If I told you I feel unlovable, you’d probably stand up in protest. You might say that you enjoy my presence and my contributions. The statement seems absurd. I grew up in a loving family, and while I sometimes may be a loner by choice, I’ve always had friends. And, as I’ve grown older, I’ve become more social and engaged in communities where I feel valued. Hence, let me rephrase the statement. I feel unlovable in romantic, physical, or sexual ways. That’s something you couldn’t refute. I’ve been single all my life, so you couldn’t point at a current or ex-partner who loved me this way. There has only ever been one single woman who expressed romantic interest in me, but she was so desperate that it didn’t feel genuine. I can’t rule out that there have been instances where someone gave me subtle signals that I misread, but none that are obvious in hindsight. Since no woman ever expressed a genuine romantic interest in me, I might reasonably conclude that I’m fundamentally romantically unlovable.
Now, you might tell me that I’m dumb for expecting women to come to me and confess they have a crush on me. That’s not how things work in our society. As a man, we expect you to shoot your shot and make a first step if you’re interested in someone. You may find out she feels the same or is at least open to exploring the possibility, or she’ll politely decline, and you can ask someone else until it finally clicks. However, if I told you this, I would reply that I feel so unlovable that the possibility she said “yes” is functionally zero, so what’s the point? And actually, it’s worse. I convinced myself that my interest could create so much discomfort in the receiver that expressing it was almost unethical.
Many young men blame liberalism, feminism, or the #MeToo movement for their inability to express interest in women out of fear of retribution. However, I had heard women speak about having to fight unwanted advances from men over a decade before said hashtag went viral. I knew I wouldn’t want to do even the slightest thing to contribute to this problem, even if that cost me a chance at romance.
Of course, I’m far from the only man afraid to express their interest to women. Many manage to do it due to peer pressure and mimetic desire, having a strong enough sex drive that overrides their fears, and often the use of courage-enhancing substances like alcohol. I don’t strongly feel peer pressure, my sex drive isn’t exactly high, and I have a strict personal anti-drugs policy. Therefore, I have only two options. The first is somehow convincing myself that I’m lovable and desirable and that expressing these wishes isn’t unethical. I intellectually grasp the concept of “benevolent transgressions”, but they’re hard to believe. The second is that my future spouse reads this post, is more courageous than I am, and takes this load from me. Until then, I will keep writing these navel-gazing essays.
TREEWEEK was a “TPOT camp” in the spirit of other retreats like Jesscamp, which also doubled as the organizer’s extended birthday celebration. It took place last week at “Seegut Blaue Blume” in rural Brandenburg near Prenzlau, more than an hour from Berlin. I signed up because I trusted Simon and his team to create a great event. The location seemed nice, and many people I knew from Jesscamp and online interactions would be there. It seemed an excellent way to have a little holiday in September.
A forest and beautiful nature surrounded the place, but the weather was more suitable for indoor activities, especially in the first few days. Because nametags or badges are boring, the organizing team invited us to bead a bracelet or necklace with our names. There was a lot of art-making at the event. I didn’t participate because I don’t trust my hands with a paintbrush, but I enjoyed seeing the fireplace covered in drawings. My hands are more suitable for playing the piano, which I did a lot. Many more musicians attended the event, so there was a constant hum of live music, whether played on physical instruments or synthesizers and with looping software. Jamming with other people is fantastic; I should do it much more. And feedback on my playing was overwhelmingly positive. While we had the whole place to ourselves during the week, the venue still ran its monthly Open Stage on the front porch on Wednesday. Some TREEWEEK participants signed up, so it was a joint celebration between the locals and our international community. I bet the MC never announced people from so many countries on this stage.
Feeding 70 guests is no small task, but Simon’s brother (and my brother-in-name, Lukas) took charge of the kitchen and ensured nobody went hungry. Food was always available, and people signed up for shifts working the kitchen or the scullery, which turned into a dancefloor with the playlist of whoever managed to connect their phone to the speakers first. I did a lot of housework this week but enjoyed serving the group this way. It’s also wonderful to talk and bond with people over peeling 20 kilograms of potatoes together. There was one barbecue with meat, but on the other days, the food was primarily vegetarian except for an enormous amount of boiled eggs.
I brought my werewolf playing cards again, and we played a few rounds, though fewer than at the two Jesscamps I’ve been to. We also played other board games. The most remarkable was the attempt to play the German version of Codenames in a group of people with limited German skills and see how far that went (it went better than expected). And, of course, there were a lot of great conversations. I learned a new group coaching technique and sat in two guided meditations. There was often dancing at night, especially on Saturday when Simon celebrated his birthday. One guy brought his startup’s technology that lets you control lights with gestures and makes you feel like a magician.
Overall, I had a fantastic time at TREEWEEK despite the rain. For myself, it was mostly a comfortable, cozy event, meaning that I didn’t take part in activities and workshops that pushed me out of my comfort zone, unlike the improv and clowning workshops at the Jesscamps. Nobody scheduled such activities I was interested in, so abstaining wasn’t a deliberate choice. I also arrived without expectations to turn this week into a life-changing, self-improvement, or personal development activity, so I’m okay with it. However, after events, I often think I might have participated in a more profound way that let me take more out of it.
Much of the potential for deeper connection lies outside the scheduled activities in personal interactions, especially one-on-ones. Group retreats like TREEWEEK always remind me that I enjoy meaningful connections when somebody offers them. Still, initiating them without some external structure is nearly impossible for me. It’s particularly noticeable when it involves members of the opposite gender, especially at gender-imbalanced events, or when it’s about physical connection. There are some blocking thoughts and feelings, and I need a strategy to work through them. There’s some lingering social anxiety. It doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the event or my interactions; it just means there’s potential for more and deeper connections.
I want to thank Simon and his team for offering the community this wonderful space. I hope there’ll be another TREEWEEK next year, as well as many other events. Regarding myself, I will probably attend future retreats, but I need to be more intentional about why I’m going and what I’m getting out of it before buying the next ticket. In the meantime, I’ll see you all online.
Last year, I published a few blog posts about being single. Then I stopped. I have started multiple drafts but never completed them. I can’t find the right angle to share my thoughts and tell my story. My mind is full of interconnected thoughts that are difficult to express linearly, and some of these thoughts are uncomfortable to express at all. One reason for starting the series of posts was to clarify what I wanted in this area of my life. Still, a year later, I feel more confused than ever. At the same time, the pressure is mounting because I’m approaching my fortieth birthday at the end of the year. While I sincerely believe there’s no “expiry date” for finding love, there is one for having children, especially biological children. That date is not just about fertility but also about your aging parallel to them. I’m way past the age where I can be a young parent, but I can still prevent being a super old parent by acting very soon if I want a child. Do I want one? Well, I think I do. It still doesn’t seem the primary goal that I can’t stop thinking about, but it’s undoubtedly one goal and one that, unlike some others, I can’t delay.
The default path is to start dating, end up in a long-term relationship, decide to marry, and then have kids and start a family. These steps seem a natural progression. Many people have clear goals and an idea of marriage and family. Still, others first start dating because of sexual attraction, loneliness, or because everyone is doing it. Then, everything else is just the natural next step. They never imagined their wedding, but when the right person appeared, the idea seemed appealing, and then parenthood was just the next level of married life. I might be more of the latter type of person, and I’m stuck at square one because I’ve never prioritized dating.
Many people I know met their spouse in their early- or mid-twenties, married in their late twenties, and started having kids then or in their early- to mid-thirties. The later they started, the quicker they went through the steps. Some even seem to “speedrun” the process, and there’s the cliché of the man who discovers they’re ready for marriage and then “marries the girl in front of them”. And by now, I would have to “super-speedrun” if I wanted to follow the default path. However, my perfectionism and romantic ideas place me too far away from that clichéd man who could date to settle. I know a few single women, but none where I have strong feelings that I could love them and start a family with them. (Also, some have already decided they don’t want kids.)
I see a couple of options in front of me. The first is to continue what I do now, which is mostly nothing. If I do so, I need to accept that I may never experience parenthood or only in a very suboptimal way. It’s not especially appealing. Also, even separated from parenthood, I’m not entirely convinced that singlehood is the preferred state I want to stay in forever. Still, I’ve recently realized that a romantic relationship with someone who doesn’t want to have kids seems somewhat pointless to me, which may be telling.
The second is to start running and making meeting and dating women a full-time job until I find someone to love, marry, and have children. Ruthlessly prioritize hobbies and activities that allow me to meet single women, sign up for all dating apps, optimize my profile, announce my search publicly, involve my friends, and ask them to set me up, etc. I’m sure that’s what most others would do in my position, and I’m also sure that’s what others would suggest to me if I asked them what to do. It is the obvious step, but so far, I have not been able to motivate myself to do it. I want to investigate this further in a follow-up post because that may go back to some of my general ideas and attitudes that hold me back in dating and that I still need to explore.
Finally, the third option is to be open-minded about non-standard approaches to relationships, parenthood, and family life. One is co-parenting, where people get together to have children without being romantically involved. This would suit me quite well, as it’s similar to how I approach work. Finding a woman who I can imagine being a good mother and thinking of it as a project of raising children might be easier than hoping to catch the feeling of wanting to wake up next to her for the next forty years after forty years of sleeping alone. While this path still leaves the possibility of me finding love at an older age, it means abolishing the default path for good. Am I ready for that? Other variants would include multi-parent families, polyamory, and communal living. Still, before considering either of those, I’d need to deconstruct what most people get from the default path that includes a spouse and children, find what is truly missing in my life, and then see what alternative approach to life covers the essence of it. And now we’re back at the point where I need clarification about what I want, and I must also explore that.
Wow! I made it to a point where I wrote down some thoughts in a way that made me feel confident about publishing. I needed to be stuck on a boat with no Internet access and nothing else to do, and I was slightly sleep-deprived. I may write the first follow-up piece on the return journey. As usual, feel free to share your opinions with me in a reply via email or social media.
It’s April, which means it’s a new month and also a new quarter if you want to think of a year divided into quarters. A great opportunity to look at the first 25% of the year 2024. Looking at mine, I see light and shadow.
I started the year with a ton of motivation and clarity about my next steps. Professionally, I wanted to transition my existing client projects where I’m holding a software development position into a higher-level role of architecture and leadership, and also build out my personal brand and a marketing strategy to acquire additional projects with API consulting roles. The transition was quite successful in one project but still ongoing in others. In January, I actively worked on planning the next steps for my freelance business. The subsequent one would have been the implementation of the plan, starting with launching a new website and landing page. However, I didn’t do much in February and March. The reasons were that I was busy with day-to-day business in existing projects and also a couple of events and travel, but I can’t blame them entirely. Previously, together with a coach who helped me with the transition, I had also established a daily routine as a framework. The coaching ended in January. After falling sick for a few days in February, I got sidetracked and no longer followed my routine. The only thing that stuck was the weekly review, but that wasn’t enough to keep me on the rails. During the sick days I started watching a TV series that got me hooked so badly, that even after recovery, I watched a few too many episodes every night, went to sleep late, and couldn’t follow my routine the next morning because I slept in. After six seasons of Supergirl in less than six weeks, I’ve sworn that I will only watch TV shows with a weekly release schedule or mini-series.
Outside of work and productivity, things are looking slightly better. I managed to get a medical checkup that I already wanted to do last year, and besides a severe Vitamin D deficiency, which I’m treating with a prescribed supplement now, my body seems to be in good condition. I turned my simmering motivation for building community into action, hosted my first two-hour party, and already sent the invites for the second iteration. Besides this party at home, I also hosted a proper salon-type discussion event for Interintellect with a friend in Berlin and went to the community building retreat for German Effective Altruists to extend my network outside of professional connections. At the retreat, I had a great 1:1 conversation with one of the directors, who has a similar background. It both confirmed my path and gave me some new ideas about professional networking which simultaneously supports other communities like Effective Altruism.
For April, I’ve decided to go on a bit of a social media fast. I can’t go completely dark, but I’m restricting my use of all my social platforms to professional and promotional reasons. A few tweets and also a conversation with a friend with a more “analog” life motivated me to take that step. Social media can be beneficial, but only if we use it, not if it uses us. Another related goal is to go back and be more consistent with my daily routine, which enforces some non-digital me-time in the morning. While these goals are mostly about reducing distractions and gaining focus, I also have a more explicit and active goal, and that is to finally launch my new website and landing page this month and start with active outreach to new clients. Wish me luck, and I’ll keep you updated.
A weekly review is a valuable practice to regularly check in with yourself and see how you’re progressing. It should be a part of every self-improvement journey. However, establishing a weekly review as a ritual can be difficult. I have tried a few times and failed to keep up, but now I have found something that works for me. Let me share my approach in the hope that it will be helpful for you, too.
The first thing is finding a regular space to do your review. To establish the practice as a ritual, you should do it at the same time every week, so you need to pick one that works consistently and where you are also in the right mood to do it. If you do it on the weekend, you may not always be able to do it at the same hour due to different weekend plans. If you do it on Friday, you may be too tired and feel like postponing. I’m doing it as my first task on Monday mornings, which works well.
The second and even more crucial thing is finding a format for weekly reviews you enjoy so you don’t dread doing it and start procrastinating. I tried using the plus-minus-next method Anne-Laure Le Cunff of Ness Labs popularized. I pushed it multiple times, but it didn’t stick, even when I made a pact with myself last January. Back then, I blamed the timing and being overwhelmed on Mondays, but now I realize that my primary issue was likely the planning aspect - the “next” column. With short-term goals, the “plus” and “minus” columns became nothing other than a previous week’s “next” column checklist. I felt good about the goals I accomplished and bad about those I didn’t. This checklist drowned out other things that I could have written there. While I could say more about my problems with planning, the key to making a review practice stick was to detach these two: a review that doesn’t try to be a plan.
My current review practice encompasses five columns or questions. As expected, there’s a “positive” and “negative” list. I fill those out based on how I feel about the past week at the review time. Although what I feel good or bad about comes from who I want to be, there’s no explicit checklist to consider. I’m also creating a “so-so” list for things I have mixed feelings about, for example, if I enjoyed something but have spent too much time on it.
The fourth question is about relating my review so far to my goals. And goals, in this context, don’t mean a to-do list for the week. It refers to long-term aspirations that I’ve stated separately. For example, one of my goals is to build out my freelance business with new clients and services. I will ask myself if I’ve done anything in the past week to pursue this goal. If there’s nothing, I should adjust my priorities. Again, I won’t set explicit goals for the next week. Sure, the standard advice is to make something actionable, but it’s better to drop the advice if the fear of not fulfilling a plan stops you from questioning yourself about your progress. Interestingly, this goes both ways. If I’ve mentioned many things as positive in the past week that weren’t related to goals, does this mean I have to revise my goals?!
The fifth question is a fully open question. It’s labeled “other thoughts” and is an invitation for free-flow journaling. It’s a place to write down what answering the previous four questions brought up in my mind. Part of that could be revising goals and priorities or making connections between this week’s and last week’s review and understanding patterns. Again, this is all optional and intended to keep me on a self-improvement journey without enforcing a rigid structure I can’t keep up with.
In summary, my weekly review (nearly) always takes place at the same hour, contains five prompts (positive, negative, so-so, connection to goals, other thoughts), and is entirely detached from any planning. If you have a similar practice or try mine, please share your experience.
I hosted a party! I mentioned Nick Gray’s book “The 2-Hour Cocktail Party” in my yearly review post, announced to host one in “early 2024”, and kept the promise to myself! Here’s a little field report about hosting this event.
For those unaware of Nick’s party concept, here’s the gist: you invite around 15 people using a website that allows you to hype them up with an email campaign, have them come to your house on a weeknight, serve them beverages and light snacks, give everyone a name tag, make three rounds of icebreakers where everyone shares something about them with the group while letting people mingle freely the rest of the time, and finally kick everyone out after two hours. The book and Nick’s website explain how and why, so I won’t go into detail in this post.
My main change to the formula was not calling it a cocktail party because I felt it was false advertising without serving proper cocktails. I named it an after-work party instead. Other than that, only minor changes to the tools and shopping list (you can’t host a party without serving beer in Germany).
The exciting but emotionally intense part of the party wasn’t the event itself but sending out invites and waiting for reactions. I feared people’s thoughts about me if I invited them to such an event. With every message and reply, my mood changed from stressing about being unable to fill the room and ending up with only 2-3 guests to worrying that my apartment would overflow and I would have to decline some RSVPs. I sent out a few invitations, waited for reactions, and, depending on how I felt about them, I shared more invitations. I didn’t pretend to be confident about the concept but instead always mentioned that I got the idea from a book and that it was an experiment, so people knew what they signed up for. The fact that so many of my friends and acquaintances supported me made me quite happy. I configured the guest list to close automatically after 20 RSVPs. In total, 18 guests signed up, three having to cancel due to being sick, so it was precisely 15 guests. Including my flatmate and myself, we ended up being 17 people.
While anxious during the preparation and planning phase, I felt relaxed on the event day. I was concerned about finishing cleaning and food preparations, not guests. The RSVP list looked solid; even a few no-shows would have been acceptable. However, there were none. Everyone who signed up ended up being present. One person messaged me and said they’d be late, but everyone else arrived between 19:00 and 19:10. German punctuality, FTW! I was too busy opening the door, greeting guests, and taking care of other last-minute logistics (I would have needed 10 minutes more for preparations) to end up feeling in the awkward zone Nick describes in his book. I gathered everyone for the first icebreaker at 19:20. I did the second icebreaker around 20:10. The book recommends three rounds, but due to the punctual arrival, running the first icebreaker with the easy question twice, once for early arrivals and once for latecomers, made no sense. We ended with a big thank you from me to the guests for participating and a round of applause from the guests for me for organizing at around 21:15, and by around 21:45, everyone left (except for one of my flatmate’s closer friends who stuck around with him).
As I’ve given talks and led meetings before, I’m familiar with addressing crowds and enjoy taking the initiative, so gathering people and explaining icebreakers wasn’t an issue. Of course, it helped that my guests were very supportive. Nobody questioned the format, and everyone participated. In the second icebreaker, I sensed people had warmed up and felt more comfortable sharing, and the energy in the room, which was great from the beginning, was even better.
The best type of feedback that I got about the event was from people who were critical of the formula and things like nametags and the two-hour restriction, who eventually saw the value of these ideas and changed their minds. Some expressed the desire to gather again in the same crowd on a weekend with no end time, which is an excellent testament to the people in attendance.
My focus was on running a fantastic event for my guests. I talked to most people but was also slightly occupied with party logistics. Hence, I haven’t gotten the maximum possible value from it regarding individual conversations with those who came and whom I knew less well. However, I didn’t have any set expectations about it. I still had a great time that Wednesday night and ended with the feeling that the whole affair was quite effortless despite the time invested in invitations and preparations. I’m happy to check off one thing from my list for the new year.
I can’t say how much time I invested precisely. A few hours went into setting up the event website, but I also indulged in a lot of custom coding that wouldn’t have been necessary, but it’s something I obviously enjoyed. Sending invites and replying to messages were sprinkled throughout my workdays. I went on a big shopping trip (thanks to my sister’s tremendous support!) the day before and spent some time cutting vegetables and cheese to serve. Again, I could have spent less effort, but I enjoyed the preparations. I would have gotten away with only simple, ready-made snacks. I won’t count the time cleaning because that was due anyway.
Nick’s book not only provided a formula and a potential scapegoat in case the party failed, but it also helped me overcome the fear that my living space wouldn’t be appropriate to host a crowd. An exciting side-effect of hosting was that the apartment felt more like home, and I’ve gained some new appreciation for where and how I live.
Will I host again? Absolutely! I know that the concept works. Also, some people wanted to attend but couldn’t, and others I hadn’t even invited because the list was already filling itself. Next time, I hope for a mix of new faces and repeat guests.
Being known as a host and community builder is a long game. I haven’t seen any significant effects on the rest of my social life yet, but it’s not something that can happen with a single party. I imagine that after hosting two or three more of these parties and maybe other formats, I will see some unexpected effects later. I hope that others will follow my example and host as well. I also look forward to sharing my knowledge and experience and helping others host. And if there’s one takeaway from this post: you can do it, too.
So far, Twitter/X has been my primary social media site, but a year ago, I wondered if and how I should continue using it in light of changes made by its new owner, Elon Musk. I decided to take my time with things and observe the changes, considering that I was at a time when I didn’t focus on marketing and outreach for work. For 2024, however, I want to connect to more people to find additional professional opportunities to build my brand and expand my freelance business.
It seems like the worst predictions for Twitter/X were false. The site didn’t crash or collapse. Communities didn’t emigrate en masse, although some have said goodbye and moved to other platforms. The vibe may have shifted, but the service still has cozy corners. I don’t want to leave with a bang, but I also don’t feel confident about investing more into X, mainly because I’m curious about other alternatives. Hence, I’ve decided to use X only to interact with people from communities heavily relying on it, like Interintellect. I will still share important announcements and the occasional general-interest tweet, but I won’t try building and growing an audience. Which platforms will I use instead?
One platform I want to give additional attention to is LinkedIn. It’s not the most exciting platform, but it’s where everyone seems to be. If I want to build my business, I should invest more. I plan to share three weekly posts to discuss my work and the industry and regularly interact with posts from my connections to remain visible.
I will also build a new website and landing page with an email list as a sales funnel for consulting services. I’ve yet to finalize the details, but I’m working with a friend to build it. There will be some overlap and strategic connection between LinkedIn, this landing page, and my emails.
I will invest more in the fediverse and post regularly on my Mastodon account. Software engineers and people from the broader community, like technical writers, API designers, and DevRel folks, were among the first to look at alternatives to X. I want to engage them and share my work there. Compared to LinkedIn, though, it will be the slightly nerdier, techier, more raw version of my brand.
This blog will remain a behind-the-scenes channel for both work and personal stuff. It’s public and connected to my name, but I’m not aggressively marketing it. It’s for those who want to go deeper. The post you’re reading now is an excellent example of the type of content you can expect here. I’m using Bluesky for more random “tweets” (are they called “skeets” now?) that I want to get out of my head.
I’ve recently deleted all posts from my Instagram because I couldn’t keep up posting strategically and didn’t want to create feed posts randomly. Hence, I’ve decided to use Instagram only for ephemeral stories which cover multiple aspects of my life. I recently uninstalled the original inventor of short stories, Snapchat, from my phone and deleted my account because I don’t have enough contacts there to make sharing stories worthwhile.
The only interesting aspect of Threads, Instagram’s text-based spin-off, is the eventual fediverse support through ActivityPub integration. I will play with it once it’s out, but I’m not expecting Threads to play an active role for me. I also want to experiment with other fediverse platforms, like Pixelfed and Bookwyrm, but I still need to figure out how. Flipboard’s announced ActivityPub support has also caught my attention.
I’m not posting regularly on Facebook, but I still keep it as a “book of faces” of people I’ve met because I think it still serves this purpose well.
I’ve grown fond of a small German neighborhood network called nebenan.de for local connections. I like small alternatives to big players, even if they’re not part of the fediverse, so I’ll do my part to keep this network active and connect with people in my area.
VERO is another network with a short hype a few years ago that is still on my phone. I’m not actively posting there anymore, but I like many aspects of the app and think about using it more. Or should I drop it, as I have too many networks already?! Another app I’m unsure about is BeReal. It’s an excellent, non-distracting way to keep up with friends, but I only have a few contacts who actively use it.
Very soon, I’ll delete my XING account. The network used to be the European LinkedIn, but the geographical split doesn’t make sense in an age of global business. The company has recently made changes that make it feel more like a traditional job portal and, hence, not applicable for a freelance entrepreneur like myself unless I wanted to recruit full-time employees. My relevant XING connections are on LinkedIn, too.
How is your social media strategy for 2024?
Once again, we’re in the liminal space “between the years”. Christmas is over, and the new year hasn’t begun.
My issue with times like these that are outside the routine, and that means most holidays, is that they can only ever fulfill some of the expectations we have for them. They can be a time to do nothing and not feel you’re supposed to do anything. They can be a time to sit and reflect on your life. Alternatively, you can spend time with friends and family, especially those you rarely see. Or you can get a head-start on work. Or you catch up on all the tasks you haven’t been able to complete, both at work and in your household. I’m talking about the drawer you wanted to sort for years. All these are perfect uses for time off, but if you expect to do all of them, you realize how short a few days are once your schedule fills up. Add procrastination due to indecisiveness to the list, something I unfortunately do pretty often, and your holidays are almost over as soon as they begin.
For me, the Christmas break was mainly about spending time with friends and family. In other words, I have yet to do the other things on the list. So, let’s start with reflection.
When writing on this blog, I always look for older posts to link and refresh my memory with my earlier thoughts on similar subjects. In the first post for this year, I sounded negative and described 2022 as a year of stagnancy, even wondering if I’m getting too old to make progress. I linked a post from December 2021 in which I wrote down a few questions I wanted to explore in 2022, but I wasn’t happy with my headway. While I can’t say I have the perfect answers to these questions, I made significant progress in 2023.
In terms of work, I’ve been serving the same clients for a long time. One project ended in early 2023 as the company didn’t renew my contract, but the other existing projects quickly replaced it and filled my workday. I kept telling people that, technically, I’m a freelancer, but it feels more like having three part-time jobs. And that isn’t what I want. While this continued in 2023, I’ve been working on my business and figuring out where I want my professional journey to continue. I had a lot of conversations about it as well. And, very recently, I have figured it out. I have a plan and people who support me in implementing it. So, while I still need to implement it, I feel prepared and excited for the next steps. I will write about the details separately, so watch out for that.
Regarding life outside work, two highlights of this year have been my trip to India and the UAE and attending Jesscamp in the summer. Both exposed me to new people and ideas, expanded my comfort zone, opened my mind, and let me reconnect with people from the past. I also went on a few short trips to Berlin and once to London for community meetups. I finally met Anna and Anne-Laure, the founders of the communities that guided me through the pandemic.
It doesn’t mean that all great things only happen while traveling. In May, I picked up a new hobby locally: I joined a Salsa dancing class. I’m still struggling with my dance moves and still count myself as an absolute beginner even though I’m now doing the follow-up advanced class. However, I enjoy dancing. I finally found something that allows me to connect more with my body than my head (despite the cognitive effort to remember the steps) and an excellent opportunity to meet people who aren’t all nerds. I’m grateful for my friend who joined the classes with me; otherwise, I might have yet to do it. I’m motivated to improve at dancing, which will also encourage me to care for my health and appearance more broadly.
Earlier this year, I wrote about being a lifelong single in my thirties. The post was for me to have a basis to talk about it with friends and close followers, but someone put it on Hacker News, and I woke up to 10000 views and 400 comments. It was an unusual experience, but having shared something so intimate with a large crowd (and, mind you, connected to my name, which I’m also trying to establish as a professional brand) without having anything bad happen felt like an inoculation against the fear of revealing my self.
Besides the professional next steps, one thing that has always been on my mind is the desire to host events and connect people. I’ve done it through community meetups or virtual salons and my regular public board game nights, but I wanted to experiment with other forms of hosting, like dinner parties. Those felt intimidating, though. Then, I found Nick Gray and his book “The 2 Hour Cocktail Party”. I bought the book and made my way through it in one sitting. That confirmed my desire to host and gave me a less intimidating playbook. I have yet to host one of these parties, but I’m already preparing one for early 2024.
Altogether, 2023 feels like a year of a few great things and preparation for even greater things to come next year. I’m looking into the future with excitement, anticipation, and optimism. And I hope all of you do the same! Happy holidays!
Today, I’ve gifted this blog a proper “About” page and also a “Now” page.
The “married introvert” is a stereotypical type of person that I want to introduce today. I’m describing them as men because that’s the version I’ve observed more often and that I find more relatable (for obvious reasons); however, it can certainly be a person of any gender. And, of course, this is a simplification created to make some points. It doesn’t mean that real people fit this stereotype perfectly. That said, who are they?
The man has only a few friends and probably had them for a long time. He’s not a socializer; he rarely goes out or participates in community activities. When he’s not working, he enjoys solitude in the comfort of his four walls with a book or a practical hobby; he likes to tinker with stuff. However, he’s also married or at least in a long-term relationship. He might even be a father.
For their spouse, he’s a good partner. He might not be overly social and outgoing, but he has an intriguing inner life that only a few people share, and she’s one of them. He’s also unlikely to cheat or leave her because his lifestyle doesn’t provide good opportunities to meet someone else. If both partners are “married introverts”, their relationship becomes their comfort zone, and they mostly go through life as a couple with few other people involved except maybe a small group of friends. They probably started dating in high school or their first year of university and had no or few previous partners. If the spouse is more extroverted, she might organize the social life for them both to the extent the man is comfortable with.
The curious question is, if the man isn’t doing what you’re supposed to be doing to find a partner, like mingling with more people, how did they end up with their current (and only) partner in the first place? They had to do at least some socializing to get a date. Of course, finding a match is helpful if you want to avoid being alone all the time. Even introverts desire some human contact. A long-term partner fulfills your social and sexual needs while requiring much less social energy than maintaining a large circle of friends or continuous short-term dating. Therefore, focusing and channeling all your social energy on finding that partner (versus other social activities) makes sense. You might become more extroverted temporarily for instrumental reasons. Some people have consciously decided, but most have done it subconsciously. And obviously, a sex drive can be a powerful helper to direct your social energy into dating.
The next question is, why am I interested in this stereotype? It’s because I could have been that person. I sometimes wonder how my life would have turned if I had gotten into a romantic relationship with any of my younger self’s crushes. When I was younger, I wasn’t very social. I was not a complete loner without friends. Still, it was mostly a small group of selected people, and I would also spend a lot of time just with myself, thinking about stuff or tinkering with the computer (you have to be at least a bit of a loner to start coding as a pre-teen). Why didn’t the younger me focus on those crushes I had? There are many reasons, but I’m convinced the lack of perceived sexual needs was most significant.
I’m much more social and outgoing today. I still love sitting down and writing code or words (like these), but I also enjoy hanging out. Even when on the computer, I spend more time in communities, and then I go to a gathering of strange Twitter people or even travel to India and connect with online friends. I started Salsa dancing recently, something the younger me couldn’t fathom. I’m running regular game nights, looking to expand my audience, and thinking about hosting other events. My thoughts about those often occupy more mental space than work-related issues, even though I’m also into building my business.
My different priorities are indeed a function of being single. I’d focus on building a family if I were in a couple. The business part would be primarily instrumental to supporting that family, and any community stuff would come last. Here’s what worries me: my current interests, priorities, and desires to socialize and connect with people might not be authentic. I fear I’m not genuinely interested in the community but only do it as a coping mechanism for not having a partner and, at most, see it as a way to expand my dating pool. I’m just not admitting it and deluding myself.
Is that a bad thing, though? Their founder’s romantic rejections have partly inspired many great projects and companies. Cult leaders make their movement their harem. Human nature’s desire to mate and procreate is innate, and civilization is downstream of that. Why must I tell myself that whatever I’m doing must be for some pure, higher reason?
One problem is that if whatever I’m building connects me to my soulmate, then I’m losing interest. But, first of all, this might not happen. Married couples are some of the strongest and most active community folks trying to bring people together. It’s possible I’m genuinely interested in community, and it’s not just an instrumental cope for my singledom. Also, even if it does happen, everything in life is temporary. Even if it ends, it has still had value not just for me but for everyone involved.
I need to stop overthinking this. The fact is that I’m drawn to engaging in and building community at this point in my life, and I should roll with it instead of pondering my motivations. Maybe I’m the “married introvert” in a parallel universe, and that version of me hasn’t left the house in days. But in this one, I’m becoming more extroverted and social in my late thirties, and I should go with the flow and enjoy whatever happens.
Whenever I converse with a foreigner living in Germany, I hear that they find it hard to make friends with locals, and their circle is mostly other migrants and internationals. And every time I listen to it, I wonder about the causes. Are we Germans racists who don’t want to interact with others? Or are the foreigners not even trying to be a part of society and try to stick with their own culture? I don’t want to blame anyone. I neither want to force migrants to assimilate nor do I want to accuse all locals of xenophobia.
It’s often a language issue for new arrivals in the country. That can only be a partial explanation, though. There are a lot of second or third-generation migrants in Germany who speak German fluently without a hint of accent. Their circle of friends still appears to be people from their own culture.
Again, I’m not saying that people must always mingle with everyone. We naturally gravitate towards those with a similar background. However, there’s always the risk of groups forming Parallelgesellschaften (parallel societies) and being alienated from each other in times when we need to all work together. If I go to an event and the ethnic markup of people in attendance is fundamentally different from those I saw on the street or train to get there, I can’t help but feel that something’s off.
It’s not a German problem per se. When I wrote about attending Jesscamp in my previous post, I pointed out that the event didn’t have racial diversity because practically all the attendees, even those from far abroad, were White. But I live in Germany and care about politics and society, so it’s my focus. I’ve thought about what I can do to help connect over various boundaries.
Twice per month, I’m running a public board game night with around 10-30 people joining. We have good diversity in terms of gender, age, occupation, and social class. But there are no people who aren’t White locals. Board games are a very German thing, but not exclusively. Everyone likes to play. It may be an excellent place to start and explicitly try and invite people that would make the event more diverse and could help them connect to others. Some games are problematic because of language, but others only need a little language skills, and I can help translate and explain rules, at least in English.
How do I find the people that I want to attend, though? I know some local groups for different nationalities can be found and contacted via social media, so maybe I’ll do a cold reach-out. One of my online friends, also an expat living in Germany, encouraged me to do so and said that many international groups are open to hearing from locals.
Lately, I’ve desired to host more events and connect people, but I have not made any moves. It may be a topic for another post, but what I said above is a point to get the ball rolling. As it’s the beginning of October, let’s agree that this is one of my goals for the month. I’ll give you an update in November on how it went.
Last week I attended Jesscamp, a fun week-long event where 60-ish people, who spend too much time on Twitter, rented an entire hotel in a rural village in the Black Forest to hang out in real life. A few attendees already wrote their impressions of the event in blog posts or Twitter threads, and I enjoyed reading those. I also want to share my thoughts a week after the camp’s wrap-up.
Jesscamp, named after its initiator, is one of the physical manifestations of a subculture known as TPOT, which stands for “this part of Twitter”. It’s not a tightly-knit community but rather a loosely connected group of people, and many of them, including myself, usually say they are adjacent to this group instead of being core members. The founding story of TPOT, which used to call itself “ingroup” at some point, is that they’re a bunch of nerds who have been deeply involved with LessWrong-style rationalism but wanted to explore other parts of life. They consider themselves post-rationalists; many talk about embodiment and healing or spiritual practices. My connection to TPOT is mostly through Interintellect, which has an inevitable overlap. I only bordered on rationalism through my engagement with Effective Altruism, and I don’t call myself a post-rationalist. I have opinions that diverge from “mainstream TPOT”. Still, I was interested in exploring a group of curious and open-minded people. I came to Jesscamp with little expectations but openness to the experience.
Another similar event had happened just weeks prior: Vibecamp. With over 600 attendees and three days, the US-based camp was a much more extensive and denser experience. I haven’t been to Vibecamp, but a few people went to both Vibecamp and Jesscamp. However, I was curiously following reports from Vibecamp. While many participants enjoyed their experience, some discourse on Twitter gave some negative vibes. Firstly, there was a lot of discussion about status in the community, from lurkers (“lemurs”) to micro-celebrities. Secondly, there was an emphasis on dating while having a skewed gender ratio, leaving some men hoping to get laid at Vibecamp frustrated. I was intrigued by how these things would play out at Jesscamp. Undoubtedly, the small group size would make it more cozy, and the longer duration would make it more relaxed. My experience confirmed these predictions.
Jesscamp had a skewed gender ratio as well, with more male than female attendees, but I haven’t sensed that this was a problem, and I haven’t heard any reports about it either. I haven’t been part of any status discourse either. I don’t know about the experience for others, but Jesscamp felt pretty egalitarian to me. Almost every group at a table seemed open to people joining and leaving the conversation at any time. I am used to feeling out of place, but I never had this experience at Jesscamp, which was new. People were polite, open-minded, and willing to hear what others said. Nobody tried aggressively changing my opinion or peer-pressure me into participating in activities. I don’t like using the term “belonging”, but I felt safe and respected during the event. One thing I noticed, though, is that while there was “diversity of thought”, there wasn’t enough diversity in other areas, such as ethnicity. There were two East Asians and one Indian person, with the rest being White (including slightly darker-skinned Southern Europeans). The only minority with strong representation was trans people. This setup indicated that this is a community of primarily privileged folks, with around 80% of people working in tech (or having worked and currently “funemployed”).
All activities at Jesscamp were spontaneously planned by the attendees, unconference-style, without guidance from the organizers. Some people took advantage of workshops, whereas others spent more time hanging around with others in free flow. I was one of the workshop people. I participated in two improv workshops hosted by Sasha and one clowning workshop hosted by Elle. Both instructors were practitioners but not teachers of their craft, yet they created an excellent curriculum for the group. I enjoyed acting with the group and going outside my comfort zone to express myself. I’m very grateful for the experience.
Other Jesscamp attendees will probably remember me as “the werewolf guy” as I had brought cards and my narration skills for playing the social deduction game. Luckily I found an excited group of players who couldn’t get enough of playing, so we ran werewolf sessions on most nights.
I went on a 13.5 km hike around the village through vineyards and forests with a small group, and we made a trip to the local pool. Other than that, I spent all my time back at the hotel, often doing some work in the morning (once in a great guided co-working session hosted by Alexandra) and then participating in conversations with various people. I also used the opportunity to play a few notes by myself or jam with other musicians. When someone else occupied the piano, I dabbled with percussion instruments. I enjoyed these sessions and wish I could do them more often.
Due to the incredible real-life interactions, I spent much less time on my phone and computer than usual. However, whenever I opened Twitter, I realized the community felt much nicer in person than on social media. More curiosity and mutual exchange compared to controversial hot takes posted for likes.
I didn’t sleep enough during the camp, although I slept more than others. It was intense, and I still felt it back in my daily routine this past week.
I’m glad I went to Jesscamp and will go again when there’s an opportunity to meet the community. I’m grateful to everyone I met and the organizers who made the event happen. Was Jesscamp a life-altering experience? I don’t think so. Still, it was a significant step on the journey I’m already on to become a more whole, socially active, and curious person. It hasn’t given my life a new direction, but it showed me new ways to be and gave me some food for thought.
Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is about to launch a new social network. Its working title is “Project 92” (it used to be “Project Barcelona”, and may be named “Threads”), and they position it as a direct Twitter competitor. In other words, it’s a heavily text-focused network compared to the visually focused Instagram and the general-purpose Facebook. The other exciting aspect of this project is that they’ve now confirmed - on a screenshot shared by Verge - that it will support ActivityPub, the standard used by, among others, the federated Mastodon network.
I’ve observed people on Mastodon and the fediverse having mixed feelings about it, but the negative prevails. Too many fear that Meta will do an EEE, an embrace, extend, extinguish move with that project. An EEE is when a product first embraces an open standard and extends it with further functionality not fully compatible with the standard. Then, they eventually extinguish the standard by achieving market dominance. Some Mastodon instance admins have already announced that they plan to “defederate” Meta, meaning they won’t allow the free flow of content between their instance and Meta.
I want to share why I believe Facebook is starting this project and supporting ActivityPub and why I think it’s unlikely they can kill the fediverse with this move. On the contrary, they could boost the federated network. Either I’m right, or in some time, you can pull out this post and show me how overly naive I’ve been.
Through its ownership of WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, Meta dominates the messaging and social networking market. Some activists and politicians have criticized WhatsApp and Instagram acquisitions and asked for a rollback. Meta must play nice in this climate and show the market they’re not too dominant or anti-competitive. What could be better than supporting an open standard and decentralization?
Twitter never had the mainstream appeal of other networks, but it has a critical cultural impact because it attracts influential people. It’s also escaping Meta’s sphere. They couldn’t purchase it earlier, and now it’s sure that an acquisition would not meet the regulators’ approval. However, Twitter’s ownership did change when Elon Musk bought the network, and his erratic leadership in the first weeks and months made people lose confidence. It’s been a good time for Twitter’s competitors, which are primarily decentralized networks, the ActivityPub-enabled fediverse (with Mastodon and others), and the newer ATProtocol-enabled BlueSky network.
In the current social networking ecosystem, the following is true: It’s doubtful that a centralized Twitter competitor will emerge. People will stick to the original unless they have good reasons to switch. And decentralization could be one of those reasons. The fediverse has already moved beyond being a nerds’ toy, with larger organizations setting up their instances in the network to gain some independence. Hence, if Twitter fails somehow, the replacement wouldn’t be a single service but a network of services. The network comprises Mastodon (and Friendica, Pixelfed, Misskey, etc.) instances, individual WordPress sites, and some centralized services like Tumblr. If Meta can’t wholly own this substitute, they can at least be part of it, which is better than nothing.
Meta has a competitive advantage with “Project 92” due to the integration with Instagram, which no third party can replace, as the company might restrict the necessary API access. They are counting on users with an active Instagram presence to move to their new text-based social network instead of joining or creating, e.g., a Mastodon instance. These users get full access to the fediverse and their existing Instagram followers, a win-win situation for them and a lock-in effect for Meta.
It’s tough to convince users who are not active on Instagram or are critical of the whole company to join the new network. Thus, it’s still better for Meta to get some access to these users through federation instead of none at all. And, honestly, they probably still have their grasp on them through WhatsApp.
If “Project 92” doesn’t work out because users are not interested or it’s not making the company any money, they might shut it down. However, what could they do if it’s mildly successful, but they want more? They could shut down ActivityPub, but I don’t see why they would do it. They’d degrade the experience for their users who followed federated users and give them a reason to leave their app and join a Mastodon instance. They could subvert the protocol subtly to make remote users click through to content on Meta servers, where they can show ads or convince them to switch. Again, they rely on the goodwill of fediverse admins, who have already demonstrated they might defederate at any moment if they see foul play.
Many services like Tumblr have announced that they’re working on ActivityPub integrations but have yet to launch them. When Meta launches, those services get another push to ship support, which will take little time because they’re already working on it. ActivityPub is the future. Meta will stand against an entire unified ecosystem that may be stronger than them and has the Meta-critical public on their side.
Fediverse admins should be careful, of course, and they should not let Meta get away with sleazy moves. However, they should not defederate prematurely. Of course, they can do that if they want an alternative, corporate-free ecosystem for a small niche. However, this is an opportunity if they believe that the fediverse can become a mainstream social network and that decentralization isn’t just for nerds but everyone. They could be the ones to onboard the people who aren’t very active on social media, don’t necessarily want to use a Meta-owned app, but want to follow some of the influencers on that major network.
I’m currently a full-time freelancer working with various clients. I also work on a few other projects to turn into products, individually and with a partner. I have many ideas on what I could do professionally, but I also have limited time, attention, and resources to invest in my work. If I am overwhelmed with too many things, I will not make enough progress in each. I’ve recently thought a lot about my focus, and I want to leverage the Playground program I’m attending to gain some clarity.
My client projects have included software development, technical writing, and consulting. However, the overwhelming majority of my time goes to software development. I have a few long-term clients who enjoy working with me, and I enjoy working with them. The work, however, is often barely related to the specialization on APIs that I’ve built over the past years. On the other hand, I’m seeing a lot of business development potential for partnerships beyond freelancing. I don’t want to stop this work anytime soon.
Years ago, I set up a website and published a few blog posts around a business concept for developer content production. However, that doesn’t correctly reflect my daily work. I’ve done very little developer content and a whole lot of developing. I worked on this business concept because I saw the potential for scalability and the combination of my various skills and interests. Still, my journey turned out differently.
Many ideas about what I want to do are swirling in my head. Some are distinct from what I’m doing now, and others are close. Some of them are highly connected, while others are more independent. I wrote them down recently, without filtering, to find some patterns. My goal for the first week of Playground was to write this post to share a brain dump with the world. I didn’t quite finish it in the first week, but I’m catching up now.
I’m not sharing the complete list and all my thoughts today. However, it boils down to whether I want to be a builder or an educator (in the broadest sense of these words).
My biggest education project so far was the book “Designing APIs with Swagger and OpenAPI” that I wrote together with Josh Ponelat. Leveraging that book to sell consulting packages around API design and related topics would be a no-brainer. However, I need more than one book. As these consulting projects might be well-paid but limited in size, I need a sales funnel to generate leads regularly, which means spending a lot of time on cold outreach, content marketing, brand building, etc. I haven’t done so, mainly because my days were full of paid software development projects. I must choose between doubling down on what already pays the bills or setting up this new system. I’m considering the latter because this would be very intriguing and generate more money in the long run if I get the right clients. I’m doing the former because it’s inside my comfort zone, and, as I mentioned above, I’m enjoying the work and see a lot of potential in it as well.
I like building stuff. I’ve worked on software projects for myself since I was a teenager, and I still enjoy it. I also like talking about my work. Developer relations is fascinating because it combines technical and human aspects and is mainly about sharing a passion. I’ve enjoyed the developer content and writing projects that I’ve done, and I love giving talks and being at conferences and tech meetups. However, talking about things others have built - whether a community or open source thing or the product of a company contracting you - eventually becomes unsatisfactory as you think about how much you’d enjoy making it instead of just talking about it. At least, it’s what I’ve experienced.
Building things for myself is enjoyable. Building something for others is still good. The most satisfying (but also sometimes stressful) is making things for others that leverage assets that I’ve previously created for myself. And I can already do this in my current projects, with expansion potential.
For a while, I’ve spent much time reading articles about APIs and related topics and shared this content on my Twitter to build a personal brand. I’ve stopped doing that, and my Twitter output has become random. I first voiced some of the sentiments around my plans in December when talking about a social media and personal branding strategy in light of changes at Twitter. Back then, I decided not to make outreach a focus, but five months into the year, it might make sense to rethink that.
There are two paths forward for me. The first is to stay with the current software development projects that pay the bills and spend all unbilled hours on SaaS-style projects that could generate earnings in the future. I wouldn’t worry about branding, outreach, or content creation besides doing a bit of build-in-public on personal projects. My wish to write or do DevRel-style work would be limited to those projects. The plan might also involve adding some subcontractors to help me with the development. I could have an arbitrage opportunity in client projects and put the profits into my other projects.
The second is to seriously build another business that involves more one-off high-value consulting projects around APIs. It’s not the developer content business I tried setting up before (although I’m still open to it if client demand exists), but more focused on API design and related topics. It could include workshops and paid speaking opportunities as well. It’s an educational effort that would give me more money and exposure to leverage in other projects. It’s about building a brand as an expert.
I’ve started and stopped writing this post multiple times, mostly because I needed to see if it was the announcement of a decision or a basis for discussion of a decision yet to be made. I hoped it could be the first, but I need more time to decide. But the options are on the table now.
Friends who have served me food at their places are sometimes irritated if I only put a small amount on my plate. “Are you sure you don’t want more?” they ask, trying to be a good host and feed me plenty. “Let me finish this first”, I say, “and then I will take more”. Which I usually do if the food is good.
I learned this as a child. My parents and grandparents wanted to ensure I wouldn’t put food on the plate, not finish it, and then it would go to waste. Eat small quantities first. There’s always more. And there was always enough, including leftovers, to carry forward to the next meal. On the odd case that we finished everything they cooked, they were worried it had not been enough.
The first time I fully realized this was a conversation with a flatmate in college. He grew up with four siblings. They were not very poor, but he told me that he and his brothers sometimes fought over food and had to ensure he was getting his fair share. I don’t have memories of fighting over food with my sister.
It goes beyond food. I can’t remember any time we discussed money in terms of whether we could afford a necessary purchase. My parents did not have affluent backgrounds. They came from families that left East Germany, and my grandparents had to build a new life in the West from scratch. But they did well for themselves, getting stable, well-paid jobs and being able to purchase a single-family home for me to grow up in. They could afford what they and their children needed. However, they were never “trying to keep up with the Joneses”. I don’t know anyone less prone to conspicuous consumption than my parents. The financial advice I indirectly got from them was that you could build wealth if you don’t need luxuries and live below your means.
From what I’ve described above, I have gained an abundance mindset. Sometimes when people hear that I’m a freelancer, they tell me they’d like to do it, but they’re worried about paying the bills if there’s no steady paycheck. One of the reasons I’m pretty relaxed about my entrepreneurial journey is that I am literally unable even to think that not being able to put food on the table could happen to me. (However, being too laid-back is a problem, too, which is why I sometimes stay too long with projects that are not financially viable.)
At carnival parades in Germany, it’s common for the people on the trucks to throw candy toward the people watching the train, and then the children try to catch or collect them from the ground. I never did this as a child. Of course, the main reason is that I didn’t even like eating 90% of the sweets they threw at the crowd. But I’ve also felt something cringe about fighting for scraps like this, especially if it involves competing against the other children trying to reach for the same stuff. I’m not trying to sound classist, but I felt this is somehow below me.
In school, I was always among the kids with the best grades, and I didn’t have to exert unreasonable effort to get there. I’m not saying this to brag. I’m saying it because it fueled my abundance mindset. When I started university, I remember the dean of the computer science department telling us that there were simply no unemployed folks among their graduates. We CS students were irritated about the law and theology (!) students who apparently hid books in the library to get an unfair advantage over their peers while we liked helping each other.
I strongly believe in competition, but only if it’s fair play. We should win for our merits and never by putting anyone else down. Besides, I think most of the “games” in the world are positive-sum and not zero-sum. We should lift each other and increase the overall size of the pie instead of fighting about who gets the bigger pieces.
Because abundance makes me feel I have everything I need or could have it if I wanted to, I don’t need to assert dominance. I don’t need to engage in fights. If things get too heated, I can be the first to step down and remove myself to help cool things down. If we meet on a narrow path, you can be sure I’m the one who slides to the side to ensure you can pass. If only two pieces of pie are left, I will take the smaller one and leave the bigger one to you.
Why am I writing about all of this? Am I trying to say I’m a better person? Of course not. That would contradict this piece itself. So here’s the reason.
Recently, I wrote about being single. In the article, I said that my singleness results from a “combination of a lack of opportunities and a lack of desire”, but at the same time pointed to “some thoughts and attitudes towards dating and relationships in my mind that hold me back”. And my abundance mindset could be one of them.
First, the idea of abundance means there’s little pressure to find someone quickly, even as one gets older and the dating pool shrinks. You will subconsciously assume there’s always “plenty of fish”. Of course, it helps you stay relaxed on a date, but that can also mean a lack of seriousness in actually “closing”.
Second, the dating market is limited. There is no abundance. And it’s a zero-sum game if you’re assuming monogamy because everyone will end up with one partner. The only way to ensure this partner is good is that you are willing to compete for them, even at the expense of other men fighting for the same woman. And I sometimes feel multiple men courting the same women can be as cringe as the children fighting over the candy from the carnival truck.
Third, it is not a market based on fair play. I’ve seen people of all genders throw good manners out the window and are willing to play dirty because the prize is worth the cost. The desire to score the hot girl or the handsome guy overrides behavior patterns appropriate for interpersonal relations. It’s no wonder I don’t feel like playing.
I don’t consider this my primary blocker, but it is certainly relevant. I will follow up with more thoughts on others, but in the meantime, I’m curious to hear your opinion, too.
I’ve joined Playground, an “anti-procrastination platform” run by Ida, who I know from Ness Labs. I was curious about her approach that sets up an accountability buddy system but also tries to gamify the whole process. The program is cohort-based and runs over three months. Ida assigns you a buddy in the first session who you’re supposed to meet once every week, and you get a weekly “Playguide” to work through together. My accountability buddy for this cohort is Luise, who is also from Germany, so we can do the exercises in a mixture of English (because that’s the language used in the guides) and German. She’s doing different work and has other goals, but we’re getting along well.
When signing up for the program, you select a goal you want to achieve over the three months. Mine is that I want to shift my work further away from hourly billing and into selling products and services. In other words, the freelancer-to-entrepreneur route. Late last year, I mentioned this in a post where I was thinking about my social media strategy. I co-founded a company that eventually was no longer financially sustainable before starting full-time freelancing, and I’m still working on side projects, both from this time and new. I’ve even found ways to integrate both, but I only have a little to show for it because I need a more precise focus. So I hope to see it during the program, and I will also write about it on my blog.
After a fun getting-to-know-each-other game, one of the main exercises of the first week was to ask “Why?” five times to dig deeper into the reasons behind the goal you set. The challenge for me was that there’s rarely a single reason behind a decision. Multiple reasons require digging deeper into each, so you build up a reasoning tree where you need to ask “Why?” a few times more often.
I want to separate the income from the hours I work. Why do I want this? To have more time and money, both. Here’s where the tree splits into money and time.
The reason for more time is that I plan to spend this time on different things, both professional, like business ideas, and personal, like spending more time with friends or non-monetized hobbies. Why do I want to do these? I like many things, and I dislike saying “No” to anything (remember my musings about focus).
The reason for more money is the freedom that money brings. I can reinvest the money in the business to make even more different projects. At the same time, I’d also like to give away some of that money. As a follower of effective altruism, I am confident that giving money to high-impact causes can make a difference. And I like doing good.
I hope the Playground program can help me work toward this goal, and I will try to document the journey.
The word “asexual”, when applied to humans, describes a person who experiences no or extremely low sexual attraction and desire for sexual interactions with other people. Asexuals consider it an orientation similar to hetero- and homosexuality. Instead of being attracted to one or more specific genders, they are attracted to none.
In the asexual community, there’s also a differentiation between sexual and romantic attraction. A person might have the desire for a romantic relationship but not to sleep with that person. Accordingly, there are heteroromantic, homoromantic, and bi-/panromantic asexuals. If neither romantic nor sexual attraction is present, a person might call themselves an aromantic asexual; or “aroace”.
Two days ago, I published an article on this blog in which I revealed that I’m a lifelong single and, accordingly, have no sexual experience. I also said that I was wondering if I wanted to change that and find a partner, but I’ve been mostly indifferent to the fact that I had no mate and that I’m a virgin. The post was well received, and I got a lot of positive feedback on Twitter and in private. People told me their stories of being single for longer and finding partners later in life, reassuring me that it’s not too late. I also received the question of whether I have considered being asexual or even aroace. So, let’s talk about that.
I had sex-ed classes in third grade. I was curious to learn how humans procreate, but as a child, this had no relevance yet. My expectation was that it was something that came naturally later in life. As a teenager, like most boys, I was interested in girls, although I did not feel ready for dating or a relationship yet. However, I remember a situation where I realized that I was thinking about relationships as just very intimate friendships, whereas others would be thinking about the physical aspects. I called myself “an asexual” in front of a friend, but I had made up the term for myself as a joke, not knowing whether that was a thing or not.
In my early twenties, I first searched the term “asexuality” online and discovered the “Asexuality Visibility and Education Network” (AVEN), the quasi-official asexuality forum. If I remember correctly, I believe it was prompted by some conversations and also the fact that I had noticed my body was capable of sexual arousal, but I still had no desire to act upon those signals. I wanted to know if I was a late bloomer or whether I was different from the average person my age. Reading and interacting with the community helped me gain an understanding that asexuality is a thing, but I couldn’t decide whether the term applied to me or not.
I also learned that asexuality is a spectrum with various shades of grey between a “pure” asexual and an allosexual (= experiencing a normal amount of sexual desire) and that there are terms like “demisexual” that describe someone who only experiences sexual attraction to a partner with whom they already have an intimate romantic relationship. And, unlike celibacy (being a “volcel”), asexuality is not a choice. Community members who were not yet sure which label applies to them would call themselves “questioning”, and that’s what I think applied to me as well.
People typically realize whether they are gay, straight, or bi from the sexual attraction that they experience, even if they haven’t had intercourse with their preferred gender yet. Asexual virgins, however, often hear that they cannot probably know whether they like sex or not without trying. The asexual community fights back against this view as a misconception, but I think this is a valid point. I realized that pondering and theorizing would get me nowhere, and I mostly ignored the question. If the right person came along and I got close enough to them that having sex was an actual possibility, I would surely notice how I felt about the idea, and then I would have my answer. However, as I’ve mentioned in the previous post, the right person never came along, at least so far. When I have occasionally searched for and gone on dates, I have followed the approach of ignoring possible sexual incompatibility until the point where it would come up. It mostly hasn’t because my match or us both would lose interest before that. So I’ve remained “questioning”, and it’s closer to two decades than one since I first stumbled upon AVEN.
I have one helpful data point from last year. That was the first time I met a woman who indicated a strong interest in sleeping with me. I rejected her due to a total lack of attraction and haven’t regretted that decision ever. I believe talking about myself as a “potential asexual” helped her cope with the rejection, as she could think it was not about her but about me. However, a single case is obviously not enough to confirm my asexuality. I need more data.
While I’ve talked about asexuality with close friends, I’ve not used the term in public so far. As I said before, I’m not confident that the label applies to me. I might just not have met the right person yet and opened myself up to the possibility of a sexual encounter because there was no other person with a mutual interest. Unlike many people who complain about it on AVEN, I’ve not been peer pressured into dating so far, except for occasional hints at a desire for grandkids from my parents. People in my environment seem to gladly accept me as a heterosexual man who just hasn’t found a partner yet. I fear that if I called myself “asexual”, people might say it’s not true and just a coping mechanism for not finding anyone or plain resignation. So I typically don’t talk about it at all unless specifically asked. Well, now the cat is out of the bag with this blog post.
Considering that I’ve fallen in love multiple times, with either my crush never knowing about it (because I was too shy to tell them) or them rejecting me, I would not consider myself aromantic. However, maybe a term like “demiromantic” could be applicable. As mentioned in my previous post, I don’t pursue a relationship for its own sake. It has to be a specific person. I never sat on the couch alone and wished for a generic woman by my side, but I’ve sat there and wished for a specific person to give me company.
To summarize, yes, I have given asexuality and aromanticism some thought, and have done so for a long time. The concepts are helpful in understanding me. I’m not sure if these labels fit, though. Hence, I don’t use them.
I’m single. I don’t know if this comes as a surprise to you. Of course, you have yet to hear me talking about a wife or a girlfriend. But I also rarely talk about dating and finding someone. The bigger surprise might be that I’m a lifelong single. In other words, I was never in any romantic or sexual relationship, ever. Yes, seriously.
There are many words to describe people like me. “Absolute beginner” is one, “virgin” another. What about “incel”, though?
The term “incel” stands for “involuntary celibate”. It literally describes a person who doesn’t have a (sexual) partner but would like to have one. Besides the literal meaning, there is a lot of baggage attached to the term. Many incels aggressively blame the modern world, feminism, and women’s behavior and standards for their celibacy. Basically, it’s everyone’s fault except their own. The ideology even inspired killing sprees.
The opposite of “incel” is “volcel”. A “voluntary celibate” deliberately chooses not to have a partner.
I am not comfortable using either of those terms. Firstly, the choice of the word “celibacy” emphasizes sexuality over other aspects of a romantic relationship. I don’t think of it that way. Secondly, the incel culture turns me off. I have never blamed anyone for my situation, and I don’t think women’s rights should be up for discussion just because some men don’t get laid. Thirdly, and most importantly, at this point, I can’t even say whether I’m voluntarily or involuntarily single.
When someone asks me why I don’t have a partner, which doesn’t happen too often, my general reply is the combination of a lack of opportunities and a lack of desire. The longer answer might also include some thoughts and attitudes towards dating and relationships in my mind that hold me back, but let’s leave those for another day. I could increase my options but don’t invest toward that goal. So is that a revealed preference for being single? Or is it fear?
I don’t usually feel lonely, and I find it hard to relate to the feeling of loneliness killing you. I have no problem spending time just with myself. And I have friends, family, and communities around me. I sometimes think about finding or having a partner. Still, it’s not a driving force behind my actions unless it’s in subconscious ways.
On the other hand, I wonder whether I want things to stay the way they are. I’m not fully happy, but I also don’t know what would make me happy. I’m still trying to figure out what I want. However, I feel I’m too old to not know that.
The obvious course of action when you are unsure about something is experimentation. However, a relationship isn’t an activity (like a job, hobby, or sport) to try and quit when you don’t like it. It requires two people, and you must find a second person willing to try. Finding someone is hard, though. This brings me back to what I said a few paragraphs ago; I don’t see myself ready to invest much in something I’m not even sure I want. Also, if it doesn’t work out, I’m scared of leaving a broken heart in another person.
One thing I have figured out, though, is that I’m not interested in a relationship for its own sake. I could never be with anyone I’m not genuinely interested in, only to have someone and not be alone. I don’t want to compromise or lower my standards to end singledom. I’ve written about perfectionism from a work-related perspective on this blog before. It apparently also applies to my personal life and partner choice.
Why am I writing about this deeply personal subject? The clock is ticking, and figuring myself out and finding a partner won’t get easier as I get older. By talking about these things in public, I want to make myself accountable for taking these personal matters more seriously. As a friend told me recently, I should “whole-ass” it, not “half-ass” it, if I want to progress. I hope to figure some things out, and I want to document my thoughts here. This is a good starting point to show where I’m coming from if I get involved in the online dating discourse.
At the same time, I hope to get some support from my communities on the way. Feel free to reach out in public or private if you have any comments or feedback for me.
I’ve returned from a month-long trip to India and the UAE. I visited Bangalore for around two weeks and then Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Dubai for roughly a week each. Out of these places, Bangalore was the only city that I had visited before, but the last time was in 2010. I’ve always wanted to go back and see if and how the city has changed, though I kept postponing my travel plans. I wanted to go in 2020, but then COVID happened. Now it is 2023, so I went back after 13 years, but the good thing was that I now had an itinerary supported by my online activities during the pandemic years.
In Bangalore, I stayed for a week with a couple with whom I shared an apartment also during my last stay. I finally met their two-year-old son and visited the ISKCON temple and Bangalore Palace together. Then, I moved to an Airbnb in Indiranagar to be closer to the city center. We had a big Interintellect meetup nearby, which I had co-organized with Reddy, and I attended the first IRL Notion hackathon hosted by my friend Vensy as part of her No-Code Weekend brand. The week after, I spent my days working out of a co-working space and hanging out with more people from online circles afterward. Also, I met a guy from the old team from my startup a decade ago, and we enjoyed the nostalgia together.
I took a train to Hyderabad with Aravind, whom I met through Ness Labs and who also attended the Notion hackathon, so I didn’t have to experience my first Indian overnight rail trip alone. In Hyderabad, I saw the impressive historical Golconda fortress and the brand-new financial district with its massive towers, wide roads, and international companies. I also experienced the Holi festival. Vensy hosted me this week and pushed me into the Marvel cinematic universe. We also co-worked from her apartment.
The next overnight train brought me to Mumbai. The parents of a woman I met on Tinder (we didn’t end up dating but remained friends) took care of me and organized two days out, where I saw the former Prince Wales Museum, the Gateway of India, and the Elephanta Caves. We also had a small Interintellect meetup. I co-hosted with Shubh, which we had not yet planned when I left Germany. Shubh introduced me to her “Starbucks circle of friends”, which includes Natalie, a German journalist based in Mumbai. I also reunited with Samita, who I met in Lisbon in 2019. She’s establishing herself a second home in Mumbai right now. I also introduced her to Shubh, as she showed interest in Interintellect salons.
The final leg of the journey, Dubai, started with the only terrible thing that happened on the whole trip: I lost my wallet! Someone must have stolen it from me when I was not paying attention for a few minutes at the airport. Luckily I could block my cards immediately and get by with some cash advance from my Airbnb host and the NFC chip in my phone. There is a certain irony that this happened in Dubai when everyone warned me about how dangerous India is (especially rail travel) and told me how safe the UAE is. We had another small Interintellect meetup in Dubai, which I co-hosted with Mashal. I finally met Sach and Pragya in person for the first time. Besides that, I went to the top of the Burj Khalifa, walked along the beach, the marina, and the creek, and saw the enormous shopping malls of the town.
I returned a few days ago and am still processing my experiences from the trip. As I had seen India before, Dubai left the biggest impression on me. In my head, I kept comparing it to the United States regarding the infrastructure and the overall feel. It’s like Las Vegas, just without the gambling and the alcohol, making Dubai seem the more ethical version of a theme park city if you ignore that their riches come from fossil fuels. It is also a very ethnically diverse city. However, the markup of the groups is different from the West. For me, it felt like a better reflection of the actual global population, and it was a stark reminder to think of the world as less Western-centric. Many people I know have stereotypes about Dubai being only a tourist attraction. I can’t debunk that: parts of it feel like that (again, the comparison with Las Vegas). However, it’s also an actual city with real people and areas that feel normal. And despite being very car-centric, the public transport system is fantastic, and I did not need to resort to a private vehicle even once.
What about my impressions of India, though? What I’ve seen is a country making progress. There’s construction everywhere. Of course, all is subjective and based on the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met. However, I felt lots of tiny improvements in terms of the infrastructure. My last visit was before the smartphone age. Now, being able to call cabs and rikshaws via Uber instead of negotiating with drivers on the road seems a significant improvement. I loved riding Namma Metro, the new public rail system in Bangalore, which is a welcome change over the insane road traffic. Mobile payment is a huge thing now, thanks to UPI. Since that system is tied to Indian banks, I, as a foreigner, had to use more cash than the locals. The IT industry, especially in Bangalore, is now more about Indian startups than just offshoring for Western companies. The fact that the younger generations have more disposable income caused the proliferation of hipster-style cafés where people have become nerds about coffee and its preparation, just like in the West. Yes, there are underdeveloped parts and a lot of poverty, but things are going in the right direction. Indian cities need to ensure they don’t suffocate from pollution, but green number plates indicating fully electric vehicles aren’t unusual, so I have hope. One new friend I made, Vyshnavi, is a sustainability influencer. People do think about the environment, even if there’s a lot of room for improvement.
Europe and North America must avoid discounting Asia by clinging to old stereotypes. Billions of people live there, moving out of poverty into economic powerhouses. I’m grateful for seeing it with my own eyes.
I don’t appreciate the fact enough that I could visit four cities on a different continent and know locals in each place. Being part of global communities of open-minded people willing to meet, host, and show you places is incredibly valuable. I thank everyone I met on my journey; all of you contributed to a beautiful experience.
I returned a few days ago and have not wholly entered my daily routine. I’m tired from the trip, but I’m also unfocused while contemplating my takeaways from the trip and what my next steps will be. Even before going, I felt unsure about my personal and professional priorities for the year. There’s this idea that going abroad will hint you in a new direction, but I am still determining what it will be. The bottom line so far is that the trip was worth it. I hope to have more conclusions soon. I have no plans to travel again, but I left every city with many next-time ideas, so I surely can’t wait another decade.
For January, I set the goal of implementing the PACT I created as part of the Mindful Productivity Masterclass in Ness Labs. The PACT had one must, one should, and two won’ts.
Regarding my must, I diligently put the two Pomodoro sessions toward a non-client project almost daily. I missed some days but made up for it by working more on it on other days. So I call this a success. One caveat with this goal: I find it hard to switch off again when working on my stuff. In other words, it takes more mental space than time on the calendar, which reduces my overall productivity. An alternative is to schedule the work on certain days, but I like the approach of showing up every day, so I’ll stick with it and monitor it for a while.
Regarding my should, I have probably only made a daily plan for one day. Whenever I want to make a plan, I procrastinate until I give up and start with something on my list without making a definitive decision. I could decide to give up planning and go with the flow, but I’m afraid I will eventually forget essential or urgent tasks if I don’t plan. So I should continue trying.
My first won’t was to avoid wasting time with research and reading articles unrelated to my work. I’ve been successful and read very little in January. I still save some tweets for later but mostly short-form stuff where I want to engage in conversation. Deleting those without replying because I don’t know what to write still feels like a failure, but I’m improving.
The second won’t was to avoid using social media when tired or an hour before bedtime. It is my least successful goal from the PACT, while it’s the most important. “Doom-scrolling” on Twitter or Instagram is often a waste of time and overstimulation that negatively affects mental health. Thanks to the bookmark features, it also adds things to my to-do list to engage later, as mentioned above.
Besides the PACT, the mindful productivity map includes an anchor ritual and metacognition practices. My anchor ritual is walking outside, which I do regularly. I still need to add the mindful observation practice I wanted to establish more often. I’ve tried counting the squirrels in the park that I’ve mostly ignored, while my friends who walk in the same park always mentioned them. Most of the time, I still return to my desk without a number or another observation.
As a metacognition practice, I wanted to write an interstitial journal and review my weeks with the plus-minus-next method. I’ve kept my journal, although I could write in it more. I haven’t done the plus-minus-next review in January. I didn’t find or take the time on weekends. Monday mornings, I felt so overwhelmed with the new week’s work that I postponed it until it no longer made sense.
Rituals and metacognition practices take some time out of your schedule. However, the idea behind them is that they will improve the quality of the remainder by giving you more clarity. I fully believe that, and still, I find it hard to make time for them.
For February, I’m not planning any changes to my PACT. As the must part is already working, I can double down on the other goals and the metacognition practices. I need to figure out how to make time for them. However, it’s not the lack of time but the fact that introspection can be difficult and scary because you see how different you are from the person you want to be. It is the same reason why I also fail with my should goal of daily planning because it gives you a realistic insight into the amount of work you get done without idealistic assumptions.
However, time is also a problem related to the failing won’t goal. Using social media and digital devices late at night affects my sleep schedule, which makes it harder to get up in the morning, especially on weekends. As a result, my days start feeling rushed instead of having the head-start of an early riser.
As you see, everything is connected, but I need to start somewhere. So I want to focus on the failing won’t goal. I should have a proper evening ritual to wind down the day without too much stimulation instead of ending the day glued to a screen and regretting it the next morning. That will be my focus for February.
There were a few highlights in January. I gave a talk about APIs at a local tech event. I hosted a virtual werewolf game for the Interintellect and participated in several virtual meetups and salons. Also, I met a new person from Twitter for a Zoom call. The most noteworthy thing, however, is that I have finalized a plan I’ve carried with me for quite some time: I booked another trip to India with a stopover in the UAE and am excited about it. Thinking about the itinerary, researching options, and talking to people took some time and distracted me a few times from other things, but I’m sure it’s worth it. I will tell you the details of the journey in another post. As I’m leaving in late February and returning in late March, I will write the February review post from a different continent.
That will conclude my first monthly review post for 2023.
The mindful productivity map is the outcome of the Mindful Productivity Masterclass, the homework from its last lesson. It covers four areas: pact, act, react, and impact.
The pact section describes my current direction and follows the MoSCoW method that suggests telling your goals as musts, shoulds, coulds and won’t’s. Mine are as follows:
The act section is about setting up an anchor ritual that helps you when you’re overwhelmed and can also include a support system so you know where to seek help. My anchor ritual is that I will leave my home or office and go for a walk in the neighborhood. I want to observe something in nature outside. Then, formulate the next action item in my mind before sitting down again. I will walk around the house or look out the window if it rains instead. I chose this ritual because it combines something I already do, which is going for walks outside, with something I already planned last year, becoming more present and mindful of my surroundings.
The react section is about metacognition. It’s about establishing regular review practice to see where you’re heading and whether you need to update your pact. I’ve decided to try interstitial journaling again, do a weekly review using the plus-minus-next method, and do a monthly public review on this blog (as promised).
Finally, the impact section contains my indicators of success. I mentioned a reasonable balance between being productive, socializing, and having experiences. I want to start my days well-rested and end them with a feeling of accomplishment. Also, I need to stay true to myself and have solid ethics. I think this is the section that needs some rework to become more specific.
Happy New Year! I wish for us all that 2023 will be a great year with joy, success, and whatever other wishes are on your mind. A year is just a number and a new page on the calendar, but we still like to use them as a mental model to structure time and understand ourselves. A new year is a time to look forward and make plans. It’s time to be optimistic.
In December 2021, a bit more than a year ago, I wrote a post laying out goals for 2022. It wasn’t a set of resolutions, just questions I wanted to explore and the commitment to regular review practice. Rereading this post, I could have written it just yesterday. It appears I’m no further than I was a year ago. I didn’t implement the review practice last year, but I’m trying again for 2023.
I attended a yearly review workshop hosted online by my friend Vensy. She had a fantastic review template with many great questions for analyzing the previous year and visualizing the next. The workshop lasted one hour, and it was expected that we could only do the first iteration of our answers. Doing a full review should take at least thrice the time. Still, I was shocked by the number of blank fields at the end of the hour. When we talked about this in the workshop, I said that the lack of a regular review made it so that looking at the whole year was too much at one time, which Vensy also confirmed and stressed the importance of reviewing your life regularly.
However, two more things made it hard for me to fill in the blanks in Vensy’s worksheets. There are questions that I find tough to answer, especially when I’m asked to name, rate, or compare things. Writing down my favorite X or the top 3 Y in black on white makes me very uncomfortable. I don’t usually think in superlatives or comparatives. Such statements express a level of confidence I don’t feel, and they seem unfair to those being rated, even if X and Y are things and not people with feelings and may never learn how I rate them.
The other interpretation of my difficulty in doing a yearly review could be that there wasn’t just a lot that I deem great about the year. I can’t confidently say I have progressed. Maybe 2022 was a year of stagnancy. Some notable things happened this year, such as the release of a published book, but that doesn’t count as a 2022 achievement because the work that went into it started in 2020 and primarily happened in 2021. All my major work projects were continuations of projects I started in the previous year. I had a solid URL-to-IRL pipeline (for those not chronically online, it means meeting people in person that you got to know through social networks or online communities), but that was also the result of online interactions in the previous years. I can’t think of anything I truly started anew in 2022 or unique first experiences. And I’m unaware if I’m just unaware of those, unable to celebrate them, or if I’ve become stagnant. I just turned 38 last month, and while that’s not exactly very young, it’s way too young to believe your life can’t change and you can’t make new first experiences or improve yourself.
I made some preparations for a new take on self-improvement. In November, I participated in the Mindful Productivity Masterclass hosted by Anne-Laure LeCunff of Ness Labs. As part of the course exercises, I created a mindful productivity map, planning and outlining my current direction, anchor ritual, support system, metacognition practice, and indicators of success. However, I still need to implement this in my life. I had a good excuse for December because there was almost no daily routine. I first fell ill with a cold and the side effects of dental surgery, then COVID hit, and when I barely tested negative again, I went on two business trips. First, I visited a client in Vienna, then attended the API Days conference in Paris. Afterward, it was already time for the holiday season. But I have no excuse for January, where I expect a lot more daily routine that I can optimize. I also started reading Atomic Habits by James Clear after seeing it recommended in every corner of the Internet I frequent.
Goal setting: I aim to implement and adapt the mindful productivity map for January and get back into some more tiny habit improvements. I will also post a summary of the map on this blog.
My social media strategy for 2023 still needs to be defined. In my previous post, I wrote about Twitter and Mastodon and how the future of Twitter looks unclear. I’m interested in decentralized networks, so I should use Mastodon more. But I was also thinking about investing more in Twitter and using it strategically for my business and personal goals, trying out new social media marketing tools. I should also post more regularly on LinkedIn to reach those who don’t hang out on Twitter. There are other networks that I’ve joined but don’t use. And overall, I need to ensure that my usage of these sites is healthy and that I don’t end up doom-scrolling or procrasti-reading.
However, for now, I have decided on a wait-and-see approach. More specifically, I have added figuring out social media to the not-to-do list for January. My reasoning is as follows.
At the moment, the situation with Twitter is in flux. What will Elon Musk do next? I assume things will stabilize, and he will put someone else in charge, but the company’s strategy needs to be clarified. And Mastodon is growing, but I’m curious if it will become a target for social media marketing and if third-party tools like schedulers will support that or if the Fediverse will actively resist this commercial side of social media. In about a month, I can be more confident about the state of things and see where they’re going.
The other reason is that I should focus on something other than marketing and personal brand building right now. I have a few long-term and returning clients and projects in the pipeline, so I can wait to sell more. I need to establish goals first. Three years ago, I created a website focused on selling developer content production. However, that was only one aspect of my work since then, and I’ve worked on many other things.
I’m often thinking about whether I should add more focus to my work and establish myself better in a niche or continue doing what I’m doing right now. Focusing would mean saying “No” to current projects I enjoy - and I don’t like saying “No”. But the path to growth from freelancer to an entrepreneur is productizing services, which requires some focus. So, there’s a lot on my mind that I need to figure out finally. The social network on which I announce the result has yet to have priority.
I’ll end with a Twitter thread by Thomas Frank, who claims that regularly posting on social media is insignificant. What matters more is working in seasons. Sometimes you need to go into hermit mode and create great things. Then, start “touring season” and reap the rewards. Now is my time for hermit mode.
When Elon Musk bought Twitter, I had very few expectations about the impact on the service. I’m neither a Musk fanboy nor an Elon hater (as the meme goes, I’m a third, more complex thing). He deserves credit for his entrepreneurial activities, including bringing electric cars to the mainstream car lover and reviving space travel. On the other hand, I knew some of his behavior and opinions were questionable, at the very least. And I’m generally wary of billionaires accumulating too much power, including control over an essential communication and media platform. However, I didn’t expect that Twitter would change significantly under Musk’s leadership. Now I have to admit I was wrong.
After he entered the Twitter headquarters (with a sink, just for a pun’s sake), Musk quickly changed the culture into “move fast and break things”, a motto that might work for an early startup but not for an established platform. Things have gotten chaotic, making many people worry about the long-term stability and viability of the service. I don’t want to recount everything he did and subsequently roll back. However, I’m pondering how to use Twitter in the future.
The chaos at Twitter has been great for alternative social networks. Tumblr appears to make a comeback. New competitors like CoHost are appearing. The biggest benefactor is Mastodon, though, along with the whole cosmos of ActivityPub-powered federated platforms often referred to as the Fediverse. There have been exodus waves from old social media sites into new networks, but they have yet to be sustainable. It could be different this time. I don’t expect Twitter to die or claim the Fediverse is already a complete replacement. Still, Mastodon might be the first federated network since email to graduate from geek toy to mainstream endorsement. There might have never been a better time to migrate.
From seeing the first drafts of OpenID to being a participant at IndieWebCamp, I’ve always been interested in federated and decentralized technology. Hence, observing these developments is interesting. However, I’m also worried about the financial and administrative sustainability of the Fediverse. Decentralization has a lot of advantages, but it’s neither a business model nor a panacea that solves all problems inherent to social media. In “Smoke alarm and snowfall”, Julia Racsko shares similar sentiments. Decentralized social media is an experiment that can fail, and we may find that centralization is better.
While Elon Musk seems erratic as the head of Twitter, his general idea of emphasizing the Twitter Blue subscription model over funding from ads seems intriguing. It’s another experiment that I want to see played out. It could change the overall vibe when Twitter rewards paid users more attention. The most active and visible Twitter users could be those who can justify Twitter Blue as a business expense, engaging more in promotion than conversation. Maybe we see a split where Twitter becomes even more of a broadcast network, and regular discussions move to Mastodon. Also, if the paid model works, Twitter could become what app.net tried to be. Of course, this is all speculation.
As I’m observing and speculating, I need to develop my social media strategy. I have two Mastodon accounts, but I rarely post on either. That should change because I don’t want the Fediverse to be a ghost town. On Twitter, I promote my business and my book and drive the conversation with the tech community around APIs and Developer Experience. I also engage in discussions around a broad range of interests with a vast community of active Twitter users. Doing both from the same account seems challenging, but setting up an “alt” account seems overkill, and I know there will be analysis paralysis if a tweet could fit both, and I can’t decide where to post. On top of that, I should spend less time on social media and more time creating stuff and engaging with people in the real world or more intimate virtual spaces.
While figuring mine out, I’m curious to hear about your goals and plans for social media usage in 2023 and how you deal with the Twitter situation.
“How to flirt with the world” was the name of the Interintellect salon I attended tonight. Pragya G., who I’ve been following on Twitter for a few months now, hosted it as her debut salon. I want to give a personal recount of my experience at the salon and why I attended it in the first place.
“Flirting” isn’t a word that’s been part of my regular vocabulary, and I’ve long had a lot of negative connotations. I would mostly think of cheesy pick-up lines and people (primarily men) aggressively forcing a sexual or romantic layer into a conversation instead of letting it flow naturally. It wasn’t until I came across an article (to which I sadly don’t have a link anymore) that my perspective changed. It described flirting in different terms. It doesn’t have to be sexual or romantic at all. It’s mostly just an open-minded, cheerful, light, and playful way to interact with the people you meet. It’s certainly not something I’m good at or do regularly, but I deem it positive and desirable. According to her tweets and the salon description, Pragya’s idea of flirting seems to be similar. She’s also someone I admire for her capability to feel gratitude for other people and the mundane aspects of life, something I’m not good at either.
Having attended multiple Interintellect salons, I observed that various hosts have different hosting styles. For Pragya, I noticed that she practiced what she preaches and flirted with all the attendees. But most of all, she cared a lot about all her attendees. She didn’t take that we took the time to join her for granted. Gratitude doesn’t always appear authentic when it seems over the top, but I could accept it as genuine from her. Maybe it’s because she told the story about one of her friends who did this for her, and she wants to carry it into the world, making others feel recognized. There’s an interview with Tasshin Fogleman that I listened to a while ago, which helped me understand from where she’s coming.
When the salon started, Pragya asked us to think of a situation in which we were involved in a successful flirt and what words and thoughts come into our minds when we think of it. One attendee came up with the term “benevolent transgressions”, which continued to be a theme throughout the salon. Flirting is always a play with boundaries; we also described it as a “dance of small steps” or “making small bets”.
Interestingly, Pragya, who does one-on-one flirt coaching, mentioned that the number one fear of her male clients is crossing too many boundaries and, thus, appearing creepy. This fear seems primarily male-coded, whereas women worry more about leading on and sending the wrong signs. In this context, most attendees agreed that indicating interest isn’t creepy, but only when someone cannot process disinterest from the other side. The conversation reminded me of a recent tweet from Clo S., who said it’s usually the “wholesome dudes” who worry about creepiness. The problem is that you cannot fully take responsibility for another person’s feelings. Yes, nobody should be a creep, but it’s practically impossible to live a life where the amount of discomfort you trigger in other people is zero because that would mean excluding yourself from potentially positive interactions. I think this is something I still need to learn and internalize. Making people just a tiny bit uncomfortable is okay as long as you are willing to admit mistakes, back off, and move on.
We touched on various other topics, such as the distinction between general and more romantic flirting. An interesting framing was that you could start with undirected flirting and then continually make it more directed to a person if they respond. People can flirt or be the receiver of a flirtatious approach without noticing it. It’s also possible to extend the definition of flirting by including things beyond people or even ideas. You can flirt with friends, but not everybody responds well, so you need to adapt. Most people like recognition and compliments, but people with low confidence may question their motives and not always take them positively.
The primary motivation for flirting should be generosity, the desire to make other people feel good. It is where Pragya’s idea of “flirting with the world” comes from, and many attendees can relate, even if there are additional ulterior motives behind the action.
It was a delightful salon; as I mentioned before, Pragya tried to make it a wonderful experience for everyone. It was also quite emotional for me, although I’m unsure if it was the room’s topic, host, or general vibe. I hope she’ll host more Interintellect salons in the future.