List of gratitudes 2022

 Needless to say sadly, 2022 was now the third hard year we are facing since the pre-pandemic period. It seems that these maladies are comming like in old myths and histories, together one after another. The war did not affect us directly, but it does our everyday life and politics daily.

In this new madness which affects more and more the world and made an almost gnostic dualism in the West, an artificial "left" and "right" war (which actually is more complex), I tried to find sanity and my own islands of happiness in meetings, personal experiences, a record number of conferences and travelling. This year was so intense than the previous 2 together. Extraordinary in the accummulated experiences and academic achievements, but also very demanding for my body and soul. Next year I will put more effort to spend time with myself and will put aside the academic life, at least on nr. 2 or 3. 

I don't have illusions when it comes to the future year, that our global struggles as humanity will continue in 2023 too, but I do hope that these evil energies will not win and the energy of creation will conquer all of us.

Here is my list of gratitudes for 2022: 

• I am grateful for my family and friends, those few who always helped me in this year and those who are far from me, but we are in constant and living connection. Their physical and spiritual aid is priceless and represents the human fuel of life in a world of transhumanism. 
• I am happy to spend so many amazing hours with friends and colleagues in Split, Vienna, Budapest, Sibiu, Cluj, Bontida, Balatonfüred, Rome, Athens, Zagreb, Poetovio, Erfurt, Graz and Timisoara. Amazing experiences, although way too much for a year. 
• Glad to publish the major results of my previous 3 years research on Roman religion in the Danubian provinces (a book, a digital map and at least 11 studies). After my PhD, this was the most demanding and hardest job I done.
• Glad to see live again Moderat, GusGus, Molchat Doma, Acid Arab and many other amazing musical experiences in this summer. 
• Happy to see so many amazing museums and libraries in 2022 in Vienna and Rome especially. 
• Glad that I am alive and avoided major health issues, although I had several flues and viruses this year too. 
• Happy I still have a job in academia, which is more and more difficult today, especially for my generation. I feel lucky in many sense.
• Grateful for those who helped me in Szeged and Vienna to receive a habilitation stipendium, which allows me to have a decent life and research perspectives for the next 3 years. 
• Happy, that I found this year new friends and allies, although its not easy today to built up new relationships and friendships. I lost few colleagues this year too, who cannot accept my views on politics, biopolitics and other issues from this gnostic, dualist world.

Lets hope, we will have a peaceful year in 2023, or at least those who want wars and division will fail. 

List of gratitudes - 2018

In the last few years, I try to sum up my year on my birthday. This is the advantage, when you are born in a day, when everyone is in holidays and big parties are not really possible. I'm using this day for reflecting on my passed year: goods and bads, results, failures and what happened with me and the world around myself. 

2018 was one of those "big" years, although I was lucky enough to have a "big" event in my life almost every year in the last six years. This year in politics was unbearable in Romania and in the world too  and I'm sure the next year will be similar too. We need lot of self-defense techniques to survive the global world and the smaller enviroment's negative powers, but also to create a better world. 

This year was a paradigmatic one in my own small world too: new job, new city and lot of amazing things I experienced, which for I'm very grateful.

Here is my list of gratitudes for 2018:

- I'm grateful for my relatively good health

- grateful for my family who supported me in April-May when I decided to leave Cluj

- grateful for my old and amazing new friends from Budapest: great inspirations for me all of them

- thankful for my new job at the University of Sibiu: a dream I was hoping for since years 

- thankful for my summer (Sziget festival too)

- grateful for finding an amazing flat in Sibiu in a historical environment

- thankful for some of my friends in Sibiu who helps me a lot to accommodate in a new world

- grateful for finishing and publishing in Oxford the results of my 5 years long PhD 

-thankful for my most amazing Serbian friends who made it possible to participate on the Limeskongress this year - a really beautiful memory of late summer

- thankful for my colleagues and new friends from Szeged, where I will have a new research project next year.

This year was a "big" one for me. I hope, next year will be about stability, personal, spiritual awarness and evolution of all of us. A year of preparation for some bigger, more important steps on personal and on community scales too.  Maybe even on global scales too...

Wish you all a beautiful new year in 2019!

List of gratitudes 2015

As I did also last year, I decided again, to write a very personal post in my blog. Nowadays, when some people find  "boring" or lazy to write a personalized letter for birthday and human relationships became more and more superficial, real values such as old friendships, fidelity, responsibility, hard and persistent work, kindness and devotion need a special care for survivor. 

So, here is a list, why I'm very grateful and thankful in this year:

• grateful for my relatively good health and the fact, that I had no serious injures in this year (although I found my limits in this sense)
• grateful for my amazing friends, especially those who I know since 15 or even 20 years now. Biggest gift of the human adventure to have so long interactions and relationships
• grateful for all the new friends and nice colleagues who I met in this year and we are keeping our friendship also now. They made much easier my stay in all the foreign countries I visited or where I need to live 
• thankful for visiting 15 cities in 5 countries in this year and all the cool people I met there
• thankful for my colleagues from Erfurt, who still represent the best spiritual and intellectual support to survive a cute, but for me, too provincial town 
• thankful for the colleagues from Alba Iulia and my friends there, helping me to write the book about Cserni Béla 
• thankful for all the conferences, colloquiums and seminars where I had the opportunity to meet so many amazing names and personalities. A memorable moment of the year was the Lived Ancient Religion panel at the IAHR, where at least 20 of the best scholars from my field were present in a small room.
• and finally, I'm thankful for my struggles and painful experiences in this year too. They helped me to learn my limits, to be more confident and sure, what I want and what I like. My stay in Germany proved also, that I value more emotions, passion, devotion, fidelity and the old, Central European values than some so called liberal or Western ideologies.  And I'm proud of that. 

  

  One of the big discoveries of this year: the beauty of Prague