Incredible it is how things change after a few days abroad. Having been away now for more than a week from office, daily working routines, a flood of emails, regularly looking after the dishwasher, trying to squeeze in laundry between two meetings uphill and downhill I feel my life has sweepingly changed. More though: I have changed as well.
This might sound like an excessive interpretation but it’s just true. I can well remember the year I spent in Taiwan when I was a student. At that time I became someone different in various respects. I started to look at things differently (as I do again now). I shaped as a person (as I hopefully will still be able to do). And I lived and let live.
The latest is the most difficult. When I lived in Taipei I was a student. I wasn’t bothered by all these things a professional business life implicates (I love my job, so this is not a complaint but a pure statement). Today I often have the dim feeling that my life is squeezed between appointments, deadlines and self-imposed constraints.
Walking by an arts and poster store in Philadelphia I found the perfect plate to describe what has changed in my perception. Have deadlines amused me up to now? No, they have tortured me every now and then (more often now than then). I presently realize and just feel there is none and that’s just a great experience. I have checked me up by example. The article I had to deliver last week I sent with four days of delay. And nothing happened.
I have decided now that I won’t care about deadlines for the time in the USA. They amuse me, yes, not insofar as I won’t respect other peoples’ needs and expectations regarding me and my work. They amuse me because of the impact they can have on me while I am not in the position to reflect their relevance.
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