I spent two weeks in the south of Switzerland this summer, the first half of which was in a beautiful rustic house in the midst of mountains, without cell phone reception or WiFi. We would sit outside and play chess, pet the dogs or read. One day we got an apricot soda, took a sip…
I like to time travel. As I’ve written before, I send letters to my future self. But I get messages from the past too. Every few days an email lands in my inbox: Two years agao, you wrote… My online journaling app Penzu automatically sends me entries from exactly one, two, three or four years…
Where were you at the beginning of the year 2000? Along with the excitement about entering a new millenium, there came some anxiety about our if computers could handle it – or if there would be system failures with potentially catastrophic consequences. This goes back to the early days of computing. To save precious memory,…
I write an article every week. But I skipped last Sunday. I had a draft ready, but never published it. Minneapolis, where I have family and friends, was burning. People were marching in the streets all over the USA and the world to demand equality. Here in Switzerland too. It would have been easy for…
Dear Stranger You won’t read this, and neither would you remember our encounter. It was about 20 years ago in the Bern train station. It was late at night and I wanted to buy some snacks. After the cashier scanned the dried fruit and sparkling water (ok, it was probably M&M’s and a Vanilla Coke),…
The world is a stage and we’re all actors. No, wait, don’t leave. This is not a melodramatic teenager writing, it’s me. I’m talking about a theory by Erwing Goffman. According to the canadian sociologist we switch between different roles depending on who we’re interacting with. We know it intuitively: We’re not quite the same…
Do you have a Happy Place? A corner in your mind you can turn to when you feel stressed and overwhelmed, a place that will make you feel warm and fuzzy inside. Maybe it’s a spot in the real world that you like to think of, a beach or a forest, maybe it’s a person,…
I know I should get up, but it’s so nice and warm in my bed. I’ve slept for way too long and there are things I need to take care of. I know it won’t be so bad once I’m up. But not right now, ok? Five more minutes. The bed is actually my apartment…
It’s four in the morning and I’m lying wide awake. My thoughts are loud: How the hell am I already 36? How did I find excuses all these years for not doing anything in pursuit of my dreams? My optimistic past self was convinced that at this point in time I’d have some solo albums…
What makes you you? What are the characteristics that your friends would say are typical for you? If somebody had a way to measure all these and combine them, would they be able to derive a personality type that actually reflects your true self? Tests like the one on the popular website 16 Personalities claim…