I am writing this from a small medieval street in the center of a town in Holland called Utrecht. How I got here is how I get anywhere. The dragon of change opened its mouth and fire came out. Or maybe it was just the new job I was offered at the end of January. Layoffs became all too familiar in Ireland as January ground on. I had quite a few interviews, quite a few final rounds and was told I was too experienced. A lot of jobs were steering me more into account management stuff with clients, things I didn’t want to do. But I got an offer from a company in the Netherlands and so to the Netherlands I went.
The office is in Amsterdam. Utrecht seems about my speed though. A university town with canals and creatives. Music, art, and it’s the most car unfriendly city in the Netherlands. So I’m looking for a flat now. I start work on April 2. It’s all coming together, the new life. The sudden new shift into yet another reality.
Utrecht isn’t necessarily out of the blue as S. Has lived here before. So we spent a few days traipsing through the dark medieval streets in the morning. Watched the sky change between fifteen different moods, listened to the various melodies of bells all over the place. The brown green canals slowly roll beneath, colors lighting the tunnels at night with Delft blue ink colors and glass green. There is mystery here. The people are different than they are in the Den Haag, where I stayed for a week for a point of comparison. There, the people were cautious. Incurious about things. Safe. Probably because it’s a diplomatic town and run by lawyers.
I have been to Amsterdam. Twice. It’s a marvelous city. But overrun with tourists and British, many there to get high and drunk. And it will be twice the price and harder to find a flat in. It is difficult to find places to live in European cities these days. Everywhere I seem to move, it’s a housing crisis. Where have I lived where there wasn’t one?
Anyway, time to put all the power of the positive thinking energy into finding a flat. But first a room. I have to make it to my April paycheck still.
I’ve been laying low the last few months otherwise. I had to prepare for moving (again) and there was a lot of research to be done. Entered a few writing contests, began writing some new work, and I went back to working on the novel I’ve started while living in Ireland.
More soon as events unfold. For now, I am in my usual place of stepping stones: rent room for a month or so, start job, look for flat, move into flat, settle. Be calm. Write. Enjoy a softer footprint, a more tranquil city, an ever changing and fragile sky that breaks into light and rain and moon with occasional sun at unpredictable moments.
