#mightbevlog

[mightbedamian]

#TMIishTuesday #43 - 16 Things I learned in 2016

No more "first off"s anymore! It's 2017. It's Tuesday. It's #TMIishTuesday. Go! Hey there mighty people of the internet! And welcome to issue #43 of #TMIishTuesday - my weekly Tumblr post about what goes through my mind and what you guys want to know more about. It can be something very personal, it can be something political, it can be completely pointless - but in 99.9 % of the cases, it involves opinions. And mine as well. Last week I went quite cliché by posting my new year's resolutions as my last post of 2016. Addition to my 5 resolutions from last week: 6. Use after-shave every day. I haven't for a while. For which reason?? Also: So far I haven't failed any resolution. I mean… It wasn't too hard, but still. Kind of proud. :D Okay, and guess what follows on a cliché post!? Another cliché post! First post of 2017. What better time to reflect on 2016? Yeey, I'm so creative! :P But you know me. If you are expecting a break-down of political events, you might need to look somewhere else. I'm sure the BBC, NBC, or ARD have made enough "year in review" broadcasts to fill an entire year. No, THIS is a reflection of some of the events that - I figured out in 2016, - I learned I in 2016, - I achieved in 2016, - have moved me in 2016, or - simply have made my 2016. Ready? Let's see, if we can make it to 16 things. 1. It's okay to be gay! At the start of 2016 I came out to basically anybody, who knows. The only exception being my best friend. That was in December 2015 already. But in 2016 I told another very close friend (who might also be reading this. Hi there!), my parents, and the parents of my two best friends. Every single one of them has been absolutely supporting. Thanks to all of you guys! <3 2. Bosses can be assholes! Don't get me wrong: I've had three jobs last year and only one boss was an asshole. But this dude. Wow! I applied for a job to do in the period between Christmas and my new study that started in August. Among others, I applied at a call centre. Not the most satisfying job, but decent enough. It was all about getting working experience anyways. But this dude ordered me 4, 5, 6 times to do 1-2 hours of calls under his supervision saying that I was very close to getting the job all the time. All of that lasted from mid January to mid February. Then he said we should schedule yet another meeting and that he would email me a date for the following week. I was already really fed up with him and the entire place. And he didn't message me. When I emailed him half-way through the following week, he replied that they had no more interest in me. That was such a kick in the face! I basically worked my ass off for them and was then fired. I had no contract or anything, but still. I feel like they betrayed me for 150-200 euros there. So that was an experience… 3. Having help in looking for a job is crucial! I applied loads for the apprenticeship that I started last August. 40, 50 letters for sure. By mid-January a friend of my parents, who had heard I was looking for one, approached me: Hey, so, I heard that this rehabilitation clinic is looking for an apprentice still. I'm cool with their Vice CEO. You could tell them I sent you and just try your luck. At the end of February I had an interview there - and after doing a one-week internship I received a call saying I could start there in summer. WOOHOO! 4. Being a cashier can be awesome! After I had been "fired" (if you want so), I felt let down, discouraged. But I wanted to work really badly. Sitting at home doing nothing really felt bad. So I applied as a cashier at the supermarket closest to my parents' (where I had moved back in). And I got the job. Worked 4-6 hours a day, 6 days a week. Having basically no weekend (when you work late shifts on Saturday and early shifts on Monday) really sucks, but it pays just like any other job you can do without a study. Not having to pay any rent, I made quite some money. And it was really fun as well! It's a massive supermarket and there are lots of returning customers - also from the surrounding area. Not just the city itself. It's quite a cool store tbh :P And my colleagues were really cool as well. On New Year's Eve I went there for the first time since leaving for a different city. Just walking through those sliding doors I felt "at home". Such cool people! I kind of miss that place. In a way... 5. Tumblr is cool! These past days I realised how Tumblr played a big role in my coming out process. I never really was aware of its influence. But in Summer (or so) 2015, half a year before coming out, I created this account and followed some blogs posting cute guys. That was the first hint, I guess? In 2016 I continued scrolling through these posts and got waaay more into it. Not only did I start writing texts that I posted on Tumblr, but the amount of time I spent scrolling and browsing just increased a lot. And I like it. Oh, and I posted my coming out story to have it written down somewhere where I can read it any time I want to - and yet hidden from friends. Great decision! I wouldn't remember it as well, if I hadn't put it there. And look what has developed from this all! I write a ton of stuff about stuff that matters to me. Every week. And I did 21 posts of #mightyadvent as well. I love it! Thanks for reading my ramblings, guys! 6. Coming out videos are great and the world is not binary! This is something that is probably also valid even more for December 2015, but: I freaking LOVE coming out videos. Recently I've been way too busy and haven't watched one in probably a month or so. But until May or June I probably watched EVERY coming out video that was uploaded to YouTube. Just to get a feeling of how my coming out had gone. And because I wanted to hear other people's stories. There is a huge mixture of reactions out there. People getting disinherited or getting hit. People with indifferent parents. People who got very loving responses telling them they supported them the way they are. I was lucky enough here. While I knew that there is more than just - male/female for gender and - hetero/gay for sexual orientations, I never really knew what else there was. Like, what exactly is there beyond the binary? Then I started watching all those coming out videos. And I stumbled across people identifying as all kinds of genders and sexual orientations. Even if some were trolls (remember the guy who came out as playing Minecraft? F*ing bastard! Sorry, I shouldn't call people this, but he deserves it), I saw LOADS of real, sometimes very inspiring videos, and stories that just make you go "awwww". Anyway, I'm drifting off again. What I wanted to say here is: I learned that there are more than two genders and more than two sexual orientations. I knew that transsexuality existed, but never had an idea what people felt like going through it. And I now know a lot about asexuality or pansexuality as well. 7. Twitter is queer, too! In the summer I somehow stumbled across VollzeitJonas's Twitter. He must have replied to some YouTuber's tweet or so. Anyway, I followed his account and thereby truly boosted my experience. By him posting some stuff and retweeting lots and lots on LGBTQ+ issues, I began to discover the topics as well. I found queer.de, a wonderful German news website that focuses on news on LGBTQ+ issues. And I found dbna.de, a site for gay youth. Dating website, community, forum, tips - it's all on there. From Jonas's Twitter account it basically just evolved over time. I interacted with him and others, who follow him and by now I follow some more cool peeps. I like that! 8. Living on your own rocks! Yeah… I moved twice this year. From the students' house in the Netherlands I had lived in for the past 4.5 years to my parents' house (in February) and then to the place I live now. And I'm really living on my own for the first time. It took some money to get all the stuff needed to fill an entire apartment. And I basically spent all the money I had earned over the 4.5 months before as a cashier. But: It was worth it. I really like my interior. It also took some time to get used to all the stuff you have to do when living on your own entirely - with no flat mates. Not owning a dish washer, cleaning everything on your own, cooking on your own… You name it. But it certainly offers some advantages as well. 9. Work can be a positive thing, too! When I started the apprenticeship in August I was quite scared. How would I be able to cope with working 40 hours a week and having to study for school at the same time. It was quite hard to get used to, to be honest. But I figured out I don't have to study tooooo much for school. My study pays off. At times I feel like the most difficult thing is constantly translating from English to German cause I studied in English. Work itself is quite interesting. Different tasks and while it gets a little boring at times, most of the times there's more to be done. And they try to assign me different tasks so I don't get too bored. That's cool. Also I have - like at the supermarket - very lovely and caring colleagues. One tiny downside: There's only one guy my age there. And I think he has a girlfriend. :/ And for the "boring" stuff there's a positive news too: I'll get to see a different department in two weeks, so a little more variety to come. I enjoy working full time cause I can see what I am doing this for already. That's cool! However I should have taken a few days off work before Christmas. I did like 95 % of my Christmas shopping the afternoon before. Oops. 10. A car can save lives! Or well… Let's say it can improve the quality of life. I got a car a month after I started the apprenticeship. It's 15 years old. But you know… as long as it keeps going… Plus it's my first car. Oh and by going by car I save about 4 hours a week on travelling time. And some money as well. Sounds weird, but makes sense once you realise that a month ticket for the train is more expensive than day tickets for me cause I only work three days a week. The other two are school which is located in the city I live. And the car also proved very useful for visiting a friend in the Netherlands. He doesn't live in the place I studied at anymore, but moved further west to Apeldoorn, meaning it was a two-hour drive for his birthday. By train it would have been 3 hours - which I probably then wouldn't have done. And it was about the same price to go. Trains are f*ing expensive! 11. Travelling is the world to me! I didn't go on a long holiday in 2016, but did several weekend trips. In May I went to visit a friend in Denmark with the mates from my Dutch table tennis club. Had the greatest time there! Three days of talks, catch-ups, table tennis, a cool city (Århus), amazing weather - to say I enjoyed my time there would be a big understatement! Side note: That is now the most Northern spot I've been to. I told you about my trip to Apeldoorn already where we had a great time as well. Even if it was only about 15 hours. And I pretty much just got back from the last highlight of 2016: I visited a very good friend in Belgium. First time I went to Belgium. Or well… I crossed it on the way to Orléans as a third-grader. That doesn't count, does it? Anyway, Belgium was really fun! Being with my two best friends is always perfect. And exploring a city I have wanted to visit for a long time, makes it even better: We went to Brussels for an entire day and explored the city of Leuven for the other day. Really cool - both cities! Want to go again! Have no trips planned for this year, but could imagine visiting my Danish friend again - and who knows what else. 12. Online dating is hard! I don't know whether I mentioned this on here and I certainly didn't "offline". But I'm sure there's a tweet about this. In October or so I got inspired by VollzeitJonas and others and created an account on that gay online dating platform. After some browsing I got a message from a guy, who was looking to meet people. And I replied politely and thought I'd give it a try. But that's just as exams started at school and I had several other "big projects" in this thing called "real life" and I felt I wasn't quite ready to invest that much energy at the time. That's why it kinda just ended after one message. Sad story. But totally not his fault. I think I should give this whole online dating thing a go again. See my new year's resolutions, btw. [/shameless self-promo] 13. I can still feel the Pulse! This is probably the most grief I've felt this year. I woke up some Sunday in June to the news of Orlando. It was early morning over there when a "man" (should we call him "man", if he's that cruel?) entered Pulse club. One of the more popular gay clubs in the city. And now probably all LGBTQ+ around the world know the club. For a very sad reason: That man didn't just enter the club. He fired into the crowd trying to assassinate as many as possible. 49 didn't make it out alive, 53 more were wounded. Most of the people at the party were of Hispanic background cause the club was holding a Latin night. That much for the motive of the perpetrator and the description of what happened. Learning about the events in the morning on Twitter just twisted my stomach. It was the first major LGBTQ+ hate crime I heard of after discovering my own sexuality. I follow several LGBTQ+ folks on Twitter, so the message spread to me rather quickly. I realised how much of a deal this was when I saw so that basically any LGBTQ+ I follow on Twitter posted about it. Sheer madness. I had just become more proactive and had just fully accepted myself as gay - and then THAT happened. Writing about this still makes my fists clench. R.I.P. to all 49. 14. Terror is here! December - the time of the year most people here in Germany get excited for Christmas. And we have those cute little Christmas markets. You can get glühwein there and fries and lots of (let's face it: pretty useless) self-made stuff. The booths are lit up with chains of light and everyone is just letting go of the stress that tends to tension the atmosphere around that time of the year. A very famous Christmas market is the one in front of Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church which itself is one of the must-see places as a tourist. And then there was the man who would kill 11 and injure 55 more when he drove a truck into that very Christmas market on 19 December. I - again - read about it first on Twitter. At first I thought it was just an accident and didn't really bother too much, skipping the messages in my timeline and scrolling on. But after an hour or so I thought it was about time to check what really was going on in Berlin. It was only then when I realised how bad things really were. We had our first successful terrorist attack in Germany. R.I.P. to the victims! 15. Prejudice sucks! Remember New Year's Eve 2015? Lots of people were sexually assaulted right next to the famous Dom cathedral in Cologne. Potentially by men "of North African appearance" (that's what Police said). And there was an outcry in the entire country for how ruthless "all the immigrants" were. What they forgot - like so many times before and after the incident - is that a group of 5-50 people is not "all immigrants". But that's a different story I could rant over for an entire #TMIishTuesday post. What also was part of the outcry was how not-present Police were during that night. How was it possible that so many ladies were assaulted in public and Police didn't notice? No one really knew the answer. Lesson of these events: More police will be present at big public events. The results? Well… New Year's Eve 2016. Cologne again. More police is present. The square in front of the Dom is closed. And we still get news. News that make me wanna puke again. Why? Apparently police checked kinda any non-white person thoroughly, while not checking white people (or not checking them that much). That's prejudice. If not racism. And no debate about this: Police being accused of being racist is an absolute no-go! And that should make them think. For heaven's sake, why can't we just have a great time on New Year's Eve? 16. Chocolate cereal likes to play hard to get! I want to end this on a lighter note, so: In 2016 I discovered that my beloved chocolate cereal really is hard to get hold of. The best deal is certainly at the Aldi (thanks for not sponsoring this post, Aldi!). Problem here: People know that. And in each batch there are like 12 (?) boxes of different types of cereals, but only one box is chocolate cereal. And guess who went to the Aldi a good few times just to get cereal and ended up NOT getting it because there were like 5 batches of cereal in the shelves, but all chocolate cereal was gone? Yepp. This guy. Sad times! 17. Thank you! Finally I'd like to say thank you to all the lovely people who made this year as great as it has been: - My friends from my hometown: Stephan, Lukas, Ago, Dennis, Katja, Linus, Desiree, Tomas - My "Dutch" friends, who are not all Dutch: Marc, Linda, Laura, Christina, Martijn, Rik, Danny, Mette, Cédric, Annelies, Abhishta, Wouter, Menno, Celestine, and the rest of my table tennis club - My friends from the new town: Jenny, Florentin, Juliet, Linda, Marina, Katharina, Lina, Dana, and the rest of my class - My parents and family - and so many I probably have missed on this list.  Also thanks to loads YouTubers: - Those that showed me that queer is cool: Ash Hardell, Ricky Dillon, Connor Franta, Calum McSwiggan, ItsColeslaw, Troye Sivan, Hannah Hart, Chandler 'N Wilson, Sam Collins, Courtney-Jai - Special shoutout to those who I witnessed coming out this year: Ricky Dillon and ItsColeslaw - Those whose vlogs up my day: Marzbar, Ben, Oskar, Felix von der Laden, Ben Brown, George Benson, izzi, FunForLouis - The German Minecraft gamers out there: skate702, CubePlayTV, Herr Bergmann (plus teams #unfazbar, #Destilay and #Vibe for their great #VARO4 videos) - The rest, who just don't fit a category, but make THE BEST content: Julien Bam, Applewar, Mikey Murphy Finally thanks to the lovely Twitter folks: - VollzeitJonas, XLucamiraX, _FlexiHD_, achojo, Hennddrik, jsnjgr Wow! This has become such a long post! I feel like it's the longest I ever posted! :O That was totally not the intention. And it turned out a little more seriously than I initially planned. But that's fine. That's just a representation of my life. That's been my 2016! Hope you liked it. I certainly did! What did you achieve in 2016? I wanna know. Let me know by placing a comment, tweeting me, dming me, or what else you can think of - you know the means to get to me. As always: Next #TMIishTuesday next Tuesday. If you have any questions in the meantime, just ask away. Whatever you’re curious about - I don’t bite. :) Also: Poll to determine next week’s topic will be up on Twitter on Sunday afternoon. Until then: Stay mighty! Oh, and here’s some self-promo: - Last #TMIishTuesday: http://mightbedamian.tumblr.com/post/155176055527/tmiishtuesday-42-new-years-resolutions - More #TMIishTuesdays: mightbedamian.tumblr.com/tagged/tmi - Poll to decide next week's topic and more very cool stuff: www.twitter.com/mightbedamian - Even more very cool stuff: mightbedamian.tumblr.com

[mightbedamian]

TMI-ish Tuesday 21: Weekly Blog

Hey there mighty people of Tumblr! 

And welcome to a new post about my life, also known as #TMIishTuesday. I had a very busy and exciting week, so for today's post, I thought, I'd write about it in a daily vlogging kind of style. If that makes sense? Vlogging style while writing? Nah… Anyway, you'll know what I mean in a second. Even, if you don't know daily vlogs. (But, seriously: If you don't, what have you been doing with your life for the last like 2, 3 years?? :P) I can tell that this is far too much rambling again… I'll try my best to keep this to the point, I promise! Here we go!

So… let's start on Wednesday cause any week starts on Wednesday, right? :D Wednesday was probably the least eventful day of the week. Packed the last things from my bedroom at my parents (I had already moved most of my stuff to my own place the Saturday before) and got some last small things for my new place.

The very important day was Thursday: I MOVED! I moved houses. Yepp, that's right, I now live in Osnabrück. And for the first time ever, I don't live with anyone else. I have my very own apartment. That's really cool! But on Thursday, it was still scary. And chaotic. Most of my stuff was still in boxes. In LOADS of boxes that still needed to be unpacked. Fixed some things with my dad and did loads of groceries. For the first time in Osnabrück. Remarkable! And it was my first night here. All the new noises, new surroundings - oh, and no curtains or anything else to keep the sunlight away. Cause they still were at the tailor to be cut to the right length.

Friday arrived. Slept really well. And was only woken up by my alarm (at 8.30, but keep in my I had no curtains! Then 8.30 seems late :D). Made breakfast, tidied the place a little bit, and went straight to the station to get my bike to the place I work. That place is half an hour by train and you cannot walk from the station there to the building I work. Therefore, I needed a bike there. Explored my way from my house to the station, went there, explored my way from the station to work, explored the place a bit (it has 6k inhabitants so there's not much to do there :D) and caught the train back 1.5 hours after I had arrived. When back at home, I did groceries again cause there was still a lot needed. For the rest of the afternoon and night, I pretty much chilled. And my bank account was not happy about that. I will only get wifi tomorrow (Wednesday), sooo… watching YouTube videos all afternoon and night that Friday was probably NOT very cheap. :D

Saturday was a chilled one. Didn't set an alarm, woke up at 10-ish - not bad without curtains :D After breakfast - while watching some more videos - I stumbled upon a book: Das weiße Amulett by Kathinka Wantula. I had not read a single page of a book that was not study related in forever! Seriously, must have been… what? 7, 8 years maybe? I know, right? That's bad! The last thing I had read was a part of the final book of Harry Potter. But halfway through I stopped. I had read it twice already anyway! :D Das weiße Amulett, right! I was like: Internet is f*ing expensive anyway, let's just read a page or two. And after the intro, I just COULD NOT put this book aside! Wantula's story about this girl Karen is just too cool! I read more than 200 pages that day. That's right, more than 200! After not having read anything for the last few years! That's also why there were no posts on Twitter. Sorry about that, mighty Twitter people! But here is what you missed :D Also, after doing more groceries, I thought it was about time I cooked for the first time (after cereal, bread and take-aways for the days until then). So I put some water in a pan and put it on the stove. After a few minutes I noticed a smell that scared me a little. I didn't quite recognise it. It was not burned or anything, but I just had no clue. So I decided to scratch my plans and have another bowl of cereal instead. It was late anyway. Whilst eating, I watched some more videos and then it happened: I ran out of internet. No wifi and my mobile data package consumed entirely. I thought: Oh, no big deal, let's order some more data via my phone. So I paid 15 euros for that and waited. The last time it was there within a few minutes. But nothing happened. I could see in my account that the 15 euros were gone, but no service whatsoever. I was not happy, but decided to read some more. That's also how I got to 200+ pages :D No internet until I went to sleep.

Sunday was split: Reading vs. building. Kind of. I set my alarm, but instead was woken up at 4.30 in the morning by my neighbor heading down the stairs. I don't know, if she was late for work or what happened. But it was enough to wake me up. I fell asleep again, but not for long. At 8.30 my alarm went off cause I needed to do some tidying, before my parents arrived in the afternoon. But first: Breakfast whilst watching videos and ranting about the bad internet. (Thanks for listening, mighty Twitter people!) After, I felt it would have been appropriate to start tidying up and unpacking the last things. But the story of the book was just TOO exciting. So I laid down on my bed again, before I even had a shower. And I started reading. Before I knew, there was just 1.5 hours left before my parents were due to arrive. And somehow I managed to get everything done, except for putting the clean dishes away from the kitchen board. And that was only because they arrived 15 minutes early. I should have known… We assembled a new lamp and put ALL the stuff from the boxes into its place. And some of it wouldn't fit, so I left it in my parents car for them to store it somewhere at their place. Before we knew, it was 8pm and they left again. Oh, and before we also put the curtains into place. So now I can sleep! Finally! I had another bowl of cereal and read for the entire evening. That makes it another 200+ pages read that day.

Monday. My first day. My first day at my new work/study. Apprenticeship to be precise. Sunday night I had noticed that I had to get up at 5.30, if I wanted to have breakfast and enough time to get ready and head to the station to catch the train. It all worked out. I arrived on time at 8.20, even though the train had 10 minutes delay. Stupid trains! :P I already knew my new colleagues from my one-week internship in March, so I was very welcome. And my boss immediately told me that I could join him when he would show a group of healthcare students from the US and Canada around the clinic. I was stoked! That was quite a welcome! And it meant that I also got to see the whole clinic and the "city". Pretty cool! And I could talk English in person to someone again after months and months of abstinence. Thinking about it: Those were the first Americans I ever met! And besides a former class mate, who was half British, and the boyfriend of someone from my former table tennis club, I had never talked to a native speaker of English before. To be quite honest: I didn't notice. Props to me, I guess?! Haha. But okay, btt: Was nice being shown around my work space and the "city". And being surrounded by a lot of young people as well. One negative thing, though: Besides the professor, there were only three guys. And none of them was boyfriend material… Damn it! When we brought the students and their professor back to the bus stop and arrived back in the clinic, only one hour was left and I spent sat next to the secretary of my boss. She explained to me some stuff that happens there and how things work there. Then it was time to catch the train back home, where I actually cooked some pasta. This time the smell did not scare me away. Turns out, it was not being burnt, but just some household cleaner left on the stove from the guy that rented this apartment before me. The meal was delicious and I watched some more YouTube, said hello to the mighty Twitter people after more than 24 hours of not tweeting (how that happened? Go ask Karen and Michael from Das weiße Amulett! :D). Oh, did I mention that I finished it, before even tweeting? Those last 30 pages were not too challenging to be honest. And after tweeting I wrote this post until this paragraph. Fun fact: It's 23:23 the moment I'm typing this. And I'm probably heading to bed now. Have to be up at 4:45 cause I have to be there earlier than today. Fun times!

Tuesday. My last day. Well, not really. But for this post. Today actually. I have to say: Work - again - was a lot of fun. And apparently my boss was impressed by my English skills yesterday. First thing when he arrived today, he told me: "You know, I've wanted to attack this for a loooong time - years actually - but… Would you be up for translating our website from German to English? Peu a peu obviously, there is a lot". I had to pinch myself to not get overly excited. Feeling that my language skills are acknowledged is something that is just an unbeatable feeling. I worked hard on those and it pays off! That meant that I spent the morning doing the usual things - that I'm just getting used to - after all it was my second day there - and for the afternoon I got my own work station and started this monstrosity of a project. Translation. Pretty cool actually. Although I have to admit that I'm not 100% satisfied with myself. My vocabulary definitely rusted quite a bit over the last 9 months when I never spoke the language. Plus there were lots of technical terms that I didn't know and several times I was not even sure that the dictionary put the correct translation. But they want to hire an interpreter later to check what I did anyway. But I do most of the work. Cool! I did that until the end of my working time. Will continue some time when there is not enough other stuff to do. Maybe tomorrow already, maybe only in a few weeks time. Who knows? Anyway, when I arrived home, I watched some videos - you guessed it -, but soon ran out of mobile data. That meant I had to buy more. For another 15 euros, which is a little bit of a waste of money cause from tomorrow on I'll have wifi myself. But apparently I cannot add less. At least I'm settled now. :P And that's basically my day. Was about to post today's #mightygoodnighttune, like I do each day before heading to bed. Then remembered I still wanted to post this. So wrote this. Now proof-reading and probably trying to shorten it (it's 2.5 pages in Word, omg!), then post it. Update: It still is 2.5 pages, but it's written a lot smoother now. :D

Now that you made it this far, tell me what you thought about this. Should I do more of these "day coverage" posts? What should I improve?

If you enjoyed reading this post, like it, reblog it, follow my blog, tweet it, print it and put it on the page of your guinea pig... Okay, don’t do that last one. The poor little thing! 

Anyway, next fact next Tuesday. Or earlier, if you would like to know anything specific. Just ask away. Whatever you’re curious about - I don't bite. :)