The idea that changed everything

Telling you a personal story of a life crisis - and a beautiful restart :)

Internship

In February 2018 I signed up for an internship in a mailorder company close from where I was living. The company was struggling in competition with Amazon (while at the same time working together with them) which was obviously not a good situation to hire new people, but it proved they needed someone to click a button for several hours each day in a retarded software because it was cheaper and easier than to set up the whole product catalog to an extensive update. Now even a company in a difficult situation knows that it is questionable to hire an intern only for this (the German laws say that the main purpose of an internship needs to be learning, otherwise the intern may demand to be paid like a usual employee)...

So, aside from this button clicking task, they agreed to have me actually learn some things. They allowed me to do some small graphic design tasks which was nice, because I had been doing almost only sound before and it was a good way to learn Adobe Illustrator and InDesign - which seemed useful tools for various creative projects, f.e., as I happily realized, for making cards and game materials for my board game.

It proved they were interested in this board game. I had told them in the job interview about it and they pondered publishing it, which sounded exciting. I brought the concepts and made two small presentations and they allowed me to work on it for a few hours a week during my work time.

This did not sound too bad for the beginning.

So I clicked this button. Checking the products from the company's catalogue on Amazon, calculating if we could offer a few cent cheaper than the competition, if yes, offering the product. In 7 countries. Putting cheap light sabers, Donut pillows and plastic figures - made in China and stocked in Germany - on that list to bring happiness to the people ordering them in Japan. I could hear the planet thanking me for my work. The sighs of a doomed company, sounding like countless engines.

Another strategy to save this flagging company leviathan was to check the best selling products on amazon and try to cop... I mean, to make an own version. To ameliorate them. To quickly re-design them, have them produced in China, sell our own. I watched the whole team admire the prototype of doormats with copied phrases and bathrobes and slippers with cute, cheap looking animal heads. What a great feeling this was to get home after an exhausting work day with this doormat, knowing to have made the world a bit more colourful today. This feeling of being... maybe not useful, but accepted, to have a job to mourn about, a home to maybe not live, but at least to sleep in, to have a purpose in society and the health insurance being paid, was worth all the sacrifices... or wasn't it?

Despite my occasional tries of cautiously telling my opinion to my team leader, we got along. We respected each other and in a way I liked him. But the chicken I worked with became more and more hostile. It started with very slight signs, which I of course realized because they were speaking with the voice of my demons. In my big insecurity, I decided to talk to the graphic designer. From her side at least I felt no hostility.

"Do the girls have a problem with me, do you know?"

"I think the problem is that you discuss. I did several internships and I did not discuss. I kowtowed. And made crosses in my calendar until it was over."

It turned out that I was bad in kowtowing - maybe because I refused to let go of the idea that we were, despite some of us using to cackle and to pick at others who seemed curious or weak, reasonable people and each of us had skills and opinions which counted something, no matter our position.

So things got worse. I started to regularly wake up at night, scratching my body with stress, with the pop songs circling in my head with which the celebrated local pop radio station chose to torture children, pupils, employees who had no choice (thanks for years of good morning moods, SWR3 :) So nice to experience how my monthly broadcasting fee was contributing to education and freedom of expression in the school bus / office). It's not funny. The same songs all day while you're supposed to focus on something. It is a torture for some people, not respected by a majority who have no problem with this. There's no law against this (at least there wasn't back then and I don't have big hope that this has changed)... and try to explain this problem to your coworkers in a company which has had it like this since ancient times. A pen pal of mine once had a screaming fit at work because of this... and with experiencing this myself, I was not far from this either.

During the days I was lacking sleep and trying to survive the long day before the screen with blurry sight, neck pain and headaches. On several mornings I broke down in tears because I felt unable to manage the day, my tasks and the chicken games in a state of insomnia. My boyfriend took me to the doctor, because I was unable to make any decision for myself at this moment. There I got a sick leave for some time. I used this time to apply for other jobs, which felt right at this moment but which did not really help for my condition or confidence.

After 5 months finally - 1 month before the end of the internship - I decided to quit. I did not have a plan but these four weeks of my life just felt too precious to keep destroying myself like this for a piece of paper I would get at the end.

When I told my team leader, he asked me:

"So what's your plan? What are you going to do? Nothing?"

"I never do nothing", I responded.

"Sorry, of course not", he agreed and seemed to mean it.

"What about my game?", I asked. "Do you still want to publish it?"

"If you leave we don't publish the game, it's obvious", he said.

"Ok", I said with a feeling of relief. So I would be able to close the chapter with this company and get back for myself the project which was dear to me. To work on it in my way, in my tempo, and decide myself how to proceed once I felt it was finished. It really was a good thing.

The crisis

I suddenly broke out in tears before my therapist.

"Do you feel that your life is not worth living?", she asked.

"At the moment, no, it's not", I said with my voice breaking.

"Do you think about killing yourself?"

"Not really... I normally have plans with my life."

"Like?"

"My music, my board game, my audio play series... if I could just solve that problem. How to pay my rent without destroying myself in the effort. How to have my own lifetime, which is so precious to me and so worthless to others, for my own projects... instead of wasting my energy applying for jobs I don't want in companies which don't want me."

Having experienced how spending your life in a completely pointless and destructive way is appreciated by society, but following your own ideas and projects is not, turned me completely hopeless. If there was one thing this internship taught me, then it was that I did not want to live this way. The mentality in that company, the ambience of fear to loose a situation which is frustrating, but secure, the rejection I had experienced and the feeling that I needed to function but I could not... even if I wanted to, I could not spend my life the way I was told I should. I would rather kill myself than to keep living this way.

I think this was point zero and it was an important lesson to learn. Because, before taking this last, definitive escape, I could as well risk everything to follow the vision that made me want to continue my life. For the start, I decided to use my emergency savings to take some months off (because, well, you could call that an emergency situation). To get some distance to the stress and the all-too-fresh depressing experiences circling in my brain. To have some time to sleep, to breathe, without pressure. To get back to creating, to find back some joy in life, some confidence. To progress with my therapy as well.

I was very isolated at that time. I was living together with my boyfriend trapped in a loving nightmare. I had moments of complete desperation and knew I needed to leave this flat, at least for a while. I asked the only person I saw as a good friend for help, but I could not bother her for more than one day and shortly afterwards she shit a brick and stopped talking to me. My therapy was only once every two weeks, so I was spending unending nights lying awake in hopeless thought circling, either aimlessly crying or trying desperately to think of a way to have a restart, a place where I could go, a person I could ask for help.

Congratulations! I think that's what you call ein an die Wand gefahrenes Leben.

Halt die Klappe, Teufelchen. I'm trying to sleep.

At the end of the summer I got to hospital with an appendicitis. During the time in hospital I started to write down some memories from better times which gave me the idea to reach out to the pen pal mentioned above. I did not greatly involve him in my misery and he sent me some YouTube links of something that was amazing him at this moment. It was my first time to see a handpan.

The idea that changed everything

At first I made fun of him for considering to spend a fortune to get such an instrument... but for some reason I came back to watch the videos and to listen to the music. There was something inspiring in it which was hard to grasp. I became more and more curious... not only because of the instrument, but because there seemed to be a community behind it. People taking these instruments to the forest and starting to improvise, to make fairy music together. It was strange, but... I felt I wanted to meet them. Badly. To make music together with them. For the first time since years I felt like putting down this cursed headphone which had isolated me from the world while I was working alone on my music... and meeting new people instead.

This wish became so strong that - again - I had difficulties to sleep at night. But not because of stress this time, but because of excitement. Of course I could not justify to spend so much money on an instrument in my current situation, except... except... if I made this my therapy. To get over my social phobia.

Yes!

I jumped out of the bed.

I'm going to work for this. To get this instrument. Start to practice. Try to connect with the people to get over my fear. Try to make friends. Find a new job, be it just to replace the money I'm going to spend on the instrument. This is what I'm going to do!

I also had in the back of my mind what another penpal (who had taken off to Asia) had told me earlier this year: If you're sick of Germany, try somewhere else.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I was not sick of humanity, but of humans in Germany? How could I know? I never had been in another country (apart from some family holydays long years ago)... maybe things were different at another place. Maybe not... but it would be a pity to judge without having tried, wouldn't it?

I had always been fond of Scandinavia, without ever having seen the option to go there by myself. I found a language course at an adult evening class, starting the following day, and without hesitating I decided to invest the money in something which motivated me and which could be the first key to a new life - and signed up. Learning language sounded like something nice to do slowly, next to my handpan quest and my creative projects, and it would also be a nice way to see some faces and challenge my fear.

It was a time of big inspiration and big changes in my life. I was lucky to catch Yatao (the handpan duo including the artist in the video above) during these weeks at a concert close by which took place in a Yoga studio. There they were for real, the magical instruments I just knew from the screen - waiting to be played. People filled the room (happy times where this was possible without masks and anxious looks when someone was coughing), sitting and lying on pillows on the floor. Then the guys came and started playing. In between they looked at the audience silently for a moment, then suddenly told us how they were feeling in this moment. The expectation in our faces. The feeling to have to present something... Insecurity if they were reaching us or not.

Hearing them talking about freedom, imperfections and spontaneity was a revelation for a social phobian in the audience... they had an album called "Freedom is a state of mind" - and, damn, they were right.

After the concert a woman stood up and asked if there were other handpan players at the place, interested to organize a group. What a wonderful idea that was! I could not call myself a handpan player yet, but I was working on it, so I was eager to exchange numbers.

I joined a handpan beginners course with the artists the next day, which was wonderful. My brain was completely flashed with these beautiful new experiences. I put a picture from the course in my flat. I decided to try a vegan week.

I completed the quest to get my own instrument, which triggered a new quest, leading me to Strasbourg where I live today and craft these wonderful instruments. It's an incredible story that deserves its own chapter one day.

The two years I spent here - and the environment of the cooperative workshop where we work - are a blessing. It has been a time of healing for a sick brain, a time of challenges, of learning and small (and big) successes. A time which allowed me to learn to recognize (and make friends with) my demons. To believe in myself again. To follow my own rhythm, to set my own priorities.

I feel how my brain works differently today. Wonderfully clear compared to two years ago. Without getting stuck in doubts and thought loops every few steps. How anxiety is replaced by curiosity, doubts are replaced by confidence, troubles are replaced by challenges. I rediscovered the fun of learning.

I'm deeply thankful to be able to experience this. To - finally - live a life which is worth living. It would not have been possible without help and inspiration.

Thank you for reading! May my story be a ray of hope for others managing difficult times :]

Sophie

(First improvisation on my handpan)

***

Message into the past

Hold out, Sophie! Don't give up... doors open at surprising places. Take your time to breathe, no matter what others expect from you. Don't let them put pressure onto you... People are different, and what is considered normal by some of them can be a death trap to others. Give yourself the time you need... and you will feel how you open up again to gain energy and to get inspired.

Be ready to take a step backwards to be able to find a way out of this dead end! Be ready to fight for your freedom, even if it hurts... White Bird must fly or she will die!

Follow everything which amazes you... because this is what makes you you, and this is how you will find your way! Lots of beautiful experiences are lying before you. You will meet inspiring people... you will fall in love again... you will speak foreign languages and see amazing places in southern France and Scandinavia :)

Yourself from the future, 2021