idle as a CEO

This past week has been an interesting time. As my flight home draws closer and closer, to an almost unbelievable nine days away, I am finding myself thinking constantly about what it is I'm actually doing. I have been unemployed for nearly six months, which as someone who was consistently employed for the past ten years, this seems unfathomable to me. I never used to even stop for a vacation, well ok, there was that time I went to Toronto for three weeks in 2004... Otherwise, any travel I had enjoyed over the past ten years was on tour, or the odd weekend on Vancouver Island or in Seattle. If I haven't been working, what exactly have I been doing? I have read a good number of books, done a ridiculous amount of walking, rediscovered cooking, stopped to smell some roses, photographed many a cat, monument, bike or silly foreign sign and let's be honest the beer here is delicious. I have felt the need lately to get back into some sort of routine, I feel incredibly useless if I don't have somewhere to be, maybe not every day but a good number of days in the week.

I started volunteering at a gallery about twenty minutes away from my house. Ideally, I would be getting paid but judging by the looks of the building the gallery is in I'm getting the sense there's not much money to be had in the average independent Berlin gallery. It has all been very fun to be a part of something, I've made yet another couple of friends, Gemma and Kara. (who actually were in the music video as well) The first day we hung up the exhibition, which was really quite nice that Javier trusted our judgment, considering none of us actually have any gallery experience. The next few days we spent getting the space ready for the show and a video shoot which we did the first part of on Friday. The next part will be done on Wednesday for which I unfortunately will not be there, I have a rehearsal with Michael Tuttle the bassist for our own show on Friday next.

I still think how easy it would be to come home over the holidays and just not show up for my return flight to Berlin in January, pick up the odd jobs on Craigslist and then start my life up again in the new season. Right? I guess I feel that if I went that route I wouldn't have given this Euro-life a real chance. I've been in this particular city for three months, I have started to make a few friends, I am starting to have some contacts in the art world here, I'm enjoying myself even though it's fuck cold, and damn it I gave myself a year.

Let's be positive, when I come back in January, I'll find a nice cosy place to keep my things until the end of July, get in touch with the friends I've made and go for coffee with them, hopefully meet someone with a kitty that I can visit from time to time, register and get a job, practice my German with cashiers and waiters, maybe even enroll in a class, hopefully tour to some of the other German cities I wanted to go to and more of Europe. Then when I come home in August I will be pleased with myself, proud that I didn't give up on something I've wanted to do for nine years, and hopefully then I can get my damned dual citizenship.

* "idle as a CEO" line from the video shoot we did. We were all playing unemployed factory workers, which is not actually far from the truth except of course the fact that I wasn't ever employed in a factory.