While writing this entry, I am on a train to Berlin, coming back from a winter holiday loop including staying in Eilat / Tel-Aviv and Poznań during the past 10 days. It is a sunny and unexpectedly warm last day of this year and I feel very positive about the future outlook, as I am finally well-rested and I catch the last rays of sun. I needed this as 2017 was yet another year of BLAST. Work, travel and life experience-wise.

Comparing to last year, where I visited 13 countries in 12 months, this year the quantity was lesser (!), but quality-wise, I discovered my own private paradises and revisited friends all over the place. To name 12 countries I’ve visited in the past 12 months, I will recall them in the chronological order : Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan (where I said hello to 2017), Spain, Poland, UK, Croatia, Denmark (and Faroe Islands to be precise), Italy (more than 3 times, lucky me!), Portugal (and Azores to be precise again when it comes to autonomies!), France and eventually: Israel. I still fail to write up about my own thoughts on time while traveling in time. Similarly to Paul Theroux, I do believe that travels create a necessary headspace to find both distance and perspective to our own daily experiences. Like meditation, in parallel to focusing on the new stimuli during travels, I often let the recurring thoughts ebb, flow and process them accordingly,

Work-wise, it’s been probably the most intense, yet inspiring year full of learnings. I’m proud of the teams I’ve worked with and about my own achievements, to put it vaguely. I’ve written more about the changes earlier this year, and I’ve also managed to find the situations I thrive in as well as where I should develop more. I still fail to remain a completely healthy work-life balance and tend to get overtly excited /upset about things, engaging myself in and burning out a lot of energy on the way, but I feel I get wiser every year.

This year I realized that I want to dedicate more quality time to people I care about and most importantly, myself. Which means saying ‘no’ more often to networking, social media and excessive engagement in the exciting events life in Berlin or spending as much time doing sports just to level up my endorphin since the day/night are not endless at the end of the day. I learned to accept that life is about enjoying different phases and I can’t have everything at once. Even though I am all about intensity and living the live to the fullest. And I tend to live a healthy life, but I reject the idea of focusing myself on the fitness side of things to the extreme; I’m not very good with opium for the masses. While observing constantly self-centered fitness movements, making people look and feel insanely attractive on the surface but leaving the internal battles unresolved, I grin to myself.

Instead, I restarted a psychodynamic therapy, and engaged in a lot of initiatives around the mental health topics-both at workplace (while I was working at SoundCloud and currently, in the agile coach chapter at Native Instruments around the topic of team building and non-violent communication) and within my inner circle, including topics of body acceptance and positivity. I realized my relationships are deeper, and more satisfying although I give myself more space to feel the sadness, or grief, when necessary.

This all brought me to the final paragraph about my life in Berlin. It’s been 3 years now, and I had my ups and downs. I can’t tell how long I will remain in this place, but even in the darkest days I try to see the sun and enjoy other colors than black: even though it matches me universally.