My First Steemit Meetup Was Too Good For Real Life

The weekend Steemit meetup getaway in Tallinn, Estonia is done and boy, was that an experience! There is so much I want to tell you about that I'll have to do several texts about it. One "went to Estonia, had a great time" post isn't going to cut it. No way in Hell ;)

_{Credit: @m31}

The past three days feel more real - despite now only being a memory - than what I came back to. As if I had been woken up only to fall asleep again, as if me writing this during the lunch brake at work wasn't real, just a trans I'm being seduced back into.

I miss the genuine satisfaction I got from eating left-over french fries from @m31's dish while tipsy from having 'Sex on the beach' (ehem... the drink that is), later navigating to a grill for more where for a brief moment happiness actually was attainable by materialistic means just for 2€, with burger sauce (oh yes!). I miss being an unsocial cranky depressed mess the following day because lack of sleep while still hanging around people who actually bought food to my indecisive money-tight ass despite me being hard at "doing human".

I'd take either of those again any time if I had the choice.

How do people manage to get back to life from holiday? For me all it did was showing a glimpse of something exquisite and now I want more. Do people come back happily from finally having to been recharged, to take on again at work? Maybe, but for me it didn't.

"Konsta, quickly, give a big smile to the camera before those tourists come on the way",

I witnessed from the mouth of another Finn. The kid sitting on a rock stair looked depressed with the parent commanding happiness reflecting gestures out of him, those that should come from within, not from his mother's mouth.

Why do you want your kid to smile to the camera? To shit yourself and others how great your life is? That at least this one trip was worth the cost of tolerating the job that paid for it? I'm gonna have to disappoint you: happiness isn't the indicator of success, neither is smile even an accurate indication of happiness nowadays when you're forced to do so.

I guess you're happy to come back because all you wanted was to "level up" your life in the face of other people with your trophies (you know, like children), to feed your old self. Not to experience something that would widen your world view, no, otherwise you might even start considering you're life isn't what you wanted it to be. Scary? You'll get used to it, unless you mask it away.

I myself am having hard time pretending so I'd rather not do that, though sometimes I feel obliged to in the midst of "untold social norms" that keep hovering in the air with certain circles.
But during the weekend? No, I didn't feel the need to do so in front of the people, not with my words, nor with my face - with people I had never seen in real life before.

_{Credit to @rubencress for the picture}

That's quite remarkable, and a sign for me that I'm in good company.

Little too grim for a Steemit meetup post? Don't worry, I got something little more upbeat also coming up but I just had to get this out of my chest while suffering from "holiday hangover" (credit for the term goes to @escapist who has also told to suffer from it). Seriously, I had no headache on Saturday or Sunday, but then I get back home, sleep over 8 hours, get to work on Monday, and bam, I have a headache. The day after I forgot/didn't care to remember to lock the doors and close the windows at work before leaving, the alarm could've gone off, there could've been a bill for false alarm, I couldn't mind less. No, actually I did, I regret forgetting my job because I had to pretend to be in contact with my instructor: "Yeah... yeah...", as she is explaining my job to me.

Me being all doom and gloom here doesn't mean I didn't like it, on the contrary: It's about the contrast created between the two realities. Luckily there's only 3 more months of this government forced labor left.

Reading others' posts of the meetup, I get immensely happy while at the same time sinking equally deep into the void. It was so good that I completely forgot everything else for a moment. Not even a single thought associated with anything work related came across my mind during the weekend, except that one moment at Hell when work became the topic of discussion with @thebunbun - "drunk surgeons, 24 hour shifts", I listened in disbelief. But even then I was completely detached from it. That's the point of a holiday, right? Well, for the modern world, I don't think so. For me it brought equal amount of pain for the bliss. Complete reset isn't good, only half way so you remember where you're coming back to.

But I hope this misery stays with me for the rest of my time because then I know to remember how good it indeed was.

I miss that. I miss you guys.

_{From left to right:}

me aka. @celestal, @kristves, @rubencress, @eveuncovered, @escapist, @m31, @beercake, @thebunbun