On visiting home

15/06/2018: Got back home, back to work, and prepare to rush into the Amsterdam MSc Experience. What is weird about it? And where do I actually want to be?

And by Home, I mean more like a country of origin. Because for people who are all over the place, the term becomes increasingly ambiguous. Some even end up saying that their home is everywhere and can be wherever time shifts them.

Anyway, for me, the country of origin is Czech Republic, the town of origin is Prague, and my family is evenly split over and beyond borders of the metropolis. My mother lives on the very eastern edge, grandmothers towards the southeast, my office is located on the southwest, dad works close to the west end and lives about 40 kilometers farther in the same direction. My closest bro-friend has family 60km south of Prague, while the fake-sister of mine is situated at some point between mine and my dad’s work and my highschool BFF, which actually remains a very close friend, took a flight towards the northeast. And just to be complete, the northwestern outskirt is where my favorite swimming pool is.

Now, driving a car between these points is kinda out of question, because the traffic in the city just sucks, especially this year, when it was decided that fixing two bridges, a 500 meter segment of water pipes, a bus stop, and another random piece of road is en excellent idea, so why wait for the holiday\?

In contrast, riding the bike around is great and highly benefitial for my body. And as much as I’d love to use my old Author San Francisco that my father used to ride alongside my mom during their early sport-dates, I just cannot pull off 100ish kilometers a day while wearing a black tie attire, on top of managing to extend my visits to everywhere beyond hijacking their shower. This includes my work!

The bus and train connections are lovely. Get you there eventually, and you have enough time to read and stuff. I managed to complete Eragon within about a month just during travels. Yet, this does not provide as much relief to my socially exhausted mind as being truly alone in confinement of my own room.

Consequently, both my short and long-term visits are mostly composed of socializing with people, chilling on the subway, and sleeping. Add some work into the mix, and the idea of playing all 90 of my steam games over the summer commences to evaporate. And it drives me mad and pushes the need for increasing dose of antidepressants I take daily. In the end, I usually begin ignoring almost everyone and pretend that I’m not really here. And it works. But splits your mind apart, because they all wanna see you and you wanna see them in a way, but live somewhere they’d never come, because it’s just far from everywhere. The grandparents and parents all age. Taking long breaks from being in their proximity makes one see fairly large difference in health and wealth on every visit. And that makes one sad.

Social dilemma. Western education is for me, though. I hope I’ll be at least able to send cash, if nothing else. I also silently pray for settling down. Building my own house, luring some kind of a wife inside of it, then placing a tortoise in the garden to guard her while I’m gone. But that, that will take some time.