Spring updates

It’s two in the morning. And I’m not sleeping. Maybe it’s partly because of those four cups of coffee yesterday, but there’s probably another reason for my years of insomnia, besides the kids waking up of course. In the hope that this typing will tire my eyes a little and I’ll go lie down for another hour or so later, I’m finally checking in with you again.

Not sure where I left you last time, but you probably don’t remember either, so it’s okay. At the beginning of the year, I intended to publish one such post every month. Well, now I’ve limited them to seasons. So after the winter update, I’m serving you a spring one today. Before the summer arrives. (This is a bitter joke, because it’s snowing here these days, even though it’s the middle of May).

I’ll start with some good news, which is far from self-evident, especially when you’re over 40 haha. We’re healthy. Leo is in daycare since February and has only been home one single day since. Knocking on wood. But I’ve been a little more absent from social media in recent weeks. I don’t know, maybe I lacked motivation because we’re mostly at home and working and I don’t have that much travel content. I think I always share snapshots of the same scenes from our afternoon walks. I know you mostly like to follow that too, but I’ve never posted something just for you, always a little for myself as well. And apparently I haven’t been in the mood to share much lately.

Besides, technology has been nagging me for a couple of weeks now. I don’t even know what exactly started it, but this domino effect of everything that went wrong took a lot of my energy away. My phone’s battery died. Of course, at that moment I was in a terrible panic because I didn’t have everything backed up. Let this be a reminder to you and quickly back up your photos and other important data.

I had the battery replaced, but a few days later the screen started to die. All of a sudden I could only click on things at the very bottom of the screen and at some random spots in the upper half. This made posting stories on IG a nightmare and also didn’t give me any satisfaction. I basically had an involuntary digital detox for almost two weeks because scrolling through my phone was just too annoying. Well, at least I managed to make a backup.

The climax of this saga was when I ran out of battery one day while outside and when I turned the phone back on at home I couldn’t confirm the PIN number because the screen in the exact part where the “ok” button was not working. At that point I was unreachable, outside the wifi area also of course without internet. Quite a funny feeling when I left the house without the always-present mandatory equipment, my phone.

We used to live like this, and we didn’t lack for anything, but now we are completely dependent on these mini devices. The problems are also of a completely practical nature. For example, you can’t pay for parking because you don’t have access to the app. You can’t confirm an online purchase with a card, the navigation in the car doesn’t work, you can’t immediately write back to business customers. So buying a new phone was inevitable. I might get it tomorrow. And then, in the middle of the night, when I can’t sleep, I’ll be able to fill shopping carts on Zalando again (btw, I just throw this in and then never order), scroll through Instagram stories, plan at least 7 trips in my head for the coming years, and delete duplicate photos. 

Another thing that hit me at the same time was problems on my blog. One day, without any warning, I got up a little after four in the morning and, made myself a coffee, sat down in front of my laptop and wanted to finally continue my article about Cappadocia. Because, when everyone is still sleeping, it’s pure peace and I usually really like these inhumanly early hours. But no. Not this time. I won’t go into details, but to quickly summarize, the blog site simply stopped working as it should because my theme was too old and incompatible with the latest WordPress and plugins update. It took me at least three full days to fix it and if it weren’t for my dear brother, who always comes to my aid in these cases, I would have just closed everything and gave up. Really. I love writing, I love taking photos, I love saving memories in this way, I love sharing them with you, but I really hate it when technology fails.

Now we’ve solved that too. The blog is working. It took me a while to get (almost) everything back together. But it gave me something to think about. I asked myself again “do I need this” and “who am I writing all this for” and “who is even reading this”. And then I realized (again) that I’m writing for myself first and foremost anyway. Because it makes me feel good. And it would be a shame to stop. Through all these years of blogging, I’ve gotten a tough skin anyway and on the one hand I actually don’t care so much about who reads it anymore. Now I just hope there will be peace with tech issues for a while. 

So I really tried to finish a couple of posts, but as you can see I had other challenges. I did manage to update the one about Piran, Slovenia. Please read it, I added a lot of my favorite photos and additional information. Piran is practically our second or third home in Slovenia, so I know it really well. On top of everything I was invited to be a part of an event which has now been postponed two times already. I do understand why, but still, it took some of my precious time away. 

Then there’s our “job”. I put it in quotes because it’s not a classic job, even though we do different things that take up a lot of our time and we earn quite a bit. We also did some gardening lately. (I know, never again before the end of May, because yes, we have snow now even though it’s middle May). In the meantime, we went to Piran to clear our heads. Charlie was also in France. And then the kids were home during the May school holidays, because our kindergarten is always closed. So we spent a most of our days getting lost in “our” forests and hills. Still excited about where we live! I don’t know about you, but for me, these days just fly by.

In terms of planning our fall trip, it’s challenging. One day I think we have to make the most of our last year before school, even though airfares have skyrocketed due to Iran war. The next day I think the world is going crazy and I don’t know what’s in store for us next year and maybe it’s better to stay home or somewhere nearby. I know we’ll choose the first one though. Because, you only live once. We have about three scenarios, we’ll see which one we decide on. See you in the summer update!