A Village in Rheinland-Pfalz (Germany)
I wanted to touch the earth, to smell the grass after I'd cut it. Now that it's green again more than ochre, alive again more than scorched. And still before the rains come.
I wanted to be out in the fresh air, to spend time in the garden, to catch the last rays of a summer that's fading. I wanted to check on the apples still hanging on and the new pears, to look in on the firm plums and the delicate grapes.
I wanted so badly to be in that place – the garden I kept returning to whenever I took the few steps from my desk to the window, so I could look at it more with my heart than with my eyes.
But none of that happened.
I was held by work, taken hostage by it. I was in a meeting that wouldn't end and that I couldn't simply step away from. I had to stay and finish something that had no end.
It was as if, every time one hole got filled in, a new one opened up somewhere else. Where is the satisfaction supposed to be in that kind of work? How can a person lose themselves in all of it, bury themselves so deep, that the world around them becomes completely indifferent to them?
I can't do it. I suffer every time. I go on suffering long after all the lights at the desk have gone out. I feel it as time lost.
I'm having these phases again more often, where work demands more of me than I'm willing to give. A gap and a contradiction that breed frustration in me. That's the part where work eats into my private life and I can't get rid of it. That's the season of suffering.
I wanted to touch the earth, to smell the grass after I'd cut it. Now that it's green again more than ochre, alive again more than scorched. And still before the rains come.
I wanted to be out in the fresh air, to spend time in the garden, to catch the last rays of a summer that's fading. I wanted to check on the apples still hanging on and the new pears, to look in on the firm plums and the delicate grapes.
I wanted so badly to be in that place – the garden I kept returning to whenever I took the few steps from my desk to the window, so I could look at it more with my heart than with my eyes.
But none of that happened.
I was held by work, taken hostage by it. I was in a meeting that wouldn't end and that I couldn't simply step away from. I had to stay and finish something that had no end.
It was as if, every time one hole got filled in, a new one opened up somewhere else. Where is the satisfaction supposed to be in that kind of work? How can a person lose themselves in all of it, bury themselves so deep, that the world around them becomes completely indifferent to them?
I can't do it. I suffer every time. I go on suffering long after all the lights at the desk have gone out. I feel it as time lost.
I'm having these phases again more often, where work demands more of me than I'm willing to give. A gap and a contradiction that breed frustration in me. That's the part where work eats into my private life and I can't get rid of it. That's the season of suffering.