Notes

Biked to work today, for the first time since the Datawrapper office moved to Friedrichshain. The wind was blowing in my face, every other cyclist was passing by me, the traffic lights seemed to all have a personal grudge against me, and I took ten minutes longer than Google Maps told me I would. I’m utterly out of shape, and I felt it.

But hey, I got there. I even got back home.

Will repeat. I biked everywhere until four years ago and I loved it. The Karl-Marx-Allee and I will become big friends.

I love the combination of sunlight and dark, rainy clouds.

Today I was in the woods and I really felt like …staying there. I was near the end of my walk, a walk with a perfectly reasonable length, and I thought „I don’t feel like I’m done yet. I don’t want to go home. I feel like doing the rounds again.“

So I kept walking.

I like these situations where your feelings and needs in the moment overpower your plans. Especially when you notice that it has no unfortunate consequences whatsoever when you just do what you feel like doing instead of following those plans. „Ice cream? Right now? Really, now, at 10pm? We actually wanted to go to x, but well…I mean, why no? Ice cream it is.“

These situations remind me that life is more flexible than it often seems. And the bring back control over one’s own happiness.

Cloudy day. Free Friday. Grocery shopping and laundry and instant ramen and sugar and caffeine and trying to get rid of a persistent cold. Walking through a park and trying to really look, really enjoy its loveliness. It’s hard.

One of the best things about Berlin are the many, many lakes it’s surrounded by. Today we visited one of them; one of my favourite ones. It was a beautiful spring day with bright green leaves, lots of sun, and 11.5 degree cold water that my husband dared to swim in.

Why we don’t visit those lakes more often is a mystery.

We totally should. We hopefully will.

Also did some stamp action with my son. Fun.

I spent two sunny hours exploring Marburg. Good city. Good river. Good book stores.

I miss chocolate. I haven’t eaten any since mid February, which feels like a really long time ago, and the reasons why I decided to not eat any sweets during Lent are kind of blurry, too. I thought once you stop eating as much chocolate as I do (did!), you get used to „not eating chocolate“ and you don’t care so much anymore. Well, it felt the opposite for me. In the beginning I was motivated; now I feel like I miss it more every week (day?) and, again, I don’t know why I’m doing it (anymore). I could just, you know, start eating chocolate again. But that would feel like betrayal.

Six more days until Easter Sunday.

We’re exactly in the middle of the two states „it’s cold, everything is gray and brown, the trees are bare, it’s basically still winter“ and „spring is here, flowers are blooming, the sun is shining, summer is around the corner“ here in Berlin.

Coming back from Leipzig. Best central station ever. Fairly quick to walk through. Fast elevators. Beautiful architecture. Big book store.

Always a a pleasure to be there.

Today my good friend N and I traveled to Leipzig to meet a common friend in Leipzig, M. While she waited for our train to arrive, M bought a book with sentences that can create mindset shifts, e.g. „nothing grows inside your comfort zone“ or „you can be replaced in your job, but not in your family“ or „acting is better than judging.“ M called those sentences „tools.“ I liked that idea of having a problem and explicitly turning to words to help you. I assume people have always done so (especially with religious writings).

A few hours later, M told us all about her freelancer business. It was so interesting. She explained how a tool helped her shift how she thinks about her work load: Instead of first taking on projects and then working as many hours as they required her to work (leading to overhours), she now first plans how many hours she can and wants to work, and then plans how (and if) projects can fit into that schedule.

I first assumed (or hoped?) it would be another „mind tool“ like those sentences in the book she bought (or the Eisenhower Matrix or SWOT etc.), but as M continued talking, it became clear it’s a software called awork that helps her do so.

But then I was intrigued how this (apparently fairly biased?) software had helped her to finish her days early — not by „being faster“, as so much software promises you with their stock photos of relaxed-looking people in front of a computer — but by going a bit deeper and changing how she thinks about project scheduling entirely. I wonder if there’s more software out there like this.

„Communication is the burden of the communicator,“ someone I had a call with told me today. Such a smart sentence. It’s the equivalent to „It’s always the designers fault,“ which I’ve been repeating for years.

You don’t understand a chart? It’s likely not your fault, but the fault of the chart designer.

You don’t understand a sentence in an article? Its probably the fault of the writer.

You don’t understand what your teacher/the presenter/the speaker is talking about? Probably their fault.

I believe this is so important to me because my self-confidence was low for a very long time in my life, so I did assume often that it’s my fault. I thought I’m simply too stupid. And I know enough people who still think that, which, well, is a bit sad to watch.

Today was one of those great days. The sun was shining and I was building charts, read exciting data vis papers, and started a new blog post with data vis guidelines.

I haven’t done any of this in a long time, and it all brought me (even) more joy than I remembered it did.

Today was the second Monday since I’ve returned to work from my parental leave. I’m weirdly nervous about working, full of positive stress I’m causing myself. It feels a bit like starting this job again for the first time.

Also nervous-making: I haven’t written a blogpost for this, my, website in years…but in the past days I’ve worked on two, and I’m about to release them. Nothing in there is controversial, and still, I’m polishing every word.

I don’t believe it’s making them better.

3.5/5, I guess. I liked reading it. It felt a bit repetitive (two siblings visit four planets on a scavenger hunt and their enemy always gets first what they’re looking for), and I don’t fully agree with the „it’s worth doing things even if they seem pointless” conclusion (as I understood it).

And the idea of „marriage”, „university” etc. in a alien species felt a bit lazy to me.

But yes: The writing was nice. I liked getting thrown into the story; I liked the few (enough!) references to the mom of the siblings. I liked how much was untold and that the story worked, anyway.

I did feel indifferent about the cat.

We just returned from a short vacation to the Baltic Sea. I’m so glad I got to experience ice at and on the water; this was really special.