Life without a desk and office chair

July 26, 2023. Jule locked her bike at a parking spot at Hildesheim station. I watched her from ten meters away and cried because she hadn’t seen me.

I probably had this sad dream because of my walk to Linden. Aside from this dream, I was pleased that I had gotten rid of one of my worst habits: reaching for my phone and wasting time on it before getting out of bed. I took a quick glance at the time and put the phone away again. It wasn't yet eight o'clock, and because of the downtime function, I couldn't access the dating app or other apps. After briefly staring at the ceiling, thinking about the dream, and looking out the window at the treetops, I got up. From waking up to getting up, no more than five minutes passed, unlike the usual half-hour or even longer before I started using the downtime function on my phone.

I got up, got ready, and walked the two and a half kilometers to the library. Today I walked a bit faster to get my circulation going and wake up. Today, I planned not to drink coffee directly in the morning.

As I approached the Christuskirche, I looked at it and saw the large clock showing twenty to nine. "Interesting," I thought, "I hadn't noticed this change." Since I no longer carried my phone in my pocket but in my backpack, I checked the time less frequently. It would simply be too cumbersome to take the phone out of the backpack to check the time. "A positive change," I thought. After all, there was a clock at the station, at the Christuskirche, or in the library, all the places I frequented recently, which told me the time without the negative side effect of accidentally opening the dating app on my phone.

I sat on the fourth floor, writing my life chapter with Mara, and was glad about the decision to be here on the fourth floor of the literature department. I was virtually surrounded by pretty students. Four tables away sat that one tall, red-haired student whose ears had fascinated me back then.

Later, when I was in the cafeteria eating potatoes with soybeans, it rained. Afterwards, I treated myself to a coffee. Luckily, it wasn't raining anymore, so I could enjoy the coffee outside. I watched the dark clouds above me and tried to push them away from the sun with my intense gaze. I succeeded, and the sun cast its rays on my face.

"Oh, I'll go home now and get used to working without furniture," I decided and went home to continue writing my story. It was somehow fun to work on the floor. I simply ate my buttered bread standing at the windowsill where my table once stood. It was so great to be able to go directly to the open window. I sat on the windowsill with the plate in my hand, continued eating my peanut butter sandwich, and enjoyed the comprehensive view of the communal garden and the trees around it.