Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.
I’ve been thinking about my life – about what makes me happy, what makes me unhappy, but most of all, I’ve been thinking about how to change it so I won’t be so unhappy anymore.
Talking about this topic is hard for me, because I know that in the grand scheme of things, my life is pretty great. As soon as I speak my mind, in fact, as soon as I put these words to paper, I feel as if I’ve been injected with a heavy dose of guilt for uttering these very words, for even feeling them in the first place. The guilt quickly courses through my body with every heartbeat, seeming to grow more and more as it spreads, until I feel so silly for feeling this way, that I quickly start apologizing and taking it all back, claiming that my life is, indeed, pretty great, that I have no reason for feeling like this, and then I continue on as if nothing ever happened. This goes well for a while until I inevitably become overwhelmed with my life once more and come crashing down into a million little pieces again. Poor Jochem has had to help me put myself together far too many times during the last year.
I’ve kept up this self-destructive routine ever since we came back from our trip in June last year. But not anymore. I keep thinking that there will be time to stand still, observe, take notice and do something, but of course this will never happen unless I make the time. I work in education for heaven’s sake – rule number one in teaching school is that your TO DO list will never be done and that it is therefore of the utmost importance to your survival that you learn to take your eyes off of it, look the other way, and pretend it isn’t there. At least some of the time. On Sunday, for example.
I, however, have not given myself this luxury. We came back from our trip and I gave myself no more than three days to acclimatize to life back home before I started working again. I promptly got myself a job and an apartment and wasted no time getting back into my exhausting obsessive compulsive routines. When I started my job (my very first, real, grown-up teaching job) it took over my life completely. Being a perfectionist, my work became my whole world.
My friend Aimee, whom I met in 2011 in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia, is a teacher herself from Birmingham. She told me that her first year working as a teacher was like being in a roller coaster that just wouldn’t stop. That sounds about right. I feel blessed that I at least like my job and that I feel confident that I’ve become quite good at it. That has never been the problem. The problem is that with my job taking up so much of my time, there is just not enough room for a whole lot else.
I became so overwhelmed one day that I actually sat down and made a list of all the things occupying my life on any given day. The list was endless. It was filled with work, of course, but also with appointments, household chores, yoga routines, social engagements, 30-minute swimming work-outs, things to read and watch and listen to, money to budget, places and faces to meet and see, and don’t even get me started on the long list of social media apps that was checked every single day.
It just got to be too much. I was losing out on sleep, on time for myself, on time with Jochem, on attention paid to my cat, on the things that I actually like to do because I like to do them – instead, all my time was spent on things that I believed I had to do. Because that’s what’s been wrong, I’ve come to realize – the premise that I HAVE TO do these things. My life was so busy, so filled to the brim with stuff to do, that everything became a blur. Everything became an errand. Everything was a chore.
That’s no way to live. Especially when you’re constantly reminding yourself of a simpler time when all you had was your fiancé, a backpack, lots of money in your back account and all the freedom in the world. It’s unhealthy not to live in the present moment – to always be looking back at the past or to look forward to the future. I became unhealthy.
However, I continued to live my life this way for almost a year – constantly on the verge of another emotional breakdown, trying to find some kind of balance between doing all that I thought I was supposed to do and wishing for a life I no longer had and from which I felt farther removed than ever. And, of course, I kept all of this to myself. Jochem was a powerless witness to my madwoman ways.
But then something amazing happened. My parents, my brother, his girlfriend, Jochem and I went on a road trip to Spain to pick up my wedding dress.
The joy that this trip gave me, after not having been on a trip for so long, cannot be exaggerated. Even though it was just a short week among relatives in surprisingly cold and rainy Spain, a country where I’ve been dozens of times already, it lit me up. I felt like a junkie who’s finally managed to score some dope and is beyond relief - as the pain subsides and the itchiness recedes and some light is shone into the dark corners of his mind, he is at last able to breathe deeply, look around, think clearly and just be. No worry, no pain, no nothing. Until the effect wears off, of course.
During that week in Spain a couple of wonderful things happened. I finally got that wedding dress, for one.
Jochem and I went on a road trip of our own through Don Quixote country to Toledo.
My brother asked his girlfriend to marry him. My friends even flew over from The Netherlands as a surprise, nearly giving me a heart attack, in order to celebrate a small pre-Bachelorette Party. There was sun and sea and good food and wine.
Surrounded by so much love and happiness, I came to feel that I had to do something about this crazy state of mine, something that would stick. Clearly, the idea of working hard at life until the next holiday would come along, was not working for me anymore. I needed to do something to relieve the pressure right now. I had finally grown sick and tired of being such a burden to myself and others.
So, I made another list. A list with all the things that gave me joy and happiness. How shocked was I to see that this list was significantly smaller than my daily TO DO list. No wonder I was so miserable half the time – I had rearranged my life in such a way that it was filled with errands.
Then I tried to make another list of how to change this status quo. This is a list that I am still working on and, boy, it is by far the most difficult list to make. My instinct, whenever I feel overwhelmed, is to run away. Take all the money from my bank account that I’ve been saving for the wedding, buy a plane ticket to Polynesia, and just hide for a couple of weeks. Of course, this is hardly practical. Not to mention the fact that it’s not a real solution – when I eventually return, all of my problems and issues and neuroses will be right where I left them (as I’ve already been painfully made aware of once before).
But what to do then? I find it so difficult to answer this question. For example, I spend so much time each day cleaning up our apartment, which I detest, but to just stop doing this would not bring me any relief. I hate clutter and I hate dirt and just letting it be would make me restless and cranky and toxic. Luckily I have an amazing fiancé who buys me electric vacuum cleaners that go through the house twice a day, but still, that’s only part of the problem.
So, I’ve started trying to make some real changes in my life by, like, not rearranging the sheets when Jochem has made the bed or by not checking to see whether my shampoo is still in the right place whenever Jochem has used the shower. If you knew anything about how I run this household (which more closely resembles a military base than an actual home where people are allowed to live in) or if you’ve ever had the misfortune of coming along on one of my highly organized camping trips (ladies: thank you for not killing me), you would know that, for me, this is nothing short of radical. It takes all of my willpower not to intervene in these matters. Although I feel that I’m literally fighting for my own happiness (and it pains me to have to write this so dramatically, but there you have it), I also know that I’m not there yet, and that it won’t be easy, and that I will have to keep taking notice of my wants and needs forever, and stop feeling bad about having wants and needs in the first place. But I’m trying.
I’ve also done some other, more fun, things. I’ve bought some stuff that I didn’t need. I’ve booked a yoga holiday in southern Portugal, which will be my first solo vacation in five years, dedicated entirely to yoga, meditation, vegetarian food and the art of leisure. I’ve been seriously looking into horseback riding lessons, something which I’ve dismissed until now, solely because of the costs, even though I’ve loved it for as long as I can remember. I’ve thrown away a big pile of newspapers and magazines that have been staring at me for months (“READ ME!”) and have started reading books again. I’ve also been reading a lot of Molly Wizenberg’s food blog Orangette to reconnect with my love of cooking. She’s actually the reason why I’ve felt motivated to start writing again and if this means that my posts suddenly look a lot like hers, I apologize, for it is unintentional.
On that note, I would like to end this long post with my recipe (or I should say: our recipe) for pan de cristal.
Pan de cristal is something that I believe my brother discovered on a whim one day while he and his fiancé were visiting our relatives in Spain. It’s kind of become a food legend in my family and every time any of us are in Spain, our main goal appears to be to eat as much pan de cristal as possible. I first tasted it while we were in Spain to pick up my wedding dress and it is, indeed, worthy of its status in our family. I had it three times in Spain and have made a successful replica back home. Pan de cristal is nothing special though – it’s basically a crispy sandwich. Then again, isn’t the best food often the most basic execution of arranging a few simple ingredients in perfect harmony?
Pan de cristal
Ingredients:
- 1 loaf of ciabatta bread
- 1 ripe tomato (big, fat and juicy), preferably a vine tomato
- good-quality extra virgin olive oil
- 150 grams of good-quality Manchego cheese, the famous Spanish sheep’s cheese
[NOTE: The original recipe calls for jamón (a fatty Spanish ham) instead of Manchego. As a vegetarian I don’t eat ham, of course, but, in my opinion, it’s better with Manchego even if you do eat meat. Spanish ham can be delicious (I do remember), but has a very dominant flavor. I think that the ham would overshadow the subtlety of the crispy bread with its soft flavors of ripe tomato and olive oil. My family, however, could not disagree with me more. I guess it’s a matter of taste (or principle).]
Cooking instructions:
* Preheat the oven.
* Divide the loaf of ciabatta bread into 3 equal parts and then halve each part to get 6 slices.
* Heat the loaf of ciabatta bread according to instructions. Because you’ve already divided and halved the bread, the slices will come out nice and crispy. You will get the best results if you set your oven to the hot-air or convection mark and if you place the slices on their ‘back’, so with the inside up.
* Halve the tomato.
* Cut your cheese into thick slices.
* Take the bread slices out of the oven and rub them with the tomato, the same way you would rub a piece of garlic onto a crostini, but be quite rough – it should look kind of messy (in front of guests just call it ‘rustic’).
* Pour some olive oil on top of the slices. You can be quite generous, but your bread should not be soaking in olive oil.
* Put your cheese slices on top of the tomato and olive oil infused ciabatta.
* Serve while still warm.
This recipe serves 2 slices each to 3 people, unless you’re like Jochem and I, in which case you can probably squeeze in that extra slice as well.
Enjoy and, if you’re anything like me, try not to worry about the bread crumbs until after you’ve eaten the whole thing.
I’ve been thinking about my life – about what makes me happy, what makes me unhappy, but most of all, I’ve been thinking about how to change it so I won’t be so unhappy anymore.
Talking about this topic is hard for me, because I know that in the grand scheme of things, my life is pretty great. As soon as I speak my mind, in fact, as soon as I put these words to paper, I feel as if I’ve been injected with a heavy dose of guilt for uttering these very words, for even feeling them in the first place. The guilt quickly courses through my body with every heartbeat, seeming to grow more and more as it spreads, until I feel so silly for feeling this way, that I quickly start apologizing and taking it all back, claiming that my life is, indeed, pretty great, that I have no reason for feeling like this, and then I continue on as if nothing ever happened. This goes well for a while until I inevitably become overwhelmed with my life once more and come crashing down into a million little pieces again. Poor Jochem has had to help me put myself together far too many times during the last year.
I’ve kept up this self-destructive routine ever since we came back from our trip in June last year. But not anymore. I keep thinking that there will be time to stand still, observe, take notice and do something, but of course this will never happen unless I make the time. I work in education for heaven’s sake – rule number one in teaching school is that your TO DO list will never be done and that it is therefore of the utmost importance to your survival that you learn to take your eyes off of it, look the other way, and pretend it isn’t there. At least some of the time. On Sunday, for example.
I, however, have not given myself this luxury. We came back from our trip and I gave myself no more than three days to acclimatize to life back home before I started working again. I promptly got myself a job and an apartment and wasted no time getting back into my exhausting obsessive compulsive routines. When I started my job (my very first, real, grown-up teaching job) it took over my life completely. Being a perfectionist, my work became my whole world.
My friend Aimee, whom I met in 2011 in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia, is a teacher herself from Birmingham. She told me that her first year working as a teacher was like being in a roller coaster that just wouldn’t stop. That sounds about right. I feel blessed that I at least like my job and that I feel confident that I’ve become quite good at it. That has never been the problem. The problem is that with my job taking up so much of my time, there is just not enough room for a whole lot else.
I became so overwhelmed one day that I actually sat down and made a list of all the things occupying my life on any given day. The list was endless. It was filled with work, of course, but also with appointments, household chores, yoga routines, social engagements, 30-minute swimming work-outs, things to read and watch and listen to, money to budget, places and faces to meet and see, and don’t even get me started on the long list of social media apps that was checked every single day.
It just got to be too much. I was losing out on sleep, on time for myself, on time with Jochem, on attention paid to my cat, on the things that I actually like to do because I like to do them – instead, all my time was spent on things that I believed I had to do. Because that’s what’s been wrong, I’ve come to realize – the premise that I HAVE TO do these things. My life was so busy, so filled to the brim with stuff to do, that everything became a blur. Everything became an errand. Everything was a chore.
That’s no way to live. Especially when you’re constantly reminding yourself of a simpler time when all you had was your fiancé, a backpack, lots of money in your back account and all the freedom in the world. It’s unhealthy not to live in the present moment – to always be looking back at the past or to look forward to the future. I became unhealthy.
However, I continued to live my life this way for almost a year – constantly on the verge of another emotional breakdown, trying to find some kind of balance between doing all that I thought I was supposed to do and wishing for a life I no longer had and from which I felt farther removed than ever. And, of course, I kept all of this to myself. Jochem was a powerless witness to my madwoman ways.
But then something amazing happened. My parents, my brother, his girlfriend, Jochem and I went on a road trip to Spain to pick up my wedding dress.
The joy that this trip gave me, after not having been on a trip for so long, cannot be exaggerated. Even though it was just a short week among relatives in surprisingly cold and rainy Spain, a country where I’ve been dozens of times already, it lit me up. I felt like a junkie who’s finally managed to score some dope and is beyond relief - as the pain subsides and the itchiness recedes and some light is shone into the dark corners of his mind, he is at last able to breathe deeply, look around, think clearly and just be. No worry, no pain, no nothing. Until the effect wears off, of course.
During that week in Spain a couple of wonderful things happened. I finally got that wedding dress, for one.
Jochem and I went on a road trip of our own through Don Quixote country to Toledo.
My brother asked his girlfriend to marry him. My friends even flew over from The Netherlands as a surprise, nearly giving me a heart attack, in order to celebrate a small pre-Bachelorette Party. There was sun and sea and good food and wine.
Surrounded by so much love and happiness, I came to feel that I had to do something about this crazy state of mine, something that would stick. Clearly, the idea of working hard at life until the next holiday would come along, was not working for me anymore. I needed to do something to relieve the pressure right now. I had finally grown sick and tired of being such a burden to myself and others.
So, I made another list. A list with all the things that gave me joy and happiness. How shocked was I to see that this list was significantly smaller than my daily TO DO list. No wonder I was so miserable half the time – I had rearranged my life in such a way that it was filled with errands.
Then I tried to make another list of how to change this status quo. This is a list that I am still working on and, boy, it is by far the most difficult list to make. My instinct, whenever I feel overwhelmed, is to run away. Take all the money from my bank account that I’ve been saving for the wedding, buy a plane ticket to Polynesia, and just hide for a couple of weeks. Of course, this is hardly practical. Not to mention the fact that it’s not a real solution – when I eventually return, all of my problems and issues and neuroses will be right where I left them (as I’ve already been painfully made aware of once before).
But what to do then? I find it so difficult to answer this question. For example, I spend so much time each day cleaning up our apartment, which I detest, but to just stop doing this would not bring me any relief. I hate clutter and I hate dirt and just letting it be would make me restless and cranky and toxic. Luckily I have an amazing fiancé who buys me electric vacuum cleaners that go through the house twice a day, but still, that’s only part of the problem.
So, I’ve started trying to make some real changes in my life by, like, not rearranging the sheets when Jochem has made the bed or by not checking to see whether my shampoo is still in the right place whenever Jochem has used the shower. If you knew anything about how I run this household (which more closely resembles a military base than an actual home where people are allowed to live in) or if you’ve ever had the misfortune of coming along on one of my highly organized camping trips (ladies: thank you for not killing me), you would know that, for me, this is nothing short of radical. It takes all of my willpower not to intervene in these matters. Although I feel that I’m literally fighting for my own happiness (and it pains me to have to write this so dramatically, but there you have it), I also know that I’m not there yet, and that it won’t be easy, and that I will have to keep taking notice of my wants and needs forever, and stop feeling bad about having wants and needs in the first place. But I’m trying.
I’ve also done some other, more fun, things. I’ve bought some stuff that I didn’t need. I’ve booked a yoga holiday in southern Portugal, which will be my first solo vacation in five years, dedicated entirely to yoga, meditation, vegetarian food and the art of leisure. I’ve been seriously looking into horseback riding lessons, something which I’ve dismissed until now, solely because of the costs, even though I’ve loved it for as long as I can remember. I’ve thrown away a big pile of newspapers and magazines that have been staring at me for months (“READ ME!”) and have started reading books again. I’ve also been reading a lot of Molly Wizenberg’s food blog Orangette to reconnect with my love of cooking. She’s actually the reason why I’ve felt motivated to start writing again and if this means that my posts suddenly look a lot like hers, I apologize, for it is unintentional.
On that note, I would like to end this long post with my recipe (or I should say: our recipe) for pan de cristal.
Pan de cristal is something that I believe my brother discovered on a whim one day while he and his fiancé were visiting our relatives in Spain. It’s kind of become a food legend in my family and every time any of us are in Spain, our main goal appears to be to eat as much pan de cristal as possible. I first tasted it while we were in Spain to pick up my wedding dress and it is, indeed, worthy of its status in our family. I had it three times in Spain and have made a successful replica back home. Pan de cristal is nothing special though – it’s basically a crispy sandwich. Then again, isn’t the best food often the most basic execution of arranging a few simple ingredients in perfect harmony?
Pan de cristal
Ingredients:
- 1 loaf of ciabatta bread
- 1 ripe tomato (big, fat and juicy), preferably a vine tomato
- good-quality extra virgin olive oil
- 150 grams of good-quality Manchego cheese, the famous Spanish sheep’s cheese
[NOTE: The original recipe calls for jamón (a fatty Spanish ham) instead of Manchego. As a vegetarian I don’t eat ham, of course, but, in my opinion, it’s better with Manchego even if you do eat meat. Spanish ham can be delicious (I do remember), but has a very dominant flavor. I think that the ham would overshadow the subtlety of the crispy bread with its soft flavors of ripe tomato and olive oil. My family, however, could not disagree with me more. I guess it’s a matter of taste (or principle).]
Cooking instructions:
* Preheat the oven.
* Divide the loaf of ciabatta bread into 3 equal parts and then halve each part to get 6 slices.
* Heat the loaf of ciabatta bread according to instructions. Because you’ve already divided and halved the bread, the slices will come out nice and crispy. You will get the best results if you set your oven to the hot-air or convection mark and if you place the slices on their ‘back’, so with the inside up.
* Halve the tomato.
* Cut your cheese into thick slices.
* Take the bread slices out of the oven and rub them with the tomato, the same way you would rub a piece of garlic onto a crostini, but be quite rough – it should look kind of messy (in front of guests just call it ‘rustic’).
* Pour some olive oil on top of the slices. You can be quite generous, but your bread should not be soaking in olive oil.
* Put your cheese slices on top of the tomato and olive oil infused ciabatta.
* Serve while still warm.
This recipe serves 2 slices each to 3 people, unless you’re like Jochem and I, in which case you can probably squeeze in that extra slice as well.
Enjoy and, if you’re anything like me, try not to worry about the bread crumbs until after you’ve eaten the whole thing.
