If this comic diary sticks around for more than a year, you’ll eventually notice that I become full of self-pity every time summer comes to an end. I find it hard to accept that we’re in for half a year of cold and wet weather. I hate being cold. I’m also not particularly fond of the accompanying darkness. Fortunately, we’ve learned from past winters and are currently planning to spend some time somewhere with better weather this time around.
I love wearing my Apple Watch. Not only does it tell me that I apparently lost the ability to stay in Zone 2 while running, it also tracks everything else, lets me quickly set timers, pause my podcast without fishing my iPhone out of my pocket, and gives me glanceable information about my life.
Unfortunately, it looks like shit. That’s why I invested quite some money (€40) and bought this very pretty Casio watch. I love it! It’s shiny and has much more of a visual opinion than the Apple Watch, which has looked basically the same for the last decade.
I'm not sure if it's just a phase or if something happened, but she's very hard to read at the moment. One second, she's happily being brushed in her basket; the next, she swats at my hand because it's become too much for her. I don't know what's going on, especially because she still likes to be petted as much as ever. But she hasn't been properly brushed in about two weeks now, and I just hope she decides to let me do it again soon.
A big part of building a life you enjoy is challenging yourself from time to time. Most things worth doing aren’t easy. They might be for other people, but everyone has their own hang-ups. Mine is going out in public and doing stuff on my own. I’ve gotten a lot better at that in recent years, but I’m still not where I want to be.
And you know what? I embrace it as a project I get the opportunity to work on. Isn’t it great to have a life full of projects you’re allowed to keep working on? Yes. Yes, it is.
Especially because I’m kind of double-dipping in the upside sauce: once because I get to feel great right after challenging myself, like I did after that afternoon in a café, and then again when I’ve challenged myself for long enough to suddenly become someone for whom it feels easy to spend time alone in a café.
What a privilege!
In Germany we have the saying “Was muss, das muss,” which roughly translates to “What has to be done must be done” and I think that’s beautiful.
We should react with “Ew,” then completely ignore whatever tried to rage-bait us more often.
Sometimes, it really do be like that.
I built a shelf for my art supplies! I now have a whole new section in my office dedicated to storing my pens, pencils, paper, sketchbooks, brushes, and paints. I love it!
The Year of Art has been going on for more than six months now, and I don’t feel like I’ll be stopping anytime soon. This really has a chance of becoming a lifelong project, so it felt worth improving the logistics around it.
I don’t know why, but the ending of Disclosure Day made me cry?!
We successfully built everything. Let’s just not mention how, a couple of days later, a real handyman had to come and bolt it all to the wall properly.
Anna’s new kitchen was installed on Monday, and I saw it for the first time on that evening. It’s beautiful!
Germany seems to have a reputation for apartments being rented without kitchens. A couple of people have told me that, though I can’t confirm it myself. I’ve never moved into an apartment that didn’t have a kitchen. Maybe I’ve just been lucky.
Aaand we're off to the UK. First Glasgow and Edinburgh, then London.
Packing is the worst. I’m not even bad at it, it just isn’t fun. It’s like a puzzle where the result will never be perfect, and you just have to live with the compromises. Especially when you’re flying with only carry-on luggage.
It took me quite a long time to realise that I tend to get hangry. Once I noticed it, the fallout was reduced significantly, and I’d consider it a solved problem now. But it’s funny how we sometimes don’t reflect enough on the connection between our bodies and our moods, and end up spending years running around grumpy simply because we haven’t eaten and never made that link.
(I really can’t complain about too many meetings, though. We have a very strict “Let’s not fill everyone’s days with something that could just as well be a non-synchronous Slack thread” policy. So when a meeting runs longer than planned, it’s usually for good reason.)
I’m trying, once again, to become a bike person. It’s easier to get to Anna’s new apartment by bike than by subway or bus.
Sant Jordi preparation.
It was the Long Night of Museums. You buy one ticket and can visit every museum of the city.
Ended up with some weird Harry Potter fan fiction. Not great.
