“No cilantro, please” – September 2016

Last night, I spent 8 hours fixing a ton of broken content on this website (which also meant that all my other evening plans fell through). In that process, I stumbled on my old series of “monthly diary with bits and pieces that are usually completely out of context” again – and noticed that a month had just passed. So I thought I might as well write one.

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I found

• Roses

I wrote

• “Sometimes life is like Berlin Brandenburg Airport.”
• “I’m super bad at celebrating birthdays, or, generally, celebrating anything.”
• “Sometimes life is about having to take the right bridge, else having to walk a much longer path. … Elderflower lemonade is love turned beverage.”

I said

• “No cilantro, please.” (I still got cilantro.)
• “I am SO going to endorse you on Linkedin!” (Never happened.)
• “You do not ‘yo’ me. I am not a ‘yo’ person.”

I was

• At a conference
• Happy
• Nervous
• Desperate
• Sad
• Alone
• Excited
• With my favourite humans

I did (1)

• Carry boxes (and furniture)
• Carry a couch all by myself (it was a super light couch, but don’t tell anyone; I looked super cool and super strong carrying that thing just myself)
• Dye my hair green (only temporarily though)
• Throw a keynote that was ready completely out of the window, and started writing it all from scratch – two weeks before the conference date
• Walk around nervously in circles
• Try purple eyeshadow (and liked it)
• Keynote View Source Conf Berlin

I did (2)

• See the fireworks
• Have celebratory pizza
• Take a post-conference-recovery-day off (and thank past-me for it)
• Get new glasses
• Get a massage
• Lose the sad puppy eyes
• Get two proposals (yes, there’s more to these stories; no, I won’t tell; no, I’m not getting married)
• Meet someone I haven’t seen in 3 years
• Watch a movie
• Find the perfect summer outfit. On the last day of summer.
• Get a free pain au chocolat (which was then stolen by a gang of sparrows gone wild).
• Carry a pizza box
• Make a choice

I did…, although it was a bad idea

• Start always having two cups of coffee on my desk, to ensure a stable, interruption-free supply chain. (It sounded like a good idea.)

I had

• Coffee
• Coffee
• Coffee
• Kombucha
• Späti Coffee (and it wasn’t as bad as it sounds)

I realised

• In how many ways writing is a craft – and can sometimes feel like almost manual labour.

I read

• “Yo.”
• About space missions, habitats on Mars, music and space travel.
• About Neuroscience.
• “I like your thinking.”
• Why we cry on Planes
• How to be perfectly unhappy

I heard

• “I have finally understood your life strategy: for every non-coffee thing, you have to do a coffee thing.”
• “This looks SO romantic!” (it wasn’t)
• “I brought you a gift!” (One of my all-time favourite sentences.)
• “I’ve never seen you so relaxed at a conference during daytime.” (I never was so relaxed at a conference during daytime.)

I listened to

• Girls in Hawaii – Misses
• Ravens & Chimes – Division Street
• Heifervescent – Deep Sea Diver
• Santigold – Disparate Youth
• Creedence Clearwater Revival – Have you ever seen the rain (that’s another story for another time)

I thought

• “So this is goodbye.”
• About mutual fangirling
• About learning and pain
• About familiarness, and how it sometimes never completely fades; and how gestures, motions, sounds
• “I wish it were Friday night already.”