Genuinely happy

I couldn't help but notice that this spring and summer were quite different from any other I had lived through. Good different!

Yes, I had a steady job and no holidays at all, just the occasional vacasion. That was new.
Granted, I've had summer jobs, once even during the whole holidays and last year I had to do my military service instead of enjoying my free time, so not having real holidays wasn't actually a novelty.

So why do I think this spring/summer was a special one? Was my job that great? Could it have been my then current girlfriend? My family? My friends, old and new ones? The parties?

I enjoyed working very much, it was an interesting and exciting job, which gave me a lot of opportunities to broaden my knowledge and meet new people. And it payed well. Also, I rather enjoyed travelling around and not being at home.

I loved my girlfriend. Being with her, or if that wasn't possible due to various reasons, calling her and talking to her was wonderful. Few things had ever had such a cheering effect on me. The amazing thing however was, that I've never been a steady-releationship kind of guy. Yet she managed to solely capture my attention. Only once had I ever experienced such a thing before and at that time I had been to young to appreciate it much. However, this time I did and it was a completely new and fascinating experience. Even though it didn't last and we are now broken up, I'm deeply greatful of the time we had. It showed me a new facet of myself.

Family is probably the most important thing for me, even though I may not show that very often. As it is with most of things, you don't know what you've got untill you either miss it or you've got something worse to compare it too. Since I lived half the time in hotels approximately 200 km away from home and my family this summer, I started to miss them. Yes, independance is awesome and everyone should experiance that, but being part of a family is essential for happiness, I think.

I don't like being alone, it's not my kind of thing. I need company and variety. Looking (mentally) around at the group of people I like to call my friends, I can't help be amazed at how much they differ. Comparing my four best friends with each other is not possible. They are so different. And it's the same with all my other friends. Everyone has a unique facet that makes him or her special to me. This summer in particular was a great one in the aspect of friendships. After finishing school, it is no big surprise, that you loose contact to some classmates immediately afterwards and yet you maintain freindships to others. To some more intensely and to other just on a need to know basis. A totally new type of friendship is created at military service. No other friendships can compare to that. And this summer I managed to mingle my old and my new freindships. It created very interesting moments, when this happened, but it worked out quite well. Rarely being at home and sometimes not being able to meet with my girlfriend, my friendships grew to be even more important sources of comfort and support.

The parties during this spring and summer were quite different from any previous ones. The reason: I was an employee. Turing up drunk at school is banal, but doing that at work, that could creat problems. So naturally, I stopped partying during the week and focused on the weekends. That doesn't really make the parties different, true, but since I had a steady and quite nice income, I was able to care less about admission-prices and drink-costs or taxi fares. This meant I could go wherever, stay how long and drink what I wanted to. So I went to see David Guetta, to Sensation Austria and enjoyed every Friday and/or Saturday somewhere in a club or pub. It was a great time, a nice thing to balance out the 4 days workweek, in which I still had to work for 40 hours a week. Usually, however, I worked quite a bit more hours in a week. But no complaints, it was definitely worth it!

But none of these aspects alone, mentioned above, are solely responsible for this spring and summer being so special to me. The work alone would have driven me into a burn-out at the age of 21, the parties alone would have destroyed my liver by the age of 21 as well and family, friends or girlfriend alone, also could never have such an impact on ones life.
The combination of all those on the other hand can. And they did. For possibly quite the first time ever, I had been succesful and happy in every aspect of my life.

I'm not saying that up till now I've never been happy, or that now, that I'm single and unemployed again, I won't be happy anymore. I've had a great childhood and time at school. And I'm very much looking forward to the start of my new stage in life: Study at University. New people, new challanges and new aspects to happiness.