03:30 and I’m awake, at my desk, and wondering why on earth I am so bloody courageous. Oh well, no use complaining about the open gate now. I’m here, the world is out there, and it is the murmurs of my soul that I hear.
I wanted to go to bed four hours ago, but the down side of being self-employed and having a home office is that the concept of a regular eight-hour day simply doesn’t exist. The list of errands I have to run is growing, but with deadlines looming and clients getting antsy, the errands will have to wait, as do sleep and food.
It was one of those days when I made the mistake of digressing from my sacred morning routine of a quiet breakfast with the birds and the sunrise. For some reason I was hell-bent on giving the cat her regular Monday bath, something she neither agreed to nor appreciated. In the end, a warm bubble bath and a lot of cooing did the trick. The computer enslaved me somewhere between my second slice of toast (homemade gluten-free of course!) and the lower half of my coffee, and before I knew it, it was way past lunch time. But who’s complaining? I’d rather have it this way than twiddle my thumbs idly. By working my butt off, I can at least ignore the uncertainty and pretend that I will have time for a lovely nap later.
I’m too tired to even complain, and I realised the other night how much I miss having a conversation in English. My whole life has transitioned into German (which isn’t even my second language!), that English, my mother tongue, has been relegated to the back burner. Yes of course I spend the whole day writing in English, but it’s my job as a translator to do so. Even Tagalog is part of my job now, not even something to fall back on to relax. It is quite a different story to be able to relax and not have to concentrate on choosing the write words in a conversation or focus on the distinct terminology on hand. Or horror of horrors as it is in the German language, wait for the second half of the verb at the end of the sentence to figure out the context. And to think I resume my Italian language lessons later this week… Good grief what have I done?! I stopped trying to learn Dutch and Portuguese last month because I reached the point I couldn’t figure out the right word for “tired” in any language anymore.
At the end of the day, I am so linguistically frazzled from all the convoluted and discombobulated language nuances of formal, legal, colloquial and literary German that my brain doesn’t know whether it’s coming or going. So why torture myself and go back to language lessons? (Italian would be my fifth working language, i.e. spoken and written fluency being the goal) To be on the cutting edge of the industry and open up the options for more assignments in the future. Assuming of course that I don’t short circuit in the process.
Unlike being engrossed in writing a book, I can’t venture too far away from a high-speed internet connection because of the research involved for all the translations. I yearn to go back to a quaint cafe and write another chapter of the second novel (it would make my editor so happy), but I have to be able to eat as well!
Who was it that said blogging should not take more than 20 minutes a day? I think this is the first time I ever hit that mark. Normally I take my leisurely time, but alas, more German awaits!
Wings, Shadows, and Chains 
Some days are worse than others, hang in there
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