Messenger Lessons...

I jumped my  first hurdle to work as a bike messenger alone. My life here in Graz has been filled with so many new experiences and I always have to fight my own demons of fear and lack of belief in myself. I am lucky to work for Veloblitz, the coolest group of guys who showed me so much support and trusted that in time I could be a good bike messenger.

I first did my training day over one month ago. I chased Sava (one of the messengers) for about 6 hours, even though I felt strong enough to ride, I also didn’t know much of the city and was not sure where we were for almost the whole time.

  Its better to do something badly yourself then watch someone else do it well, I knew I had to take the leap and ride alone. I was so scared and worried about screwing things up, getting lost and fucking it up. In everything we do, fear is there, looking at us and we need to face it down and defeat it. I always experience a lot of self doubt in everything I did, despite my fear.. I always push myself and go through it. I got lots of good advice from each of the experienced messengers, mostly to have no expectations and to do my best.

One thing the job taught me was about taking each moment as it comes and not worrying about the whole day and how I am doing.. how much money I am making etc… It teaches you to be calm in stressed situations.. it makes you push yourself physically while you tune in mentally to the route that you need to ride. It makes you appreciate your body and all it can do for you, it makes you stand on your own feet, depend on yourself and trust yourself. My boyfriend (who is a messenger himself) gave me lots of good tips and also rode with me around the city to get to know it better, he always told me that I can do I t and that he believed in me.. but no matter what other say.. the battle is always yours and yours alone.. and perhaps greater then the battle to make it to each job on time, I fight my fears and work on trusting my instincts.

I have had lots of funny moments already, going totally wrong ways, getting lost and bringing packages way too late… what I call all of this is ‘experience’. That beautiful thing that sometimes is filled with blood, sweat and tears. Sure I was late so many times so far… but I also gained knowledge of the city and rode faster then I have ever done before. The funniest moment so far was when I thought a line on the map was something I couldn’t cross and did a serious long detour… only to realise it was a random line on the map and totally crossable.. it was distressing at the time and I thought I was very stupid.. but now I laugh at it and regard it as one my finest messenger moments to date… 

It’s cycling season, and now I strengthen my body and work on riding as much as I can each week, normally 3-4 times a week. Together with friends I formed a beginners cycling group ‘THE VELOBITCHZZZ’, and we cycle together as much as possible. 

There are lots of lessons abounding in my life at the moment. I choose to accept whatever life is bringing me with an open heart and strive to see it all as a path for growth. After the last time I rode messenger, I was very discouraged and wrote the Furwerk(head-quarter guys) to tell them I was sorry for my poor performance. They wrote me back that no one expects me to be amazing at the beginning and that they know I can be super fast. There is a great support here for trying new things, and everyone knows what its like to start and to be in my shoes. 

In every area of my life right now I feel like I am learning a lot, pushing into new things and as much as possible trying to be open and loving. This is in every area.. my work, my cycling, and my relationship, I feel like for so long I have been stuck in the convenient confines of my previous mindsets and lifestyle, now I am realising things don’t have to be the way I have always thought were ok. I don’t have to live by any other rules then my own, the ones I set and the way I want to live. This is giving me a feeling of responsibility, control over my feelings and my life and also confidence in myself, as I see my choices are good and my reasoning is clear and rational. 

One of my greatest concerns this year was that I would struggle through a big depression, similar to what I had last year. I kind of accepted that every year in the summer (I know it’s a weird time), I would get depressed. I almost waited for the depression to hit me and if I had a bad feeling in the beginning of the year at any time, I would get worried that the great depression had hit me early. I always thought perhaps I was a manic depressive and something was wrong with me.. I thought I might need to take medication and see someone who could help me when those feelings of sadness were very strong. I realise now that there was nothing wrong with me, I am a balanced and sane person, it was the stressful and capitalistic circumstances of my job and the world that I lived in that created those feelings and pushed me into a stressful place. The world around us forces us into depression these days, the constant attention on work and success, the lack of rest, sleep, enjoyment and simple play.

 The last years in the summer, CE in Serbia would always be out of money, I felt terrible stress and pressure, I also let the expectations of unrealistic and very uncompassionate people matter to me. I listened a lot to ideas of those who did not really care about me, but just had their own interests at heart. All of this I thought at the time to be reality, now I realise that it was all the reality that I created for myself. Although last year was an important time of learning deep lessons, and its almost always through rough patches and deep sadness that we grow and learn many things, I now live differently, at least a bit. Even though I still work very much, I have detached my sense of self worth from my business. I know that no matter what happens at CE, I am a wonderful person, the future of my business does not say anything about who I am.  

I think the way we are brought up and raised in this society is wrong in so many ways. Of course its easy to look at the problems with the world and criticise things and that’s not what I want to do. I do however want to challenge some of the mentalities and obligatory restrictions placed upon us these days and at least question why. Let’s go back to what I discussed a little earlier… attaching self worth to acomplishments… I always felt that I was what I did… that I had to do so many things and please so many people. Who is to say what we are meant to do with our lives, whether we choose to study, work, wander the world or do nothing for a while, we shouldn’t feel that we are less or more of a person or less or more worthy of love or life. We are always glorifying people that work hard and accomplish big things, but not everyone is meant to travel that path. Work these days is basically slavery in return for a few gold coins, it adds nothing to the personality, stresses, drains and squelches human spirit. 

About one month ago I had a serious stress breakdown. I was working many, many hours each day for months on end. In the beginning I felt really strong and like I could handle it. Typical to my character, I took on way too many things, and started to also invest time in my hobbies.. this meant that all day from early in the morning I was on the go. I rushed around all the time, I didn’t have time for friends which meant that my relationships with people were not on a deep level.. this is very troubling for me and gave me a lot of insecurity, because I am an emotional person and relationships of all kinds are very important to me. It was one Friday in the middle of my 17 and a half hour shift that I rushed home do a quick one hour fitness training. All of a sudden I felt a deep sadness and pressure in my chest and started to cry. I called my boyfriend, but I couldn’t talk to him, I just cried and cried.. I went to see him at his place quickly, but the tears didn’t stop and the pressure inside of me made me feel terrible. I felt like I was just a working machine, with no real friends or love, the stress had blinded me to the beauty of my life and my workaholic tendencies had caught up with me. 

I really got to thinking after this mental collapse… why had this happened to me.. when I had tried to think of why I was crying so much, I couldn’t name it. It was not one thing, but the stress and confusion of work that had done this to me. I think we are all far more beautiful and free minded people then we realise, we are stopped from thinking and acting freely by the materialistic system that literally fucks us as we are forced to enslave ourselves.. but I had learnt my lesson. I never took such a long shift again and I determined to spend more time cycling and doing things I enjoy, going into the sunshine and into the wilderness.. spending time with people who uplift me and make me happy. I have enough money to live, as I think most of us do.. but I am a workaholic and I don’t know yet how to say ‘NO’ when people impress jobs on me. I still need to learn to respect my body and spirit and its needs. More important then anything you do.. is you.. and if you are stressed and unhappy…it’s not worth it. Nothing is worth killing your spirit for. 

I also now challenge societies rules on sexuality, relationships and love… I am able to do this together with an amazing person, and we are going into a journey together to open our relationship to other people and experiences. I am writing this on my blog, because I think that this is such a big topic that scares almost all of us. We are all pretty fearful when we are confronted with relationship issues. I don’t know how much to write here, because it seems pretty off topic.. but its definitely part of my journey of openness, love and honesty.