs and tucked her directly into bed. I was barely feeling my legs after 4 floors with a baby in my arms.

So yeah… now I’m trying to assess the damages that I did in the past almost 2 weeks since I gave up all controls and did everything what my heart desired. I took out half of my money from etoro and went to a shopping spree of crazy tokens… Great. Epic. Of course I kept also the crypto, what is risk without crypto?

Lucky I woke up in time before ending up adopting also a blockchain moon cat.

OMG.. now I even have 3 unicorns. Where am I going to raise them all? What do you suppose to feed a blockchain unicorn?

Ok. Enough adventure. Now I’m going back to study for SBL and start a diet. Everyday running at the stadium with mom and baby.

Whom am I kiddin’? It’s Summeeeeeer!!!

Be right back, I have to run to Kaufland to buy some diapers. For the baby, not for the unicorns. And while I’m at it, I’ll fetch also some hot croissants from Iepurasul. And some magic hay for the unicorns.

I wish there was a scale for each human where we can measure how many Soul, Stamina and Ambition points we have at a given time. Maybe there is something like a SmartWatch that monitors the bodily functions and the levels of hormones in real-time. And tell you when you need to eat, to drink, to work, to study, to take a break and go out in the sun, to have fun, to engage in sexual activity etc according to your biorhythm, the place on Earth where you are at that point and the goals that you have pre-defined for yourself.

And also to tell you how much time and energy points it will take you to achieve certain goals, also, to suggest further goals according to how fast or slow you have achieved the previous goals.

Oh, wait! There is an app for all of these and infinite more! It’s called A Brain. Incredible, I know, it can even tell you when to breathe and when to blink without you having any idea. It took over your body functions in proportion of over 98% and you have no idea. What’s even more fun is that it’s compatible both with Android and Iphone. 😀

Today it was a magical day. So sunny and warm! Baby had some competition games at kindergarten and she was released home with a full bag of presents, apparently for achieving the first place in a running competition, she had the highest speed. My first thought at seeing this award was: how many other kids received the same diploma with first place as she did? I would not be surprised if all of them. You know now-a-days the politically correct way of education: you are very special, just like everyone else.

After we picked her up we went to the playground, the 3 of us and it was so fun! We let her play at the toddlers sections, she was so fearless to climb all those stairs by herself and slide on the medium size tobogan. I remember when I was for the first time at Aqua Park in Mamaia and I went on the big water slide, that one that was huge and insanely high.. this is how I felt when I saw her on top and sitting down preparing to slide.

Is so easy to project our fears and our setbacks on our kids and we end up praising and celebrating every single achievement with them, feeling that it is such a big step, but for them is just another step, they don’t see it like we do.

And by praising and celebrating each step they end up dependent on our input and on our approval. But when you decide to stop celebrating it? Like, literally every step, from the first one? When you decide to stop praising them for managing to bring the spoon full of soup to their mouth and drinking it all without spilling on themselves?

When do you stop celebrating them putting their shoes or their pants on, all by themselves? When do you stop celebrating them washing their hands and their face and brushing their teeth without help?

When you stop celebrating them getting an A in school? When you stop celebrating them getting their paycheck at work?

At some point along the way all praising and celebrations from our parents, siblings and/or friends seem to stop and we are expected to know our value and our power without input from outside. But it’s so damn hard to keep track of everything, of every achievement that we had and adjust our attitude in relation to them.

to be continued

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.