Fun and Responsibility | The final column: Please disembark!

When something comes to an end, we often think about how it began. Where does the fun end and the responsibility begin? Where does responsibility end and the fun begin? Why is it almost impossible to experience one without the other? Just as relaxation can only occur on the basis of tension, even on a purely muscular level: the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems need each other. To enjoy the view, you first have to climb a mountain – if you take the gondola, it's never as beautiful up there as when you've carried yourself up there with great effort. Similarly, the coolness of a mountain lake is never so refreshing if you don't feel the inner heat of the climb.

They say there are good problems and bad problems—because everyone has problems. A terminal illness, for example, is a bad problem, while a conflict with your boss can be a good one. The question is whether the problem has the potential to help you grow, to develop. Writing a column is always a problem in a way, because it looms before you like a mountain you have to climb: the latent guilt, the procrastination, is part of the equation. Writing a column feels like an itch that intensifies weekly, an itch that can only be soothed by writing. As if something, life itself, is piling up on you. And the lens through which you see your experiences is constantly sharpening. A blessing and a curse in equal measure, when everything you experience has the potential to become a story, told well or not so well.

I shed "fun and responsibility" like a snake sheds its skin. A skin of writing and words. The stories lie on me, like the objects I own sometimes do at night. An inventory of my own life story. The brain is the storage, the attic of the body. Some things gather dust there, some are forgotten. Much must be forgotten to make room for the new.

With my eyelids closed and my eyes open beneath them, I lie in bed every night. Instead of falling asleep, I begin to try and remember, piece by piece, every object I've ever owned. A hopeless task. When an object appears before my mind's eye that I can't place, I get up and start searching. Once I've found it, I lie back down in bed, relieved. Sometimes I take the object with me, even if it's something like a kitchen utensil. I want to keep it as close as possible so I never lose it again. If I can't find it, it leaves me feeling uneasy. I add the object to a list: "Things I've Lost." I have lists for everything I've missed, neglected, lost, lent, squandered, ordered, or not yet received, lists that I add to every day.

On good nights, it stays that way; on bad nights, the process repeats itself, again and again, until, utterly exhausted from taking inventory, I fall asleep—without even realizing I've fallen asleep. I think of the saying "The house never loses anything" and of: "Home is where the haunt is" (Mark Fisher). Hauntings—searching for a home: secretive, cozy, uncanny. Haunted by haunted houses.

When I wake up the next morning, there in my bed, around me, are: a large ceramic bowl, my mother's key ring, my vaccination record, my first boyfriend's stuffed animal, a vintage Prada suit, the complete works of Marx and Engels, a particularly enormous chestnut (the first one I found this autumn), a silver brooch, an Opinel pocketknife, and a mug I've had since childhood, with a mouse licking up spilled liquid on it. Many children had that exact mug—a collective memory. A déjà vu.

There's a photo from the '90s. My father is lying on the floor of our living room, but he's invisible. I've placed everything I, a kindergartener, own on top of him. If I were to bring everything I own now into my bed at night, never to lose sight of it again, I'd probably suffocate under it in my sleep. The great surplus heap of a lifetime. Fun and responsibility are inextricably linked. Farewell, my itch for a column; I'm so looking forward to the writer's block that lies ahead.

This was Olga Hohmann's last column. We say thank you very much and wish her much enjoyment and responsibility in the future!