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.
The fact that I’m even willing to regularly visit a hairdresser who doesn’t let me pay by card speaks volumes about the quality of Ramona’s work and her company. I genuinely like getting my hair cut by her and even actively look forward to it. My friendly-passive-aggressive habit of pointing out that this is literally the only thing in my life I still carry cash for hasn’t borne any fruit yet, unfortunately.
I was supposed to pick up a package for Anna while she was away, and I’m not even kidding when I say the kiosk was somehow even more chaotic in real life. There was barely any space to move, customers had to step over packages, and the staff couldn’t seem to find anything. In the end, I had to help them look for Anna’s package myself, but not before they tried to convince me that maybe it wasn’t there at all.
When he actually spoke up, I could understand him perfectly, but he insisted on whispering even though the place was pretty noisy and I obviously couldn’t make out what he was saying. The interaction was somehow even more absurd in real life than it is in this comic.
Justine and Pablo offered "Hitschies" at Justine's party. I'd never tried them before, and they were delicious. Delicious enough for me to get weak and buy myself a whole pack. I really shouldn't have sweets at home because I know I can't control myself around them. I'm pretty good at controlling myself when it comes to not buying stuff I don't want to consume, though. So this was kind of a rare lowlight in my culinary adventures.
I bought a tube of white gouache to use for occasional highlights in my watercolor paintings and haven't touched it once since. Anyway! I'm very happy with this little hand gesture. It's dorky, funny, and reads well.
Perhaps it was the tiredness from the day before, but I somehow lost track of time and thought it was Sunday already. I hurried to get the newsletter finished and published before meeting Anna, only to then find out that it was, in fact, Saturday. Oh well.
I’m not sure what’s going on in this house, but sometimes it feels like some kind of social experiment where normal people have been thrown in with people who don’t care about anyone else, just to see what happens.
Those cinnamon buns were the worst! But at least they were very expensive, so it hurt twice.
Do you know those people who buy a very dry and far too expensive cinnamon bun and then let it ruin their whole day? They don’t stop complaining about it, it wrecks their mood, and they can’t get over the atrocity they had to endure? I never wanted to be a person like that, and I’m happy to report that I didn’t become one.
I don’t want the quality of my life to be determined by how well I can circumvent every tiny inconvenience. It’s far more fun to just go with it and consider the worst cinnamon bun of your life not a personal affront, but a good story to tell.
Every time a long train ride is part of the itinerary, I pack my Switch 2. Every time, I pull it out for maybe ten minutes, if that, before it ends up shoved back into my backpack. You’d think I’d have learned by now and just leave it at home. But I’ll do exactly the same thing next time.
Marcel from four years ago would never have been able to go for a run after a day of travel. For one thing, I wasn’t running back then. For another, travel used to take so much out of me that I’d be completely spent.
But over the last couple of years, I’ve worked on my relationship with travel, and this run felt like one of the clearest signs of progress.
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.
Right? I feel like there are rules but none of the cats care to elaborate. Not fair.
We should react with “Ew,” then completely ignore whatever tried to rage-bait us more often.
Millimeter didn’t actually react like that. That was just my attempt to make the cartoon a bit less boring.
I ordered a printer! Exciting times over here!
It’s sometimes hard to cope with the fact that all my friends improve so much at running in such a short time, even though I train three times a week.
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 sometimes forget to make enough time for myself, which leaves my social battery completely drained and brings on headaches.
Last time, my hairdresser Ramona and I slightly misjudged both my hair length and the timing between appointments, and I ended up looking like someone who rather enjoys having far too much hair on their head. I’m fortunate not to have thinning hair, despite being a man in his thirties, so it feels a bit tone-deaf to complain about having too much of it. But with hair as thick as mine, it can sometimes become a real nuisance. But I’m not complaining, and I count my blessings.
In Germany, we have the saying "Man muss die Feste feiern, wie sie fallen", which loosely translates to "You have to celebrate the good times as they come". We tried. We failed. Oh well.
Busses are the worst kind of public transportation. Change my mind!
Meetings before 10 AM should be forbidden.
I'm very strong.
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.
We will persevere through these challenging times.
Running intervals offers an interesting contrast. I never want to do them, even less than a classic run. But once I get going, they’re so much more fun. There’s something deeply life-affirming about sprinting through a forest. It feels almost primal.
We had quite a social day. Notting Hill is unbelievably beautiful.
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.
Hamburg is considering a bid to host the Olympic Games, and the citizens have been voting on it.
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.)
Keeping up a long-distance friendship requires sacrifices. Mine is spending the last 30 minutes of Cecilia’s and my regular FaceTime session in agony because I drank way too much water while we were talking.
My hand felt a bit numb this morning. The doctor said it might be because Millimeter hit a tendon. It got better over the course of the day.
Millimeter sometimes misjudges her strength. She just wanted to tell me to stop petting her, and I didn’t recognize the signs. My bad.
This was a couple of days ago; it's still in my hallway.
Bless you!
I’m not made for interacting with humans for more than a couple of hours at a time.
The walls are thin, and I'm a bit sensitive to noise.
The Döner wasn't even good. Fantastic company, though.
I saved money by buying something I don't need. I guess I could play through those Spider-Man games?
Can't run 10K without clothing, can I?
