Roots

Lietzensee, Charlottenburg, Berlin

I can't get enough of this pond by my office. A couple colleagues and I make a leisurely loop around it almost every day after lunch and it just gets prettier each time. Every day we ooh and aah over cute dogs, baby ducks, little children. It's just the loveliest thing to have right outside of your workplace.

Anyway, back to the point of this post. Not that I'm sure there is one. I basically uploaded the picture and tried to think of something to say about it. "Roots" came to mind. And roots made me think of living abroad, life as an expat, being "up-rooted."

It made me think of the competing desires to both travel the world and explore versus be settled and comfortable. The former I've got pretty covered at the moment (the other day I was reading through a contract for one of my projects and it included the sentence, "The scope of this agreement shall be the world." Good grief.) Anyways, it made me wonder about when I will feel rooted in Berlin, if I will ever feel rooted in Berlin, whether I even want to feel rooted in Berlin.

It made me think of all my visitors, how weird it is at first to have them here, in an environment so different from where I usually see them, and then how equally weird it is when they leave, because I've gotten so used to having them around again.

And it made me think about family. My family, whom I miss dearly (Hi Mama, Dad, Julia, Mo, Matilda!). My "family" in Berlin (Hi Kelly, Sophie, Giovanni, Josh, Keighley, Anna, etc.!). And even my future family, that will probably be pretty awesome and adorable.

All that from a walk around the pond, a little reflection, and hipster photo software.