Random biking fears on a Sunday

Hi!

I got a tip from a work colleague to go out biking on Sunday when people are still asleep so that I can practice biking on the bike paths on the street where the big evil cars usually go too. However, since I only learned to ride a bike this year at 30 years old and since I also happen to sleep on Sunday mornings, I just went a little later. 

My boyfriend had a German class from 10 am, so I went out all on my own during his lesson. I am emphasizing that I went on my own because he would always just come with me... kind of like a dad who reluctantly goes out with his kid to sit around and watch the kid ride the bike and fall on their face while trying to show him this new trick. Except that I do no tricks. I just try not to fall on my face or run people over.

I have this stupid irrational fear that a neighbor or someone will just stop and talk to me about my bike and ask me why I am not riding to the park near me or why I walk along my bike a lot... Oh God, what if they find out that I am an impostor and have only learned to ride a bike recently? Will I be miscommunicated from the imaginary community I live in? I *must* have a guardian with me to deter any people from trying to talk to me and find the real embarrassing truth about me.

I know this is completely irrational and dumb, so I went out on my own in order to show to my brain that this is stupid. It then proceeded to tell me that if I fell or hurt myself, there wouldn't be anyone to help me... because you know... I don't have a phone with me or even a watch that connects to the phone and I can use. Hell, I can even talk to my phone wherever the hell it is and ask for help if need be.

Anyway, I went to this park from which you can view this walkable rollercoaster called Tiger & Turtle in Duisburg. All around this thing there are paths you can walk or bike on and there are also paths that you can use to go up to it... but I ain't doing that on a bike, at least not until I have the body of one single athlete and not of ten of them. 

Biking is not easy when you are overweight, and there might be something wrong with your bike, so I would bike for 5-10 minutes and then relax for another 10-15 mins or just walk around my bike. While it was strenuous and stuff, since this was slightly more exercise than going from my desk to my couch, I really enjoyed it. The weather was really nice and I stopped on a bench when I had this moment of... freedom. 

Now I think I understand why people go on bike rides or hikes or whatever.  I was sitting on that bench making sure my lungs worked properly by willingly doing some ✨ heavy breathing exercises ✨ when I started just looking around. I saw FIVE seniors on e-bikes riding into my field of vision and another three coming from the opposite direction. I saw birds and rabbits and I started wondering about what I should do next. That is when it hit me. There was no "should" there. I could just walk home if I wanted to. I could ride the bike a little more. I could leave this area entirely and go to some other park or a supermarket's parking lot where there definitely was no one. I could do whatever I wanted! It was just me, the good weather and the bike. The world was mine. Mwhahah!

I love this feeling. I have feelings similar to these when I am on vacation and just chilling in my hotel room before heading out, but this one felt more intense somehow. I suppose, on vacation, I semi force myself sometimes to do things because I won't be there forever, but here... I can come to this place every day or even multiple times a day... so I am free to do whatever I want. 

I decided to finish going around the rollercoaster thing with like 1-2 breaks in-between. This one time I was biking on my own, trying to bike slower and relax a bit hoping that that would make it a more pleasant experience, when I noticed someone running behind me. There was this, hmm, let's say 58 year old, man behind me jogging... and I had to make space for him so that he could pass me. Yes, a jogger passed me, even though I was on a bike. And I am out there worrying about running people over... the wind was blowing faster than I was riding that bike...

Anyway, this was really fun. I have other things I wanna post about, but I started writing about this and this post is pretty long already. See you next time! 

New look and old new macbook

Blog look:

I decided to change the theme of my blog. I am keeping it very simple. Currently there is a background image, you can see a few entire posts and all the other information like the about page and search bar is at the bottom. The idea is to just come here and read and not be distracted by anything else on the page. 

Macbook:

Two weeks ago I decided to become a "bookworm" for the two weeks in a row. Well that has not been very successful since I have been sick and stuff, but I actually found something else to focus on... 

Back in 2021 I rented a macbook air with the M1 chip. I had never owned a mac, so I thought that as a developer I should more or less know how to use one. I ended up buying one because I loved that it had no fans, never got hot and the battery lasted like 10-12 hours. Until then I had only been used to SCORCHING HOT laptops or tablets with like a 3 hour battery life tops.

I have used it on and off since, but I've never bothered customizing it, tinkering with stuff or even actually learning how to use it properly. It has always felt more like a temporary laptop where I had no idea what was going on. It even updated its operating system three times until now and I barely noticed it.

One day this week, I decided to declutter my desktop and change a few things. Yeah, umm.. I ended up getting mad at this laptop because I didn't know how to create a folder inside another folder in list view. Apparently you have to open the folder you are interested in and THEN create the folder. I then rage quit when I wanted to right click inside this new folder and click on "new text file". Macs don't do that. You open the app and then save, not the other way around.

I realized that it was time for me to consider selling this macbook and getting myself a lightweight windows laptop. Unfortunately I was unable to find something that could replace it that was good on battery, lightweight and didn't get hot. Also, I hate the idea of selling electronics to random people on the internet which is why I am happy to announce that I partnered up with lol jk. This laptop is brand new so it was actually time for me to learn how to use it and make it mine. 

All I have been doing the end of last week and this current week has been binge watching videos by macmost on youtube, who I have been subscribed to, probably since 2021. After spending time to learn the macos way and all the other tricks and key combinations and what not, I now actually feel like this laptop is starting to become mine. I've practiced a lot of what I've learned by finishing decluttering my desktop and files on my cloud storage that now I have everything set up exactly how I want it to be. It is starting to feel more like home. At some point I felt so motivated that I even decluttered my physical desktop so now it is not just a mess full of medicine, notebooks, pens, chargers and all kind of random stuff.

All in all it has been fun to take the time to learn how to use this thing and I am still in utter disbelief that I had to learn how to save a file as a pdf and even edit it, as a millennial in 2025. 

Short content on this blog

 Hiii I am posting tiktoks now!!! Before you close this blogpost and hate me for it, please hear me out! I don't think tiktok and the likes are bad for you. It is all just entertainment and how can entertainment be bad for us? The tiktok I am sharing right now is about how social media is good for us and how we should be using it in our blogs! I know... I didn't think this existed either, but there are blogfluencers and they are really good and interesting. So click now and get blogfluenced and you won't regret it! :) 

(do click it, it is not really tiktok lel. if nothing happens, sorry, the code is dead.)

ok actually fuck that.

However, I kind of find myself wanting to post more, but not having the patience or energy to write an entire long post about something or even to just stick to one topic.

In my attempt to find more personal amateur po.. *cough* blogs... blogs, I have noticed that a lot of people just write small posts that are like 1-2 paragraphs long or just post one or two pictures or some links and call it a day. I kind of wanna do that too. 

This weekend I decided to learn to use the macbook that I have had for 5 years now and "make it mine". I reorganized some files, set up some cloud stuff where I need it and decided on how to go about doing certain things. I think I want to do the same with this blog. 

My plan is to have three types of posts and maybe separate them by labels or categories or something. The long essay-like ones that stick to one topic, the short ones that are more frequent and about whatever and the ones about how well or poorly I managed to stick to my goals for the current week.

If you just stumbled upon this post, I wrote last week that every Sunday I want to decide on what to focus on the following week and make it "my personality" because preassuring myself into doing things seems to work

Oh and this was super difficult to pull off. I had to use some javascript which was ok, but on the main page you can see a snippet of the post's content so I had to write some nonsense at the top that filled it up. This would be easier if I had my own domain and own blog website, but whatever! I also thought about actually linking a real tiktok and manipulating its behavior with javascript but ugh, too much work and I don't want it to be too real either.

Anyway, nice seeing you! Have a great day and stuff!

What I learned from showering naked for the last 30 years

Hello void,

I have been thinking lately about the fact that I think a lot, but don't do shit. I want to read, code, learn French, ride my bike, watch more movies, hang out with people more, play games, clean up, cook new dishes or, dunno, try out something new, but I never get to it. Some of it makes sense, like being sick or the weather being insanely hot, but the reason why I don't do anything is mostly because I just feel meeeeh or overstimulated or understimulated. It might be ADHD too. I don't think I am depressed. 

Anyway, I remember reading somewhere that changes come with an identity shift. You are doing something new that is not part of your identity, so you could try to assume your identity already in order to accommodate your new behavior instead of hoping the behavior will stick and change your identity.

My plan is pretty much to fake it until I make it. Every Sunday I will be deciding on what "my identity" will be for the following week and I will try to live it the best I can. The thing is, I do not want to go extreme. This is not supposed to be an extremist go big or go home situation. It is more of a project situation where you can approach it in different ways and tackle different aspects of it depending on what you feel like. 

The idea is to keep the focus of whatever I want to do that week. I won't pretend I am an athlete who already knows what to eat, is used to it, and can work out for hours every day. If I wanted to be more physically active, I would just think of what I could do to achieve that. I could spend my entire week reading about it or I could just not buy groceries for the week and go to the store every day. The stores are like 5 minutes away. One day I may feel super motivated and walk 10k steps. Who knows?

Why I think this might work:

1. If I am bored, I can just ask what my identity would do. (yes, I did think of titling this post "What would Jesus do?")
2. It feels exciting because I am pretending to be someone else, like a spy or some shit. 
3. It feels official. I am not just trying to read a lot now because it would be nice, but because that is who I am now!!! Yeah! A bookworm! You have no idea who you are messing with, boy! Anyway...
4. I suppose this is more of a focus shift, something like the Italian week at Lidl or Aldi or whatever supermarket of your choice. Everything is normal, but with a focus on a certain topic. 
5. Worst case scenario, I can just do something else next week. 
6. Bonus points: I can just talk about it on the blog or write down notes, making it into a real project and maybe one week pick up right where I left off. 
7. The idea is not really progress, but to do shit. Even if I do 52 different things and get nowhere in any of my goals... at least I did shit. I did 52 different things during the year. Yay to me!

The more I read what I wrote, the more adhd-like it seems. I need a plan to do shit I genuinely enjoy... like what? 

Anyway, since I may be doing different shit every week, I thought this sounded like one of those videos where people are like  "I only took cold showers for a year" or "I lived without my phone for a month" which is why I chose this title lol.

So yeah void, you are screwed because you just messed with someone who reads for fun now! That's what I will be doing this week. I even have a physical magazine ready to go for when I feel meh!

P.S. I once told myself that "I am a person whose kitchen sink is always clean." and I actually peer-preassured myself into cleaning the damn kitchen sink before going to bed, so it sort of works lol. 

Stuck in your patterns explained better.. hopefully

Hi!

I just came from my vacation in Norway and Denmark and I have been thinking about my last post. I tried to express the idea that I believe that we can get stuck in our own routines, rituals and thinking patterns that there is probably no way out until you happen upon someone or something that slowly influences you until you become a different person. After writing and rewriting that post for two hours, I think I still did not manage to capture what I had in mind, so I am going to try again.

What I have been trying to describe is the awareness that comes from a break from your routine. It can come from either going on vacation, hanging out with someone or just having a cold and thinking about how good you had it when you were able to breathe. It can also be the moment when you realize you can use your kitchen table to fold laundry on it instead of breaking your back on the floor or bed like you have been doing for the last two years. It can be the moment when you realize you can have chicken nuggets with fries for dinner or just skip it entirely. It can be the moment when you do the most random things that you normally wouldn't do. 

My question is... how do we get more of these moments and especially ones that change us long term? For instance, how does someone go from worrying about keeping their home perfectly clean all the time to realizing that they don't need to? How does one go from having a messy home to realizing that they can keep a home clean, but it takes time to learn how to do it and build routines and that it is okay to take it slowly? How does one go from hating the idea of biking because they cannot ride a bike to realizing it is never too late to learn to ride a bike and enjoy it? 

In my previous post I said that we would need to be consistently surrounded by people with different lives than us until we get influenced into a new direction. I still believe that that may be the fastest way of achieving this, but I now also believe that being on the look out for inspiration, trying out new things just for the sake of it and maybe questioning the things that cause us distress may at least point us into the right direction.