Lone dino goes about their business. Image from Gratisography, copyright-free

Weekly Vent: the house is empty again

So today I start a column called Weekly Vent. Because, why not. I’m sitting in this empty house that’s The Leipzig Glocal, on a Sunday, with oily hair and droopy squinty eyes. Tired. The figurative house still gets guests, visitors, but only I “live” here now. Yet another team has left and at the moment, I confess I don’t feel like dealing with people.

Problem is, I still need to post content, if nothing else. Suddenly, I remembered I used to do creative writing. It used to pour out of me so easily. Now the mere thought of writing a well-thought-out blog article makes me cringe. I’m way out of practice since I hadn’t written anything on this platform in many months. Buckle in, this isn’t going to be a particularly clever first weekly vent.

Happy Birthday to me! Alone again, naturally. Photo from Gratisography, royalty-free

I’m the founder of The Leipzig Glocal (LeipGlo) and at the very beginning, in 2015, I also “lived” alone in it. This was supposed to be my personal blog, with the participation of a few friends (as guests) and their creative musings. But within a few weeks, the blog had attracted its first team and become more like a webzine. We developed ambitions of going professional and the core mission of helping internationals connect with the local scene, and vice-versa.

As I owned the brand and was closely intertwined with it, often people who didn’t like me (anymore) or my chaotic mind and sudden movements left the project.

(This is also what happens when you try to please people all the time, get resentful, and then lose it at some point. And when you work with volunteers and are mostly a volunteer yourself in this.) Other contributors I actually let go, or they left because they weren’t getting as much from LeipGlo as they were putting in. We didn’t start making any money until 2018, with the first job fair we organized.

Then the job fairs ran dry due to COVID-19. I had a burnout, no proper income, had to deal with fines, walked away, left others in charge by themselves, and ultimately drove them away. Now I have an income again – from my very demanding academic job – but find myself with eight years’ worth of expectations for LeipGlo and an empty tank on the side, creatively, energetically.

socially distanced job fair teaser
The author, Ana Ribeiro, at the first Leipzig Glocal Job Fair, which she and her team organized in November 2018. (Photo: Justina Smile Photography)

People keep asking me what direction I wanna take it now. I’m already trying to get paying clients back – clients lost, or almost lost, when the team I put in charge let the ball drop on LeipGlo as a business. I sort of don’t blame them. I didn’t leave them a roadmap, and even if I had, they wouldn’t have liked it. They had told me as much when our bridge to each other started getting burnt two summers ago. It got so bad that we couldn’t really communicate anymore, I said I planned to sell the brand, they jumped ship without a warning, and I locked the door behind them.

In the next heartbeat, I had to get back on the ship or let it sink. Two days before my 39th birthday, this wasn’t a “present” I was expecting to receive. I thought I had just about moved on.

But here we are.

selective focus photography of traffic light
Photo by Jos van Ouwerkerk on Pexels.com

Weekly Vent is my new column, where I’m just going to tell you what I’m up to or give insights; it may or may not happen every week, but the name sounded catchy to me; you may or may not read it at all, but at least it’s fresh content.

I do not know, at this point, if I really do want to sell the brand. I’ll have to do a fair amount of soul-searching and ask myself the reasons for going back to doing this myself. I’ll have to spend time asking what I want out of all this, how this fits into my current life and into my future plans. Somehow letting it just drop, shutting it down, doesn’t seem like an option for me, now that I do have my keys back… although not in the way I would’ve liked.

So for now, this is what I can give you, dear readers: Posting some stuff in this space and on social media. Publishing articles from the few contributors who still want to write, despite what they heard from the disgruntled former team (I’m the problem, it’s me). Having you post events and sharing them with you. Still offering the jobs and doctors list, and a link to movie showtimes. Sourcing information about Leipzig from my own observations, from the web, and from ChatGPT. Kinda sorta planning the next job fair, whenever that will be. Those were mostly my own ideas to begin with, anyway.

I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, and my weekly vents and random Insta stories, at least for the time being.

In this era of public oversharing and narcissism, I’m drawing inspiration from Prince Harry’s Spare book. I’m reading it as we speak and will let you know what I think about it at some point.

I ask you kindly:

Bear with me as I try to figure this whole shebang out.

If you’ve got questions, ideas for weekly vent topics, or any other story ideas, feel free to contact me. I may not answer right away, but unless you’re a spammer (I do get a lot of those), I will get back to you.

Thank you for your continuing support. Thank you for taking the time to read my first official weekly vent.

Yours truly,

Ana

A Global Studies doctoral degree holder and former newspaper reporter, avid eater, pseudo-philosopher and poet, occasion-propelled singer, semi-professional socializer, movie addict, Brazilian-American nomad. In this space, she will share some of her experiences and (mis)adventures regarding various topics, with special attention to social issues.

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