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My music of the year 2010. I just asked myself, what i was REALLY listing to, not what came out! Let say the real good caribou album. It is great but i never listen to it! so why put it on MY top list? Just to please the critics?

Because of my long world travel this year, i couldn’t catch up with new music, so lot of older stuff from last year like mumford & sons is on the list and quite a lot of „outdoorsy lone ranger folky stuff“ which kept my going alone, on the road in far off places 🙂

1 The xx  – The xx
2 Joanna Newsom – Have One on Me
3 William Fitzsimmons – The Sparrow And The Crow
4 Angus & Julia Stone Down The Day
6 Arcade Fire – Suburbs
7 Junip – Fields
8 Jack Johnson – En Concert [Live]
9 Beach House – Teen Dreams
10 Tired Pony – The Place We Ran From
11 Pearl Jam – Backspacer
12 The Low Anthem – Oh My God, Charlie Darwin
13 Belle & Sebastian – Belle & Sebastian Write About Love
14 The Drums – The Drums
15 Broken Bells – Broken Bells
16 Iron & Wine – Around the Well
17 Gisbert zu Knyphausen – Hurra! Hurra! So nicht
18 We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls
19 Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More
20 Ugly Casanova – 180° South: Conquerors of the Useless (OST)
21 Eddi Vedder – Into the Wild
22 Band of Horses – Infinite Arms
23 Villagers – Becoming A Jackal
24 The National – High Violet
25 Byte.fm – Internet radio

(only on album per artist, otherwise …)

For next year you should write on your own blog. back to your own plattforms. no facebook. no third-party-shit

Not more blogging in the last weeks, even if i tried too, but just to damm lazy! bloody facebook! bloody twitter! … maybe everything is too well in my life? no more crying around and saying „me me me“ or am I just to relaxed?

For next year find something you care about!

Of course, it’s the money as always. And that there is still nothing which would give me a sense of responsibility for someone or something. ok, i enjoy quite a lot of things, probably to much, but can’t make money out of it. thats the different to quite a lot of people i know. i only work, cause u must work for a living, otherwise i would spend my time and nergy in the outdoors, helping nature to survive and educate people about it.that makes sense! i really enjoyed my work in Iceland, guiding and educating people about the ocean eco systems and marine mammals or on Haleakala in Hawaii, volunteering for the National Park on Maui. So see! There is something work related i enjoy! Instead of the whole Graphic „you hipster fuck no cares“ Design Studies, i should have learn something about forests and oceans, bees and plankton and how to teach things, so YOUR kids will know what animal Paul is!

For next year, you should volunteer & doing stuff with WDCS, SSCS, IFAW or Greenpeace – of course there is no money in this game, but all lot of good karma and worth doing it

speaking of volunteering kind of, the whole co-working space düsseldorf project has kicked off and we made it happen in 3 month. now we must see work to fill this creative space and help to let it grow. its really great to create something, which could be last for a while. as i told many people, even if it fails, i made real world connections with people and ideas, can you ask for more?

For next year work hard on your own business for profit and help to let the others grow for karma!

i will try to work (hard) there on my desk till spring. so i can see, if the freelancing thing is my deal or not. it feels good and i love to design and code for the web, but still its doesnt’t change anything. no idea, if it was right to put webdev on my card, but just let’s see.

For next year be „here“ –  try to find a regular daily structure in life. not more more more

next year is coming up and i would love to, how to say that, not settle down (Cats Stevens Song, anyone? i mean i wouldn’t mind for the right reasons!), but be here, be around and see what europe has to offer. step back a little bit, after the last 5 years of traveling and adventures. 2004/2005 Australia  2006 and 2007 study like crazy 2008 diploma Iceland, family affairs,  2009  hamburg, great summer, canada, california, hawaii, australia and 2010 new zealand, indonesia, singapur thailand, world cup, great summer, coworking space …so it would be really ok to be here, be in love, focus on someone, work and live europe. düsseldorf?  i don’t care as long as i can make it money-wise. so if it should be Hamburg, Copenhagen, Helsinki or Lisabon for a GOOD reason, come on let’s do it!

i think  i learned a few things while travelling and being on my own for quite a while. there is a very small line between doing things and running away from things.

For the next year you should be more active (again!)

better late then never. start again with running and kendo on a regular basis. try to dive at least once a month, and even try to rock climb, maybe even (kite)surfing and snowboarding. hiking of course! there a 2 big ones in germany i wanna do: the „saxony  mountain walk“ (100k +) and the „harz walk“, maybe something in the south.

For the next year you should think hard about where you wanna go from here and how!

in the long run there is „my“ big decision to make:  i love my people and room in düsseldorf, but i need to decide on the „big try“! Iceland? Australia? Canada? Hawaii? Asia? for real? not just a few days, weeks or month. real commitment, but then for what? and why? just for a better outdoor lifestyle? starting from scratch? no friends? no job? no working visa? … but then again, being here,  it’s often so frustrating to know to be capable of doing a real high profile job, making money, doing real stuff, but somehow can’t get a grip on it, a carrier and shit,  just not „dumb“ enough anymore after all my travels? not „useful“ enough for corporate life? but i  mean, who the fuck? who really wants a big car, house, louis v  and shit?

by seeing friends making carriers, having babies/family and the kind of moving on to a next level (next island? next purgatory?), you realize that this is something i silently envy. i am still so restless inside and have no idea, if there is something worth out there, living for? or wise versa something or someone happy to be with me or can calm me down? in the end, lots of luxury problems , so we will all see (again), what will happen next year!

2011 – OMG! 2011 fckn unbelievable!  i am really happy to live in these times. the technical progress, a changing world, beside all the shit we are digging, its damm exciting!so have some great days and a good start into a new fresh year!

Yesterday i went to Cologne with Sandra and Mo watching „Blitzen Trapper“ in Concert at Luxor, Cologne. The ticket was a present for my birthday in October. I really like present you can use weeks later, like newspaper subscriptions, or concert tickets.

Anyway really nice, „simple“-kind of concert, not much audience, so great for short ones like me. we got probably best places right at the end of the bar, sipping some becks, me later „kölsch“beer, watching first „pearly gates“ (reminds me of the „trapez singer“ of iron & wine-cover fame) and later „blitzen trapper“ – seems booth bands had quite a lot of fun, rocking the luxor. BTs sound was great,  i felt instantly like being back on pacific west-coast of the states – Seattle, Washington NP, PDX aka Portland (where they actually come from), SF and so on.  Rough Americana with a lot of rainy grunge -attitude and folky harmonica tunes. band singer reminds us of this guy in „from dusk till dawn“ with a penis revolver , forgot the name, whatever.

so yeah, great easy concert, in a good mode, thanks for the ticket! and thanks for (every time) driving and the good company. i am very happy to have those both, otherwise i wouldn’t know, how to handle my desire to go to concert, as i would be mostly on my own.
i know from being alone on  the road a lot, it’s awful. one of the strangest things is to go to a concert alone. don’t ask me why.i hate it. its totally different then going out to theatres, cinemas, etc. people just expect that you will be there with friends, a girl or working as a journalist.

Alright, if Blitzen Trapper becomes the new Arcade Fire some day  i can say i saw them once with 30 people in a small venue 🙂

from today on google street view is available in Germany. big discussion here about data, privacy and stupid neighbours. Unfortunately Google’s all seeing eye didn’t drove in our yard to make picture – so u can only see a slight corner of our house. maybe i can help out with a photo 😉

What we used to call „blogosphere“  changed a lot in the last years, at least in Germany. that’s ok. that’s the nature of the interweb. continuously changing and moving on. but when i talk about change i talk about the big shift happing all over the world, we all felt.  from blogs to updates. from macro to micro.

but their is still desire left, to tell long stories, to put up words longer then 140 letters. to continue my personal archive of comments, stories, words, which will be here longer, compared to the timelines and life-streams, we all fill up everyday with tweets and likes.they feel like waterfalls. without pools to catch the water. no conservation of letters, words, content.

don’t get my wrong i love the web and i love microbloging. but we are talking about „gated cities“ called twitter, facebook et all. its all private land, the whole web seems nowadays like private land: behave or i will kick you out!!.

that’s why i wanna find own words again, on my own server, my own platform, a platform i control. to restart the good things, i enjoyed so much in the last decade and helped me to remember thoughts on life, which i had years ago. to rethink things.

some black letters. to combine macro and micro. to fill up an own personal blog again!

Decided to visit Hamburg and Berlin, got some cheap train-tickets, great friends, who host me and a bit of work to do. so i can check out co-working spaces in HH and B, do my work, have fun with my friends and see both cities again. Maybe even new adidas samba shoes in berlin.

co-working spaces are of interest for me as we are working hard on opening up one in Düsseldorf, called „Garage Bilk“. So its essential for me to see how it works in those big cities, what style, what decoration, tables, lamps, etc.

We are planing to open up on the 18th of November. Have a look in the meanwhile at: http://coworkingdus.de

all the old content, means blogs from 2003 – 2007 are gone on this place. i will put them up somewhere else. just to let you know!

kind of. I thought that it would be good to use the next weekend in observing my chunk of stuff, i still own:

• to much books (what have I read  in the last 3 years? what not?  for what do i have books? to impress guests, that’s all!)
• to much cloth (everything I didn’t wear in the last 1,5  years, needs to go to our hall fleamarket!)
• all my CD‘s/DVD’s must go (but where? eBay is no solution. any ideas?)

The goal: everything should fit in 3 „german umzugboxes“and a backpack and a „work-/messengerbag“.it all fits in a small normal car.

why? i could move & travel at any given date, without no second tought about my posessions. an idea i really like!

#technomad #simplicity

While i was running today, the first time after over a year  in long running tights and longsleve (cause I missed the last autumn/winter in Germany <– travelling with the summer), I felt very good.

Strange indeed as I had a 10 month long running break and while starting again last months, I paused for 2 weeks till now, cause of work and a problem with my calf.

Anyway, it feels really good to run in the dark and in whole gear, again. Maybe because you feel more focused, maybe cause no „summer-joggers“ and „beautiful people“ are around. the parks. The streets are empty on a Sunday evening as German people watch the crime TV series „Tatort“ and stick around with their family.Not much people go running outside, alone, in the cold Dark. why should you?

Because It seems to make you think. It starts all over again and again and again: 3 years ago, August of 2007 I started running for the first time and with  a lot of discipline (while not having it concerning my diploma, but who the fuck cares, right?) I run my first official 10km run on new-years day 2008. A real success for myself. Me running, 10ks! Holy fuckin nerd!

From that point, till my 10k-run at the Reykjavik Marathon, in September 2008, I did very well (for myself, in Iceland, the only person running it seems in countryside Husavik), but then I lost a lot of spirit and discipline, when I was back. Besides my grandmas death, a new old odd job in Hamburg and finally starting to travel again, I couldn’t keep up with a routine. Same goes for Kendo and  my Diet.

To be honest, I hate routine. A lot of people like routine, cause it helps you to get better in things you do (and they say, strange I think, it makes them feel safe), but I hate it.
When I feel can do something, I move on to new things. There are so many things out there you wanna do and try.That’s why I’m not a specialist in anything.
Conclusion: You must accept routine as a positive thing, like a tool, to get better in things you love to do. But watch carefully, that routine owns you!

So, I thought, while running around through the night, that maybe true, but the years passed fast! Things are not the same as the were, when I was running here regular the first time! People vanished, People got babies, Mr.Obama is president and Mr.Jackson died. I changed, I experienced quite a lot of new things.  It feels ok, but on the other side, it feels like, I have done this before, come on, move on! Remember, I said, I hate routine.

But as we, who were watching „LOST“ know in the end, you are only allowed to move on when you are „ready“ and so maybe Düsseldorf is my island, my purgatory. There are still things to do, before I can allow myself to move on (really away, change direction, start new things, get a family, etc).

That’s why I will use the dark times coming up, to prepare myself again:  Run regularly, eat focused, try to make money to pay my debs, try to get more skilled about the work I chose to do  and set new goals for the next year. Or, let the old goals guide me again till I’m ready for new ones.