Grey

Exactly five years ago my career took a turn for the better when I started my first job in the foreign relations field, and I haven’t looked back since. Today I paid a visit to my boss at the time, to whom I am still grateful for having recruited me. My third day in Brussels. We had an intensive and sometimes tense five-hour meeting with the World Bank and other donors to our host country yesterday, and it is beginning to look as if we might pull the arrears clearance scheme off if all the details work out. I have started to work on a budgetary aid project proposal for 14 million euros which would be the basis for the rest of the multidonor scheme. I will work on it this weekend in this comfortable hotel room of mine. Workwise it is good to be away from the office for a few days to concentrate on this particular issue of budgetary aid. It is also good to see colleagues I am usually only in e-mail contact with, things work out a lot better when you talk in person. Over the years I have found out that especially in tense situations e-mail is a lousy means of communication, and my Dutch bluntness doesn’t necessarily help when communicating with all those sensitive French and Italian souls.. I haven’t been feeling all that great these days. The grey skies of Brussels are having their way with my serotonin levels, or is it being away from A. and the children? I am not very good at the latter, in fact ever less so, and it has made me think of the second half of the year, when the family will stay in Lith. We knew that, planned that and accepted being separated as an acceptable price to pay for yet another baby. Having said all this though it won’t be easy on any of us. I am particularly worried about M. and T., who are very attached to me. Another thing that’s weighing down upon me is that I found out here that the boss has tried to revise my staff report downwards. I was informed of it by his boss, a Dutch director. The surprising thing is that my position in Brussels is apparently strong enough that the latter wouldn’t accept it. What bothers me the most is that the boss hadn’t even discussed this downward revision with me. I wonder if I should talk it over with him once I am back, or just let it rest. It is good to see that there are still some ex-colleagues I remain friends with, that I am happy to see after a long absence, and who, they too, seem genuinely pleased to catch up with me. I have seen and had drinks or lunch/dinner with several of them. Nevertheless on the whole this big organisation I work for is not the right place to look for personal happiness (professional gratification is another thing). The stakes, also personal, are too big. I may be looking for the wrong things of course. I would probably be bored stiff within a month without the thrill and adrenalin rushes my present line of work gives me, but a slight sense of estrangement is always just around the corner. Walking through Brussels there is something depressing about all those worked-up self-important suits (of which I am one of course). I consider myself privileged that I can do what I do, but a nagging Weltschmerz remains and strikes especially when I am away from my loved ones. After meetings yesterday and drinks with an old colleague, I spent some time in Brussels’ biggest store for books, music and computers, the FNAC, then went to see a movie on Truman Capote and his writing of In Cold Blood. Not bad at all, and inspiring in a way (as far as writing is concerned….).