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Getting out of a rut. Daily posting Challenge!

Published by Birgit

Project Goal: Escaping being so lonely and stuck, being more courageous and less like an anxious snail.

I keep thinking about challenging myself with the goal of escaping this stagnation and isolation that has taken hold of me and my life. My idea is that by sharing short posts daily I can crack open the shell that is holding me back. It’s been several months of ‘thinking’ about it, several months in which I took no consistent actions. There is no time like the present. Without overthinking this any more: Let’s start.

Hi, my name is Birgit and I am stuck; and no longer young enough to expect that somehow something will fix itself; that’s why I plan to unstick myself. With daily blog activity. Why not? I have a lot of self-doubt because every time I tried this or something similar in the past: I failed. But past failure isn’t evidence to predict future possibilities. Let’s just start and see.

Day #1 – expect books, journals, snapshots, tips, food, coffee, basically old style blogging with a sprinkle of affiliate links because why not?

Active reading, listening, watching.. I want to get more out of what I ‘consume’ and experience and I think one of the best ways is to share or respond to what I enjoyed (or didn’t enjoy). I keep trying to convince friends to read actively, which for me means: get some post it notes and write down concepts & vocabulary notes and reflections or opinions about the passages I have read and place those post-its between the corresponding pages of the book. An external notebook is also great. But I love seeing a book filled with, removable, notes.

I was just watching Mark Manson on Youtube, presenting a video about ‘How to read more and faster.’ Well my first reaction is: I love the video but I sometiems regret it when I read a book too fast. Last year I read ‘The Naked Tourist’ by Lawrence Osborne, and in hindsight I wish I hadn’t been so impatient and had taken my time more. Luckily I took notes on post-its that I stuck all over the pages of the book, so I could probably return to key passages and read them again. Now that I am saying this: I think I will. Is The Naked Tourist a book I recommend? Well, it IS written with a bit of a male perspective and some of my feminist friends might not enjoy it as much, but I think it is worthwhile especially for the passages concerning tourism and its development and impact in several places in Asia. Maybe I’ll write a response to the book another time. I have recommended the book several times to people who also travel and wonder what made travel change as much as it has in the past century.

Mark Manson asked “How many books have you read this year and how many are your goal for 2024?”

Well, it is the approaching the end of February and I have only read just one so far: Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee. It was enjoyable, captivating and kept me reading, I found it hard to put this book down. Patchinko gives insights into Korean immigrant’s life and struggles caused by the social status Koreans have had in Japan. The narrative follows members of a Korean family throughout the unfolding of Japanese occupation of Korea, the end of WW2 and into contemporary times. We see how life struggles and priorities change with the times and how family structures change. The book touches on the different ways that Koreans in Diaspora adapted to their lives in Japan and the USA.

I would have enjoyed reading even more, Pachinko was reasonably long at almost 500 pages, but actually not long enough to have the space to full develop every of the characters we came to care for. I would love to see additional volumes following different family member’s life stories; and people connected to them; in even more depth.

If you have any interest in the world, travel, history, the interconnectedness of our global events of past, present and no doubt future, then I think you can’t go wrong reading Pachinko. I also think it is a great read if you have never really thought about Korea and its people, narratives like Pachinko offer a gateway into finding connection with people we felt are foreign.

I appreciate world literature as a unifying current that helps us see ourselves in the lives of people we previously thought of as strangers.

Books can be great ambassadors. South Korea is on my ‘map’ thanks to a series of chance events:

a) When I studied in London I couldn’t afford to rent a place, so I purchased a caravan on eBay and a fellow student and his wife, both from South Korea, allowed me to park my caravan on their driveway. Another colleague from the same postgraduate degree program helped me out by volunteering to collec and generously store my Art work from a gallery when I was away in America and couldn’t do it myself.

b) During the second big lockdown in 2021 I felt very down (who didn’t?) and chanced on a Standford university lecture about Growth Mentality and Different ways to Think about Maths. In it I learned that the act of trying benefits the mind far more than the act of succeeding. I wanted to put this to the test, could I restructure my brain if I embraced keping trying hard things regardless of outcome? I decided to try and study a language that I couldn’t imagine myself having any change of learning at all. I wanted to test ‘trying’ even if I was sure I would fail.

Which language should I choose? Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Finnish, Hebrew, Arabic, Russian? Somehow I felt like I had the least preconceptions about Korean, it was the most foreign to me. (I had exposure to the other languages either through past language learning attempts, friends or visits.) That’s how it started. I picked Korean based on that I knew the least about it. Except the kind friends’ support when we attended university in London, and the couple of times they offered me Kimchi, fermented cabbage, which was new to me but I really liked. (Remind me to talk more about Kimchi another time.)

I took Korean Language lessons on italki. I learned to read Hangeul, the Korean Alphabet. It was a weird experience to be so clumsy and try to put sounds, let alone meaning, to these shapes that make up Korean words. I can’t claim that I am confident nor proficient at it. I definitely make pronunciation mistakes. But I really enjoyed getting to grips with it and the core goal of this practice was to embrace growth mentality and keep trying even if it doesn’t seem to stick.

I am sad to admit that hardly anything of all the lessons that I took stuck in my mind. I can barely introduce myself. Considering how many lessons I took I should be able to say something but I can’t even bring myself to order a coffee at a nearby cafe that is owned by Koreans. But I haven’t given up yet. I would like to resume trying to learn at least the first 1-2 levels of Korean. Maybe if I keep trying .. I might succeed.

I definitely lack a more tangible language learning goal. There isn’t enough reason to learn Korean. Learning a language is much easier when you are surrounded by it. I admire people who become fluent in a language without ever having visited the country. Absolute unicorns.

c) At the same time as choosing Korean by chance, I saw a Netflix thumbnail for what I thought was a movie about the 9 lives of a cat. (I made an assumption based on the movie being called ‘Because this is my first life’ (이번 생은 처음이라 ) and the thumbnail showed a cat. I was having a difficult time to watching a movie about an anthropomorphised cat seemed like a good idea. It turned out that there was a cat but I had actually chanced on a romatic K-Drama with Lee Min Ki ( 이민기 ) and Jung So-min ( 정소민 ), two actors who are now among my favourite Korean actors. The ‘movie’ turned out to be a 16 episode series! There is no way I would have chosen a 16 part series but this was one of the first things I watched on Netflix and I just didn’t realise what I was in for. I hadn’t watched a complete series in years; and now I have watched ‘Because this is my first life’ twice! (Because it was so sweet I felt like seeing it a second time 12 months after my first. Is this how addictions start?)

This unleashed an intense 2 year, weekly K-Drama viewing habit. I just love how characters are developed in K-Drama and I really enjoy the sound of the language. This then lead to me purchasing a Samsung phone. Yes really. I made this choice because I thought: “If Koreans are THIS good at making K-Drama series, then they MUST be great at making phones, too!”

Sadly ALL these hours spent watching K-Drama have not left behind any Korean Language acquisition. I wish I had been more studious and had stuck more with the project of developing a Growth and Abundance Mindset.

(*Tangent Alert. Sorry! Long tangent: The high quality of K-Drama and the Korean Wave, aka Hallyu 한류, is what started the process of me slowly reducing my reliance on Apple products. I am aware of customer retention strategies and making tech products sticky and difficult to leave, not impossible but it is very time consuming and requires a lot of dedication to extract oneself out of the Apple ecosystem. I will write a blog post about my thoughts about tech-SAAS-and physical-tech-product-stickiness.

Purchasing the Samsung phone was a first step to exploring if and how I might un-chain myself from Apple. Tip: Use Dropbox for cloudstorage and synching between devices; instead of iCloud and I prefer Dropbox to Google One / Google Drive as well. I have reasons = another blogpost. Dropbox has a free storage allowance, it probably won’t be enough for a lot of cloud storage but it is a great start to explore if Dropbox would work for you, too. I recently upgraded and have a paid plan, I never thought I ever would but this is part of my strategy to be less tangled up in the sticky Apple spiderwebs. The reason I don’t think that I will use Google Drive as my primary cloud is that I don’t like their file previews. For this I prefer the Dropbox interface.)

Back to Mark Manson’s question about my Book reading Goals for this year:

I would like to read at least 12 books, but I am already slow as it is almost the end of February and I have only just started reading my second book ‘The Return of Marco Polo’s World’, by Robert D. Kaplan. I got it from the libary as an audio book. So far it’s pretty interesting. I might not entirely agree with Kaplan’s perspective but that would actually be great – because disagreeing would help me read with more engagement.

I will definitely be taking some notes, which is something I find easier with a physical printed book that I own rather than an eBook that I borrow from the libary. But audio books are even more tricky. I think I need to get this as an eBook instead and use my Kobo eReader to read.

Kobo has the option of adding notes to pages but the interface is a bit slow and clunky so it is best to just highlight the passages I have reactions to and add a very short keyword as a note to help me find the highlighted pages again later.

(Kobo eReader = its effectively the same system as a Kindle but it’s not linked to Amazon and I prefer that, I got it primarily to read library books and my own pdf. I didn’t want Amazon to collect my reading habits from me, they know enough. I appreciate Amazon, but feel the need to draw my data sharing line somewhere. Hence the Kobo. Someone else can have my reading habit data instead…)

Questions for you:

Are you reading any books at the moment? Whats next on your reading list? Do you have feelings about Tech Customer Retention practices or about file storage cunundrums?

I don’t know if you like to keep digital reading list / bookshelf?
I have signed up to Storygraph, which is like Goodreads but not owned by Amazon. I enjoy the amazing service that Amazon provides but I prefer not getting locked into a single platform/company monopoly ecosystem. Storygraph is free and I am enjoying using it. If you like to see what I have on my reading list then you can follow me and check my profile there: Birgit’s Storygraph Bookshelf & Reading List

All the Links I shared in this blog post in one list for easier reference:

Birgit’s Storygraph Bookshelf & Reading List (free, Goodreads alternative)
Dropbox (free and if you use my link to sign up and upload some files then you get extra free storage in addition to the basic free amount)
‘Because this is my first life’ (이번 생은 처음이라 ), romantic K-Drama, on Netflix
Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee *
The Return of Marco Polo’s World, by Robert D. Kaplan *
The Naked Tourist, by Lawrence Osborne *

*books: Check if your library has a free copy that you can borrow, otherwise purchasing one will support the author and the publishing industry. That brings good karma.

Please subscribe to be a part of my self-resuscitation project :

I am thinking of making my blog project available to subscribers only.

Below you see the offer that Dropbox makes to people who use the invitation link to open a Dropbox account. (It’s free) I don’t remember how much the base amount of free storage on Dropbox is but you will get an additional 500MB (that is half 1GB and a lot of space if you are just storing pdf and images. If you are storing video then even a phone video can quickly take up 500MB and more)

click on the image and you will be lead to the invitation window for Dropbox. I got a lot of bonus space when I saw a promotion on a gig-economy platform, they gave me a ton of free space. And I have had about 10 friends sign up with my link = 10GB free storage. It all adds up. I like sharing things that I use and that save us all a few pennies.

I am quite amazed by the summary that AI created for my blog post. I tried several suggestions and I have to say: It is quite refereshing (if also highly alarming) to have a tool that took on the task of summarising my new project for me.

The other AI suggested blog excerpt was this one:

“Birgit aims to break free from loneliness and stagnation through daily blog posts. She discusses her passion for active reading and shares insights on books like “Pachinko” and “The Return of Marco Polo’s World.” She also delves into her attempts to learn Korean and her preferences for non-Amazon affiliated platforms. Join her journey by subscribing!” Also really good. Wow. Who needs writers anymore?
this excerpt was written by AI, everything else by me: Birgit over 7 seas

note: I didn’t use AI for anything other than the excerpt. This was the first time I ever tried it. Every word and thought inside this blog post is entire my own concoction. (for better or worse, haha…)

For my birthday I would like you to save money

Published by Birgit

Instead of receiving gifts and cards I would like you to use my referral link to sign up to Transferwise

so that at any time in the near or distant future you will save a generous amount of fees compared to using traditional banks to send money within the US or between countries from wherever in the world you are. Using Transferwise saves a lot compared to using Paypal. You can use it to send money or open a borderless bank account and receive payment to it.

It’s as simple as it sounds, or even more simple. As a birthday gift to me but also to you I would like you to sign up to Transferwise with my link https://bit.ly/2BYvvYv, especially if you get paid in USD but live in another country and are currently losing money on exchanging your USD into your own currency.

I recently came across a post of a Digital Nomad Facebook group member asking how a person based in South America can get paid in USD. The group members offered a lot of different answers but the simplest and most money saving one of them all was Transferwise. You can open a USD currency account with Transferwise even if you are not based in America. It’s worth exploring.

You can register with your home address.
For example if you are based in the EU, then this is your primary location and you first open your Transferwise borderless account with your EU address.
Then once this is all set up you can add a UK and US account, able to receive and hold £ and $.
Each account will have its own account numbers that are fully functioning and you can receive payment into your Transferwise account just like as if it was a traditional bank.
Please let me know in the comments if you are having troubles setting this up and I’ll try to help you out..

I’m lost

Published by Birgit

I have had this website for so long, and for a while it was fun, I always thought that it would become a business.. But then so much happened in life and I couldn’t quite find my direction.

Right now the world seems to be falling apart, we are all struggling and the news are dark and darker; people’s worries are dark and darker. And it’s a lot. In the middle of it our business is wobbly and I am not sure if we will have the money for the next month rent of home, studio & storage space.

I’m caught between countries, citizen of none of the places I have tried to build a life, everyone is overwhelmed; returning to my home country is as scary as not returning; staying and applying for citizenship where I am is as scary as not staying and applying.

Everything scares me, everything is out of balance. And I feel very unmoored.

The only way forward that I can see is to keep going. But as I keep paddling I am ever more isolated. Living abroad started so well, staying abroad was so good for my self-fulfillment, for finding versions of myself that I couldn’t have found if I had stayed where I am from.

But somewhere down the road, living abroad became complicated when global economy slowed down, the sentiments and sense of security changed, at first so, so slowly and then, suddenly from one day to another.

Then just as I found some confidence to begin my ‘content creation’ journey (it’s not just that, but it’s easier to call it that) AI arrived with a bang, it ran down the door and whosh here it is. New fears, on top of already almost unsurmountable old fears.

What is real and what isn’t real ? – now that is a question I have to ask myself every time I see anything physically in front of me.

I started intermittent fasting again, yes for health, but also because it saves money. Whatever happened? This wasn’t how this was meant to go.

Do you know where I sleep? On the yoga mats, on a duvet, under another duvet on the floor. It’s ok, but it’s also a bit… NOT at all how I pictured all my work and later all my sacrifices to work out.

Now I am scared of the future, of illness, of the world, and everything else. I don’t know how to futureproof myself. Well, I do know: I HAVE to change something. Nothing can pre-empt every twist and turn of this world, but it is time for me to learn to live with joy in my heart, more joy than fear. Because a lifetime spent being afraid of everything hasn’t helped me one bit.

So.. here it was another journal entry, that probably doesn’t belong into the public eye. But I have to begin somewhere and I think I want you to understand where I am starting: I am starting from something like ground zero. It’s all come crashing down and I can not choose giving up, I really DO have to choose to keep going.

ebay, list something and don’t be disheartened when it doesn’t immediately sell
ask someone to accept my invitation link to an app that just offered me $100 if someone I recommend signs up & activates it according to a checklist of 4-5 actions.
make my first video for the video course I am taking.

I can NOT allow myself to give up and I can NOT allow myself to keep doubting every possibility. I lose more time doubting than I would lose trying

Which one: eBay first? or print the video instructions & follow them first?

Remembering India, Climbing Charmundi Hill, Mysore, Karnataka— a very long time ago

Published by Birgit

Timeless memories in an ancient place, feeling welcome. A pilgrimage back in time, my time.

Apologies ((I just realised that images here are not protected from being downloaded. That’s a little unfortunate and is the reason why I am not sharing my favourite images of the temple and sights on Charmundi Hill. I need to ponder if I am ok with giving these visual memories away without a meaningful price. I used to offer some of my images on Society6 for print on demand, but that wasn’t really worth it either. The occasional pennies..))

Anyway here we go

the MEMORY of ascending Charmundi hill.

I lied, we didn’t climb it, we took our rented scooters and at sunrise made our way from Gokulam, driving through Mysore city and up Charmundi Hill. Back then India was another world to me. It took me a long time to acclimatise and settle into the experience. The sounds, the incense sticks…

… the views, the people. I am so glad that I got to experience the magic of this place. Magic in part because it is so different to everything I had experienced up to that point. Magic because being a foreigner with no comprehension of where I had just landed made me feel so alien and made everything feel alien and also was absolutely wonderful. Since then I have read literature set in India, got a sense of India’s history, got to fall in love with it’s Art forms.. India is a place that I am sure I could visit and never leave and never run out of new things to learn. What a rich place.

There was no Google maps then. No internet in my palm. Internet was available at Internet Cafes with painfully slow dial-up connections. (I am sure faster internet could be found but I wasn’t in need to finding it then.) Travel was so much more reliant on the hand drawn maps by others who came before, maps would be photocopied and handed on to the next person until the photo copies got blurry and became hard to decipher. I miss that type of travel. I also miss the old style Lonely Planet books, but I digress. I am great at this, at digressing. It’s always been my superpower.

There REALLY were cows walking in traffic on the streets. Cows without someone herding them, just cows flaneuring down any street that took their fancy. I am sure those cows knew where they were going and where they belonged but to the foreign eye, to my eye, this was an incredile experience.

The hill, Charmundi hill, the colours, the temple, the pilgrims who would be so open to taking a photo together, in fact it was often the pilgrims requesting to take a photo, pulling me among them to make sure I would be on their pilrgimage snapshot.

What did we all think we’d do with these images we took of strangers? Them of me? Me of them? We couldn’t communicate a lot, the pilgrims in this memory didn’t speak much English, if any. Yes, that is true. Not everyone in India had the opportunity to gain English fluency. I am ignorant, but if people barely complete schooling then those people probably have more important things to learn than English. I am NOT suggesting Indian’s don’t complete schooling, most Indians I met are absolutely dilligent in getting their kids educated. But it isn’t available to everyone. Wealth disparity existed and exists. Education is a gift that isn’t in everyone’s reach equally. I am gettng lost in details.

Those pilgrims made my day and I feel a little glimmer of happiness every time I recall our communicatig with gestures and smiles. I felt welcome in India in general, and very much that morning on Charmundi Hill.

What a blessing to have had the opportunity to experience so many months in India, relatively unburdened by financial worries. I never had much, I have hardly ever in my life been debt free, but somehow life was doable on little. And I had enough for my little to set me free.

Charmundi Hill, the first time I saw a Lotus for sale.

The first time I came camera Lens-to-nose with a free roaming monkey. Charmundi Hill, I have just NO idea of the significance and meaning of anything but just being there and in the moment felt great. And I took some of my all time favourite photographs up there, as the fog of the morning lifted. I wish I could experience all of this again.

Perhaps a first time memory can not be repeated. But Charmundi Hill should be revisited in my life time. Perhaps I can somehow manage to do it.

What do you learn from my meandering thoughts? Maybe not so much. But perhaps it is a nudge to recall a memory of yours? A memory of a journey to somewhere so new and unexpected, a place or time you didn’t understand but that holds its own meaning in your heart? A meaning that isn’t easy, if even at all possible, to convey but that lights a little glimmer of joy whenever you recall it?

People: Take photographs!

Take photographs of your journey through life; and let others take photos of you. Time doesn’t return. Memories are your only access to time travel and they are nudged awake by stumbling on an image, that we brough along for the ride, from times past. Take care of your images.

I apologise for witholding the images that I love the most.

I need to find a place on the internet where I can share them without giving them away. Perhaps a printed photo journal would be a good place for this? Perhaps this is a great idea. Of course it would be yet another one of those occasions where someone pulls a string to your wallet. I bet we are all getting tired of everything coming at a cost when nothing we do seems to be rewarded with the money we need to buy access to what brings joy.. It’s a cycle. Let’s break it somehow. Let’s break it.

And lets visit India once more.

This thought somehow alerts me to that one day every journey will be a journey of last visits. There are not infinite opportunities to repeat, experience again, improve or fail again. This somehow terrifies me.

Perhaps this is a very well fitting thought to arise as I think about India. A country that seems to handle impermanence and eternity…

I know we all look so awkward, but I swear they were as keen as I to share this memory together. – I am SO glad that I had my first digital camera! Nikon D70, I will forever love that camera! Everything went DOWNHILL when I started worrying about image quality and camera specs. It literally drained the joy from everything. Go make memories, take photos with whatever you have. Nobody cares if the image is perfectly exposed. NOBODY wants to pay money just to see an image 5% ‘better’. Be in the moment instead. Keep hold of your money and travel. You can never get back that time. Live it while you have it.

I would like to try something in the near future; I would like to try if you are willing to become a paid subscriber. I would like to dedicate more time to writing and creating and I literally can’t do it without about $1000 a month. This would get me kickstarted. I have never been the type of person to make much money, and always been the type of person to make a few memories here and there..

Help me create. Your philanthropy would change my life. I know that I will need to figure out how to explain why this should be of interest to you.

I will also create a series of monthly notebook journals that will feature images from along the treasure trove of memories and places and space for you to add your own. You will be able use these as journals or just as paper to keep your shopping lists. Each notebook journal will have 12-28 pages, and may serve the purpose of a monthly calendar. Let’s see. This is a project in development.

Please follow along and cheer, cheer loudly.

And remember to make memories not perfect images. (by me, Birgit)

Mid-November in Birgit’s Life – Journal & Film Recommendation

Published by Birgit

I recently remembered that I can access a wide range of documentaries, educational series and world cinema on Kanopy. Kanopy is a streaming platform, a sort of less glamorous Netflix, screening some unexpectedly popular gems like Perfect Days by Wim Wenders, a movie that I have wanted to see since it came out in 2023.

Being able to see this reflective movie was a real treat. Everything in life is moving so fast lately, and it seems that no matter what we do: life gets ever more tangled.

Relationships fall apart as communications break down. Life is becoming more lonely at a time when what we all need is solace in closeness. But it is easier to be alone than to be in confrontation or in polar opposite political disagreement. This is a little personal. I’ll leave these words hanging in the air, unresolved.

As I browsed the Kanopy catalogue I saw that they have Golda, a film about the Yom Kippur War starring Helen Mirren.

The film is calm and quiet but tense and hits a nerve in my soul.

Here is a briefest summary of the Yom Kippur War from Britannica: “Yom Kippur War, fourth of the Arab-Israeli wars, which was initiated by Egypt and Syria on October 6, 1973, on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. ”

A November afternoon in San Francisco, after the elections, 2024

Published by Birgit

It is November 7th, 2 days after the US presidential election. The mood in San Francisco is tangibly somber. If I had a butterknife to hand then I am sure I could cut through the atmospheric cloud hanging over this city today. It’s more tangible than yesterday, which I assume is due to a level of collective denial “This can’t be.. I must be dreaming..?”

I’m trying to ignore it all because I can not change it. I can’t wish the world around me into compassionate and flourishing reality. Instead I pondered this question:

“What could I achieve with all this worrying energy?”

If I invested equally as many hours into one practical hyper-focus; instead of investing those hours into another chapter of global anxiety inducing events or whatever this is that we will all experience in the coming political season(s)…?**

One thing that is certain that this upcoming chapter will bring changes. Changes that many fear, changes that others look forward to. I’m not good with change in general but when it is political it feels additionally daunting.

But if I took one lesson from Brexit* then it is this… Back then I made the mistake (was it a mistake?) to try and put my life on hold while I waited for clarity.

I wanted to stay in the UK and keep my life, career and friends there. Instead I ultimately ended up re-enacting that scene from the Disney version of Cinderella, where the mice scrambled to safety, running from a cat, and the one mouse couldn’t run as fast nor slip into the mouse hole because: that mouse held on to too many pieces of cheese. I was that mouse. I AM that mouse, still. In trying to hold onto everything I inadvertently may have lost more than most.

The lesson I learned:

TRY to keep living instead of fretting. Accept the change, even if it is unacceptable and maybe even deeply uncomfortable. But in accepting we can live a life worth living.

Fretting and hedging all my bets left me living a life of existing, not a life of living.

That’s really what happened and it is HARD to come back from. I am still trying. Because we actually get older. Knowing about and experiencing aging are two entirely separate entities. Knowing is not enough to take the actions our aged selves with our younger selves could have taken. It was impossible to really picture this clearly as I was in my 30s, then in my very early 40s. And now, now I am unavoidably older. There is no way to roll back time and catch up on the joy I missed out on. I can’t erase the suffering my bet-hedging has caused me. I can only share this with you:

Keep living actively and optimistically and talk yourself into letting-go if letting go means that you can re-build. I didn’t want to re-build anything I wanted to keep what I already built. I couldn’t have imagined then, in 2016 and ongoing years, how bad a choice that ultimately was. I waited a decade of my life away, if you count the time that I paused life, while waiting for my American Greencard, too…

So take it from me: LIVE life, create, build. Political reality may change and bring unavoidable aspects with it. But there ARE aspects of each of our personal realities that we CAN be in a lot more control over than many of us are. And it comes down to personal choices, to discipline (ok, I KNOW it’s not easy, I am a very distractable person, getting started with a new and discipline requiring life choice is a profound challenge; but it is not insurmountable. Go and challenge yourselves!)

**Imagine what could be aachieved within 1 year; better yet: make it 4 years; of intense focus on an empowering skill… It is open to interpretation what constitutes a skill empowering.

It could be masterful baking or refreshing mathematical skills and learing accounting (yes I know “AI does everything better,” etc.. I know but any more doom-and-gloom and we might as well go dig ourselves a nest into a cave and wait for the end.) Learn a language to fluency, just for the joy of it. Or learn mechanical skills to fix things. There is SO much we could do with that hour or more of doomscrolling many of us do on a practially daily basis. Don’t we all fritter time away like as if there would always be more of it? Do you think that you are as guilty as I when it comes to spending 2 hours a day on a time sink? Pinch of 1/2 of this time as a gift to yourself. 300-365 hours in a year. That’s a significant chunk. Could it be life changing? Tell me…

Which skill should I choose? Please share your inspirations with me. And will you also choose something to learn / do?

And remember someone else feels: that right now is a time for celebration. I don’t have to see it how they see it but it’s worth taking a look to try and understand the world from their perspective. Difference and also humanity is what we have in common.

P.p.s. I know, I know, “this is a heavy time.” But that is exactly why it is important to focus on the light that we can all develop and share.

(Is this too whimsical for you? I sincerely speak from very grave experiences that have cost me most of a beautifully established life, a life of creativity and relative economic security. If I say to do something whimsical for your mental health and to help you live your life then really it is not a flippant suggestion but one I learnt the hardest way.)

*Brexit was the June 2016 UK vote to exit their membership with the European Union, and it was a much too long, drawn out and often unclear processes until it finally closed that chapter (yes I am over-using the word chapter in this journal entry but I am real and not a glossy AI, it’s in my imperfections that you can find me being perfectly myself).

Breathe & be your best self.

Make yourself a pancake and run a hot bath. See you all soon.

I got $1200 worth of free travel credit !

Published by Birgit

This is mostly a post for Americans but the principle applies in the UK and everywhere:

Little update.

I orgininally wrote this entry in June 2024. It is now November of the same year. This credit card ended up tallying up to $1200+ worth in credit card points that I will be able to use for travel! We used this card for about 3 months for all our grocery expenses, my birthday shopping (shoes and a t-shirt – it was kind of frugal), cafe visits (not that many) and a few of Jason’s relatively high business expenses. The welcome bonus IS what made this card very worth applying for. Did I even give you an invitation link? What is wrong with me! Here it is: …. to be added asap …. (remind me please!)

It absolutely amazes me how many free perks American banks are willing to offer to new customers. Jason and I just signed up to another credit card with Chase and if we spend $4,000 in the next 3 months we will receive a huge amount of free points that we can use for future travel! Basically: FREE hotel stays, or, if we get enough points between us: free flights. I wish everyone would make use of what is free on the table.

Life is hard, take the freebies.

(like REALLY, please take the free stuff! It adds up, and to my knowledge it is tax free!)

Obviously it isn’t always easy to meet the spending amount. $4,000 is a lot of money. But Jason has to buy a flight to the East Coast later this week and might need a dentist visit, too. If you are in the USA then you know that between these two we already might hit this (horrifying) $4,000 spending goalpost.

The car needs new brakes and we need to buy groceries over the coming 3 months. I think we’ll have to spend $4,000 in total, regardless if we like it or not. Signing up for the credit card means that we will get more than 10% ‘refund’ (in points rewards) of the money spent on our unavoidable expenses. Who wouldn’t take that money? It’s so much money.

I’ll share the link to the credit card that I was offered by Chase below. Please remember, it’s only a great deal if you can pay off your credit card bill each month.

However, however.. If you have unavoidable expenses that you will have no choice but to put on a credit card either way, then you might as well apply for this card and get the perks. Because the alternative is to have put debt on your old credit card and get nothing in return for it.

Here is the invitation to the card that got me $1200+ on credit card points to use towards travel ! :

Earn 75,000 bonus points with either Chase Sapphire card. I can be rewarded if you apply here and are approved for the card.
https://www.referyourchasecard.com/19n/NZE2UCYG4Y

(Limited-time offer – $300 Chase Travel℠ credit + 60,000 bonus points with Chase Sapphire Preferred. I can be rewarded if you apply here and are approved for the card.) If you do want to apply for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card then please use my link:
www.referyourchasecard.com/19P/L00YQN6TY8

My motto is to sign up to referral perks whenever I see them and can qualify.

I never get around to accurately calculate how much money I got for free each of the last years for signing up to things. In 2023 we got at at least $500 of literally free money between us.

(For credit card signups and my Revolut invitations, for which I unfortunately only have limited invitation links that expire after 30 days.)

And then there are the savings I get using the mobile phone provider that I am using. (I pay $15 a month and get 5GB data included in my plan.) To me it’s wild that anyone would use any other mobile phone service provider. That’s a story for another time.

Don’t leave free money on the table.

This particular credit card might not be for you, but there are other offers popping up from time to time, take them when you see them, because they add up.

See you soon, Birgit.

If you have no choice but to spend it then at least collect rewards along the way. These small amounts add up.

p.s. These invitation links expire, my apologies if the link above has gone out of date and the offer is no longer available.

day #6 Who is this Blog Journal for?

Published by Birgit

I’m struggling, lonely and feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders. I need a pro-actve project to pull myself out of my shell, and will begin with a silly daily Blog journal. I say silly because it is personal, not professional, but it is to practice my writing-for-myself muscles. I stopped experiencing joy when sharing anything online, I instead weigh if what I write reflects me in an unprofessional light.

I think the one thing that is worse than being seen as too sensitive and judged as potentially unprofessional is: to become invisible. I have allowed myself to become invisible, that’s not a good thing. It means I don’t really live anymore.

And this Blog Journal is for me, to be perhaps a public embarassment but at least not be invisible. I can only be myself. If I am not myself I shrink into a corner feeling ashamed of not being professional enough to merit my public presence. It’s embarrassing but I don’t know how else to tackle to problem. It’s a catch 22.

Soon I will set the visibility of some of my blog journal posts to subscribers only.

Subscribing is free but reassures me that someone is out there in the universe… And setting some posts to surbscribers only will let me limit who sees me in this whimsical, vulnerable way. And I don’t expect you to read my daily diaristic rambling. There won’t be a quizz at the end to check if you read every post. There will be no ‘exam pressure’. If you subscribe you might get notifications when I post – I don’t enable notifications on every post either.

Do you have a journal writing project of your own? Or how do you combatt loneliness and life struggles? How do you restart a stalled life or career? Have you ever done it? Please share your wisdom in the comments or send it to me using the private contact tab. I’d love to know.

day #5 Sunday – the day I fell into the crevices of the internet labyrinth

Published by Birgit

25th February, I spent too much of the day navigating antisemitic content online. People are so mean and it feels like some people find satisfaction in being hateful. I tried reasoning with an antisemitic person but obviously that was a losing endeavour.

Because I keep walking past extremism idolising graffiti I wanted to know what laws are in palace and I looked up if we actually have functioning laws that protect citizens against hate speech and against people calling for violence against them. What I found was disappointing. A deep lack of clarity that would condem hateful actions.

Under California Penal Code Section 404.6 PC, it is unlawful to incite a riot, even if the defendant does not participate in the riot or actually commit a violent act as part of the resulting riot.
https://www.losangelescriminallawyer.pro/california-penal-code-section-404-6-pc-inciting-a-riot.html

It doesn’t seem like much, not enough for sure. Generally it was a day that I lost to the endless myriads of the internet and I didn’t feel terribly good about anthing by the time the day came to an end.

On a more positive note I watched the entire interview with Noah Kagan and Marina Mogilko and as much as I like Noah, I wish that someone would talk to him about bodylanguage. I wish he could have wriggled and picked himself less. Between the constant wriggling, picking and the moustache I was seriously distracted.

Is this too mean of me to make a comment on? I just really like it when people hold and rpesent themselves well. (I know, look who is talking! I’m so flawed…)

Just because he does this interview publicly does it give me permission to be this kind of critical? I hope it was clear that I DO appreciate his business accumen and his Youtube channel and everything he shares in interviews. I know that I can just look away, but it was a video, so the natural response is to watch and be more present than I would be if I didn’t give it my full attention.

However, I would be absolutely mortified if someone made a public comment abour the back of my head where my hair has a double crown and it almost always looks like I don’t take care of myself. Seomeone please send me to a Korean hair salon, I wish I could get a Korean perm*.

*(In case this is an entirely new concept to you: Korean perms are often done to lift the hair close to the scalp / roots and help hair that is always parting in an unpleasing way to fall in a more pleasing one.

day #4, Saturday, 24th February – Relationship Goals

Published by Birgit

We sipped Matcha and had a major life-strategy conversation.

We are trying to untangle why we are experiencing life as deeply traumatic and exhausting. We counted the actual number of days / hours worked over the past year and had a look at the income to work ratio but also at the amount of days taken off work. It was great to get a lot of clarity on those numbers. We discussed alternative income sources and also how to handle the pressures of life a bit better, to not have the overwhelm eat us alive.

We haven’t exactly arrived at a concrete plan but today was definitely a step in the right direction.

We talked about the dream of being able to save money each month, to be better prepared for the future. We agreed that we would love to aim this high and within the next 15 years turn our future fate around to become something that we can manage to live with, and might possibly even enjoy. We talked about creating something like a pre-nup but as a post-nup (?) to better secure each other.

And Jason started talking about how if I put more in then I should get more out, but I interrupted him. I really think that we are in this together and we both deserve a secure future and we should build that and then share that together. We both deserve to be economically safe. But we should still have a legal document and he agreed that creating this post-nup type document would be good. You just never know what could happen. Nobody plans to fall out and become estranged but it probably is best to talk everything through and have it on paper. Ultimately, if anything ever happens to us as a unite then having a pre-agreed documet, takes pressure off. We won’t have to deal with the stress of untangling things and I believe that when we plan for the worst case scenarios then those scenarios don’t happen in the first place.

We brainstormed a few ideas that might help make us this amount of money, without running ourselves into the ground.

Eventually we had to take a break. 4 hours masterminding life is a lot. But I tinkered with some offerings and pricing ideas on my own for a bit and I really think today was very helpful. We

day #3 keeping failing – keeping trying

Published by Birgit

Days pass so fast! Catching up on a whole week of blog entries.

I completely didn’t keep up with my daily blog entires. I’ll try and write them all in one sitting.

Friday, 23rd February

We drove across San Francisco on Friday morning to do a quick photoshoot of one of Jason’s custom glass lampshade client projects. Its always hard to estimate how much time it will take to ‘just’ take a few photos. I probably have 300 images on my memory card and it will take half a day to sort through them, make decisions on which files to edit. In the end all we really need are just 1-3 final images.

This is why hiring photographers cost as much as it does. Like with so many services: they feel expensive to the customer but don’t actually pay that much for the service provider. Once I extrapolate the full amount of time that was/will be spent on this short photoshoot it ends up being a full day. If you ever see a photographer quote you $250+ for a 30 minute photo session and maybe 3-12 images (with potentially a separate fee to cover the editing process). Then I would love you to know that this really is just the price of running a business. It seems to expensive from the perspective of the client but as the photographer every day that doesn’t bring in a gross income of $300 is a day that didn’t earn enough to ensure a secure future. (Speaking from a California perspective where $300 day rate is on the low end, $300 a day actually equates to just a moderate middle class income, at best.) Anyone running a business knows that any business model that relies on a stream of clients each paying a day rate, is extremely uncertain because we never know if the next client will find us and schedule a service.

If you are considering starting your own business, it is best if you either have an agency that supplies you with a reliable stream of assignments or if you can build a subscription or contract model client relationship. Anything that makes income more predictable.

An absolute disaster would be to not be able to hold onto money as you earn it. That was us. We would earn it and it wouldn’t be enough, so we always ended up spending all of it. That left us highly vulnerable in times when we got no bookings. Let’s talk about business & life more in another blog post.

We also visited Stable Cafe on Folsom Street, the world’s best supermarket: Rainbow Groceries for a few select items we can’t get elsewhere; returned clothes Jason was gifted for his birthday to REI and swapped them for something he liked better (and he invited me to pick out something for myself). Went to Trader Joe’s to stock up on the main bulk of the coming week’s groceries and spent what was left of the day recovering from having been out for so long. Jason watched an old Buster Keaton movie from 1928 while I did computer things and late in the evening I gave an English language lesson on italki and finished off the night with K-drama.

That was Friday.

How was it? That was interesting..

(this is an insider joke that only J will understand.

Day #2 of my daily blog writing challenge

Published by Birgit

Today I am making myself a new habit tracker

So much has gone completely off course in life, I am running behind with important tasks, admin, payments, self care and social commitments. When I speak to friends they mostly seem to have the same struggles as I do.

Enter: The Habit Tracker (or call it whatever you prefer)

In the past I drew my habit trackers by hand and I loved doing that. But it is time consuming each time and paper is much less forgiving of corections than digital is. My hand drawn trackers looks more organic and nice and worked great; except they didn’t work at all when I didn’t prepare them.

Months go by between spurts of focused energy. In these months I am like a ship that loses its course and drifts in the occean and that’s honestly not helpful in getting my shit together. That’s why I have decided to finally (3 years since starting habit trackers) accept making a digital habit tracker: In March I want to work on improving my habits again, catch up with all the loose ends of grown up life. And while I prefer having my habit tracker on paper I am going to test preparing my new tracker in Google Sheets. And I’ll share it with you.

literally hours later:

I didn’t expect it to take so long. It took about 90 minutes to make myself a basic habit tracker using Google Sheets but then I spent another 2 hours fine tuning it to make it more presentable for the public, and adding 4 additional variations, because my yellow colour scheme might not be everyone else’s cup of tea….

Here is the link to Etsy where you can find it for £4-£5 / $5-$6

(I was going to share it for free but the time it took… wow..)

Now I understand better why people pay money for digital products. Because (speaking to myself here:) “Yes, it’s true, you can make your own for free but it takes time and wouldn’t we rather read a book, go for a walk, snooze, sell something for 10x the value on eBay?”

Here is the link to this habit tracker, I slightly changed the design* of it to offer prefilled categories & blank ones, with & without background colour. It’s not the most beautiful thing in the universe but I really think it’s a good first start both for myself having made it AND having uploaded it to Etsy as well as maybe for you to test it. It’s nothing too precious, it’s just meant to be a tool to help myself get jump started at taking better care of myself and not get so lost in life’s distractions and tasks that I neglect my health and wellbeing.

In my past habit tracker I included a lot of the work that I need to get done, open projects, weekly non-negotiable targets, but in this habit tracker I focused mainly on the basics of self care, with some entries for life responsibilities.

Being self-employed is time consuming and working from home gives no separation between life and career. I think this comes at a detriment to both.

*design = I really am not sure that I should call this design. Design is a grand overstatement when you see my little habit tracker making effort. Maybe it would be better described as ‘the look of it’.

Who is this Habit Tracker for?

This is for you fellow nerds like myself. Nerds who fall down work-and-distraction-rabbit-holes and forget to drink enough water, only realise that they didn’t go for a walk and take enough steps after the sun goes down, and could accidentally eat only bananas all day and forget to cook the green vegetables or to do the dishes.

I think this tracker would be ADHD friendly, if that is something you are thinking about.

You are probably seeing this because I sent you a link directly.

The original file was made in Google Sheets and unexpectedly took 3 hours to format and export multiple times until the bones of the tracker were right enough. (the initial one I made for just myself was done in much, much less time, but somehow making it public added 2+ hours.)

If you are like me then you might find my habit tracker useful.
I made this to help me keep track of basic self care and action steps to get my life back on track.

I use mine on ipad in Goodnotes. The files are formatted to A5 size and I have included 5 versions, the exact pre-filled categories one that I use (you can see it in the preview) as well blank for you to add your own categories and actions that you would like to accomplish regularly.

I would love it if you would buy this and test it for me, and please give me feedback privately when we next meet on Skype or Whatsapp or in person.

It would be great if you would get use out of this tracker, too.

You will need either:

A stylus and a tablet with an app that lets you import a pdf file and write on it. (I use ipad, apple pencil and Goodnotes)
OR
A printer, to print out the A5 tracker, you might need to fold it to fit it into your current notebook.

This is a PDF file.
I airdrop it from my computer to my ipad and import it straight into Goodnotes.

You could also save your pdf as a jpg and use the tracker that way. I find that this negatively affects the clarity of the text. I prefer to use my tracker in PDF format imported to Goodnotes.

Speaking of better habits… The sun is inching very close to the horizon line. I really shoudl run outside and get my 3000 steps in. Unless I want to turn into a slug. And I have to say, I think slugs may have more muscle and energy than I ..

Let’s get this habit tracking journey started!

p.s. what do you think? Team habit tracking or just team daily list? (aren’t they the same?)

p.p.s. Blog content 100% written by me, Birgit (can’t you tell? as always messy and the opposite of brevity.. haha.) and summary written by my new co-editor called “All the Intelligent Thing” yes, AI (Künstliches Hirn im Netz) – because it’s almost like having a helpful friend or virtual assistant.

Links I shared in this blog entry (only one today):

The habit tracker I made today and uploaded to my tiny Etsy shop

All the Links I shared in yesterday’s blog post in one list for easier reference:

Birgit’s Storygraph Bookshelf & Reading List (free, Goodreads alternative)
Dropbox (free and if you use my link to sign up and upload some files then you get extra free storage in addition to the basic free amount)
‘Because this is my first life’ (이번 생은 처음이라 ), romantic K-Drama, on Netflix
Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee *
The Return of Marco Polo’s World, by Robert D. Kaplan *
The Naked Tourist, by Lawrence Osborne *

4.5 hours

That’s the time it took to write this blog entry & create the habit tracker from scratch & reformat it multiple times & test it & upload it to Etsy and to finally press publish on today’s blog post.

(I share this to let you know that maybe youa ren’t slow, maybe it’s just that things take time.)

journal entry: I just removed 240 subscribers – I now have 19 left

Published by Birgit

I had a look at the subscribers and who they are, mostly they are long disused accounts that were primarily set up to try and make a quick affiliate income dollar/pound sterling or Euro.

It felt a bit sticky and uncomfortable to leave those fake subscribers for the sake of image and ego. It is meaningless if they aren’t real people.

But it did make me wonder: What am I actually doing here and who for? Perhaps this website only ever was a bit of a failed practice project. It never had a clear direction, just a vague wish to go somewhere. Sometimes it was my diary, sometimes a place where I cried ‘help’, other times the place where I, too had dollar signs in my eyes and hoped against hope that someone would use one of my affiliate links.

I think I figured something out. I think I am getting an idea for a new direction. I’ll let you, invisible friend or gaping void, know what I get up to shortly. In the meantime I’ll continue as normal: random posts with no particular reader in mind. Shooting spaghetti into space, maybe one will stick somewhere.