225/2024 – Just a Jumble of Thoughts

I’ts not a Sunday today and I’ve still almost let the evening go by without sitting down to share some thoughts. I really need to get more organized. More organized? Or rather organized at all? I don’t remember being this scatter brained years ago. I definitely spend more time sharing (personal) stuff on the internet. I need to bring that derailed train of thought back on track, so let’s start again.

Yesterday I went to a gig of a German singer (he mostly sings in English) – Sasha – on his sort of celebratory / anniversary tour. I don’t know exactly. Even though I like him fine I don’t consider myself a fan. He had his first hit in 1998! And he’s still doing this, 26 years – half a lifetime – later. More to the point he’s still so good. His music is proper pop, catchy tunes, easy to sing a long. Fun!

Photo of a phone camera taking a photo of Sasha on stage
Capturing moments in the 21st century

And he has always been an amazing entertainer. Very funny, down-to-earth, all around nice guy, I think. He could have tried to distance himself from the pop world and look back on his huge success from 26 years ago with some irony or depreciation, because it was and is “just” radio-friendly main-stream pop music. But he didn’t. He ended the show with his first big hit and lead into it by saying how grateful he still is for this song, because it allowed him to travel all over the world -literally – to perfom this song back in the day.

Official video from 1998 – He was so young. Looks like a puppy 🙂

But he still managed to make it sound amazing 26 years later in a big band arrangement.

Still sounding good

We went to his gig at the same venue in 2019 as well and last night tried to work out where and when we had seen him play shows before. I tried to look it up on setlist.fm, but I’m not sure that’s all that reliable for a German artist. I remembered a gig in airport hangar in Düsseldorf, but had to google it to find that this was part of the “Jazz festival” (?!?!?) in 2006! 18 years ago. That kid is old enough to drive and vote. j/k.

I didn’t find any photos of my own, but in the process of moving my data from one computer to the next a few years ago I lost a few month / years of photos and 2006 is among them. I then remembered to have a look at my downloaded blog archives from the “Pre-Wordpress / self hosting” days. And there was indeed a short gig recap – back then still in German. I scrolled through the months of posts and OMG did I post a lot back then. About everything. Books. TV. Life. Politics. Just short vignettes sometimes, but also sometimes multiple times a day. I clearly hadn’t been working fulltime back then.

The downloaded file also included a “blog roll” Anyone still remember what that was? Links to other blogs I had been reading / following at the time. 70% of the links ended in 404 (or something similar”) nirvana.

Screenshot of a 404 Page from blog hoster twoday-net
Page not found

20% were still online but hadn’t been updated for over a decade. 10% were still going and only one of them was a blog I still read. I don’t even remember why I once read those other ones or that I did read them at all. I once again felt old as fuck. Sasha had a great line about that last night though, more or less translates to “I’ve been 40 for 12 years now”.


Work is still super busy and I’m doing my best to keep my imposter syndrome in check. Not everything that causes some complications is my fault even if I’m the project manager. There is only so much managing you can do before you venture over into dangerous micro-managing / burn out territory. 

Today I’ve started looking at the timeline for the next big project milestone which is scheduled for the end of 2025. I started working back from then: which steps have to happen when, how long will those take and what will the deadlines will be for all those. It doesn’t seem like such a long time to go till December 2025 when you look at it that way. A bit scary but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. At least it felt good to have some idea of the necessary timeframe for everything. 


I’ve got a few more notes jotted down on a piece of paper, but right now can’t be bothered to elaborate on all of those. I’d rather keep up some more with my weekend newspapers and less news bits on social media.

Photo of newspaper pages scattered
Weekend editions of two big newspapers

And at least share a new artsy / doodling project I did last week. Inspired by Pet Needs singer Johnny Marriott, who does something similar on canvas with a piece of their lyrics. I ordered it! And I thought I give it a try myself. I kind of like it, but I already know where / how to do it differently with the next piece I’m going to work on. Whenever…

Art work: Lyrics written criss cross on a page Try and do the things that you can't

217/2024 – “Whatever Else May Be, I Will Not Forget My Friends…”

Lyrics: “St. Christopher Is Coming Home” – Frank Turner, 2008

Oh look, it’s Sunday again.

The plan for my short break / long weekend (Thursday to today) originally had been to hang out some place else with people I don’t see all that often anymore. Life required a change of plans, so people came down to where I live to hang out here for a while.

We went out to eat: breakfast, late lunch, cocktails, dinner… you name it. Not everything each day, but quite a few times.

The cakes in one of the places we met for breakfast looked to delicious to not share (with four people) at least one piece after an already yummy breakfast.

Two pictures, on the left a slice of chocolate raspberry cake with a raspberry on top, on the left a empty plate with a few crumbs
Yummy yummy cake

We went out to see stuff. A “Planet Ocean” photo exhibition and a digital and immersive art installation with works from Dali and Gaudi.

We talked. We laughed. We reminisced. We fangirled.

It all went by too fast. Let’s not wait so long to do that again.

There are a lot of things going on at the moment in my country, in other European countries, in the world. I have many thoughts on a lot of those things, but none in any eloquent shape or form I’d feel comfortable to share yet. Unlike the gazillions of people spewing their biased and unfounded ‘thoughts” on social media.

Here are some nice photos from this weekend instead:

Photo of a large photo, a polar bear under water between some floating ice
Polar Bear about to get out of the water
Photo of a large photo of mangrove by the sea, the roots are covered by fog
Mangrove in the fog
Phoenix des Lumieres sign on the square in front of a brick building with former industrial iron buildings in the background
Outside the digital art exhibition
Inside a spacious former industrial space, colourful Dali art images projected on the walls
Salvador Dali all over
Close up of some digital art projection - Salvador Dali
Close up of some well know details in Dali’s art
Inside a spacious former industrial space, colourful Gaudi art images projected on the walls
Bursts of colour in Gaudi’s art

Books I’ve Read in July 2024

This has been a bit of a so-so month book wise. I was positively surprised by some and on the other hand felt let down by others. I sold some of the latter already, so I can’t share a photo of the ones I’ve read. Here are the stats of the last 28 days.

Screenshot of my July Storygraph stats
A so-so month in a graph

Here are some thoughts (aka my reviews on Storygraph) on the six books, starting with the ones I enjoyed the most to the ones that left me a bit underwhelmed.

The Sun is also a Star, Nicola Yoon, 2016
I loved this much more than I expected. What a wonderful story of two young people who meet by chance (or fate) in NYC and fall in love on the day, when she (daughter of undocumented immigrants) is supposed to be deported. The story is told in short chapters, alternating from their different points of view and on occasion the side characters are taking over the narrators voice. It worked very well here and it helped to give the whole plot and story more colour. It also highlighted how much in our lives is determined by chance. Or is it fate after all? A great story and I’m happy to have ended the month on this one.

Cassandra in Reverse, Holly Smale, 2023
I might add more elaborate thoughts to this in a while [scatterbrain that I am, probably not though]. I really enjoyed this one. I like the unique way of time-travelling and could relate to Cassie much more than I thought and more than I might like to admit in public. I sometimes feel like my personality includes various neurodivergent aspects, but I shy away from self-diagonsis. But the comforting routines, staying inside my comfort zone, feeling like I’m not sharing my authentic / real person self with the world, if that makes sense. I loved the (hidden) message in this plot and found it inspiring and encouraging: People in general are kind and lovely and not in general hostile or dismissive and it’s worth the “risk” to be more open about stuff. And myself.

Ugh, I segue into self-therapy-talk, back to the book. I figured out the mystery of the letter writer about halfway through, I think the final revelation about Cassandra’s mum felt a bit too much and on the nose so to speak, but all in all I really, really enjoyed the being invited into this section of Cassandra’s life. Let’s end with positivity: The writing was great, the right variety of fun and emotions and I especially love the intro / finale about “what’s the beginning of a story anyway”.

Thees Uhlmann über die Toten Hosen, Thees Uhlmann 2019
[Audiobook] One of my favourite German singer/songwriters reads his book about the most successful German punkband Die Toten Hosen. Very entertaining, very relatable and beautifully written.

The Last Devil to Die, Richard Osman, 2023
Another enjoyable and this time also quite sad story from the Thursday Murder Club. The plot and how those seniors and the police act and react is quite unrealistic, I know, but that is sort of the fun of it. (15 July 2024)

The Scent of Death, Simon Beckett 2019
This story kept me hooked for the last few days, even though I realized I’m not as comfortable with grisly thriller plots as I used to be. Thus I’m not sure if I’ll read the next one in this series. I thought the plot was well constructed and I had no idea who the killer was until it was revealed, which is always a good thing for a thriller plot. I also mostly enjoyed the variety of side characters and in some cases felt really bad about what happened to them. The subplot of someone from previous stories who (still) wants to kill Dr. Hunter felt a bit too far-fetched for me.

Standard Deviation, Katherine Heiny, 2017
I sort of enjoyed the actual writing in this book and to be fair it’s the only thing that kept me reading till the end. There wasn’t much of a plot and even though I don’t mind a story which tells only snap-shots in lives of some people, at least make these snapshots interesting. For me this dragged and meandered on and on.