13th of March to the 23rd of March

Life has been good. I finally overcame whatever made me sick and work is fun with loads of interesting meetups and happenings. I started two new books and the little one is happy and healthy. Since I was pretty busy with work I had to push back a bit on writing, but here we go. For every one new here: I follow a book with writing prompts for every day of the year and share that with you here.

13th of March: “The deadly sins part 6 - a man names his envy on another man”

He woke up in a pool of sweat. Justin! Ah man, he has the music. He had Selena. He makes great music and grows. He has money. Consumed by his thoughts of Justin he walked over to the kitchen counter. Lined up on the counter are sets of supplements and trinkets to make coffee. Not any coffee - the trademarked JB-Coffee. Oh, man! Justin just has everything. Even that one drink to start your day with all minerals and vitamins and boosters and love to start the day. When he was unaware of Justin he started the day by pissing. That was the only regular step in his morning routine. Now it is the JB-Coffee. Followed by 30 sit-ups, 30 press-ups and 30 jumping jacks. This routine was accompanied by a playlist that grew shorter over the months with all published albums. Justin has albums, he has them. Justin has dance moves, he has them copied to the tiniest of movements. Justin has money, he has government benefits.

14th of March: “The deadly sins part 7 - someone endangered by another man’s pride”

I really cannot be seen going to the solarium. What should my boss think? How will that look in my career? But I have to. When Marc is committed I have to put it all on the line. He seems more favoured in our sales company. So I have to do what he does but better. This started when I noticed his haircut changed for the better. Longish hair got a military trim and to catch up I got a buzzcut. I hit the gym every day of the week and I notice that my frame is becoming sturdier. Body fat is now at 8%. I look like Chris Evans halfway through the Captain America transformation. I have to hide that frame under suits on a daily basis, but I got them tailored in Thailand to show a bit more of the work I put in. I think about this a lot. How I look. How I am perceived. How I act, walk and talk. The thing is if my solarium visits with Marc become public knowledge in the office I will be in trouble! Who will hire a top sales rep that goes to a solarium? How will this look to my acquaintances at the golf course? I’m thinking of locking the door and setting his timer to 90 minutes. That way he has to skip the next few sessions and I will be there in the office. Every day. Walking tall. Walking proudly. Marc is out on a sick note. I am there, but no one knows about the solarium. I look great!

15th of March: “A moment of betrayal in my life”

I have a problem. I wear my heart on my sleeve and I will say or do things that I find just even if it is to my own detriment. So years back I was planning to leave Shanghai for Hong Kong or Thailand and I told my “friends” in the office about it. I told everyone that I found to be close to me and went through the official steps in the company first. Requesting to be sent there and then continue my career in Bangkok or Hong Kong within the same company. I was told to up my sales calls or something. Which in turn looks great for the Shanghai office. However seemingly random people did get sent to Hong Kong or Bangkok, but just not me. I grew a bit resentful toward management and started to look outside for jobs. Shanghai is not a place for anyone not born in China to live there forever. So it is not unusual to think about leaving. Again I shared the resentment on my face and the stories of my efforts with almost everyone around me. Then someday I got called in by my boss and got told that they are aware that I am interviewing elsewhere. As a result all my benefits on top of the standard job that I started there were cut off and I should prove my worth by going up the ladder again. Not long after I quit and started another job with friends in Shanghai. I don’t know who ticked the boss lady off, but it was probably one of my friends advancing their career and joining the “random” people that got sent elsewhere. I know…

16th of March: “Ideal writing conditions”

I love to write. But the setting has to be there. I need to sit at a desk, preferably my desk with an extra monitor, but any semi-reasonable posture will work. I need a hot drink next to me. As I am writing this there is a 500ml mug of earl grey tea with milk and honey next to me. I can’t have piles of something around me when I write. So there can’t be piles of documents or something on the desk or piles of clothing or an unmade bed around in the same room. These little clean-ups have to be done before I start writing. Then I start a quick digital clean-up and delete and answer some emails until they don’t resemble a physical pile in the room somewhere. Then there is the most ideal step to get me to write for a prolonged period of time: my mechanical keyboard. I have a keyboard that makes satisfying sounds and looks great and feels great to type on. It’s a blast and I believe if you do a lot of writing this is a great purchase that leads to a rabbit hole of keyboard enthusiasts. I also need to be alone in the room I am writing in, to better channel the lonesome writer. There can also be a podcast or music running as background noise to distract me. At the beginning or during a writing session I walk around, move or do a little mobility session. To summarise: semi-tidy around me, a tea or coffee, a normal sitting position, my mechanical keyboard and some background noise.

17th of March: “Something audacious a drunk person did”

Hahaha! There are stories here that I won’t put in writing. But I love it when liquid courage makes people grow a bit bolder in their actions and these moments enhance life. As long as no one gets hurt. I know people that drink and then the real person comes out. So some get all cuddly or start to kiss the same sex and some and my least favourite get a little violent. My friend and roommate during my first stay in China was a super fun drunk. For him, a superpower in terms of language ability kicked in at a certain level. So the taxi rides back from various parties were full-on conversations in fluent Chinese with the taxi driver that led to the taxi driver giving him his number. Other times and that happened in Germany too. He became a social butterfly and included a whole new group of foreign exchange students that probably have not integrated with another group yet, but he just approached them and became part of the group with whatever language they were speaking. I don’t change much. I just get tired at some point and then I try to find a place to lie down and sleep or make a silent exit to walk home. There has been one instance when I had a friend that was so drunk but still somehow functioning that I accompanied him to the restroom to pee. There was one of those walls you pee on with constant water running down said wall. I had to pee too, so we stood next to each other releasing ourselves. Mid-stream I notice that his pants and underwear are around his ankles. Like a 5-year-old. Funny. The moment I look over, still mid-stream he jolts a bit and wobbles and eventually falls backwards. I laugh, shake my wiener and close the zipper of my pants to help him back up. He is still peeing all the way from lying on the floor to peeing sideways and then forward while getting pushed up by me. There were several people entering the room seeing me lifting up my peeing friend with his naked butt and wiener out and turning back into the bar instead of walking in. Fun times. No one got hurt.

18th of March: “An act of righteous defiance”

When I think of righteous defiance acts I always think of the people that didn’t trigger a nuclear attack when they acted as fail-safe or backup. I think of soldiers not doing what they are commanded to do when the situation could be criminal, harmful, unjust or otherwise. There is a law in Germany that makes these acts of righteous defiance in the military, police etc. completely consequence-free if the command is considered criminal or worse a crime against humanity. I find that to be great. I also like the small acts of righteous defiance when people walk out on a horrible job or boss. When I was in my early twenties I loved how this strong woman walked out during the assessment centre of a recruiting company, when she realised that this is pretty much just a “simple” sales job that didn’t require her education, experience or knowledge. That sounds like such a small act of defiance, but it was impactful. Every single person on that day was asking why she walked out. I knew because we talked. Back then I was not able to have the balls to do that, but now I would and whenever I feel stuck I try to remind myself that we humans are not trees. We can move. We don’t need to take beatings or our surroundings and abuse that are afflicted upon us. We can move. So be the person that acts with righteous defiance.

19th of March: “Emotional baggage on your bed”

This is very interesting. Because on the weekend I finished an X-Box Classic Game called Psychonauts. It’s about Tim Burtonesque characters that have the ability to travel to people’s minds and among the things you can collect in the game is emotional baggage that you have to find the responding luggage tags. So yeah, funny that this shows up here. It would be great to see how much emotional baggage every person would have to carry. We would judge differently. I believe or seem to know that most of the emotional baggage we fill with moments, experiences and trauma from childhood. Now I can say that my baggage would be relatively light, but again there are some weird spots. We never really had money and also we never had to starve, but life was hard for my mom, that at some point decided to become a Physiotherapist, which is a field that you have to pay for to study. Soon after that, my parents got divorced. I saw it is a good thing. Again, in close proximity, I have things that happened to people that I love that are way harder and traumatic. And this isn’t a pissing contest. So imagine there is a world where we can load up our emotional baggage with the things we want to leave behind. Kind of like having this cute Marie Kondo Lady come around, go through the load one last time, say goodbye and then load them onto a doomed plane, like a goat, back in the day and they disappear together with that plane. That would be great. Send it off and don’t put your air tags in. No one needs that.

20th of March: “An ekphrastic poem”

For the uninitiated, I was one of them. This is basically a poem or addition to a piece of art. So in Germany, there was an artist called Joseph Beuys - look him up. Who made “art” out of daily appliances like a bathtub full of fat. This one goes out to all of his works, not a specific one:

Is this art or can we throw it away? - a tub full fat

Can we clean this or is that meant to be this way? - stains on a felt hat

Sorry to ask, but is this meant to swing and sway? - a swing with the skeleton of a cat

21st of March: “Vivaldi’s Spring inspired this“

I can’t wait and you showed your face briefly. Through the snow of old the lush green shows here and there. We were frozen. Now we are about to be awoken by the sun, insects and warmth. Children dance and frolic everywhere. The crows pick up trash that shows up when the snow thaws. Assholes don’t change with the season. Music can make it more bearable. You come from a happier time. A time when people had other problems. Now they are bigger than us. Let’s conserve more springs and listen to music. Because if we do nothing but dance and frolic, our spring will be no more.

22nd of March: “One instance of serendipity“

Serendipity out of happy little accidents. One time, the first time ever I have been to Hong Kong everything went wrong. We went to the airport realising our flight was booked for the next day, having made the trip to the airport we were able to change the flight then and there and go out right away. We landed, drove into the city and enjoyed a beer and a cigarette. Then the first attempts to get a taxi to our booked Hotel all failed. Turns out we booked a hotel somewhere else in China. Then we realised that this is the holiday every Chinese person takes to visit their home. The golden week. Therefore every hotel, hostel and apartment was booked. The both of us were still happy to be in Hong Kong and drink everything in. Nothing could stop us from enjoying this trip. We slept in an internet cafe, gamed and played until the morning. Then we got a tiny room in Kowloon because things happen the way they happen and we subconsciously made all the right things happen when they should happen. Really just rolling with it we exited Chunking mansion and after years and years of admiring Jackie Chan movies and eventually moving to China, accidentally we see Jackie Chan in person, 5 meters away in front of us. Magic. Serendipity. Like every trip to Hong Kong.

23rd of March: “What does your last name mean?”

My last name is Seidel. Seidel is a unit of measurement in Bavaria and Austria mainly and/or a cylindrical mug or glass that typically holds beer. So there are many joyful instances I held beer. Just like the origin of my last name. The measurement I don’t like as much. It reminds me of feet and stone and everything else that doesn’t convert easily but apparently a Seidel is 1 litre, like the famous Stein that doesn’t exist as a word in Germany for beer but yeah, that is my name. Do we pick our names or are the names picking us? My first name is Swedish for bear. And if you see me with no shirt and a beer in hand you could easily guess what my name would be. It’s like someone was able to look into the future and name a little baby boy that will love to go on beerwalks (and make them a thing) and looks a bit like a bear or cub that likes to hug fellow humans. I got lucky with my name and I hope you do too!