Blog no. 21: The airport shuffle

Dear travelers,

Whenever you're planning a trip what you have in mind is always what you'll pack before the trip and what you'll do during the trip; never what you're doing inbetween.
  You see, the airport shuffle as it's going to be known for the remaining of this blog, is the transitional period between the time you arrive at one airport and the time you leave from the airport of your destination. It can be somewhere between 2 hours to a whole day if you have a connecting flight with a long waiting period, and it's a time where you're practically a ghost. You don't have any responsibilities, you have nowhere else to be at so you just sort of linger, wandering around because nobody will look for you, for a few hours you are neither here nor there, for a while you just don't really exist. I've been in this situation many times and I actually enjoy it, as unconventional as that sounds. It's a time where I can do whatever I want without "wasting time" because that time is practically wasted already.
  It's endearing, really, sitting around at the airport and just watching people come and go, trying to figure what their destination is and what they're thinking about. What baggage do they bring along? What's their story? You just observe with keen eyes, trying to figure everyone out. You're so into it that you forget your own baggage, your own destination, you forget all about your story. Maybe that bearded dude is flying to England to propose to his girlfriend. Maybe that Asian-looking lady is flying to Germany for her job interview in a law firm practice. That couple is probably going over the Atlantic for their honeymoon in Cuba. That sad-looking middle aged guy might be visiting Italy for his father's funeral. That annoying group of kids might be playing in the junior international handball finals in Sweden. And while you're doing all this thinking you're invisible, so you can keep on doing your thing and nobody will even notice (unless what you're doing is bumping into people and calling them names and stuff).
  I've met a lot of interesting people in airport shuffles, I've fallen in love multiple times with beautiful strangers I never talked to, I've listened to songs on repeat so that my trip would have an official theme song. "We Believe" by Good Charlotte was the one when I was stranded in Mallorca for the whole night with no money and no food, "Sing about me I'm dying of thirst" by Kendrick Lamar was my jam when my flight was postponed for an hour in Stuttgart, "4 da squaw" by Isaiah Rashad was played a lot during my overnight stay in Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam a few days ago and "Chasing cars" was the song that started it all, after my 5-day field trip in Salonica, 8 years ago.
  My favourite airport shuffle story though, is the one with Sofia from Chicago. So, one time I met this girl who was in my bus on the way to the airport with her friend, sitting right in front of me for the whole ride. She was really pretty, had this great smile and beautiful green eyes but I was listening to music, too shy, and too into "The Great Gatsby" that was in my hands to talk to her and her friend. After a while I took my headphones off to seem more approachable and she immediately asked me if I was enjoying the book, so I told her that it was great. She asked me if I got to the point of the huge party in Gatsby's house in which I replied that indeed I had, and she told me that was so wild. We talked for a while and she told me that her dad was from Chicago because I noticed she didn't have the traditional Greek accent when talking in English. When we arrived at the airport I was still a bit shaken because it's not something that happens often to me, a pretty girl talking me up is quite the rare occurrence, so - the idiot I am - I didn't continue the conversation. At that point she came close to me and grabbed me by the arm as if we were going on a date in some fancy restaurant. She leaned in and almost whispered in a very cute voice "My name is Sofia, and my friend is -" actually I don't remember her friend's name, silly me. "My name is Stelios, nice to meet you" I replied. We were both supposed to check in so I told her that I would check in my flight and we could meet somewhere afterward to continue the conversation. After what seemed like an eternity, Sofia wasn't at her check-in and I figured she was done before I was, so I started looking for her. I searched everywhere, walked every inch of the (admittedly not very big) airport but she was nowhere to be found, so I convinced myself that it was never gonna happen and, defeated as ever, I crawled through the security check and went on to my gate to painfully wait for my plane to depart. A few minutes before my departure I see her and her friend boarding their plane; their gate was right next to mine and she was sitting right there for the whole time. When I finally found her it was too late, so I just called her name out and waved her goodbye.
 Even though the story doesn't have a happy ending it's something I will remember it for a long time (and if I meet with Sofia again by an incredible amount of luck, it'll be a love story to write home about). Not every story has a happy ending unfortunately, but the ones in airports have a definitive beginning and end. The whole "it's not the destination, it's the journey" thing is amazingly true, although that shouldn't take away from the fun you'll have at your actual destination. Here's the thing though, you just know that whatever happens in an airport stays there and, you see, being in an airport shuffle is kinda like being in a vacuum; everything that happens is isolated from the whole world, and much like everything else around you, it just sort of lingers.

Your friendly airport-shuffler,
Stelios Zesiades.

P.S. Don't be afraid to travel solo, you might just make a memory or two.
  

Blog no.20 - A year of firsts

Dear disappointed dudes/dudettes,

  THE END IS NEIGH! The end of the year at least, since Giant Meteor 2016 didn't win the american presidential elections after all. It's been a year of experiences, a year of celebrity deaths, a year so full of chaos you'd think that the world was actually coming to an end. Well, the year's almost over and we managed to survive it all fairly decently, albeit a little bit bruised. The end of the year shouldn't find you recalling all the fuckups you experienced with dread, but with positivity. All the stuff that went wrong in this shitty year is in the past. It should be a time of remembering what you accomplished, no matter how big or small it was. And for god's sake, none of that "New Year resolution" crap, I'm talking about things that matter. Good or bad, everything you experienced will shape you into the person you will eventually become, just make sure it always leads to a better version of yourself year by year.
 It has been a year of firsts for me. I hosted strangers for the first time and had the time of my life doing so. I played music in the streets in front drunk tourists who danced to our ethnic sounds, I visited places I hadn't visited before with some vary sweet (and occasionally barefoot) travelers, and I confessed my feelings to a girl for the first time ever. I formed friendships (and other -ships), and despite all the heartbreak, anxiety, and negativity it oozed throughout, it's been great. Why is that? Under the stream of horrible TV news, breakups and some really awful days it has been a year of experiences. I found out that no matter how much shit I've been through in a single year, it always leads to something better.
  We live in interesting times ladies and gentlemen, all we can do is sit back and try to enjoy the ride. Everything we go through will eventually become something to recall in hot summer nights on the beach, or under a warm blanket with only just the Christmas lights and the moon to guide us, or maybe sitting on a bench in the middle of a packed square while waiting for our next adventure to begin. "This is not the end, this is not the beginning" says 21st century philosopher Chester Bennington in Linkin Park's "Waiting for the end", because nothing ever truly ends, it just becomes a memory.  
  There will always be good and bad days - everybody has their rough patches - but if you endure them all you might come up with something amazing in the end. That's what life is basically, a really difficult and complicated game full of twists and turns that not even Shyamalan could think of. It's trial and error, it's falling down over and over and over again and then getting up only to find yourself down again. After you find your stride though, it will be much more difficult to fall and even if you do so, so what? Getting up for the 101st time will be so much easier than the first hundred times. Just gotta keep playing, you know?

"Merry Christmas ya filthy animal, and a happy new year!" - The Home Alone guy in the fake movie. While shooting some other guy. Maybe not what I should've gone with. Oh well. 

Here's to another amazing, shitty, tiring, awesome year, and yet another year of firsts. Keep your head high and your beer hand higher, and keep on keeping on.

Your friendly dude,

Stelios Zesiades.

Blog no.19: I hate ticking clocks

I hate ticking clocks.
Whatever you're doing,
No matter how you've been
They just tick tick tick.

They distract you from your thoughts
They bring you back to reality
They make you wonder how time flies
They remind you of every passing second

It's really unfair how it all moves so fast
But still not fast enough
How am I supposed to have the time?
I wish I could be a ray of light

I really hate to be reminded
That for one more day I did not shine
I see no shadows on the walls
I've been in the dark for so long

I'm still just a speck of dust
A drop of water in the rain
A complex of molecules
Trying to figure themselves out

Everyone sees time
Moving in a straight line
But all I want to do
Is to go back and rewind

I hate ticking clocks
All they do is take time away from me.


P.S. I'm not depressed, I just really fucking hate ticking clocks.
P.P.S. This was all inspired by the one in the guest room which I have no idea who it belongs to. 

Blog no.18: Back to the future

Dear time-travellers,

You know how back in your day you probably thought of the 21st century as the century that would make everything we ever knew until then obsolete? (Assuming you're from the past, if not what the hell are you doing here? You know how things will work out.) We would have flying cars, we would have colonized a few other planets, achieved interstellar travel and teleportation or even travel back and forth through time. People were so fast to dream big, so excited to fantasize about a futuristic era with floating cities and underwater ones and since we haven't been able to do so (yet!) they don't appreciate what we have achieved in these few decades, or they heavily critisize it as a step in the wrong direction. What have we achieved so far you ask? Well, person living in an internet-less era, you'll have to sit down for this one.

  In just a few decades we have not only created a world wide web that connects everything and everyone wherever they are (except my stupid apartment elevator, of all places), we are now able to control it in the palm of our hands. We have these little devices that can give us any piece of information we like in very minimal time, and we're very much addicted to them as anyone would be if they had the chance. We live in the age of information, where everything is possible and you can learn about whatever your heart pleases in a heartbeat. And what we use it for you say? Well, we mostly argue about stuff and call each other names, as is tradition in human nature but we have started getting better at it for sure. We are so preoccupied to our future not living up to impossible standards, we didn't realize we are actually living in it, so spoiled by being able to control everything through a little piece of technology which a few years back would be a glorified walkman at best that we don't understand how to harness its true power through something we've always been great at: learning. Talking to a friend living hundreds of miles away without paying incredible amounts of money or relying on the post office to actually locate your friend in Middleofnowheresville, has become a novelty, really. Truth is, I can't really blame anyone on how they use the internet, since it's not something people consider a tool, but rather a convenience. That's not gonna be the case for long though, and here's why. 

  In my mind there are three generations of people living currently on this planet. There's the older generation that was born before the internet was even concieved as an idea, much like you dear visitor from the past. You lived in a post-WW2 era, when the dust was settled for the most part, you lived a happy albeit boring childhood, your toys consisted of plastic soldiers, footballs and bicycles and your games were always outdoors. You didn't have to worry much about learning stuff since the job market was at its peak when you graduated, so you were able to do just fine with a college degree and a knick for settlement. Most of your knowledge stems from encyclopedias, books, newspapers and occasionally stories you were told by your parents or grandparents. During the explosion of the internet you were already in your 30's or 40's, you didn't need anything else and were just fascinated to hear about the advancements, but since you didn't need to use it, you didn't bother to. Now it has taken over the world and you're so technologically incompetent that you don't really understand how to use it properly, so you rely on the second or third generation to help you with that. You are slowly learning though, and now you're at a point where you can use it by yourself, just not at its true potential. Which brings us to the second generation, the generation that I will name "the transition generation".

  Gotta say I'm biased, being part of this "transition generation" but here's how I see it: We lived in the era where the internet was starting to become the powerhouse it is now. World was starting to get unstable after 9/11 but it was still mostly safe. We didn't have super fast lines and we had to hear a symphony of alien music to be able to go online but we actually could do so in our houses and in our disposal. We used it to, of course, download music, movies and, other, well, "stuff", and we discovered so much things we wouldn't be able to do so otherwise. We stretched our imagination to impossible lenghts since we knew the potential of this and we were told by our parents (the older generation) to "stop playing video games and just go outside". Truth is we did both equally, and we couldn't be happier about having a choice between those two things. We learned about technology first hand, we adapted to it and actually noticed the massive difference of the 00's to the 10's, we experienced the transition of the novelty of the internet to the necessity that it is today. We did our fair share of stupid shit using it, we've all caught all sorts of viruses and accidentally downloaded porn instead "Shrek 2" (was that just me?) We appreciate the tools we have right now, because we lived without them, we lived with them and that way we learned how to use them wisely. 

  Now for convenience I will just name the third generation "the information generation" since they were born in the "information era". Mostly consisting of people born after 2000, these people are just now becoming adults, living in a very unstable environment, with news of bombings, fires, killings and natural distasters every other day. Not to say that these things didn't happen before, but being able to know about them surely makes things look a lot worse than they used to. They were kids when my generation first started getting acquainted to the internet but in their teens they already had smartphones, when all the previous generation had was regular phones, and the one before them had two cans and a string. They've always been able to find whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, they had so much stuff going on at the same time, and they were so overwhelmed by the amount of things they could do at such a young age, that they started to neglect it. This is in my opinion the most wrongly accused generation, since they're the ones who have to work the hardest to achieve what the previous ones were simply given for free. Having facebook in their teens meant their embarassments were engraved online forever, which thankfully wasn't the case in my generation. Now, learning from their past mistakes they are actually using the internet how it's meant to be used: with caution. They are fast learners and will probably the most hard-working generation if they wanna dig themselves out of the mess that the first generation caused for the next ones. 

  Best way I can describe all three generations is the swimming analogy. The first generation didn't really have to learn how to swim since they weren't needed to, but as it became a necessity to learn how to swim they had to do so at a very difficult age. The second generation lived in the period where people started taking their kids to swim, and gave them the opportunity to adjust from not being able to swimg to being highly competent swimmers in their young years. The youngest generation was thrown into a pool with no lifejacket, and nobody to look after them except the occasional "don't go in too deep" from their parents. 

  As the time passes though, we have seen that all three generations have done what humans always did best: adjust. We are now just learning how to use this powerful tool that has been given to us and I gotta say, we're getting pretty good at it. We might not have colonized the moon, we haven't found the Atlantis yet and we still haven't been able to perfect our social skills but what we created, this interconnected universe we now have is just a marvel to look at. Now, all we need to do is stop blaming each other for the fuckups that brought us to this mess, and just work towards solving the problems we have instead of creating new ones. Will be easy enough, right? If anyone from the future is reading this, just make my laptop screen blink once so I know we start doing that....................................................................................................................................................Shit. Beer, anyone? 

Stelios Zesiades

To Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who made all this possible. 

   

Blog no. 17: The art of letting go

Dear hot-headed beings,

"How are you so calm?" is a question I've been asked numerous times, and up till a few months ago I wasn't able to give a clear answer. Is it the fact that I find arguing a nigh useless exercise to solve one's problems? Maybe because I can't be bothered to get upset by the small differences with each individual person that tries to have an argument. Or am I just too damn beta to stand my ground and claim my so called "pride" as a man? In reality, I found that getting angry at everything does fuck-all for your mental well-being, which is incredibly important at this day and age. With the job market plummeting and the general consensus for my generation's future being: "We're fucked", a person should not let small bothersome things get on his nerves, and should just let them go, however "beta" that might seem.

  It's very difficult to swallow your pride and not talk back when someone wrongly calls you out, and even more difficult to not snap at someone when they're purposefully wronging you or taking you for granted. Mind me, backing off from arguments doesn't mean you should let people take advantage of you, it means to have the guts to not continue a meaningless argument and control your anger in a way where it helps you instead of consuming your brain from the inside. Approaching something with a clear head is the best way to go at it, really. Have conversations, not fights with people you disagree with. We all know that the first person who raises their voice usually loses the argument, no matter how right or wrong they were at the beginning. 

  It's not about being "zen" or whatever, it's about calculating your resources. I have only so much time to waste every day, and this way I can spend more time on things that actually matter (or, y'know, binge-watch Friends for the gazillionth time). That's not the point though, and time is not the only resource. I believe that you just can't afford to get mad that easily, since you tend to carry it through the day like every other feeling. When you're happy, everything seems a bit better. You won't mind a sudden storm, a late bus, or a fly following you around as if you fell in a septic tank. On the contrary, when you're mad you tend to get even more mad at the most insignificant things, like your coffee being too bitter or having to shower with cold water because the sun didn't feel like showing up today. Well, not being mad is half-way being happy, or at least sets you up for it. That's how I personally go about it, although I do occasionally snap and say the absolutely meanest things I can come up with, which is the other very real reason why I avoid fighting like the plague. 

  I know the importance of defending yourself and I'm all for it, but learning when it's worth it and when it's not is an art. Not a particularly creative art, nor a very dynamic one, but although it's rather binary in its nature, mastering it works wonders for your happiness, or at the very least your clear conscience and healthy mentality. Your happiness is highly dependant on yourself, but you have to work towards it and set yourself up for success. However, you don't have to be happy all the time, smiling, talkative, approachable; we're all humans after all , not puppies. You're definitely allowed to be mad at stuff, just don't hold onto them for very long. Be cool, calm, collected, and as my imaginary, animated, white-haired wife once said, "Let it go."

Your next-door-wannabe-anger-management-guru, 

Stelios Zesiades

Blog no. 16 - A skullful of thoughts

  I think too much. Or at least I think I do.
  Shit, I'm doing it right now!
  It's like my brain is in a constant race with my heart about who does the most work. I get it guys, good job for keeping me alive and all but by any means, slow the fuck down, will ya?
  From the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep it's just a constant barrage of thoughts streaming into my head like a hailstorm of apple sized balls of conciousness. Quite random too. One second I'm happily thinking about all the stuff I'm gonna do in the future and everything's happy and rainbows and unicorns and all of a sudden everything's grey and I'm suddenly contemplating my life or, as my stupidly philosophical self would say, lack thereof and the rainbow is actually a huge scythe and the unicorn is, well, still a unicorn. Those things creep me the fuck out, like how the hell could you put that sharp of a horn on a creature and call it adorable? But then I'm back to being all smiles again. It's exhausting, both mentally and physically. Do you know how many muscles you need to smile? I can't be bothered to look it up right now but it's gotta be a whole lot more than keeping a straight face. Sigh. (sighing doesn't take as much energy I think so technically I'm allowed to do it.) If I didn't know any better I'd say I'm bipolar, but I do know better and I'm just kinda fucked up.
  I think the problem is not that I think too much, rather that I overthink. A lot. When I'm walking down a street I'm so aware of my environment I will never ever bump into anything unintentionally, even though I always wear my headphones to keep my ears busy and listen to the soundtrack of my life. That level of awareness though, it's the level of awareness that people go to the mountains and stay with monks for a year and a half to achieve. I don't know, maybe it's the fact that I'm always listening to music so everything kinda gets postponed while I'm adjusting the fucking cable or attempting to rap an overly sweary Kendrick Lamar song, being from the ghetto and all. That was sarcasm by the way.
  As I was saying, I overthink about stuff. When I'm ordering a pizza I have a manuscript of what I'm going to say so that I don't fuck up any of my sentences.
"Yeah hi, I'd like two medium sized pizzas. Yes, with bacon, mushrooms and cheese. No, no green pepper. The one without the green pepper is more expensive?" Shit shit shit this aint in the script what I'm I going to say. "Uhh green pepper is fine, then". I guess I like green pepper now.
 Overthinking has made me miss quite a few opportunities. It's a curse, I'm telling you, a stupid, cock-blocking curse. Why the latter you ask? Alright, let's say you're at a party. It's kinda lame, not many people are dancing and the music is, well, crap for lack of a better word, but you're drinking a beer with your friends, chatting about some funny story and you're not having that bad of a time. You see a girl sitting by the bench with two of her friends, having a quiet conversation, much like you actually. She's a really pretty one at that, blonde hair, nice face, cute smile. You're thinking about talking to her but your bladder decides that you had two beers too many and you're also starting to get really cold all of a sudden, as if the North fucking Pole shifted positions with the equator. You wanna talk to her but you're not in a position to do so, as you're dancing to the rhythm of your near-busted-bladder and your hands are trying to generate as much heat as they can to stop you from shivering and, frankly, looking like a wuss. So you're saying "I'll talk to her in a bit, I can't do it right now." All of a sudden this asshole swoops in with his friend and starts chatting your girl up. Your girl! The love of your life! The mother of your future-non-existent children! But then it all comes back to you. While you were thinking at every possible embarrassing scenario, doing the math to come up with a percentage in which you either piss your pants, drop dead from the cold or, well, both, he's just taking a shot. He might not do everything right, he might not have thought what he was going to say to the last point but goddammit his leatherjacketness took the damn shot, while you're sitting there, arms on sides and hands in pockets, pondering about what you were going to say to her. He's not the asshole after all, you are. For being too scared to face a potential failure. For always wanting the perfect setup, and a great pickup line to go talk to a girl, as if that ever worked for you. That story was totally made up by the way, and it definitely didn't happen to me about two weeks ago. Yup. Completely fictional.
  Either way, this brain thingy is either hurting me too much or helping me too much. Sometimes you gotta take a swing, and even if it misses you could at least say you tried. I should think less and do more. I should not calculate my every step up till the point of no return. I mean, even if that works once in a while, isn't it funner knowing you actually put your resourcefulness and quick thinking to use? That shit might actually save you in the future. Emma Stone might spontaneously call you and tell you to whisper dirty things to her. What are you gonna do then, smartass? Read your pizza manuscript? Use your goddamn instinct and leave your brain to rest, not everything needs to be planned ahead of time. Live a little! If not for yourself, do it for poor Emma. Once you're done thinking about stuff, that's when the real thinking begins. 

Blog no.15 - Turn that page

Dear hopefully non-psychopaths,

  Taking into consideration the fact that right now you're reading this, which is a fair hypothesis to make assuming the circumstances, I can see that you're fixated on your computer screen, wondering where I'm getting at and lingering between being casually interested if even briefly disconnected from the outside world, and being all the more intrigued in what's about to follow, completely and utterly unaware of your surroundings. That's the beauty of reading, you see, and the reason we've evolved past to being talking apes. 

  Now what happens if you stumble upon something genuinely good? Something mysterious, something entrancing? I'm telling you, that feeling is in a league of its own. Buying a new book, touching its cover for the first time, opening the first few pages and feeling each small lump of the paper on your fingertips, smelling the fresh scent of your newly acquired companion, all these seemingly small things are parts of a multi-hour trip to the end of the author's world and back. "Brace thyself he who enters, for tears shall be shed and emotions shall be triggered." 

  You jump into your bed and quickly assume reading position: belly facing downwards, elbows on the mattress feet kicked up high and intertwined, head straight forward leaning in the open book, hands delicately handling both sides of it's colourful cover, fingers edging the yellow-ish pages ready to turn at any moment now. And you start your beautiful journey. At first you're getting annoyed easily, by the fly that can't find the fucking window, the car that keeps screeching as if it hasn't been oiled since the middle-ages, the neighbour's dog who won't shut the fuck up, but as you're getting further and further into the book all these noises start to fade; in fact you can't even hear them after a while. Did they stop? Fuck no, the goddamn dog seems to be in a personal vendetta with every single eardrum in the building. You, however, are safe from all this racket since you have abandoned all the senses not responsible to making your brain decipher these markings on the paper and correlate them with images you can connect in order to create the characters, the story, the world that the author meant to pass on to you. 

  Turning the pages hastily, absorbing every single piece of information presented unto you, imagining the appearance of your new-found friends and enemies, you lose every sense of time and space, so much so that the only time that is relevant for you is the fictional one, and your posture has gone to shit since you first started reading. 

  Your upper body is turned sideways, half-hanging out of the bed, your right leg is bent in the most uncomfortable angle possible and your left leg is swinging at a stable frequency, hitting the foot of the bed on each oscillation. Unfazed, you continue reading as if you're lying on a comfortable mattress with puffy pillows and silk sheets. 

  Unknowingly and unconsciously you are smiling, occasionally cracking up. By the end of the novel your heart starts beating faster and faster, and as you turn that last page it almost stops; at least it feels like it. You read the last sentence, the last word, the last letter and the last point of the book. Turning the page you realize that there is no more, the journey has come to an end. As you're closing the book from it's rear end, you feel the back cover for one last time before letting it slide from your hands, hopefully landing on the bed. 

  You stop for a second to reflect on the story you were just part of, to figure out your emotions. Eventually you start noticing the details around your room. The sun has set but it's August so you figure you don't give a shit. You get up and in one swift motion you grab the newspaper from your desk and smack the fly against the window, relieving the poor blind, deaf and possibly mentally unstable bastard of his misery. At least the car has stopped, it's parts probably committing mass suicide over the fact that there was more grease on their owner's hair than on them. Oh, and the dog is still singing its now weaker and forever monotone "I'll shit on your ears" piece, in Fuck You minor. 

  There's a feeling of emptiness in your heart, a feeling of closure, like saying goodbye to an old friend. You close your eyes and let uncle Morpheus take you in his sweet embrace, slipping further and further into a world inhabited by your thoughts and your thoughts only, now embellished by the wonderful adventure you experienced a few blinks ago. That happens every time you pick up a new book from the shelf, one waiting to be read, to be experienced. And every single time it ends, by the time the sun has set once again and you close your eyes, dreams start becoming reality, reality starts becoming fiction, and you are now the author of your next great adventure, hopeful that one day it will lead to the one that will help you realize what your worth is in this world. And that dog still won't shut the fuck up. 

Happy international books day!

Kind regards,

Stelios Zesiades.

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one."

- George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons