April photo a day: Week 2

Phew, I’m horribly behind with week 2 of my photo challenge. I also need to apologize that all I’m doing at the moment is posting pics. There’s just so much going on in my life again. So much to do, decisions to make and to find time to breathe in between. I hope things will calm down a bit soon, so I’ll be able to post more again. But anyway, here’s the second week of April in pictures. Enjoy!

Day 8: cry

When I read the word of the day, this lyric from my song “Dancing on my Grave” immediately came to my mind.

Day 9: risk

Speaking of my music, I feel like we’re getting to a point where we’re coming closer to being ready to share out songs with the world. Here’s a little something I made to promote our brand new Facebook page (more details on that soon!). It’s a risk because people might not like what we do, but it’s also a chance.

Day 10: pink

Coincidentally, I was wearing my brand new pink trousers that day. Fits pretty well with the spring-like weather outside, doesn’t it?

Day 11: warm

Last Thursday, me and the boyfriend went to our first concert this year. And it was so much fun. Two hours of jumping around and going crazy. Heaven! And yes, it wasn’t warm, it was freaking hot. With sweat all over the place. But that’s exactly the way it should be!

Day 12: unhindered

I’m trying my best to walk down the path I’ve chosen, to be the person I want to be. Unhindered of what other people think of it. This little thing is a constant reminder that I have every right to. Even if it’s tough and scary at times.

Day 13: joy

On Saturday, me and the boyfriend went to the music fair here in Frankfurt. We’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. Especially him, being a guitar geek. While it wasn’t as exciting as we’d expected it to be it was a real joy to look at all the different instruments and to spend a day among fellow music lovers.

Day 14: laughter

Sunday was a perfect spring day. Sunshine, blue skies and t-shirt weather. The boyfriend and I decided to spend the day at the Palmengarten, a botanical garden in the middle of Frankfurt. For us, it was a day full of laughter. Especially, when we went on a rowing boat and were having a little trouble navigating around.

April photo a day: Week 1

If you’re active in the blogging scene, you might know about Photo a day challenges. The task is pretty simple: Someone comes up with key words for each day of the month and you try to take a picture that corresponds with said key word. While I love looking at other people’s pictures, I have never taken part in such a challenge – until now. Again, it was Liz from belovelive who came up with a lovely list on her blog, so I decided to give it a try. What spoke to me most was the overall theme of the month: Life! Since the past month has been somewhat dark and challenging for me, especially with winter still holding us in its freezing grip, I feel like April is a new beginning. Brighter and longer days, plenty of adventures ahead. It’s a time to live life to the fullest. And focussing on something positive to capture everyday is exactly what I need right now. I’ve decided to post my pics weekly, so here is my first week in photos. Enjoy!

Day 1: (new beginning)

As I said, April is a new beginning. And possibilities are endless. Just like the beautiful sky that presented itself to me on the way home from our Easter trip to London.

Day 2: breathe

The river is a place I like to go to when I need a moment to breathe. Luckily, I both live and work close to it. This pic was taken on my walk home from work.

Day 3: wisdom

Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand is a book that is full of wisdom for me. Just look at that quote! It’s also a book I’ve been reading for almost 10 months. I intend to finish it. Soon.

Day 4: simple

The lunch I had that day might look simple, but it’s full of deliciousness. If you’ve never tried the Japanese specialty that is onigiri, do it. I basically lived on onigiri during my time in Japan. Yum!

Day 5: wild

This summer is gonna be wild, I’m tellin’ ya! This week I received tickets for yet another music festival. It’s quite a nice pile of fun, isn’t it. And there’s more to come for sure. Poor wallet!

Day 6: chaos

Since the boyfriend was out of town for a gig with his other band, I decided to go shopping. It took me exactly 30 minutes to spend 150 Euro. It was fun though. And made for a colourful chaos on my bed.

Day 7: confusing

Sunday was a beautiful, sunny day. Almost spring-like. Which meant we had to go outside for a walk by the river. And look what we found: A drowned bike. There were also several shopping carts in the water. Frankfurt is definitely full of surprises!

I have never… written a guest post

One thing that I love about blogging is the sense of community. The amazing people you get to know and the interactions you can have with them. One of these amazing people is Liz from Be Love Live. Some months back we somehow stumbled over each other’s blogs, not sure exactly when and how, and ever since then her blog has become a source of inspiration for me. I feel like oftentimes we’re actually kind of in the same place. Chasing our dreams no matter what. Fighting to show the world what we have to offer. A wonderful and sometimes difficult journey put in beautiful words. So when Liz asked on her Facebook page if someone wanted to write a guest post on her blog, I knew I wanted to do it. So last week, just before we went on our Easter trip to London, I sat down and wrote my very first guest post. I hadn’t thought that much about what I wanted to write beforehand. I had a rough theme, but when I sat down to write I just let it flow. You can see the result here.

Please check it out. Not just for my post, but for the blog in its whole awesomeness. And maybe even click the follow button if you like it. You’ll be blessed with inspiration galore. I promise. You’ll also be able read a post by Liz on here soon since she’s also guest posting. Exciting!

I have never… shared a song

I know I’ve been talking a lot about my music and the struggle of forming a band on here. And you’ve patiently listened to the joy and the challenges and the pitfalls it has brought me. Last night I listened to the acoustic versions of some of our songs we’d recorded the other week and I knew that now is the time to share it with you. So I proudly present to you *drumroll* The Riot by Kill your Ego.

This song means a lot to me. Not only because I think we did pretty well writing and arranging it. But also because it was born from personal experience. It’s certainly not a happy song. I actually don’t think I’m even capable of writing a purely happy song. Just not my kinda thing. This song was written a couple of months ago when I was going through a very exhausting, demanding time that almost made me lose the connection to myself. It kinda led to the events I wrote about in my last post. And while it reminds me of the pain I’ve gone through at the time when I sing it, I can now also see that I’ve made it through. I made it to the other side of the tunnel. And now I can move forward.

And while we’re talking about moving forward: Me and my boyfriend (who plays the guitar) originally decided to work on acoustic versions of our songs because we couldn’t find the missing members to make our band complete. We thought that this way we’d still be able to evolve, just the 2 of us, and to hit the stage as a duo until we’d hopefully find fellow musicians to join us. Once we’d decided on it, we suddenly found what we were looking and waiting for all this time. It looks like we’re having a complete band now. Can you believe it? Our patience paid off and I really, really hope that we can show what we’ve been working on so hard for the past months to the world some time soon. I want to go on stage, I want to interact, I want to send out our message to the world. I want it all! And I’m sure that with some patience we’ll get there. Eventually.

Oh, and don’t forget to let me know what you think of the song. I’m curious to hear your opinions!

Rock bottom

I wanted to go for a walk this afternoon when suddenly the sky turned all dark. I looked out of the window and saw nothing but deep black clouds hanging in the sky. Just minutes before the sun had been shedding its light into my living room. I grabbed a chair and sat down by the window. There was a roaring noise and then suddenly tiny bits of ice fell down covering everything in white. Hail! After a couple of minutes the hail turned into rain. And after some more minutes it stopped. The sky turned blue and the sun covered everything in warm light again. As if nothing had happened. When I sat there watching the spectacle enfolding in front of me, I couldn’t help but think what a beautiful metaphor it was for the situation I’m in right now.

Last week I found myself in the middle of a hailstorm. I don’t want to go too much into detail about what exactly happened. Not here, not yet. But I’ll tell you this much: I had to pull the emergency brake. I had to pull myself out right there or it would’ve crushed me. I’ve been suffering in a situation that was unbearable for me for way too long. For months and months, I told myself I could take just a little more, I could take just that one step forward. And then another one and another one. Until I’d completely lost myself, my life, my happiness and made suffering my normal state of being. I didn’t see it back then, not clearly at least. Of course, there were signs. Signs only I could see because I kept them to myself mostly and pretended I was ok. Maybe I thought if everyone thought I was ok, I would actually be ok. But I wasn’t. And admitting that to myself, admitting that I needed help and eventually getting it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life.

I hate when I can’t live up to my own expectations and that of others. I know now that it’s totally ok. Failure does happen and this wasn’t even a failure. It just felt like one. One person can only take as much and I’ve carried my burden for way too long. Looking back I don’t even know how exactly I made it through. And making it all stop was the exact right thing to do. I can feel how I’m healing, little by little each day. I can breathe again. I can focus on things I’ve been neglecting for so long. I can focus on myself and what’s good for me. That’s what I’m doing this week. I’m getting some time to be me again. I hope it’s a start for a change. It doesn’t all depend on me, but chances are good that things will turn out the way I need them to be. I’ve been getting a lot of support from my awesome boyfriend, family and friends and I couldn’t be more grateful for that! I’m on my way to a new start.

And good news have already happened this week! I’ve recently started to contribute to an online news mag about festivals, bands and the likes as a volunteer writer. And yesterday, my very first article was published! I was so happy I danced around the room and that’s actually something I haven’t been doing in a long time. Even if you don’t speak German, take a look at it and think of this as my first step into a new direction. Thank you!

Searching

Now that things slowly seem to go off with the band (or so I hope), I’ve been thinking a lot about how I actually got here. Why I decided to do something I had never done before. Something I had never even thought, let alone dreamed of before. The answer is this: because I was searching for something. For a way to be myself. Truly, 100% myself. Because that’s exactly how I feel when I’m singing my songs. These are the moments when I feel completely connected with myself. At peace. I’ve found a way to express my thoughts and feelings (and there are A LOT) to the world. And that’s all what I was looking for. All this time.

There were times when I’d forgotten about all that, when that longing feeling was asleep inside of me. When I thought I could just lead a simple life with a safe job, go to work everyday and just do what I’m told and to be who others expect me to be. But then there were those times when I realized I wasn’t made for this kind of life. I ultimately ran away to Japan to escape from a life that was slowly suffocating me. I got a big step closer to understanding who I really am, who I want to be. But then I got back and after a while I found my life being the same old, same old. Maybe I didn’t have the strength to search for something different at the time. Maybe I just forgot about it. But that well-known feeling slowly kept creeping back into my heart. It got so strong that I wasn’t able to ignore it anymore. And I couldn’t be happier about it.

I mean there was a lot of fighting, energy, fear and desperation involved. It was a process that in the end rewarded me with an epiphany. One day, I just knew what I wanted to do. And that’s where the hard part started. In fact, I’m still in the middle of it. When I decided to commit myself to the idea of making music, I didn’t know what was waiting for me. But that was exactly the exciting thing about it. Never did I expect to find a person to share my dream with me. And never ever did I expect to fall in love with said person. I didn’t plan on those things. But when they happened I knew that was exactly the way things were supposed to happen. When I first had this idea, I had a vision of how things might be like one day. And so far I can say that everything pretty much turned out the way I wanted. Of course, there were hard times and pitfalls and setbacks. Plenty. But I think they were necessary to get to where we are now. Because they taught us things, they made us fight for our dream. And that’s how things will probably continue for a while. With every step we take.

I know I’m just at the beginning here. There are still too many situations in my life where I can’t show my true self. Where I’m pressed into some role I’m just too used to play. It’s like an automatism. There are times where I can take it. And there are times where it’s almost killing me to the point that I just want to give in and go back to the way it used to be. Of course, this is not gonna happen. I’m working on it. I haven’t completely figured out how just yet. But I’m working on it.

So I guess what I’m trying to say here is: If you ever get that strange longing feeling and you don’t know exactly you’re yearning for. Don’t ignore it! Accept it. Take it as a chance to explore what your life is really about, what YOU are really about. You owe it to yourself!

What’s on my mind

There’s actually tons of things on my mind right now. I’m busy with a lot of stuff. Exciting things. Mindblowing things. Possibly life changing things. I might tell you more about that at a later time. What I wanted to share now, however, is the quote above. Which is one of the things that has been on my mind lately. I think I’m starting to really understand what these words mean. And I love it!