Mediocre excuses of absence | plus a sort of good one

So, I was called 'back' to Hive ('back' as I never really leave) by my dear friend @bigtom13 through a lovely initiative by @galenkp to share some positivity and namedropping on Hive :-) It warmed my heart as I read that some people mentioned they would love to meet me (yes, you too, @bashadow and @hlezama and @rafaelgreen) - and suddenly I felt so happy that I'm still a part of Hive and this great community that I wanted to drop a post - even if it was just a short and rambling one.

This feeling already had a kickstart this week when all the way from the USA a package arrived for me from @sjarvie5 - it was lovely, filled with goodies from her life and youth, and including a b-day calendar with each month show off one of her pictures. I felt so lucky to receive that package and note and presents and pieces of her! Thank you so much @sjarvie5! (I will send you an e-mail on a later date <3)

_{I appreciate people appreciating my photography, so this one if for you @bashadow! I took it yesterday, and it wasn't raining, and it wasn't taken in a train but in a bus, but the sun ways shining and gave me some lovely clouds to capture. Edited it just now for this post :-)}

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Anyway, as promised through the title of this post, I have some mediocre excuses for my absence lately:

• I have been distracted
• I felt I was not really 'up to date' on everything happening on Hive (even the HardFork sort of happened without me sitting at the edge of my chair like I normally am during HardForks), which meant I didn't want to drop in without reading up on everything and everyone
• I was kicked out of @peakd + @keychain for a while after the HardFork, and didn't have time to figure out why or even figure out if I needed to report a bug or something, so I just let it figure out itself (bad bad Rosa!)
• I dropped my phone and now my screen is broken all over and I don't want to repair it as it's time to replace the phone anyway but that means less time on @ecency as well, which normally would at least keep me updated on what you guys are talking about
• I was just plain old more active offline, or ehm, nowadays, even 'real life' stuff happens online so yeah, but still, stuff that sort of happend in my real-life, but hmmm, Hive is real-life too, so ehmmm... I'm confused now. I was doing stuff that didn't have anything to do with Hive. Yeah. That's the way to put it :D

Okay - those excuses were really really mediocre. I have some better excuse actually: I very suddenly decided to go back to being a student!

Basically, everything I've been writing lately about health and therapy is now on my mind fulltime as I've decided to start the study of becoming a Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) expert so I can perform PNI therapy myself in 2 years time

WHAT?!

Yes, I still can barely believe it myself, but I enrolled somewhere in September after having learned that my university degree in Psychology was 'enough' to enrol in education that I thought would need more expertise in the field of medicine, physiology, or even (bio)chemistry. But when I was told I could enter with 'just' that psychology degree and had about two days to decide because they had already filled up the available slots my life sort of changed very quickly. The following happened, as I like to present my life in bullets today:

• I got scared
• I talked about it with my boyfriend who basically said 'why would you NOT do this awesome thing?'
• I talked about it with my brother and his girlfriend who basically said 'why would you NOT do this awesome thing?'
• I cried, because I couldn't believe only a few months ago I was still feeling depressed, and now I was already feeling so much better that I was even ABLE to consider a big step like this (also proof of getting better I guess)
• I told my parents 'I was going to do this awesome thing'
• I send an e-mail at the PNI institute saying 'I want to do this awesome thing'

From that point on I've been preparing to start my studies, actually started my studies, then had to recover from that start which was so interesting and so so overwhelming, and then started studying everything I could find left and right on the internet and in books as I actually do feel I need some background in medicine, physiology and (bio)chemistry to completely master this expertise of PNI :D

But also: I'm curious. Which is an awesome feeling. And I've also accepted that understanding will come with time and I won't get everything right from day one.

Which my therapist (yes, she's a PNI therapist and I told her I would be her colleague in a few years time) has translated for me: "The fact that you can be so flexible in your idea about how to master the PNI makes me believe you will be an awesome therapist!"

And I hope I will be.

Thank you for reading.

I'm still buzzing from all of it and hope you appreciate the little update. Tell me about you, too. How are things going? What's keeping you occupied lately?