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.