Living the life

I walked home in a cloud tonight. Mainz is so foggy in the mornings and evenings nowadays as the weather is starting to warm up to Spring temperatures. I could only see as far as about a block in the fog tonight. Everything looks so different cloaked in the eerie clouds.

My working life in Germany has me seeing things through a whole new perspective. I really take for granted the education that I have, the ease with which I can function in my own society, and my belief I hold in myself and my abilities. I tell you what, it is not easy to make a serious, professional impression with limited language skills and different cultural approaches. I understand 50% of what is said to me in any given sentence or string thereof. I can process another 20% of the meaning from eye contact, context clues, and body language. That leaves me, in any given moment of my work day, and really of my German life, not knowing- I mean truly NOT understanding any part of- the remaining 30%. I can sit in a meeting and know what everyone is talking about and why the issue is important but have no idea whether or not they've come to conclusions, reached solutions, identified other factors, or are mostly just blowing off steam about it. Um, hello, that information is probably essential to my professional success here. 30% is a lot to be missing.

I also keep realizing that sometimes I just don't read signs when I'm out in public because I simply don't know what they say. Isn't that weird? It's like being a child in some ways. I am learning to read comprehensively, I ask people to explain the meaning of words I've never heard, and I definitely need more than 30% improvement on writing grammatically correctly in German. I wanted to use the German equivalent of "embarking on an adventure in Germany" in a sentence the other day, and I chose a verb that I guess technically would translate to embark, but it's meaning implies the kind of grand adventure like the Pilgrims embarked upon... somewhat grander of a scale than I was aiming for. I was mostly referring to my adventures in bagging up my groceries...

I miss walking into my office and owning what I do and feeling absolutely confident in my ability to handle any situation that comes my way. I miss not being scared of getting a phone call. I miss being able to make small talk easily and having deeper conversations to get to know people. I miss knowing the grammar rules, even if sometimes I don't follow them. I'd like once again to have my full wardrobe of clothes at my disposal, too, just for posterity. 2 suitcases (one big, one normal) worth of clothes gets a tiny bit dull. I miss knowing the appropriate level of professional + friendly + direct + helpful = successful in the workplace.

But I have a hunch, and this is really just a hunch, that when I have wrapped up my job here, I will find that I have become more professional than I was than before I left for Germany. I think I'll find that the barriers I'm stumbling into now are actually not barriers at all but gateways. But that's life though, isn't it? The tough stuff makes us better if we want it to. And of course, the fact that I'm in Germany and working with really excellent people in a great town for a stellar company means that these so-called barriers are actually just signs of the fact that I am living the life.

I am really living the life.