Starting a new chapter in Life

We rarely have time to stop and reflect. Having survived an emotionally straining period of my life, I had nothing but that, whether I wanted or not. The quiet suppression of negative emotions built up and manifested itself as frustration, often towards almost everything. The deteriorating socioeconomic state, over-representation of extremism at the face of an international crisis and the population's reactions to all this were all simply draining. The feeling that we, as a society, are suddenly declining, abandoning critical thinking and replacing it with populism and obvious asshat leaders as our way to protest to the system. Feeling like an observer to all this during an already stressful period in my life felt frustrating at best and insurmountable at worst. This passive approach lead to unhappiness in more than one way, even depression. Unhealthy coping mechanisms were proving to be just that: unhealthy. That is to say, until I picked up the piano.
   It had long been a dream of mine to "go back" to it, to play again and after listening to some classical compositions, most notably Valentina Lisitsa's rendition of the 3rd movement of Mozart's Moonlight Sonata, I was greatly inspired to start again. Finally, I got the final push when my sister came to me all hyped up about how she had tried an electric piano and how the feel of it was much like that of a real one. Whilst I know very little of the actual instruments and the differences between them, this enthusiasm motivated me to get my own.
   Whilst still a novice, only having played keyboard/synthesizer in my youth, I was profoundly inspired to learn. This therapeutic hobby of solitude and beauty could in its way amend the wounds of times past and consequently reward persistence in an acquired skill respected by the many. It was the perfect past-time for me. In order to move things along I also got a teacher to help me out as the speed of attempting to learn alone did come near the requirements of my motivation and ambition.
   Feeling more in the uppety-up again, I started fighting off my crippling social anxiety and meeting new people. This gave me strength and motivation and somewhere along the way I found the courage to finally realize another long-time dream of mine: moving abroad. As the final date of relocation drew near, I was filled with excitement as Estonia awaited.
   Granted it is nearly not abroad from a geographical standpoint but the implications in terms of a fresh start and a new environment heavily out-weight the actual difference in the geographical distance. Like a lot of good things in life, one must simply ignore the natural fear response of the brain and take that one decisive step towards new adventures.
   So here I gently tread along the bricked path with the serene Ülejoe to my right, a gorgeous park to my left, my past behind and my new life ahead!

A photo posted by Sami Anttila (@muhwu) on Sep 8, 2016 at 2:25am PDT