Can’t even remember the last time I really had a day OFF. Without even checking emails every now and then or acknowledging the incoming calls piling up. Today I deserve it, I’ll go on flight mode and NOT check what the agency is sending me. This ridiculous amount of extra hours has to pay off now. After all this rainy winter it’ll be just me and the sunshine. The shed smells musty, but my bike looks inviting. Just need to pump up these tyres a bit. Where am I heading? Maybe I’ll decide spontaneously! I’ll just set off and see. As spontaneous as the sudden sunshine breaking through this morning.

Finding my wobbly balance and the wind picks up. Fresh, not cold, and it smells — good! And feels good. Sure different from the office air. Pale green lime trees above and I’m heading for the coast!

   

I don’t have enough time for myself. When was the last time I actually had a day off like this? Time — I’ve not had time since I finished my undergrad, really. After that life got worse. The master‘s at business school sucked. And then straight on to the agency. 

 

That was a lovely group of friends, that undergrad bunch. We sure had a lot of fun. Some beautiful days. ...some of the stuff we did back then would bore me now, though. I’ve grown up. What do I enjoy now? What do I find beautiful? Never thought about that. I’ve not had time. 

We had these lengthy discussions in the art course: what is beauty. There were these definitions: what is pretty is lacking individuality or something special, whereas beauty always has something unique about it. I definitely need a unique day. Oh, and then there were the crazies, especially Anne, who always asked how everything related to real life. Our course leader called them “our fauves”. So what is my life like? Pretty? Funny, these discussions about art — I’ve not heard the voices of these people in my head in ages, weird to suddenly remember their sound. It’s the wind. This wind smells as free as life was back then. Before it turned into office air. Funny. Art, that’s where I started off. And now I ended up in this job. Shortly before I lost touch with Anne, she had joked ‘Sure you want to sell your soul to the devil, going into advertisements?’

A fork in the road ahead. Both destinations lie by the coast. To the right the path along the river with the old arboretum as its destination, right by the dunes. That arboretum has hardly received any money from the council ever since it was donated to the public by the original owner’s heirs. To the left the path sloping uphill to the manor house with its well preserved Victorian gardens overlooking the scenery.