It’s 2225 on Wednesday 17 May. I am sat, as I am so many evenings, at my computer in my room at 32A Aristotle Road. The blind is open, and the drops from the evening’s rain are still strewn across the window panes. In that pane I see my reflection. Lines drawn across a forehead of a face no longer young, hair receding. Pearl Jam’s Black plays through the oversized earphones I’m wearing. Suits my mood. The EU flag that hangs on the wall behind also reflects in the dark panes of glass, the symbol of what I spend so many hours of my free time working for.
And as I sit I have to contemplate a long night of work ahead of me. For the website server that I administer for the European Movement in Germany has crashed again. I’ll get no cash for the hours I’ll spend repairing the thing. I’ve even lost track of what the European Movement is actually doing at the moment. Yet still I am tied, here, to this responsibility, like some kind of awful addiction. If I don’t do this work, who will? And if I don’t do it, what am I? It’s all some kind of link to all the pro-European campaigns I once did, but it feels so distant now.
Anyway, responsibility beckons. I wish you a peaceful night wherever you are.
[UPDATE – 4.1.10]
Please note: if you’ve come across this by searching for Aristotle Road in Google: I no longer live there!
Hmmm. It does sound a bit alarming. Seems he lists that alongside all the other tasks! Make sure you reprimand him, Saray!
Look on the bright side though: I am not too keen to take on too many new website tasks for the European Movement, so that might discourage Marko a bit.
So if only the thesis was written everything would be OK! 😉
did Marko say that ¨relationship building¨ leaves him less time to do the things that he actually likes?
Dani, Jon tell me I am misunderstanding it 🙂
I would say a very retoric and somehow romantic post, dear Jon. Since I’ve done many things within the pro-European movement with you in the recent years I feel more or less the same…
The fact of growing up and facing the tough questions regarding bank loans for appartments, relationship building (or managing…), changes and challenges in our professional lives, leave us simply less and less time to spend on what we really like doing. Plus, people we like working with leave and thus change as well.
At the same time though, I’m sure there are other things we can do, or you can do, within these movements. The fact that we have done so many hours on techical questions have left us plenty of time now to work on the political side…
Because at the end of the day, we do it because we believe it’s good on a wider scale, not because it would do good to our backs.
*hug*