2021
I welcomed 2021 with a blog post, so let’s wave goodbye to it that way, too.
To be honest, I don’t have an extensive review in me. This has been an extraordinarily tough and stressful year for me. After COVID had held strongly in the winter of 2020, the spring felt to be more normal and ordinary.
That particular calm was only of short duration as we got notice that, due to work from home of our landlord and the additional space requirements, we had to leave our home by March 2022. While the old place had been small for two people, especially when at home around the clock for living and working during a global pandemic, we did not fancy house hunting at all.
That said, by May we had found our new apartment which is closer to nature and also considerably bigger than the old one, allowing more space for the separation of work and nonwork life. We moved in August, and while we made sure that most things were taken care of by contractors, it took considerable time to find the apartment and make the move.
Apart from meeting people that we had to see for the move, we made a conscious attempt to further social distance and isolate as much as possible. This might feel like an abundance of caution, but with two self-employed people and one with considerable experience in lung illnesses (hi!), it still feels the right decision to err on the side of caution. Especially now with Omicron, of course.
That said, the new apartment is great: Two walkable supermarkets, DIY hardware store, and a pharmacy in a 10-minute radius. Thirty-five minutes by foot to the train station. Nature all around us. Woods, fields, views. It is fantastic.
Work obligations and apartment search meant that I was not able to continue with my YouTube videos. I’d really like to continue with them, but I first need to make sure I’m not as exhausted anymore. Health must always have priority. That said, I’m incredibly proud of the 11.500+ viewer figure of my first video. It really feels like I can reach further than with my other channels.
I also did change over my direct support channel to Steady from Patreon. The reason is simple: Steady is a German service, so it works better for business reasons, and it has several interesting features. For example, I might be able in the future to better integrate a membership into this site.
While the video front was relatively quiet, I picked up on blogging in the last quarter with three articles:
I feel very good about that, and I hope to keep the occasional post coming. I have another blog post in draft since July, maybe I can finish it soon.
In contrast to other people, I did not read a lot of books. I can only remember one, to be perfectly honest, and that is Dan Moren’s The Bayern Agenda.
I did consume considerable amounts of other media, some new seasons of last year’s favorites, like the new Ted Lasso (excellent!) and For all Mankind (even excellenter!) seasons.
In summer, I also watched all Marvel movies in release order thanks to Disney+. I think the only one I had seen until then was Iron Man 1 and Spider-Man: Homecoming, and I think both were on a plane. While they were not all great, they were entertainment and I liked the continuing story. I did rate them all on Letterboxd.
In addition, I watched Doctor Who: Flux and Hawkeye (both great!) and over Christmas Around the World in 80 Days with David Tennant, which I liked.
I also built a Space Shuttle and a Telescope! (Link to the tweet with alternative texts.)
All in all, it was a good, but exhausting, year. A lot has changed, and there has been not enough time to really wrap my head around it at this point. Onwards to the next one.
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