Above you can see a photo of a female house sparrow, but I shared another photo from the same day already some time ago on my blog. This post here is not so much about photography but I want to chat a bit about this and that.

Today I am a bit proud again because I visited the dentist and I do this regularly since quite some time. But that was not always the case because back then it was my dental fear that made me wait way too long before I visited the dentist. But I managed so many things in my life that I wondered at some point why I couldn’t get rid of the dental fear as well. I also suffered from anxiety disorder back then and managed it to live with the problem, which also means that I found ways to manage my anxiety in general. Ironically, everything I taught myself about anxiety, stress and how to live with it, was also very useful in other situations. When you feel stress or anxiety, when chemical processes in your body want to play games with you, it makes you want to get out of the situation as soon as possible. But sadly this is the master recipe to make it worse over time, and the only real solution is to not get out of the situations that are too stressful for you. This is something I learned on my own. Doctors said “You need to habituate your brain to these situations that you fear”, but sadly they told me this way too late, long after I discovered it on my own. This is not the only lesson that I learned due to my anxiety disorder, but it was definitely a very good lesson. Years ago I started to apply it before my dentist visits too, and yes my body was freaking out before an appointment but I knew the more often I would visit the dentist, the less stressful the experience would become. Today I got a new filling, and while it did hurt even with local anesthetics, it was a super great moment again when I walked out of the dentist’s office. Back then, stress controlled me, but now I do control the stress.

But after the dentist visit I freaked out because of something else, and nope, it’s not that it stressed me. I just thought this would be a nice way to make the change of subject. I plan to sell one of my old graphic cards and thought I would list it today but I was looking for the invoice since there should be still warranty on the card. I definitely wanted to find it because it’s better for the buyer and it increases the resell value. But after two hours searching I gave up. I absolutely can’t understand where this stupid invoice is and this drives me crazy. I am a very well sorted person, which means I have ring binders with tabs and I always put my invoices into the same tab. I was able to find invoices of every single bigger purchase I made, except the graphics card I am talking about. Since I was refurbishing my apartment, I thought I could take a look in the basement as I remembered that I put some older papers in the basement, but even there I couldn’t find it. Here is the irony again, because a decade ago I couldn’t care less if something was sorted or not, I was absolutely sloppy but still could find my things. Today I am more accurate than ever, and sometimes it happens that I don’t find something, it’s funny. I think the invoice must have been on my table before I started to refurbish my living room, and now who knows where it is.

Here is a change of subject again. Next month will be very interesting because the brother of my grandpa will celebrate his eightieth birthday in a restaurant and everyone including our part of the family is invited. What makes it interesting is that this is the opportunity to meet some people in the family that I have never seen before. I don’t even know the brother of my grandpa, but there is a reason why that is the case. They both had a dispute at some point and the result was that they did not meet each other anymore. Over the last year, they both slowly started to talk again, and they even met each other regularly again. Not sure what kind of problems they both had, but maybe they just discovered in old age that it was stupid to ignore each other. I like that, and when grandpa asked us if we would like to accept the invitation too, we all said yes. Here is also a bit of irony, because I know the granddaughter of his brother already and this story is funny. One and a half decade ago, me and my friends went into a music club and we saw a group of girls and we approached them. We talked with each other, and one of the females wondered about my nickname that my friends used to call me and I told her that it would be my last name. She said this can’t be true, because it’s her last name as well. We both pulled our identification cards out and noticed, yeah, we both have the same last name. We both asked our families and when we met again, we both knew we are related. I am the grandson of my grandpa, and she’s the granddaughter of his brother. I hung up with her for some time but since young persons become busy due to their careers, the contact vanished a bit. Next month we will see each other again, because she will be there too.

I was amused when my grandma wondered back then “Imagine they both would have…” and I laughed and said “Don’t worry grandma, I had an eye on her female friend, and she had an eye on my best friend”. Apart from that, the question about my nickname and last name came up pretty early and you definitely don’t flirt with someone who has the same last name (laugh). But it was definitely a “How small is the world?” experience, although our city is not really that big. The world felt much smaller when I travelled to Berlin, and when someone was screaming my name and I looked back and saw that someone I knew from my city was there too, that was incredible funny because how is this even possible? Yes, sometimes the world is small.