Life has its way :)

Yesterday I had a productive working day and finished the day feeling a little… invincible. My confidence level was 1000%

Then I went to the supermarket to get groceries. As usual, I selected the self-checkout. It was late – 30 mins before the supermarket closed. Without paying much attention to the people around me, I was standing at the checkout for a little bit toooo long because I had bought many things, and my little backpack was complaining.

And in Germany, you can do slow shopping, but get ready to enter the race at checkout. Everyone who has lived here for at least a few months knows this. Me? 5+ years here, and I suddenly became ignorant.

As I almost finished packing, a friendly shop assistant came to me: „Sie sind schon fertig. Kommen Sie bitte raus.“

I quickly moved away from the counter. That was also the moment I realized there were a few people waiting impatiently for me to finish.

As I was walking home, I thought about how panicked I was when I heard someone approaching me and saying something like that – although super friendly . in German. So, definitely, I was not panicking because of the message. It was simply my body detecting German and immediately feeling a little smaller before even digesting the message.

I think life sent me a message:

“Well, it is okay to be confident, but look how you are not yourself when communicating in German. Wake up and do some work!”

That is true also. For years, I was content with having enough German to navigate my life here. But I know that if one day I have to lead a new project completely in German, I will not be as efficient as I am in English.

My lesson learned here is that life does send signals sometimes, not to warn us, but more to remind us of our goals and prepare us for new opportunities.

So, when I came back home, my confidence was back to neutral and that is a good thing.

Let’s get fluent this year then! 😬