So I'm one day into the 5 days prolonged weekend that I took out of my paid time off and my state of mind is summarized by the following caricature:
And it's not like I can't take my mind off work although there's a ton of it and the recent round of layoffs isn't helping in reducing that amount. It's a systemic problem that I have since many, many years, and with the overstimulation of modern times it's become worse. So if I work and I have to wake up at 6 to start working at 8, well if I get the chance to take a nap from 7 to 8 either in the bus or at home before checking in, I sleep like a log. Literally, the moment I put my head on the pillow, I'm in dreamland and only clock alarm wakes me up for next round of scheduled work. But in vacation. I wake up at 5. Can't fall back asleep. I'm tired as funk, worse than a bad hangover but I'm telling myself: don't worry, you can sleep anytime you want, the whole day. In the meantime do something fun. But what's fun? I can't play games anymore, they bore me to death. I can't watch more than 15 minutes of movies anymore before being bored to death and switching to Instagram reels for 15 minutes before being overstimulated to death for 15 minutes and switching to blank stare at the walls. Gradually, over almost a week I get into a state where I am relaxed like a Romanian boyar in the 17th century, drinking coffee after lunch only to help with siesta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyar But then the brief state of disconnect ends abruptly and I'm once again swamped in bugs, deadlines, the usual. Fuck. I want to make the 17th century Romanian boyar state permanent!
Speaking of boyars... "As such, until the 19th century, the system oscillated between an oligarchy and an autocracy" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyars_of_Moldavia_and_Wallachia I guess we had some luck with the German prince the Boyars employed to solve the conundrum between oligarchy and autocracy. Around the end of the 19th century, the ruling class launched a call for "Who wants to be king of a 123,335 km2 area, with the possibility of incorporating another 102,824 km², twice the size of Netherlands and about similarly developed compared to the original? Various royalty declined for not being juicy enough but this German guy took the job and was very, very good at it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_I_of_Romania
Very precise areas. Maybe that precision discouraged some of the more laissez-faire potential monarchs - "who want to be king of a fertile land filled with endless grain and a compliant taxable population" might have worked better.
Well, he was German. And they have been documenting this land since the 800s, making it if confirmed, one of the first written accounts in Europe after the fall of the Roman empire: https://www.romania-insider.com/old-books-manuscripts-discovered-attic-church-medias
>> Maybe that precision discouraged some of the more laissez-faire potential monarchs - "who want to be king of a fertile land filled with endless grain and a compliant taxable population" might have worked better. Or maybe not. Romanians as origins were auxiliary troops of Roman empire. Harass and deceive but can't take for long a full-front assault. So what you do with auxiliary troops when you want to conquer a land? Surely not trying to conquer Odessa in WW2 when a quarter of the army was wiped out in a pointless attempt. Well, hold on. Which is what auxiliary troops do best. As long as you can hold your position, men and arms, after everyone else has massacred themselves, it's just an exercise of marching in and taking care of.
Why are we, Romanians, in Western Europe now instead of Russia? Because of the Boyars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyars_of_Moldavia_and_Wallachia We're fundamentally a deeply divided, non communist society, controlled by the top brass. And like in the US, the mass of voters helps. Socialism never took root in Romania because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.