a peaceful morning in the daily arena

Leaving or not leaving Berlin. I have been thinking about it for a long time and talking about it with colleagues and friends. I have been preparing for the departure since more than one year collecting experiences, resources, feedback and feelings, and now the time has come, i cannot postpone longer, i cannot maintain the current situation of compromise.

Currently, i am working as if i was location-independent, but living in Berlin. This is not economically feasible anymore, mainly because of the very high German taxes which expect a programmer to earn a lot of money. I could do the bureaucracy and reduce the taxes, i guess, but the problem still remains: work to stay or work to go? Up to now, i worked to postpone the decision.

“I should just go, don’t wait anymore”, i think sometimes. “I enjoy living here”, other times. I wish i could have my cake and eat it as well. This post is not ending in a solution, it will mainly be a way to enumerate the alternatives, and clarify the tradeoffs. There are some aspects of this decision that are not clear even to myself. I do a lot of things following my feelings and instinct, and rationalising is not always easy.

First off, there is something in the industry that repels me. I have been respecting my adversion and this is mainly why living in Berlin became financially difficult. In the last year i have been rather uncompromising about a lot things related to work, and this mainly resulted in consuming my resources and getting very little external recognition. So this is surely one of the outcomes i am looking for when i think of leaving Berlin: freedom to keep pursuing my personal journey, freedom to not compromise. It’s kind of funny that Berlin got its reputation as a place for people to be free and find or lose themselves, but i seem unable to live in it with this amount of freedom.

What is keeping me here, on the other hand, besides the objective and obvious advantages and opporunities a city like Berlin has to offer, and offered to me in the past? Well, for one, a lot of fear. Fear of missing out, fear of making a big mistake, fear of going back to Sicily and out of this safe, convenient, fun world. Fear of being myself to the end, and fear of trusting my intuition.

That is the surface, but there is something deeper. There is fear of being arrogant, fear of not understanding all the good i am giving away, fear of asking too much to myself, fear of being delusional, and being fighting against windmills. All at all, a whole bunch of fears is holding me back, and i am not an Yes man or a blind optimist. I respect my fears as i respect all of my other feelings.

And different feelings connect me with this city, as well. Feelings of belonging, feelings of identity, feelings of gratefulness, sympathy, and plain simple attraction, desire and greed, and curiosity, and excitement, and admiration, respect and hope. Affection.

These are the feelings, but then it comes the reasoning, and i can see a limit i have there. I cannot put myself in a temporal perspective, and i cannot quit reasoning about things in a static way, as if entities in life were eternal and immutable. From this flawed standpoint i ask to myself: “If Berlin has been so good to me so far, why shouldn’t it be good in the future?” And i can’t get out of this attitude, i fail to fit my limited human condition, and the count of the few years i have got to live, into this absolute schema of truth and values.

I am trapped in that reasoning because i like long-term, sustainable solutions. I like to get things right from the beginning, and not to change my mind. And it’s easy to find a value in being consistent, even though consistence is not very popular in our society currently. Valuing consistency is part of my identity, and this is why it is so hard for me to think out of it.

This is one of my limits, and sometimes we get excited about going beyond our limits. This is how i felt today, after Brooke left my place, in the quiet of my single room which is way darker than the gorgeous bright day outside. I felt all the good i was living, and i felt the excitement to go beyond my limits. The two feelings were the same. No separation between enjoying something good, and moving away from it. Perceiving the good, and perceiving its limit, at the same time, with no dissonance. This hasn’t been easy for me so far. I hope this will last, this is the attitude i need in order to make the right decision.