27

Hello Stranger,

I hope life has been treating you kindly!

Apologies, I wanted to post in April and also this month, right before my birthday, but oh well, I didn’t. It’s not because I didn’t write, but because I wasn’t sure about those articles.

So, here goes my third attempt.

As you might be able to tell from the title, 27 is the ripe age I turned on the 21st of May.

I am not a fan of my birthday. I never was, but lately I have stopped celebrating almost everything because every day feels the same. So this year, this meant no candles, no cake, nothing. Just a quiet day in Budapest, a walk and reading a bit.

Regardless of my personal choices, I know many of you have been reading my blog since 2020. I started posting at the end of April, and the following month I turned 21, so it feels like I have been writing throughout almost all of my 20s. I don’t plan on stopping, even if I am rather inconsistent at times, but I need to be in a decent state of mind for an article to be written, completed, proofread, and posted. You know my mantra with the blog: I want to try as much as possible to write from an objective perspective and not let my feelings take over.

Anyway, I am getting carried away. What I wanted to say is that I received a few birthday messages from some of you, and I found it genuinely heartwarming to know that I am remembered by you. I couldn’t remember the last time I posted an article around my birthday, so I checked quickly, and the last one was in May 2022. The fact that so many of you remember me and still send me messages, even knowing that I might not receive them due to this platform and its issues with reaching me, makes me even more grateful for this wonderful community.

It’s hard to put into words how genuinely grateful I am to all of you for everything, and for coming back time and time again, even when I take long breaks. I know many of you check to see if I’ve posted anything new and also re-read old articles. I really don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such wonderful people from all over the world coming back again and again to read my thoughts and show me their love, appreciation, and support.

I think I can call myself rich in life. When I started writing, I chose the anonymous route to make it easier for myself in case I received many negative messages, and yet I have only received kindness, support, and lots of love. Granted, I can rarely receive any messages now, so if there is any negativity, I can’t read it, but I very much doubt there is anything less than kindness.

You have no idea how much you have helped me flourish! When I started this blog, I didn’t have any real friends in real life. I had plenty of people I called friends, and since I was afraid of loneliness, I turned a blind eye to many things. I couldn’t be myself, and forget talking about any feelings, pain, or issues. Any attempt was met with the not-so-creative reply: “You are so weird.”

Yes, I am so weird for being a person with more than enough emotional depth from a very young age. For many years, this trait of mine felt more like a flaw than a quality, but you’ve helped me appreciate it more.

I remember mentioning the idea of creating this blog, and I received mockery in real life because who would want to read my very long and, many times, hella difficult thoughts and never-ending problems?

Strangers have been kinder to me without knowing me personally than many people I have had in my life. All your messages have helped me bloom! You started calling me a writer after only a few articles, which I must say were considerably shorter back then, and I slowly started believing that I might, indeed, have this ability.

You kept coming back to me, connecting with me, sharing your own life stories, and most importantly, your kindness and empathy. You created this safe space for me, and this has helped me process so many things.

Let’s be honest, I have spent years struggling completely alone in the U.K., and it certainly seemed like misery and misfortune were constantly following me. Many times, I couldn’t catch a freaking break! I also made plenty of mistakes, and for each mistake, I paid a price that took a small part of me away. But you didn’t judge me. You sent me your best wishes and told me that my story and resilience inspire you.

You played a bigger part in my journey than you know. I was ready to give up so many times because there comes a point where you keep asking yourself what the point of trying again is if life only seems to get harder with each passing day.

When I start thinking like this, I remember this community. I remember all the stories you shared with me about your struggles, your kind words, your support, and your faith in me.

I remember that I am not actually alone!

I know we cannot communicate like before anymore, but I carry the memories with me every day. I remember the people who reached out the most often. I may not know your names or faces, but I remember your stories, the countries you were writing from, and even the jokes. I cherish these memories. My mind is an unforgiving maze many times, but I don’t think I will ever forget you.

I was afraid that so many hardships would remove the softness and gentleness from my heart, but you were there for me the whole time, reminding me that in such a cold and unforgiving world, a heart like mine is not a flaw, but something I should cherish more. Even as darkness tries to envelop us, we continue to walk the path of light.

Thank you for your kindness! I promise it will never be forgotten! For all your kind wishes for me, I pray to the Universe that they will be returned to you tenfold because you deserve it.

I wanted to share some updates from the last few months that aren’t work-related.

Work sucks, more than before, but I think right now it’s pointless to talk about it.

I will be moving to another team, the third time in 6-7 months, but the work should focus more on cloud-native projects rather than useless UI product-focused work.

To keep it very short, I freaking need a new job, and it has to be in cloud engineering!

It’s what my brain understands best and also what I enjoy the most.

I don’t want to write code for anything web-related ever again, or I will just leave tech and become a farmer, since I already have the background thanks to my upbringing in the countryside!

Speaking of this lovely sentiment, at the beginning of this year, I started feeling something I could best describe as despair.

My life has become just work over the last four years...

There is only so much someone can force themselves to keep studying outside work hours and during weekends, especially when it comes to things they don’t enjoy.

So, I let myself be impulsive! I looked at my life and thought about all the things I wanted to start or get back to, but kept postponing, always waiting for the right time that never seemed to come.

This shouldn’t be a surprise, as I remember mentioning it before, maybe more than once, but I am a polyglot, or at least I used to be.

I was able to speak 4 languages fluently, and I was pretty good at the 5th one, even if my conversational level was weaker. My 6th language was a bit of Portuguese, which I was rapidly learning since it’s so similar to Romanian.

Living in the U.K. for almost 8 freaking years now and speaking only English all the time has, in many ways, made all my other languages dormant, including Romanian.

It’s embarrassing that arguing in Romanian wouldn’t come easily to me anymore, and it is my mother tongue...

For a long time, I kept saying that I would dedicate time to revising the other languages I used to speak as easily as English and integrate them back into my daily life, at least passively, just to keep hearing them.

I couldn’t stay consistent. It all felt like too much effort, and just like that, I slowly found myself not even trying to speak them anymore because I became self-conscious.

Then, at the beginning of January, I randomly had a phone call with one of my cousins, whom I can tolerate, and his Italian girlfriend really wanted to meet me and talk to me a bit.

I was able to talk to her, and she told me I spoke so well that I could pass as Italian. Frankly, I think she was just being too nice.

Even my thoughts are in English now, which means my brain needs a bit of time to phrase sentences differently. It happens a lot with Romanian too, and honestly, it makes me feel a bit ashamed because I already shed so much of my identity to integrate into this country.

I know many people aren’t aware, but Romanian is a very beautiful language, albeit a difficult one for many.

I will be blunt, English is an easy language, and I have grown too comfortable using it all the time.

I genuinely feel guilty about losing my ability to speak different languages, as it used to be one of the most natural things to me.

So, in that impulsive moment, I decided that there is no such thing as the perfect moment, and there is really no point in waiting and postponing things. I decided to join the Preply platform and find a tutor to revive my linguistic abilities.

It felt uncomfortable and out of my comfort zone, but then I reminded myself that I don’t even remember what being in my comfort zone feels like, so what’s one more thing pushing me?

Obviously, I had a bit of a language test at first. I messaged the tutor and mentioned that I used to be fluent, but now I feel like I lost that, and I would like to restart with the basics.

After she heard me speak, she told me I spoke perfectly. I didn’t. But it also wasn’t exactly a spontaneous conversation since I had already thought about how I would introduce myself before the trial session.

She told me it was simply a matter of time and reintroducing Italian into my life again with music, movies, reading, and basically retraining my ears, which in turn would make me feel more confident expressing myself.

She still entertained me at first with a few lessons on the basics, and eventually said there was nothing she could teach me there, so we moved into C1-C2 level grammar.

Quite chaotic at times, and damn, I didn’t remember so many tenses and specific grammar rules. As I said, English has spoiled me with simplicity.

Now our lessons are focused on advanced topics, which are interesting at times, but lots of things are not really used much in conversations. I also speak a lot during the lessons, so my confidence has improved.

To be entirely honest, I still haven’t included much more Italian in my daily life other than watching movies here and there. I know I have to make this process smoother, but sometimes I just want silence.

It feels like these lessons have run their course since it’s been six months already, and they have become focused on reading texts out loud that use tenses rarely used in actual conversations, which feels unproductive to me, and obviously lots of speaking, which does help.

However, they aren’t cheap lessons, and I am thinking of stopping them soon since my schedule is too full right now.

Of course, because I am a bit nuts sometimes, I decided that I should add other languages too.

The second one is French, and I also started my weekly lessons in January.

French was the language in which my level was very good in terms of grammar, understanding, and translating, but my ability to speak wasn’t that strong.

It’s a language that is mandatory to learn in Romania at school, so for eight years, I had no choice but to study it. You’d think that for something mandatory that cannot be refused, they would focus more on conversational French, too, but nope.

Even Latin was mandatory for about four years, with one class every week, yet no teacher ever really bothered teaching us anything. I would have genuinely liked to learn something, but this is a huge issue with many things in the education system. Some teachers simply come, waste students’ time, and get paid for teaching absolutely nothing.

Must be nice to have a job where you get paid just to be present.

Back to French, I strongly believe it was taught in an awful way, even if I personally liked it a lot.

The accent is quite a pain for me sometimes, mainly because it was never taught correctly. How could they teach students proper pronunciation when they couldn’t even use it themselves?

Thankfully, now it has become much easier and more natural.

Will I ever sound like someone from France? Maybe yes, maybe no. It depends on whether I will ever live there, but regardless, this isn’t important to me as long as what I say is intelligible and correct.

I could still hold basic conversations before, but then I had a horrible teacher during the last two years of high school who completely ruined my enjoyment of the language.

I also had a few private tutoring sessions with the teacher who taught me English in secondary school. I really liked her way of explaining things, and I could understand everything very easily when she taught me.

Since she also taught French at a different school, I thought she could help me improve, but sadly, those very few sessions were quite lacklustre because there was never any real focus on conversations.

I genuinely wanted to take my French to the same level as my English, but unfortunately, those sessions felt like a waste of the limited amount of money my mom could spare.

The high school teacher, however, was the kind of person who never really taught anything and instead brought her frustrations into the classroom.

If you weren’t the kind of student to constantly compliment her, she took it personally, and now that I think about it, I do feel a bit sad that this is what her life became.

There is nothing more poisonous than constantly wishing to be liked by others, speaking from experience.

I was literally the one student who liked French and wasn’t a beginner, but she still went out of her way to ruin my yearly grade. It went from an A+ to a B, and for a long time, I couldn’t even entertain the idea of getting back into French.

I completely stopped enjoying it, and it became a chore.

Anyway, sorry for so many explanations, but I decided to give it another go after so many years, and I found a lovely tutor.

She’s a francophone, but not from France, so her accent is a bit softer. But honestly, it’s her way of explaining things that makes French enjoyable again.

She also told me that my level is higher than I think. It’s simply a matter of refamiliarising myself with the language and continuing to push myself out of my comfort zone when it comes to speaking.

I can understand her when she speaks French to me. I haven’t lost my ability to translate, and the grammar isn’t that complicated.

I know many people aren’t aware, but Romanian and French are very similar. Obviously, all the Romance languages I speak share similarities, but I personally think French is the closest to Romanian in terms of grammar and sentence structure.

Romania also had a huge French influence in the past, which is probably one of the reasons why French is mandatory in schools.

Anyway, while I still find speaking daunting, it has definitely become easier. I know I need to be even more intentional with it.

Compared to Italian, this is more than just reactivating a skill. I need to actively immerse myself in French.

It is fun, which is something I never thought I could say about this language, so it really shows that having the right teacher makes the biggest difference.

I plan to continue my classes this year and maybe, when I have more time, even have two classes a week. These lessons are quite affordable, but at the end of the day, I still need to be the one putting in the effort.

My decision to return to this language isn’t about recovering a part of my identity that I feel I lost over the years, like it was with Italian, since I went to school in Italy for a few years and could speak like a native. Rather, I think I am trying to build a new identity.

I have been vocal about the fact that I want to leave the U.K. and move elsewhere, so I am considering a European country where French is one of the main languages.

I am even considering taking a language exam next year. I did some research, and the DELF seems to be the most suitable one.

I am not unreasonable enough to aim for C1, not yet. I would be happy with B1-B2.

I don’t think having this exam is really necessary, but it would be undeniable proof, and if it could make my life easier, why not?

This article is getting longer than I expected, so let’s see if I can wrap it up with my updates.

My level of craziness goes even deeper because, out of the blue, I decided to start some Spanish lessons too about a month ago.

Frankly, this language is the easiest one for me. I have loved it since I was a child, never learned it formally, and yet, besides English and Romanian, I speak it without issues.

I don’t plan anything long-term with it. My tutor is from Argentina, and the lessons are basically a fully immersive experience where we just straight-up talk.

I genuinely cannot explain how I even know the grammar rules, but somehow I do.

How do I speak it better than Italian, and why does it feel easier for me? No idea.

At some point, I could even pull off a bit of a Mexican accent because I was always watching Mexican soap operas with my grandma and listening to songs, but I feel like I’ve lost it now.

These classes are super easy and comfortable for me, pretty much effortless. The tutor barely even has to correct me. I just ask questions sometimes when I can’t remember certain words.

I swear my brain is doing gymnastics right now, and somehow this has helped me diminish my stress a bit because my brain is so tired of tech stuff.

Okay, enough about languages, now let’s talk about musical instruments.

I was postponing piano for three years. I bought an electric keyboard in January 2023, and I kept saying I would start taking lessons, but work was always the priority. So exactly three years later, in January 2026, I decided that it was finally time to take the leap.

I found a very nice tutor, and when I had more time, I even had three lessons per week, but now I am back to two.

During my trial lesson, it felt as if I had two left hands, but immediately after I decided to continue with this tutor, my hands relaxed, and even my tutor said that I have been making incredible progress and that he could clearly see my passion for this instrument.

I simply love it. I can practice and many times completely lose track of time. My speed and coordination have developed fast.

So far, I have learned several scales, finger exercises, arpeggios, and even some songs.

I am trying to dive deeper into music theory, too, but I have been reading music for some time already.

Nothing gives me a break from life quite like the piano and reading do.

This instrument has called to me for as long as I can remember. I loved hearing it in songs, on TV, and of course in real life. I wanted to learn how to play it more than anything, but it was simply too expensive and not something my mom could afford.

My only regret is that I waited three years to start learning after buying that electric keyboard, and I regret even more not starting sooner once I began making my own money.

It can be very expensive, but now with online lessons, it is possible to find more affordable tutors, and to me, this is one of the most worthwhile investments I could make.

I don’t ever want to stop playing. I just want to keep getting better. Even music theory makes sense to my brain.

One day, I will buy myself a very nice and special piano!

Of course, more recently, I also decided that it was time to get back into guitar after years of not playing.

Since it wasn’t completely new to me because I learned it a bit during my last year of high school, I got back into what I already knew quite fast.

I didn’t like the first tutor I tried. I really don’t appreciate tardiness to lessons, constantly not showing up for classes, and then asking me to reschedule at the last minute.

However, my second tutor is much better. He is always punctual and keeps the lessons properly structured.

My fingertips finally don’t hurt anymore, but I must admit, it is not the same as piano.

I enjoy it sometimes, but it doesn’t feel like a passion, at least not yet.

I even decided to try a different guitar, move away from classical and acoustic, and fully focus on electric guitar since that aligns more with my music taste.

I am continuing with my archery training as well. I also joined an outdoor club closer to me, but I still shoot indoors from time to time.

Sometimes I do it twice a week, basically every week unless I am unwell or away.

I had to buy my own bow since I couldn’t borrow equipment from the outdoor club, and I have invested a lot of money into it.

It is a barebow that isn’t exactly beginner-level and is more suited for competitions. It was more than my initial budget, and it ended up costing slightly more than my rent, but I really love archery, and I won’t need to upgrade it anytime soon. I won't feel guilty for this. I work hard all the time, and I deserve to spend money on myself too, not just rent, bills, and helping my family monthly.

Even once my upper body strength improves, the only upgrade I will really need is changing the limbs, which will be a small cost.

At the moment, the bow has a 24 lbs draw weight, and it is 70 inches tall, literally my height, but it is such a beauty, and it feels incredible to shoot with it!

I have gone from shooting 18 metres indoors to shooting almost 40 metres outdoors for now, and eventually I will be able to shoot even greater distances, but honestly, it’s hard to see that far away where my arrows are landing, so it's not that important to me.

My goal is to keep improving my technique and aim, and take a break from life's responsibilities for a few hours each week.

Now, am I crazy for overfilling my schedule with so many things? Perhaps, but it’s 100 times better than dedicating all my limited free time to tech.

I’ve had enough of it, and a job should never take over your life like this.

I feel like this article might come across a bit like bragging, but I promise it isn’t!

All these changes that I have made since the beginning of this year are the things I am most proud of right now.

This is my way of trying to put myself, my passions, and my interests first once again, and stop letting my job dictate everything for me, including my mood.

These are the things that will finally make this year memorable instead of just another blur.

My job has made me feel so inadequate and incapable many times, and this is what happens when you force your brain into things that are obviously not really meant for you.

I am not saying I don’t belong in tech. I know I do, but my current role is not aligned with how I work best, and I seriously dislike web development.

I am a cloud engineer, and it makes sense to my brain. I don’t need to force myself, and I can remember things easily, but I need to finalise this transition and get a new job.

Getting back into all these things has been a breath of fresh air, and I seriously forgot what it feels like not having to try so damn hard to be good at something.

I’d like to finish this article on a very positive note.

Firstly, if you made it this far, thank you so much for reading, because I know this article has become so long that it probably feels like a novella!

I feel like this piece is about slowly reclaiming myself after years of survival mode and finally allowing myself to become a person outside of excessive productivity and work nonsense.

More changes are coming soon. I need this year to be different and to matter.

I am rapidly approaching my 30s, and life has to change and start feeling more fulfilling.

I never want to become an “if only” kind of person.

If only I had spent more time living my life instead of just surviving it...

I cannot continue being this shell of a person anymore, defined by my job title and living in a country that, after almost a decade, has never felt like home.

I feel like life has been passing me by rapidly, and I have only been a spectator, not even truly present most of the time.

There were a few more updates I wanted to share, but they will have to wait until next time.

Also, I am finally slowly improving my health too, so during the last six months, I have managed to lose 30kg/66lbs. Definitely still a lot more work needed, but I will get there.

One final thing that I would like to mention is that my mom, who is about to turn 53 years old, has just passed her driving test this week, and is now officially a driver!

This came as a very unexpected necessity after my stepdad had an issue and could no longer drive, and since they constantly need to travel to the countryside too, it became urgent for my mom to try getting her license for the first time.

Urgent and unexpected things most definitely mean they cannot afford the costs, and that responsibility naturally falls on me. Nobody asked me for financial support, but if you are the eldest daughter, you know that family responsibilities follow you even if you live a continent away from them.

My mom has been very stressed about this since getting a license in my city is very difficult. I will probably explain another time why.

I was stressed too because prices in Romania have been skyrocketing, rivalling London prices, and paying for her driving school ended up having several unexpected costs added more than once. At least now I can relax a bit.

She worked incredibly hard for this and managed to finish and pass everything in about three months.

Given the fact that she learned to drive a manual car for the exam, I know it made the whole process even more stressful, but now she genuinely enjoys driving.

I am incredibly proud of her and happy that she feels like at least someone supports her.

If we can learn anything from her recent experience, I would say that it is never too late to try something new. No matter our age, we can still refine ourselves and make our dreams come true.

Thank you for reading this massive article once again!

Take care!

Today’s song is one I really love because it feels very relatable to me right now. I hope you will like it too: https://youtu.be/RC6D79WqyX8?si=phhxXkHRIEEyCv5Y

I have many pictures of my trip to Budapest, but I like this place the most.