Glad You Called: Old New Beginnings
When I started the Glad You Called blog about 4 years ago, I had just moved out of my home country for the first time in order to seek higher education. Naturally, along with such a big change came feelings of joy and excitement, but also such of uncertainty and even fear. Glad You Called was my outlet for these contradicting emotions. It was a way of making the transition, with each separate blog post.
Each Glad You Called piece tackled different aspects of my new life abroad and I attempted to capture my thoughts and put them on paper before they slip away. It was also a means of connecting to my peers and allowing them to find themselves in the lines, anonymously. The positive feedback from people that reached out to me was a key force behind my writing and I am so glad to have been able to inspire even the slightest feeling of warmth.
Perhaps, the true motivation though, was for me to not get lost… And it actually worked. The Glad You Called blog helped me get through my initial doubts and eventually build a comfortable environment in a new, very different place. As I settled in more and more, found friends and colleagues with common interests, began doing the things I like, the need for the Glad You Called blog gradually disappeared. One day, now more than three years ago, I sat at my desk willing to write something for my blog. But no words came out — it felt as though something had changed. I had found a new home.
Now, four years later, I have found myself in an unfamiliar setting once again — another foreign country, new town, different people. Very much like my first journey, I arrived in the new place without knowing anyone. Closer to my family home, I thought that I will have an escape destination when feeling down. As the weeks progressed, I realized that time is scarce and going home is not as easy as I had imagined. I find myself today with many of the same thoughts and feelings which I had four years ago, but also with some unknown ones.
Yet again, the first weeks were all sugarcoated in unlimited free time, meeting interesting new people, having fun every single day — quite simply, living a happy life. Then reality struck. As schoolwork piled up and days got shorter, I found less and less time for sports, for fun, and most crucially, for the people I care about.
A new season has rolled in and gloomy autumn finds me in a gloomy mood — just like four years ago. The new place is starting to feel very much like a new place. I have been childishly trying to ignore nostalgia and somehow it has worked until now.
But lately I have adopted a different outlook: not with gloominess, not with bitterness but with more positivity, and with thoughts about what is going right, rather than what has gone wrong. I think we should be doing this more often: be realistic but also positive, these are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary.
I leave you with some of my writings from four years ago because everything new starts, at least partially, from something old:
“The bed I am sleeping on is not the same, the people here are new, my hair has grown longer… But the outside change has not come on its own. I do feel different now. More grown-up, more thoughtful, more determined…
Yesterday, while cycling to university, I saw a neon sign, on the wall of one of the buildings. It read: I have to change, to stay the same. How about that…?”
This is not a personal coaching article nor a feel-good series.
It’s unedited and open — welcome to Glad You Called.
