An Update

This post was originally published on golifelog.com.

A few days ago, I decided it was time to write stuff in English regularly again. I’ve originally started on adagia.org but will be switching to Lifelog from now, well, yesterday, on. Since I’ve got two more texts on there, I thought I’d summarize those up here as well.

So it has been more than half a year since I last shared what I’m up to. And since I was contacting @therealbrandonwilson recently, I thought it might be time to finally start a more open journaling process again. I’ve been journaling on Diarly (a great App) for more than a year now, but only in German (my mother tongue) and basically to just get things down. There is no focus on correctness, completeness or word count. Just thoughts on digital paper. I’ve managed to write for more than 420 days there, with a current streak of 240.

Besides that, I’ve cancelled a lot of subscriptions in January. As interest rates got higher in Europe over the last couple of months, my mortgage got up too. Since swathing employers, I’ve got enough buffer to handle the increase, but all those small subscriptions, €3 there, €10 there, add up over the years. Well, but I also added one 🙈, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to write this now.

Another thing I’ve been up to lately is taking a few walks a week. I’ve written about getting a dog in the past, but my last decision was that there are too many open questions (Can I afford one?; Do I have the time?; Who cares if I’m on holiday?). But having been in home office for more than a year now, it might be time to think about those questions again. And taking regular walks (currently, I’m trying to get 3 walks per week), is one of the things I need to prove that I would be able to care for a dog. There are still open questions, and I’m on two longer vacations this year, so it is still a no for now. But, at least I know I can walk longer distances without a problem. Also, there is the health benefit, which Apple Health tells me is already taking place (VO2 Max from 26,1 to 29,7 in a few weeks; still shit, but better).

I’ve also restarted creating Lets Plays on YouTube again (https://www.youtube.com/@haidy777). Before my three-week USA holiday last year, I was relatively active on Trovo (a live-streaming platform), but that tumbled afterward. I had many plans on doing more live streams and, in general, more content creation, but my now almost 10-year-old gaming PC was showing signs of slowly dying. Months later, Christmas came along, and my brother bought me a new gaming rig. It’s not fully state-of-the-art (Ryzen 5, 64GB of Storage, some kind of AMD graphics card), but it is quite powerful and more than enough for the games I’ve played in the past. I really enjoy the process of creating videos again, and strangely, it seems like people are also watching my content again (maybe a bunch of bots 🙈).

My “Financial Idiot” Newsletter (https://blog.phaidenbauer.com/tag/financial-idiot/) is currently still on pause, as ideas didn’t sprout, and I wasn’t in the mood to write about finance topics.

That about wraps it up. If you want to know anything, just ask :) Let’s see how long I’ll stick to writing daily, public again. See you tomorrow! :)