Good to see you again and welcome to my weekly report and update on what it is like going back to 2024 digital technology and all other stuff related to my week.
The 90s challenge
Well… I went back to Spotify, Instagram, Netflix, YouTube and Google and it has been violent, dramatic I know, but hear me out: I am saying this as I am typing at 6.29am after being up since 3.02am with a Migraine that has since been cured by an Ibuprofen while having to realise that I can no longer sleep properly since I quit my digital detox. I have been waking up at the most random times filled with energy and adrenaline, thoughts and feelings and nowhere to put it to end up laying awake from 5am onwards or just in the middle of the night. I really wouldn’t have thought that I could subconsciously and physically feel this as much and as vehemently and I am surprised (and frustrated) that it is my sleep that suffers the most. I am not able to calm down or shut down and soothe myself into calm to get at least five uninterrupted hours of sleep. Especially, because I felt like I have been doing fine and actually enjoyed being back on socials and the internet the way I used to (and I wasn’t even as chronically-online as before my detox). But, with the third or fourth night of interrupted sleep I am willing to draw this correlation and realise that it affects me that deeply although I was hoping for more resilience and ease but instead I am tired and worn out by it.
So, I have to adjust and accept that I am indeed that sensitive and that ridding myself from all these senses for such a long time (although this is relative) might as well have ruined it for me for the next and near future. At least, the “all-in”-mentality was definitely overambitious.
For now, I have decided to use Instagram for only one day a week and I don’t use any other social media anyway. Also, I have restrained Netflix and YouTube and other apps like Vinted to desktop-use only - I have to be consciously sitting down and watch something. In addition I realised that I really need a Bluetooth speaker. The AirPods are not doing it for me as they leave my senses scattered between what I am hearing and what is going on around me. I want to be able to leave my phone somewhere and still listening to my music and being able to hear my environment. I want a background tune to my activities like I am in a little movie and I want to be able to enjoy music with people around me. So, with all these “I wants” I might need to invest in one although I don’t want to spend money.
Other than that I hope you enjoyed my Instagram stories this past week and the memes I sent. I really missed posting stories and sharing random stuff and I am still happy I got to go back on it again.
Weekly update 01 - Moving again
Since I got to Barcelona half a year ago, I have lived in two apartment and my second move and third apartment in six months happened this Friday. It was very spontaneous but in turn I get to live with a nice, welcoming and warm friend and a friend of hers who seems to share the same characteristics. I am so lucky with my new place. My room is pretty with a balcony and sun until noon and a living room that is lived in with a TV for Mario Kart games and a dining table shared for meals with friends who have been visiting and invited me to be part of their lunch and their group.
Another thing that has me excited about my new place is that I get to learn and speak Spanish here because I am living more outside of my International Student bubble, which is sometimes very distant from the life of the place it is taking place in and, while I feel connection within the International Student bubble, I now also and already feel more connected to the every day culture and feel a sense of arrival which I have been yearning for.
The only thing that causes trouble are how tough these changes are on me and it takes a lot of energy and getting used to which has me in a constant state of nervousness because every word is in a language that I do not fully know yet and every sound in the apartment is new and there is no sense of routine in-sync with the others or just my own for that matter (especially with my recent sleeping schedule). (To be honest, I am afraid of being “caught” being awake this early while typing away in our study just now because it probably seems very odd that I would be writing on my computer at 6.56am).
Weekly update 02 - Visit from the parents
The last week my parents visited and it put me into a lot of feelings of sentimentality and homesickness which ultimately lead to me signing Das letzte Kommando by Fortuna Ehrenfeld, Codo by DÖF and many more while eating Maultaschen that I had my parents import from Germany. At the same time, it was very enjoyed with good food and quality time and appreciation for my parents. Seeing them was short and more needed than I knew it would be because I feel like as I am getting older I expect feelings towards parents and missing and needing them to grow smaller. But, when you only get to see your parents every few months for only a few hours at a time for only a few days these accumulated feelings surface and it feels good to be a child with her parents for a short while. And to their credit, they are great parents.
Weekly update 03 - Rainy days
I think I had forgotten the power rainy days have over me and how they are to me just wholesomeness and for the first time since I have been in Barcelona I got to enjoy a rainy weekend where I didn’t do nothing and enjoyed my time at home (in my new home!) with some walks in the rain to get the newspaper, getting groceries to cook at home, listening to rainy-day music all day (Little Nowhere Towns by The Tallest Man on Earth), making berry pancakes and a dinner invite with friends who live only minutes away.
At the same time, Barcelona, although desperately needs it, is not prepared for the rain and just my few and short outings throughout the day where met with buckets and sand piled up mulch catching all the water flows that were seeping through into supermarkets and metro stations.
Weekly recommendation 01 - Journaling
One thing I couldn’t have done without this week would be my journal! All these changes, newness, oldness and progress had to be written down and wrung out of my brain and heart for me to make any sense and make sense of myself. Of course everyone heard about or does journaling so I simply want to be one more account that manifests its power and rages about its helpfulness and service it provides for you. My mind always feels more sorted and relieved after writing down my thoughts. Personally, I never do use a “Dear Diary”-manner but I always jot down whatever my mind produces without any stop or breaks until I have filled three pages of my little notebook and it works beautifully for me.
The best feeling about journaling is the sentences you write that you didn’t know you had in you and the surprise you feel when you come up with actual meaningful, poetic and reflective thoughts. So, if you don’t already, please try journaling as a favour to yourself, especially with the “three-page-jot-down”-technique I learned.
Weekly recommendation 02 - Dream interpretations
This past week, probably because of my messed up sleeping schedule or the vice-versa, I have dreamed a lot and often very detailed dreams that implied meaning and brought up many people, memories and objects of the repressed pasts. I usually do not engage further in my dreams other than taking a few minutes to pass them in review right after waking up from them but this week there were too many easter eggs and particularities within my dreams to not try to understand them. The solution: Dream interpretations really made me have a revelation about myself and I am not talking about profound dream knowledge and deep introspective tactics but a simply google-search and the first few results it yields. If that is enough for me to have a revelation about myself and meaning related to my life after a month of sitting with myself while doing a digital detox then you should try it too.
Weekly recommendation 03 - Some songs for you
I have forgotten and missed so many songs in the past month that I can’t start to express how happy I am feeling about listening to them again now and it is the least for me to share. Also I chose the cutest little otter picture which I found from this guy who design nature and wild-life related environmental shirts which I wanna buy all of (Find them here: Jim Morris Environmental & WildLife T-Shirt Co.). (If you buy something, let us please order together.)
Thank you for reading!
I’ll see you again for the next newsletter, although I am not sure if it will be a weekly thing but instead a more extensive monthly one. But either way, nos vemos!
1ste Liebe - Max Herre does wonders for homesickness (stuttgart specific)