Takin' It Slow Just Became A Trend.

ClickBurg, the Word of the Day, even The Grim DotCom are starting to feel more and more like *work* these days, and I realise that it's due to two reasons. One, my actual job has lost practically everything I appreciated about it, in short, all the fun is gone, and that backlashes into my 'unpaid jobs' as well, of course. I mean, for 36 hours a week I'm now doing something I can't justify in my mind anymore, except that it pays the bills. That takes the excitement, enthousiasm and speed out of the entire week. The second reason is that, while this semi-burnout is happening, I'm increasingly raising the bar on all the other work, which just takes more and more time, ends up having more and more tedious bits of boring work involved in it, etc. -- I'm sure the fact that I haven't slept a proper night's sleep in weeks doesn't help matters much either.

So today I'm opening the newspapers with a sigh, having to go through all that awfully boring and uninspiring news again while trying to find that one gem word mutation miscreant that brightens up my blog for the day. And I can't find anything ! I went halfway through the first newspaper until I stumbled upon the first word.. and then the second, and third.. there were EIGHT on these two pages, all new, all about the same thing.
I'm referring to the middle pages of Sp!ts today, where there is a major trend in the career world being highlighted. And I hope you can appreciate the irony: it's all about taking things slower and having more fun with what you do, focussing on the things that matter most to you, etc. - and about the increasing numbers of burnouts among Dutch people that necessitate this trend more and more.
It's beautiful. I have tears in my eyes. It's so common sense, and yet, even I have been losing track of all this lately. And to top it all off, the articles are virtually laden with trend-hype-words !

Here they are: 'slowlife', 'slowlifetrend', 'punctualiteitsdrift' (urge for punctuality), 'dut-kamer' (nap room), 'dommelsessies' (doze sessions), 'slow-leven' (leven can be life or the verb to live), 'turbokapitalisme' (I doubt a translation is required) and 'slowtrend'.

Bliss. What a page. I feel like framing it and hanging it up somewhere.
But then the downside: I have to pick one of these. And although I have a few non-favourites amongst them, it's a rough choice !

The Word of the Day is 'turbokapitalisme'. Don't question it towards me because I'm very liable to change my mind on this. But it seems the most ridiculous one of the set. I think.

Damnit, I'm going to go outside in the sun, take a slow walk, get some nice warm kibbeling for lunch, have a smoke, and relax before I work on anything else anymore today.