Am I Famous Now…

is the question which that many times occupies me. I have always had a lucky life and never had to bother about much. I always worked hard and certainly always was lucky financially. I still work hard and am sure pretty soon my financial situation will be better again, my self created bad situation. But lets move on.

Last week I needed a favour, a favour from my dad. So we called. Obviously it was easy for him to do what I asked him for, why would I otherwise have asked him?
It also was our first phone call since some years, so we had to catch up a little. Last years we have mainly been mailing, kinda no news, good news style. But this time I felt it was time to call. Don’t ask me why, I just felt like calling this time. I better hadn’t. To make a several hours long phone call short : he wants me to return to Belgium, especially after my fiasco last week (not that this week was much better).

Now why should I return to Belgium? I.don’t.like.Belgians. The point is that my grandfather is very lonely lately. He still lives in his house and since grandmother has died, several years ago, he never wanted to sell the house. Is it strange that someone doesn’t want to sell a self-built house after 40 years? Guess not. Idea is following : I move in and of course GET the house. The house is friggin huge (180sqm with an underground with basement and garage, but actually this should be called ground floor).

Basically I could do anything in Belgium. Use the house to get a loan and open a bar, get a decent job in IT or anywhere (my name and connections make it easy) or just work from home. Besides that the house terrace is great, and the garden is lovely. But why should I go?
I have no links and feelings towards my home country anymore. I have hardly been there last 13 years. Tell me why!

Obviously the whole family already knows about the phone call and everyone expects me to agree. The perpetuous problem with my family, the reason why usually we only mail : to maintain a certain degree of distance. Without that every time the expectations are that damn high, too damn high!
Expectations I don’t always want to fill in. Just like now.

It all reminds me of how we started mailing one year after I had left Belgium spontaneously. Again I was in Amsterdam (NL) and worked for a boss who had become a friend. It was only an intermediate job after what had happened to us a year before (insiders know the story). I was planning to open a new hip place with friends. One day I wanted to mail my father and realized he had no email, so I printed my email out and send it to him. Only 3 days later he EMAILED me back. We speak 1995 and my father became a nerd… LMAO.
Soon my mother also had an own email account and we mailed daily. I had travelled a whole year, so there was quite alot to tell… and I needed professional advice. After not one week, actually I was surprized it took a whole week, the surprize came :

We just filled up our fuel tank in Luxemburg and can easily take some days off to come to visit you and your girlfriend. We would love to meet her.

Uh? WTF? Did I write I was going to marry? Or did they expect me to marry in the coming weeks? I had only written that I shared a flat with my best friend, a woman!
Didn’t I just leave and not contact my parents a whole year long? Did they really think some days of mailing had prepared me for an imminent visit?

Was it a surprize I totally turned cold again and dived in my project? And didn’t mail for months anymore? The place was a huge success and got sold within only some months (hint : now there are establishments in Rome, Israel and San Francico as well, but it all started with just some friends)
Why did one phone call some days ago make them make me such an offer and hope/expect that much? Do they really think I shall pack my stuff now and move, move back to the family? Why can’t they just give me time to grow into our new old-style contact and let me roll my life?
Now I even have to figure out a way to tell them I can’t take their offer, but without breaking up the newly created contact. Thanks dad.

Why can’t life be simple?