Home again

Stuttgart looks pretty much the same, I'm pleased to say. Places and people can look different when seen again after a longish absence, and this difference is often negatively charged. (The weather is typical of winter in Germany: +7° Celsius, cloudy, light rain.)

My apartment, for instance, looks negatively different, and not just because the moths have been breeding like rabbits. I realize that it's probably been many months since I "saw" my apartment as it really is. I blush to think that I actually asked friends to water plants and bring in the post, what must they have thought? To speak plainly (we are all friends here), my apartment looks like a garbage dump. When was the last time I cleaned this place? Have I really been living like this? Yes, dear, you have. Time for a change.

On that note, here's a list of New Year's Resolutions (more or less in the order in which they should be carried out), annotated for clarity and because I enjoy annotating things:

clean up my apartment

 see above

finish repainting the apartment

a job I started some two years ago

sublet a room

for the company, and to cut my costs

get some decent furniture

my brother-in-commonlaw told me many years ago that I should "stop living like a student". It was true then, and is painfully true now.

live within my present income

and save the difference over the following item

double my income (over the next two years)

I was surprised and intensely irritated to learn that my relatives and friends in Canada are all earning at least twice as much as I. With that came the realisation that many of my friends here probably also earn more than I. My income took a serious hit the last four years, while writing a piece of software, but that is over now and I have a lot of ground to recover.

at least try to fall in love

you would laugh disbelievingly if I told you when I last had a date.

Particularly astute readers may have noted the lack of items such as "Strive for world peace" in the list. There are two reasons for this: one, I'm not Mister Incredible; and two, I do that stuff anyway. The point of New Year's Resolutions is to make yourself do other stuff, to change your life.

Because (to misquote P.G.Wodehouse) if ever a life needed changing, this life is that life.