Final November thoughts

Good mornin'

I just woke up about half an hour ago, but I'm still in bed. Yesterday, I went to a few Christmas markets in Cologne, Germany, and had lots of fun. However, I feel like I am getting too old to walk around or stand around for 8 hours. Once I got home, I immediately crashed on the couch for like two hours. I'm 31, so maybe I just hadn't slept enough? I should be able to walk around for 8 hours.

Anyway, I am excited about going to the U.S. to spend time with my partner's family. I have never met such a stress-free family in my life before. It is sort of becoming my new happy place where I can pretty much turn into a cat and sleep and eat all day without a worry in the world. Man, I miss American food, ngl. If I stayed home during Christmas, I would definitely stress out about all sorts of things, from chores to what to cook for dinner.

Otherwise, I have been good. I've removed my fall decorations and replaced them with some winter decorations. I have decided to try and decorate for winter rather than for Christmas because I will not even be here for Christmas and I want to enjoy my decorations until February or even March. Maybe I will post some pictures later!

I keep realizing that, apart from YouTube, I have nothing else on my phone or computer that I "accidentally" spend a lot of time on. Now that I am free from the shackles of social media, I am trying to find some "mindful" activities to spend my time on every day. So far I've got my French book and my French magazine, a TBR list that has been waiting for me for a year, a German book that teaches you interesting things about German that even native speakers don't know or say wrong, and I even got a brilliant subscription, so that I can learn about stuff that interests me. I think that should be good enough for now. Plenty of things to do! 

My French lesson got postponed today from 10 am to 5 pm, so I think I am going to finally get up, make myself some tea and breakfast, and then read my French book. 

See you in December! 

November thoughts

Hi void,

I have been.... I don't know what I have been doing. Last time I was here, I talked about cheating on you with my phone, but even that I stopped. My life is just not that interesting and now that it's getting colder and I am home a lot more than usual, there really isn't much to talk about.

I kind of want a space online where I talk about things that I enjoy and things that I find interesting. The idea of this blog was to talk about whatever nonsense went through my head, but I can do that in my obsidian notes on my phone and just keep things somewhat organized and interesting in here. 

However, what should I write about? My interests right now are baking, learning French and... dunno... cleaning my home lol. I am not the type of person to have an opinion on everything, so I have nothing to say. I don't care that much about stuff. I've also been thinking a lot about documenting my life and maybe that is something I could do with my blog. I could document the nice and fun things in my life whenever they occur. If nothing happens for a month, then I can just give a sign of life and see what the following month has in store for us. 

I dunno. Right now I am drinking some hot chocolate I made that is way too rich and I need to dilute with some water. I think I am going to take a nap after this. See you next time.

October thoughts before November

Hi!  

I honestly don't know what my plan is with this blog. Sometimes, I want it to be semi-unfiltered thoughts that go right from my brain onto this digital paper, and other times, I want this to feel a little more thought out and structured. I dunno! 

Here's an update of what I have been up to or what's been new in my life.

Languages

I love learning languages or about languages. If I could, I would learn them all. This is something that I used to do. I would change the language I was learning like I changed my socks. Unfortunately, I don't have the energy or the time to do this again and it was never really productive. I'd know some grammar and a few words here and there, but I would not be able to use them for anything. 

This year, I decided to only study French for a whole year. I chose French because I had recently been to Luxembourg and France, where French would have come in handy. I once even could have used French in an airport in Phoenix, AZ, with this nice elderly woman who couldn't speak English very well. French has also been a language I have been in a love-hate relationship with. 

My instinct would be to tell myself that I should only focus on a language for a month before moving on to the next one. However, I decided to go for the entire year. This way, I would feel like I had all the time in the world to experiment and see what works or to just laze around while listening to French music. Something should stick in these 12 months! 

So what did I learn in the last 10 months? Well, not much, but French feels more familiar to me. Since I speak Romanian, English and some Spanish here and there, French is just a puzzle for me. I definitely have a better understanding of the French language than I did in January, but I have not gotten as far as I could have. I am now reading a crime novel at the A2 level that is intended for French learners, and I can understand about 80% of it. I can also follow French podcasts that are made for French speakers. 

The year is nearing towards its end and now would be the time when I could decide to change the language, but I am deciding not to. I will stick with French. I even am taking italki classes, so that I can practice speaking it with someone. I also have my French magazines and my French crime novels to immerse myself in the language with. I am going to attempt to be a more active than a passive learner, so that I can make French a part of my life by the end of 2026.

Biking

The rear wheel of my bike broke and I took my bike back to the store where I bought it from and now it's fixed. I believe that they had not assembled the bike properly when I bought it and me riding the bike caused it to break. Thankfully, all of this was still within warranty, so it didn't cost me anything. 

But man... I thought I was too fat to pedal lol. I used to be in the lowest gear possible and find biking extremely difficult. I would pedal for like 2 minutes, barely get anywhere and be all sweaty and out of breath. Now, I am in a way higher gear, I get way farther and faster and it feels like I am floating. This is great! Too bad it's been raining and cold all week, but hopefully I will catch a Saturday or Sunday where it doesn't rain and I can go for a little "bike walk" around the neighborhood. I am looking forward to biking more next year in the spring or the summer! 

My brain needs to be forced to focus

I have noticed the following:

1. I finish work at around 5 pm and kind of just chill on my phone or nap or whatever until 6

2. From 6-8 pm, I make and eat dinner, talk to my mom or do some chores

3. From 8-10 pm, I feel kinda sleepy, I waste my time watching youtube or I am just chatting with people

4. At 10 pm, I realize the day is almost over and I wanna do something before going to sleep. I want to learn something! I want to achieve something, but "ugh, I am soo tired and sleepy now!"

I have concluded that I cannot just trust my brain to focus on something like reading a book, learning some French or, dunno, coding or something else. I also am blaming short content videos for conditioning me to not want to do anything after a day of work, except for just consuming social media and forgetting that I exist.

This is why from 8 until 10 pm I am going to force myself to do one of the following

1. Read the current book I have on my TBR

2. Browse through my French magazine and translate the texts, read my French crime novel or watch French learning videos or listen to podcasts 

3. Code along some tutorials. I do not even need to think about what I am doing... just coding along.

4. I am subscribed to a Turkish learning channel that I find really interesting and structured. I wanna watch those and learn some Turkish

5. Practice using a piping bag with margarine. My cousin told me about this and it is something I desperately need to do because I always mess it up. 

This way, 8-10 is "focused me time." I have to do at least one of the 5 things. I can do other things as long as they are fun and not related to chores or even self care. I am treating this as a non negotiable thing that needs to be done. I need to teach my brain to focus on things again. I can do it while I work, so I should also be able to do it in my free time! 

Anyway, it's really late now and I am very sleepy... sooo good night! 

German expressions that confused me

 Hi! 

Back when I was a kid on a Friday fall afternoon... ok I have no introduction for this, so here is some German expressions that confused me at first.

Das ist nicht ohne

Word for word that means "that is not without." This makes absolutely no sense, but whenever you encounter this in the wild, you will quickly realize it refers to something being more difficult than it seems to be. Examples I could find on the internet are "Der Umzug ist nicht ohne" meaning "Moving is not so easy." 

Der Tisch, der kann schon was 

The table, he can already what. It helps if you know that the German word for "something" is "etwas," but Germans colloquially get rid of "et," and you are left with just "was," which in turn simply means "what." Therefore:

The Table, he can already something! Still nothing? Okay, well "he" refers to the table because table is a masculine word and you refer to it using "he." In German you can also imply what is meant by simply the verb "can" or "want" or whatever without the need of the second verb. "I can English," and "I want to Italy" are pretty understandable, but what the hell can a table do? Dunno, but it does it! So if a table can do something, that means it is impressive in a way, like it could be really heavy or really sturdy. Maybe the table is even nicht ohne when it comes to moving it!

Ich wünsch dir was

I wish you something. We learned in the previous example that "was" means "something." But what on Earth are we wishing whom? Well, something, duh! This expression is used mostly as a Abschiedsformel... um... what the hell is the word for this like when you wanna say "good bye." You say this to people you like whenever you part ways. According to whatever I could find on the internet, whenever you bid farewell to someone, you wish them something, like a good night, a good day, and so on, but in this case, you are just leaving open what you are wishing them. While this is quite efficient, my Romanian part of the brain assumed the worst, so this might be something I only wished my enemies... a passive aggressive something.

Na?

 (not lit.) "Sooo?" This one has to be the most confusing one. Usually it is accompanied by "wie geht's?", the German way of saying "how are you doing?", but sometimes it is just implied. The appropriate response to this is to tell them your entire life story and then look like a fool because, just like you never answer "How are you" in English genuinely, you also do not answer here. You simply say "Na?" back. Make sure to change the subject quickly, before you get hit with another "Naaa?" back by the same person. 

Ich hab' so ein'n Hals

I have such a neck! This means that you are angry. You are so angry... your neck is about to explode! Maybe, calm down a bit... 

Wird schon schief gehen

Will already crooked go! This literal translation, just like any other literal translation, is not fair. The word "schon" does not really mean "already," but rather makes the sentence feel more relaxed, like everything is okay regardless of everything. Schief does mean crooked, but in this case "schiefgehen" refers to "to go wrong," or "to go bad." Since the "schon" part makes the sentence more relaxed, this is a funny ironical way of telling someone that everything will be okay. I suppose this is similar to the idea behind "break a leg" in English. 

Anyway, I am out. 

I wish you somethin'...

P.S: the weird American way of putting commas and periods inside quotations even if they don't belong there is really weird and something I am trying to get used to...

Journaling

Hi void.... 

Rihanna "unfaithful" has been playing in my head recently because I have been cheating on you. I started journaling more frequently, and this time it sort of works. I have always liked the idea of journaling, but I would always still be too distracted by social media and other nonsense, and I would never want to slow down and journal. 

Now, I have no more social media to argue with people on and even, on YouTube, I deactivated my watch history, so that the only things that I see are my subscriptions. Then I started journaling and my life improved perfectly. Now please buy this expensive notebook using this affiliate link and get 20% off! Lol jk. I still did not journal, but let's take a step back to the beginning of November 2023.

I was considering bullet journaling, but even that felt pointless because I don't have any tasks or things to write about. What should I even write? I talked to my cousin about this, who uses physical notebooks to keep track of stuff, brain dump and document random stuff. I think he gave me the idea to write about whatever; if I am having a coffee, then I will write that I am doing that. 

The idea is that, sometimes, I felt like I didn't do anything all day, but if I kept track of every other little thing I did during the day, I would feel better about that day before going to bed. Napping, making some coffee, cooking and cleaning after yourself and maybe dealing with some paperwork are not always exciting, so we don't remember them.

Anyway, this is what November 4th looked like for me: 

And here is an extract from November 11th:

Note to past self: The girl math was worth it. I still have that coat and it is in perfect condition and I think I will be using it for another 2-3 years... so I guess it was pretty much for free, if I am not even earning money at this point by not having to buy another coat!

Anyway... I stopped after November 14th. I don't know why. I guess things got in the way, I still had youtube to steal my attention and I dunno.. it was just not my thing.

Enter end of August 2025 and I feel like doing all of this again. Since then, my cousin has told me about the app Obsidian which uses markdown files for all the notes. I now use it at work all the time. My cousin also showed me how he pretty much does something similar to what I did in November, but in Obsidian. He even prepends the date for each line, so that whenever he searches for something, he can immediately see what date it was on. 

I decided to do what I was doing that November, but in a little more detailed way. In Obsidian, you can have the app open a new note for the day based on a certain template that you can create. I have tried different templates for my bullet journaling, but this one has been working for me recently:

Inside Notes of the day I do my usual bullet journaling where I write little messages/notes about what I am doing or plan on doing or whatever. This part is the one that I write into regularly and looks like the notes in November, but I also decided to prepend the time. 

In What was good today? I force myself to write only the positive things about the day before going to sleep and if I feel like it. For example, today I would write "mostly chilled just like I planned on doing." 
In Details I refer to something in Notes of the day and talk more about it. This is where I post pictures and I go pretty much blogpost-style on it sometimes. The idea is that the notes of the day should just be short or a short summary of something. If I need to write more than a bullet point about a certain topic, I will add the details at the bottom. 

I have a negative thoughts note on my phone's native notes app because you can password-lock those. Obsidian uses markdown and you cannot really secure those files. Honestly, I doubt that someone will really want to break into my phone and try to steal my random ramblings or read them and be like "oh no, you worry about stuff or something upset you! How dare you?"

--

I am really enjoying this. Sometimes I write stuff in there like I would to my friends. I don't try to write perfect sentences, use correct punctuation, or even use just one language in one sentence. I also don't try to write every little thing anymore. It feels like I am socializing without socializing... just telling someone, my future self maybe, that "hey, I am awake and about to drink my coffee." I am sure most of it will be boring which is why I am considering making a "week highlight" note, where I write just the important stuff.. I dunno! I'll see what I am going to do with this, but I know I will love looking back at these in the future just like I love looking back at some random journals and things I wrote years ago. 

If you wanna do this, my tip is to just start writing. Start with a simple structure, maybe even just all in one file/note and go from there. It is your notes and your journal, you can change it as much as you want until you find something that works for you without giving anyone a two-week notice or and waiting on their approval. If you start digitally, then you have even less excuses to not start because if you really are unhappy with the structure you started with, you can just reorganize your notes! What you will love looking at is the text you wrote, not the way you structured it.