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greeno
Okay now hands down..
tl;dr warning
As I got some time to type in some stuff, I‘d like to shed some light on what has been/is going on behind the scenes when I mostly post pics in here.
Almost a decade ago I started my career in some kind of high profile/availability job and instantly I was fully hooked with our good old capitalism: bigger car, newer phone, larger flat and so on and so forth #youknowit. I collected stuff, I shopped a lot but it never had a (significant) impact on my happiness or well-being.
Over time, despite (because?) being quite talented, dedicated and therefore successful, I did feel worse and worse and I think around 2018 hit a peak hole when our first kid started walking and my wife and I had to coordinate (ie communicate) more and the week had to be scheduled. I noted that all my energy and dedication went into the job and by the time I came home (9-10pm) I was just wasted #allthetime.
Not surprising for many, it turned out that this was due to burn out/depression/pressure +X so after many weeks and approx. a million objections I contacted a psychologist for the first time in my life. I have been in treatment since.
Nowadays, I have the feeling that besides my bike projects, also my main project - my mental health X life X family - goes in the right direction. But this was hard work (again!) but not (only) in the office… I have now stepped down to a less stressful job plus I stopped working on Fridays to spent more time with my little family.
And during this time period I was able to escape the consumer society a little bit. Among other things I learned that its okay to love cars - but that at the same time it is okay just to look at other people‘s cars and find happiness without ever owning a special/expensive one.
As in some occasions I wasn’t even sure whether I could do ANY job ever again, I started to re-consider my most expensive hobbies (skiing/cycling) and I decided that from 2019 on I only wanted to spend bike money from bike money - I mentioned that earlier. I wanted to do this hobby notwithstanding a high or low salary, or a job/no job, respectively.
So besides some bikes and parts you see here, I was able to finance all bike clothes, tools, nutrition that way. I am not saying everyone should do this and I totally understand that it can also be great to swipe your visa for a 15K basso. But I learned that for me, happiness is more about the projects themselves. Plus the rewarding effect feels more real, when I actually had to work for finishing a project (ok mostly its scrolling classifieds on a phone display but its still work lol). Combining and finding old parts in all over Europe/the world and putting them together in my lil basement listening to some rap.
The Look 496 in this context always was a real dream for me. To be able to ride an olympic level bike on the track and to now how that feels. But on the other hand I always knew it was only temporary and to pursue a sale to give me the ultimate freedom to pursue smaller projects which, altogether feel great. I mean it was a bit of a coincidence ghat in December and January a lot of rare parts popped up but on the other hand it felt a bit as was a bit of a proof of concept my long term strategy you could say: oh theres a crazy CODA crankset but I have to buy an oversized frame with it? SURE. Oh theres an Easton Magnesium stem fitting my M800? Lets do this?
And by the end of February I will have gather many little puzzle pieces to go down to my basement for a while and just put together what I feel like doing.
In the little spare time I have at hand with two little kids and a still demanding job (but not a dead-crazy one), this now feels like a little freedom to me.
There, I said it.
XOXO