New Rules

It's been a long break of not having time to write anything for myself, but, for today at least, I'm back! I've been caught up not only with some demanding paid writing work (it's terrible pay but I'm building up my portfolio of business, finance, politics and health/fitness articles, so hurrah to that!) but also with the trials and tribulations of living with a Czech boyfriend. Emphasis on the word 'boy'. Oh, how I long to be with a person who can be an adult at home as well as at work. My survival here depends, I have realised, on being able to negotiate enough time away from him or to myself to be able to cope with whatever is thrown at me and an unwritten rule to never, I repeat, never, expect or hope for kindness, understanding, love and affection given without prompting, or washing up completed by anyone except me.

These are the new rules in my current living situation:

1) Do not expect anyone to do any of the following: make tea in the morning, make meals at any time, do food shopping, washing up or any general cleaning unless it is you.

2) Get to bed before the other person so that you don't have to get into late-night difficult conversations that destroy all hope of sleep.

3) If you leave nice, loving post-it notes, thank you notes to accompany a red rose you bought, or buy special little things while food shopping just for the other person, do not under any circumstances hope for reciprocation of any kind.

4) Buy your own red wine and drink it while the other person is out.

5) Have a 'coffee fund' to escape the flat more often when suburbia and the quiet isolation of being in a flat you didn't want to live in in the first place begin to grate.

6) Make "acceptance, acceptance, acceptance" your new 'political party of one' manifesto.

7) Wear nice clothes while you can because you never known when the next Czech bank holiday might creep up on you and force you to accept a prolonged trip to the mountains to wear a hiker's uniform that makes you feel frumpy. (That would be the coming weekend.)

8) Be supremely grateful for rent-free living because this is the huge advantage that makes up for it all while income is slow to materialise.

So, in the meantime, I've developed a terrible YouTube habit of watching Kermit the frog interviews about all sorts of Muppet films, DVDs and TV shows past and present, as well as a cafe bill that is close to the sum total of my meet-ee income, bar one meet-ee who pays me directly into my Czech account, which serves to slowly be allowing me to save up. A bit.

And I've taken to re-training myself in the area of shopping. Seeing as I now live right next to a shopping centre, which I have to walk past to get to the metro station, it is no longer viable to cry, weep, pout or otherwise feel sorry for myself in the face of hundreds of things I would love to have but cannot afford. So I have purposely been attempting over the last couple of weeks to constantly think of things I love, such as, red roses, books, magazines, iPads, posh knee-length boots, YSL red lipstick, Wine-coloured dark lipgloss, dresses found at random on Net-a-porter (my addiction of the future I predict), Côtes du Rhône red wine (or the Rosemount Shiraz/Cabernet wine when French wines are not available even in the local big supermarket because this is the Czech Republic), tight-fitting warm Victoria Beckham-range type dresses that go over black leggings and feather earrings/hairbands of all kinds of crazy colours, and flights and hotel stays in London, Paris, San Francisco or NYC and imagining myself having them. Some of which is possible, some of which is a stretch to even imagine being able to afford. (The flights to NYC in particular, though I know I could stay in a friend's flat if only, if only, if only I had the money to sublet her flat or give her almost the cost of the rent at either Christmas or in Spring and I've NEVER been to NYC at Christmas...)

Anyway, the upshot of all this fantasising is, I am learning to not wince in lack-of-funds thinking whenever I see a lovely soft jumper or gorgeous dress or sparkly big handbag, and instead imagine that one day I could indeed afford this stuff or even walk into the L'Occitane shop without feeling like I'll be singled out as working class scum, and thus unworthy, at first glance. And I am writing lists in my head of what I already have, which I am enormously grateful for: Macbook (hallelujah!) iPod (hurrah!) red, Kurt Geiger shoes (Kermit the frog-like "yay!") and Nokia slide phone that is reliable and still works, bless it (Gott sei dank) and all of this is helping. Bit by bit.

Here are the pictures I printed out of dresses I loved on Net-a-porter (and I purposely didn't look at the price) and stuck in my scrapbook:

Happy perusing. The cowboy has just come back armed with a bag of freshly picked (giant) mushrooms, so we're having salmon and mushrooms and spinach tonight which is not only a culinary experiment, it is an experiment in sharing the cooking duties. Hmm. Strange new worlds...

Moving out, moving in, but moving on?

I made it.  I actually got all of my stuff out of my former flat, cleaned the whole flat on the Friday following the final box-exodus and even went to Šumava for the weekend, just to do what the cowboy wanted to do after a long period of him having to help me with tedious stuff.  But I'll have to make up for being utterly useless that weekend because I had period pain of epic proportions and had to stay in bed, drugged up to the eyeballs on painkillers just to survive, by going there again this weekend and being a good Czech-girlfriend substitute and going on a long walk in the mountains.  And then I'm done.  

Then, universe, let it be known, I need a big change.  I need enough income to flood in that I can realistically look for a new flat.  I need enough income to cover getting an iPad because I need access to publications and books without having to rely on the incompetent Czech postal system, which is fractionally worse than the UK postal system.  But only fractionally, and I've been away from the UK now for so long that in the meantime, for all I know, the UK postal system could have become even more incompetent.  Maybe there aren't Saturday deliveries anymore?  If there are, that's the one thing that makes the UK postal system that tiny bit better than it is here.  That's all.

On a lighter note, I've so far survived being in the depths of suburbia out of a sense of novelty, I suppose, although the cowboy is currently in his teenager mode of pointing out how this is what marriage is, boring and hum-drum and pointless.  And he's right.  If it's with someone you don't have enough in common with and if you live together in a flat you both don't particularly like.  But I never expected this to be anything but hum-drum and mildly, if not spectacularly, irritating for all concerned.

I know not to expect sweet little post-it notes left for me, nor random acts of kindness such as  a cup of tea brought to me on a day when I have to wake up early.  The cowboy seems not to appreciate things like this even when they do happen, though.  He didn't even see the little note I left stuck to the lock on the door yesterday.  Which is hard to believe.  But I guess he just shut the door behind him and didn't look in the direction of his hand as he was doing so.

I imagine this is exactly what marriage is like if you marry someone you don't love with a passion.  And it's clear that the cowboy and I have affection for each other, and even at times, a deep connection with regard to our backgrounds and the things we've been through but we don't have enough in common to enjoy each other's company for any great length of time, nor for day-to-day comings and goings.  

Here's a list of ways in which we do not match:

1) I hate watching TV without knowing what programme it is that I want to watch.  Most of it is rubbish anyway, and here it's rubbish dubbed into Czech, which has some small entertainment value and is fun when watching something like 'The Simpsons' but beyond that, I can totally do without the background drone of a TV.  The cowboy, however, always has the TV on.

2) I have two parts to my morning/breakfast routine.  First, a cup of tea and cereal.  Then, after showering and getting dressed, I like to have a cup of coffee and a croissant or pain au chocolat or just a yoghurt and fruit.  The coffee bit is essential though.  The cowboy scoffs down any breakfast all in one go, and doesn't like coffee.

3) I like reading.  Books, magazines, newspapers.  The cowboy hates reading anything except the National Geographic and a plethora of car magazines.

4) I like taking care of my own fitness routine and being disciplined about sticking to it, doing it on my own, in the privacy of my own home preferably.  The cowboy never gets round to planning an exercise routine, yet complains about having developed rather a big tummy and moans about the idea of going on walks in the woods on his own because, "people in the Czech Republic don't go for walks on their own."

5) I like to eat a few squares of a bar of chocolate in one go, then put it back in the fridge for another day.  The cowboy prefers to eat it all in one sitting, in big bites.

This does not bode well, obviously, for a future together.  

On the other hand, here are some important things we do have in common:

1) We both hate corruption and the politicians who make a living telling poor people they need to work harder, while keeping quiet about the bribe they just took.

2) We both know what it's like to grow up in scuzzy working class / communist (very similar, believe me) accommodation with thin walls you can hear everything through, eating cheap food that has never come across the word Mediterranean or, in my case even, 'garlic'. 

3) We both like action films for a laugh and a bit of welcome distraction from the bureaucracy of day-to-day living.

4) We both have an innate perception of others and sensitivity to people's feelings to the point of being able to predict what they're thinking.  We both also need to be careful not to take this too far and start telling people what they think, because that's robbing people of their own opinion.  (I'm working hard to get rid of this bad habit.  The cowboy is not.)

5) We both like nature documentaries.  Especially ones about the wildlife in parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone.

So, there you have it.  Is that a relationship?  Of sorts, I suppose.  Isn't it statistically researched that men benefit more from marriage and/or cohabitation than women?  So why is the cowboy moaning about how bad this temporary set-up is?  Especially as I've just done the washing up.  Again.

All quiet on the Central Eastern front

The sunshine has come back to Prague!  Hurrah!  I have felt all the better for it, after a confusing and challenging whistlestop London visit where the weather was predictably dull.  I am so grateful for sunshine and warm weather these days, as though my life depends on it, as there seems to be a very quiet 'calm before the storm' theme developing in my life now that I'm back from the epic road trip.

I'm deliberating many things and trying to work out where to start.  First and foremost, I need responses to my ads for offering Skype meetings for anyone with a music career that needs bolstering.  Secondly, I'm trying to pitch article ideas to magazines and am getting stuck in a chicken and egg situation as to who to approach first where an interview is involved.  Thirdly, I'm wondering if I should sign this momentous publishing deal that would last twelve years (that's why it's momentous, not because of the money they're offering of course!) because if they sit on it and do nothing for twelve years, that's my music career well and truly finished and nailed in its coffin with a Black and Decker power drill.

I am imploring the universe like never before because something has GOT TO CHANGE and significantly so, because I have done the work of researching new things, taking new actions, freeing up time for new and better work and now, comes that deafening silence of the wait to see if this time it will be different.  Gabby Bernstein, a spiritual guru type, but not as annoying as some of the usual crowd, said,

"Those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait and can afford to wait without anxiety."

So I shall not worry and fret.  I shall take the steps I need to take and then switch off my insistent brain and do something I enjoy instead.  I am watching my world get smaller around me here in Prague, as my realisation that I cannot live here forever finally dawns on me, coupled with the realisation that I cannot return to London either and I stand alone in my little waiting room because I don't know what else is left to do.  I felt that emptiness and pang of being "cut-off" here again today and was going to (dangerous though it was) flick through a few magazines in the bookshop I always go to just to maybe cheer myself up, only to find that the magazine section no longer exists and the magazine racks have been simplified and put right behind the cashier desks now.  

So there will be no more taking magazines up to the cafe to read and then put back because I can't afford them.  It's like a strict school mistress has decreed this terribly naughty behaviour a nasty habit that must be eradicated.  I know I want to move to the next level and stop wasting money on overpriced imported magazines or magazine subscriptions that never arrive because of my remote and foreign address and get myself an iPad and a subscription to the online versions of my favourite publications, but I'm waiting to see if that can even be possible within this year.  Have I risked too much by whittling my accounts down to nothing due to going on this road trip?  Have I been too trusting that new actions will yield new results?

I honestly don't know the answers.  I don't feel anxious because I am sure that I have done the best I could, and I wouldn't have done things any differently given a second chance on the last few months' activities, but there is a sadness, a loneliness, indeed a questioning of my relevance to the world while in this waiting room-type silence.  I can only keep going and feel that sadness (instead of frantically trying to do something about it) and hope that something better really is just around the corner.