… mister potatoe is coming to town.

Yeah… So.. with what should I start.

Both baby and I are coughing for few days now… but this time stronger than two weeks ago… and actually no more news. Cool. I mean, I finally know everything. 😂

the middle-finger. wrapped in a colored baggy with a sparkling ribbon

Seriously, now… I had my SBL exam, I was literally the only candidate in the CBE room, they said they had 4 in the morning though, but I had the afternoon session because I came straight from Mistik Falls.

The case was a fitness club, with 6 points of commercial acumen, from total of 20 points professional skills. The CBE software literally s*d, because, even if you were able to copy-paste, it was pasting in the examination sheet with a different font. And it was looking like hell. And there was no way to bring it all to the same format. So I had to type everything word by word… and there were no communication skills. Very “smart” ACCA, good for you… if I don’t pass it, bye-bye… real professional life is not that b*y.

Then… I got out from the exam. And guess what? Crypto sudden 20% discounts! You can buy more crypto and you can buy more crypto! Everyone can buy more crypto. Except me. Because I left my laptop at home and I have no more trading software on my phone, for security reasons.

And then I got to the hostel. My delusion and my high from yesterday was slowly starting to wear off. For a brief moment I even felt myself like a lost child in a foreign wood. The room in the hostel was freezing cold. The wifi was having just 10% signal. Or how much that could mean if there is only the tiny dot available.

Delusional… yeah… I need to have a reality check very soon. I’m starting to see the edges of the bubble of this raini thingy. And I don’t like it. Because it is not real. I think I have been doing some stuff and putting some time and energy for the wrong reasons, so I may have to break it up, as painful as it might be.

I need more adventure in my life. But real adventure, like travelling and meeting new people and doing sports, not crypto trading…

For the past two months, each time I was thinking about this first week of September I was having a panic attack. I got used to a more hectic type of day and now baby will go daily to kindergarden and I also have to work 4h/daily. From home. Alone. And the idea of having this routine is literally bringing me claustrophobia.

Do I really need to adjust to this schedule again or I can just break free? Make my own schedule? Do what the f*k I really want to do?! Just like that?

All summer I was not capable of fixing my bike. I have spent 2-3h/day studying, 2-3h day/working, 4-5h/day admining… and between all these also taking care of baby (when she was not in kindergarden or when we were not at granma and granapa) and house chores. Yeah, at least we spent two months in Romania, even if we didn’t go to any seaside or any visit anywhere, not even to salina or dino park… because first granma fell and then baby got sick… At least I managed to renew my driver’s licence!

To close this, I need to break free so badly that my delusion started to escape my dream life and invade my real life. Certain interactions with certain people literally absorb my being. I’m consumed by telepathy and tele-empathy. Everything is moving too fast, yet too slow. I cannot fall asleep at night anymore… for the past two-tree weeks I think I didn’t sleep more than 6h/night in average. What I think I’m trying to say is that part of what was happening before in my sleep now is happening in my real life. And it’s too exciting and scary in the same time, because it feels too good to be true. Because it’s not love, it’s self-delusion. Love is something that flows freely, something that you can have instantly when you need to have it. If you feel that you have to ask for it to be given to you, then it is not love. Is anything but…

I think this is the main issue: it feels too good to be true. I have re-programmed myself in the past 4-7-10 years that I don’t deserve to be too happy anymore. That I need to work very hard and fight very hard to deserve to be happy again. Yesterday I literally realised that I cannot ground myself anymore and nor I wanted to. Because I have no more reasons to push myself anymore. No visible awards in the horizon. What could have been, it is actually just a delusion.

Anyway, it seems there is reality also at this higher level. Until it will not be anymore.

Actually, I could start driving again! Yeah! This is on what I’m going to focus myself now. I cannot live in the fear that what if something bad happens. I can only do my best and have faith. In the goodness of the universe.

From yesterday I am at 4h/day working schedule and baby is going to kindergarten daily now. Yesterday morning I put her by the door and took a picture and I almost started crying. She is not my baby anymore.

I am so proud of her, especially for the fact that she is tri-lingual. Ok, a bit less with Romanian, but Czech and English she understands perfectly. And she added two more words to vocabulary: Peppa and Shakal (chocolate). She is crazy about her two Peppas. Gaston ladybug is not that much appreciated, but we just started watching those and she is growing on them, I see she is more captivated.

So yeah… I have the SBL exam on Tuesday in Brno, I’m still stressed about it, but I discovered the webinars of one Pakistani teacher on Youtube, I watched all 5 from the June ’21 already and made extra notes and now I have 2 more left from Sep ’21. I like to watch them at 1.5x it keeps me alert. With none of the other exams so far I had the patience to watch any tutorials, but this time I had to because, even after literally typing down by myself all answers from 5 full previous and specimen exams, I was still feeling lost…

This teacher is very inspiring and you feel how is giving energy, he is very passionate about what is doing. He is insisting on the tricky things and kinda puts everything in perspective and makes you feel confident on the technique for this exam. I am starting to feel confident that I will pass it. Even if this is a 4h exams and all other ones are just 3h, time management is the CSF for this exam, because you have like 10-12 pages of exhibits and overview and requirements to read, which can get messy for a CBE with the text split through so many windows.

Happy new fiscal year and bye-bye for now, keep up the good work. And may BNB, ETH and $raini always stay gaini. 🌈🦄🚀🌞

I did mention that one of my recurring dreams is that I’m driving a car and the car goes so much ahead of me that I end up taking the curves blindly, right? Like, why am I not just slowing down?! Yeah, it took me too much of my life to finally understand this dream: In my mind I’m living way too much ahead in the future and I end up bumping myself by the ordinary stuff in my present physical life. And… why am I not slowing down?

For a very long time in my childhood and teenage years I have lived with anxiety. So many things were completely out of my control. And when I graduated and had my own job and paying my own rent, more and more things ended up being in my control. So I started to exercise it, as far away in the future as I could.

Long introduction short, few moments ago I realized it’s been 9 years since I landed in CZ, not 10… as I originally wrote in the blog post below. And I even celebrated this with my partner and he didn’t figure out the mistake either. And, when I wrote the blog post below, I could even swear that my 10 years anniversary in the company was last year…

What I’m actually trying to say is that I ended up occupying a possible future line of myself 1 year earlier than I would’ve done it just by myself and by my own merits. I changed my future, again.

What exactly I did and when I did it, I’m not very sure, what I can say is that, usually when something like this happens (because it did happen, many times before), when I “wake up” I discover a trail of mistakes behind me that nobody spotted before. Which makes me realise now, does it even make a difference to correct them or not? Will my future go back to the previous version if I don’t? Well, this is where my problems start: I’m afraid to wait to find out, I guess I am a perfectionist.

“She died by going back trying to solve a mistake that she spotted in the solution that she drafted for an existential problem that nobody else was seeing but her” – it’s written on my tomb stone.

It’s like my car, on a curvy road managed to skip some very long detours by finding a short-cut. It’s like, from time to time I just need to have a little faith that, even if I drive blindly (3rd eye-ish speaking), things will turn out pretty much ok.

And that’s when synchronicity starts, when I’m travelling on a road that also my future self has travelled, but one year later. This evening I found on FB a small podcast on how to prepare for the SBL exam, at the end the tutor was asked: So what is your favourite place in the world? He said, “Greece, my native country”. He mentioned some islands there, but I didn’t memorise them..

This one just one of the examples… yes, coincidences exist all the time everywhere, in synchronicity we are just focusing more on them.

I may not make that much sense it this post, or maybe I do… but “have a little faith in me”.

It was Saturday before noon, I had everything ready, some of my belongings in the big suitcase and in my small sports backpack and the rest in piles, for my parents to take back to Campulung.

Oana asked me if I can please bring her one Doina milk make-up remover and I went downstairs to buy it. I also bought myself what I intended to be one shampoo, in case I would not figure out in time what brand/type to buy when I land there. When I got home I realized I had purchased one balsam instead. I was so hard on myself: if I cannot manage this simple task in my own country, in my own language, how on Earth will I survive in a country, whose language I discovered barely 2 weeks ago, on YouTube.

I was so nervous that I couldn’t eat anything, still my mom made some mash-potatoes with cabbage salad. On those times I was barely eating, I got used to keep a low regime, I was under 70 kg… which was quite athletic for my height.

We called a taxi and in the road to the airport it started to heavily rain.. I was looking on the window at the intense gray apartment buildings and I told myself out loud: it definitely cannot be worse than here/now. I remember when I finally got my acceptance email, I was not even having enough money saved to buy the plane tickets, so I had to request an advance from work. Plus a significant amount that my parents loaned me to last me until my first paycheck.

My heart was all over the place… some pieces with former acting colleagues, some with former work colleagues… I had started smoking, more like to fit in with the peers.. I hadn’t smoked one single tigarette from that package of Vogue slim menthol since I arrived.. I kept it for several years though, like a souvenir.

When I landed I was shocked by how cold it was. Oana and Octavian were waiting for me at the airport and they came with me until the flat where I had my room rented. She and Alexandra were so nice that they previously even went to see that place and agree with the owners for me to rent it when I arrive. The sun did come out in the late afternoon.

We found a typical czech restaurant at the corner of the street and I bought myself a pivo and a portion of pasta with chicken, broccoli and garlic, that I brought half back with me at home, it was huge.

My flat roommates were two russian girls, one of them eventually moved with the boyfriend and the other one was barely speaking English.

They had a laptop for “public use” but the Windows was in Russian… on which I had to figure out which one is our wifi and where is the password.

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