California or Japan, or At Least English

Something shifted. I noticed I was getting older, that what I felt about things had changed, and that staying in the same holding pattern wasn’t going to get me anywhere. So I made a cut—in how I was thinking about the next few years, in what I was willing to let slide, in the language I was going to do all of it in.

I started studying for my university entrance qualification. I picked English and Spanish as my languages, which felt right for what I actually want: to study web design, and eventually to live somewhere that isn’t Germany—California maybe, or Japan. Those two places have been living in my head for as long as I can remember, for entirely different reasons, and I’m done treating them as fantasies.

Writing in English is part of the plan. You learn words when you actually use them, not just study them. And there are too many sites I love that I’d never have found if the writers had stayed in their native languages. Germany was too small a room. I want to yell my strange ideas into something larger, even if the grammar isn’t always quite there yet.