The Apartment With No Floors

Stephanie is standing outside her old apartment building in Hamburg. It's snowing. The Alster has frozen over. She can see the picture window of her old living room from the street.

She doesn't go in. It's not her space anymore. But she wanders the little garden out front, takes some photos, and starts doing the math on what that younger Stephanie actually pulled off - first apartment, foreign language, no floors, German tax law, a whole life built from scratch.

This one's about giving yourself credit for the things you just did because they needed doing. And why that's harder than it sounds.

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:32 The Building
• 01:45 Wandering Back
• 02:30 17 Years Later
• 03:15 No Floors
• 04:28 You Built a Whole Life
• 05:10 And You Paid Taxes
• 05:45 Give Yourself More Credit
• 07:20 Until Next Time

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, I'm Stephanie Arapian, and this is the Centered Creator Podcast. I tell stories from my creative life, my travels, my many questionable decisions, and what I've learned about being human along the way. This one's about going back to visit an apartment I lived in 17 years ago. And the younger version of myself I found standing outside it in the snow. It had snowed most all of the time that I had visited Germany on this trip, but it was cold as well. It was so cold, I think, that it actually froze the Alster in Hamburg over that two days that I was there. And I'm looking at this small park. Not really even a park, just a well-maintained little garden area. It did have a couple of benches in it. There was at least one walkway. I think there was one slide. It was definitely more of a family-friendly area. And it was, I'm gonna say, about two streets back from one of the major pedestrian zone streets that lead into the S Bond station behind Altona. And it was a red brick building. My apartment was in the middle on the first floor, which was just a few stairs up, and I could see the picture window that was my living room facing out onto the park. And I didn't go into the stairway because I felt like that was a little bit like it's not really my space anymore. It's private. But I was able to wander around the little park area and around to the back. And in the back there was a little balcony that came off of the bedroom. Or at least that's how I set it up. I feel like you could maybe set it up the other way, but it felt like that was too public-facing that picture window to be my bedroom. But I was wandering around, taking some photos, just remembering what it felt like to live there. Oh, I remember this so well. And I felt that way about the whole city. I remembered it so well. And I think part of that is my job literally pushed me to go to different places all around the city in a way that a regular nine to five would possibly not. So I actually had a pretty good orientation and was really surprised by how familiar and how much I knew about, yep, this is over there, and yep, that is where that store is. Oh, yeah, and there's that Chinese restaurant just off the Hauptbahnhof that I really liked going to and felt very Chinese after living in China. Going back after 17 years gave me an amazing perspective and so much more love, even forgiveness or grace around who Stephanie 17 years ago was. I was looking at this and I'm like, Stephanie, wow. And I'm looking at this at like Stephanie from 17 years ago is standing next to me. And wow, you did some pretty crazy impressive things. This was the first place that I had ever lived on my own, without flatmates, without roommates, without living at home with my mom and dad. And you did it in a foreign language with an apartment that, for some reason, I still don't quite understand, did not have floors, and then you just had to go figure it out, because obviously you needed floors, so you learned to go to the German equivalent of a Home Depot to figure out how to lay down laminate floors and put those together yourself and saw off the edges. And it was a little wonky, but we made it work. And buy furniture and put furniture together in your home and uh figure out how to do a two-sided curtain for your shower to make that hang, because I'd never dealt with that before. And you did it all again in a foreign language that you didn't really speak at the time very well. I had some lovely people who helped me, and one in particular was the secretary of one of the schools that I worked for. But you did all that. Not only that, but you were navigating a job that put you all over the city, and you built up your own friend network. You got into things that supported you, you found things that made you feel good, and you found friends, and you built a whole life, and you paid taxes. Okay, I found a Stroja Breaterin that managed to do all that for me because German tax law is crazy. So much paperwork. But I did all those things. And I just look back at that myself and I'm like, you did a lot. That's more than a lot of people at that age would do. I just was giving myself, my young self, this great big hug as I was touring around the city. Like, wow, Stephanie, give yourself more credit. You did a lot of stuff. And this, maybe sharing the story maybe makes me sound like I'm being very arrogant. But what I'm trying to do here is give myself more credit than I usually do because I have, and I think a lot of us do this so often, is especially the people who are go-getters, who are driven, who are people pleasers even, or just very active in pursuit of a goal. It just needs to get done, so I'll just do it. That was been my mode for so long about so many things, and I'm still doing it and learning to undo it in a healthy way. That being able to take this side trip to Hamburg and visit my younger self and coming back as a producer and a filmmaker and look back at that younger Stephanie and who she was at the time, who was just exploring the world, making a life, doing all of these looking back, super challenging things, but not giving myself credit for accepting the challenge, meeting it, and in my opinion, now exceeding it. Like, I did well. Good job, you and I just feel like we need to give ourselves more props sometimes. I love that I gave myself this moment to revisit a younger version of myself and be able to look at it through older eyes and give myself more credit than I ever have before for the things that I managed to achieve and accomplish and how I've grown since then. That young Stephanie is still here, and I just I don't know, giving her a bit more love than she's gotten at the time. Until next time, take care.