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.

Confusing German language stuff

 Hi! Today I am gonna talk about some random German nonsense that made me go "but why" or "wtf." 

What the hell are gendered languages? 

You can skip this if you already know, but in German, Spanish, Romanian and, dunno, probably some Slavic languages, nouns like table or cat have a birth-assigned gender associated to them that you must reluctantly keep in mind when you want to use the word and say things like "tables" or "a table" or "the table" or even "big table."

If you don't speak a gendered language, this is confusing. Why on Earth is a table a he... or is it a she? Who knows! In romance languages you can kind of guess what gender it is based on the vowel the word ends in:

The sky in Spanish is "el cielo". It ends in -o, so it is masculine. The way we say "the" in this case is "el".

The moon in Spanish is "la luna". It ends in -a, so it is feminine. The way we say "the" in this case is "la".

Problem in Spanish is "problema". It ends in -a, so it is... a Greek word so for some reason it is masculine and you have to say el problema. 

If it's already so illogical in Spanish, just wait until you learn German because: 

the masculine "the" is "der"

the feminine "the" is "die"

the neuter "the" is das 

the plural "the" is "die"

These also change depending on the way you use them in a sentence, but I won't get into that now. So how do you know which word uses what? Well, you don't haha! Their our know rools. Ok there are some rules, like all words ending in -ung or -keit are feminine, but I won't get into that now. In most cases it is random or some words even have two genders for two different meanings. 

Oh and if you are wondering why you we call these genders mostly feminine, masculine or neuter and not "birds" "bees" and "plan b," it is because you refer to these words by the feminine, masculine and neuter pronouns. It is kind of like in English people call ships and cars "she." Wellm in German you call a table "he", a tomato "she" and a little girl "it"... I will get into that later.

Gender curiosities

Regardless of what these words mean, do you notice a pattern here?

Das Haus -> die Häuser 

Das Kind -> die Kinder

Das Buch -> die Bücher

Das Loch -> die Löcher

Das Tuch -> die Tücher

----------   -> die Ränder

The left side is a singular form and the right side is the plural form of the word. It seems like in order to form the plural of  a "das" word you just add "-er" to it and put two dots (called umlauts) on a, u or o. It makes sense, so if we filled in the blanks, it should obviously be

    Das Rand -> die Ränder

Yep! Congrats... you can think logically. But languages are completely illogical and "Rand" is a "der"-word. So it is "der Rand -> die Ränder". This is super uncommon and random in German, but here we go. The word means "margin" which is obviously such a special word to be such a special exception. 

Also check this out:

Der Teil (the part)

Das Teil (the part)

What the..... ? Why does it have two genders? 

Well, Der Teil refers to a part of something that you cannot just break into pieces, like your part of your garden or earth. 

Das Teil can kind of be replaced with "piece" because it is a part that you can separate from something big, like a piece of chocolate or dunno.

It gets better!

Das Band -> die Bänder (plural is logical at least based on the rule above lol)

Der Band -> die Bände

Die Band -> die Bands

All of these words mean different things based on the gender lol. 

Das Band -> conveyor belt, ribbon and other meanings

Der Band -> volume of a book, tome

Die Band -> this one is the English word "band" meaning a musical group. It is also pronounced like "Bend" so it sounds different than the other two, but in written form they look exactly the same. 

Other German things that I am like "wtf" about:

be-words

In German adding "be-" before a word kind of means you apply your action on something or someone. This is not a rule, but it is true in most cases.

Suchen means to search, besuchen means to visit someone.

Schützen means to protect, beschützen is when you protect someone

Zahlen means to pay, bezahlen is when you pay someone or something.

Kochen means to cook, bekochen is when you cook someone? Nope! It means to cook for someone! LOL.

At my previous job we had a thing called "Kollege bekocht Kollegen" which means "coworker cooks for coworker." I could not help and think that we are cooking our coworkers. In my mind this will forever be "to cook someone."

Dutch and German stuff 

Speaking of cooking someone or something by accident, the past tense of the Dutch word for "to buy", kopen, is "gekocht", which is the past tense of German "kochen". When a Dutch person says "ik heb een kat gekocht" (lit. I have a cat bought), to a German speaker it sounded like they cooked a cat. 

However, Dutch people probably also think that Germans are freaks because if you walk into a store in Germany where someone might actually want to attend to their customers, they will ask you "Kommen Sie klar?" (lit "do you come clearly?"). To a German ear it just means "are you doing okay? Do you need any help? Are you finding everything you need?" whereas to the Dutch ears it sounds like "are you cumming?😩💦." 

German prepositions

Listen, prepositions suck in every language. You get into the car, but on the plane, wtf are you doing on the plane? Get inside the plane!

In German you can be interested in something or you can "interest yourself in something." However, the prepositions change:

You are interessiert an something, but you interessierst yourself für something. Why? Why can I not interessiert my ass an something or be interessiert für something? Same for two words that mean "connected." You are verbunden mit something, but gebunden an something. 

What's up with the little girl?

The word for "girl" in German is "das Mädchen." Yes, it is neuter and in theory you would have to refer to a girl by "it." Most people nowadays however refer to girls as "she" even if they still say "das Mädchen." 

So what the hell is up with das Mädchen? Well, this happens when you are obsessed with rules and have no exceptions for them. The suffix "-chen" makes a word "smaller", but also gives the noun a neuter gender. 

The word "Mädchen" is derived from the feminine word "die Magd", which means "maid" or "handmaid" or something. No one uses that word anymore. A little "Magd" is made smaller by adding "-chen" to the end of the word, thus getting "Mädchen."

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking two things:

1. Wow that is weird, but at least it makes sense! The German language is not sexist or anything.. Umm maybe, maybe not, because I have not been able to find an explanation for the word "das Weib". This word is related to the English "wife", but in German it is a derogatory word for women, kind of like gymcels calling women "females" in English. At least the plural is logical and it becomes "die Weiber"...

2. Ngl, they should just use another word and give it the feminine gender. They do. They use the English word "girl"... yaaay. Now the world makes sense! Nope. They still say "das Girl." Yep... I don't get it either, but don't think too much and speak more! That is my new motto for language learning. 

Anyway, that is it for today. Auf Wiedersehen!