The second year abroad is harder than the first because the adrenaline is gone.
Year one is survival. Everything is new. Every small victory feels enormous. Figuring out the bus system. Opening a bank account. Finding the grocery store that sells palm oil.
Year two, the novelty wears off. You know the system. The excitement is replaced by routine. And the homesickness you were too busy to notice in year one arrives.
Nobody warns you about year two.
If you're in it right now, it gets better. Not because things change. Because you do.
Give yourself the same grace you gave yourself in year one.
@Sage_FCB This is nonsense. "Julian wants to leave, he's already made up his mind" and a club that broke bank to sign him just less than two years ago and where he's still currently having close to 4 years contract should just let him leave like that and worse, join a forest rival? π
@tweetcunha Like do you get?
You could have bargin then for maybe 2 to 3 years contract for worst case scenario. Is it that their agents dosent actually think with their brain? Cause if st all anything, the only one at fault here is Julian himself
A handwritten thank-you note takes 5 minutes.
Not a text. Not an email. A card. With a pen.
After the interview. After the mentorship session. After someone made an introduction.
In a world of automated follow-ups and templated emails, a physical note lands different.
A 2018 study from the University of Chicago found that people consistently underestimate how much recipients value expressions of gratitude.
You assume they know you're grateful. They don't.
Five minutes. One card. Their name, what they did, what it meant.
The people who advance fastest are often the most deliberate about acknowledgment.
Write the note. Send it Monday.
@egi_nupe Of course, all the rigmaroling around the bush all this while is just a tactics. Mr emotional animal doctor too will soon reveal own true colour too, it's just a matter of time.
A successful marriage sometimes depends on recognising that 'nothing is wrong' has several possible meanings.
It may mean nothing is wrong. It may mean something is wrong but the speaker is tired. It may mean the issue was explained last Tuesday and the listener is about to sit an examination.
The safest response is not cross-examination.
Try care, attention and a question that does not sound like a lawyer prepared it.
Two people can love each other and still communicate in different operating systems. Patience is the adapter.
Also, if you ate the food that was being saved, confession should begin before the investigation.
The printer knows when you are in a hurry.
For three months it will sit there, connected, peaceful and underused. The morning you need one page before leaving the house, it will request cyan ink to print a black document.
You will restart it. It will begin an update.
The update will reach 97 percent and start thinking about its childhood.
Technology has taken us to space, mapped the human genome and put powerful computers in our pockets. Yet the home printer remains a small office deity that demands a sacrifice before performing basic work.
I respect this stubborn consistency.