It’s been a nice year. Somewhere between me grumbling about how the pandemic is far from over and this post, we did have a good stretch of relative normalcy. I did not expect that either, otherwise my last post would be a bit more upbeat. As a result, though I still worked from my bachelor’s pad of an apartment practically the whole year, I’ve been really busy, catching up with what I missed of life in the past two years.
With all the grave ceremony that accompanied each pandemic update in 2020, I was expecting an equally momentous proclamation from the powers that be of “Pandemic Out!”. Kind of like how I imagine firefighters declare a conflagration extinguished for good. Alas, that did not really come to pass even until now and I’m just glad I realized this sooner than later.
And that is why one particularly wintry Sunday night in March I just decided to finally take my long-postponed trip to Venice. Someday I want to write dedicated blog posts (or, maybe more realistically at this point, they’d be essays in a book, maybe my memoirs. Heh.) about all my trips. But, as I said, I’ve been busy. I’ve literally been doing a lot this year. For now, those detailed reports would have to remain in my journals.

In fact, I think I’m facing this unique problem of getting burned out from all my hobbies. When I moved to Europe, I had one goal for my first few months while I was settling in: I did not want to get bored. That was an imperative, one that, I’m pleased to say, I managed to fulfill through my first few months as well as the pandemic lockdown era that followed shortly. And I did so by accumulating hobbies. It all came “crashing down”, so to speak, when I realized that this year can be relatively normal because now I’m trying to indulge not only in the hobbies I acquired during the pandemic but as well as those from before.
So Venice is not the only trip I took this year. I also went to Burg Hohenzollern to watch Shakespeare’s Othello performed in the castle courtyard. I went to Barcelona and inundated myself with Gaudi. And then to Vienna, a very artistic city, visual and auditory.
And I’m no longer just sketching on my Wacom; Zanshin Dojo is no longer my sole routine outing. I found a sketching group which gave me the time and space and just push to finally finish the A4 sketch book I started in 2017.
I even had an exhibit.
All this at the cost of time to work on my pandemic art project. I’m not disappointed in that trade-off.
Oh, last but most definitely not the least, I got a Steam Deck. Which probably means my quest for another brainfuck of an experience to rival Bioshock Infinite is on once more. In fact, it’s on like it’s never been before!
Anyway, I guess so far 2022 is as normal a year as I could have in Europe so far. At the moment, my plans for 2023 does not solely involve biking around Hamburg but also adventures and reunions with both people and places.