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.