I never packed those three suitcases intending to live out of them for six months. Their contents were whatever remained in my Munich apartment after the moving company had picked up everything else. I guess that meant I had inadvertently packed the essentials. One suitcase contained an inflatable mattress, bedsheets, and a blanket. A smaller one held a few cleaning supplies and basic household items. The third one contained enough clothes for two weeks in spring or summer weather. That was it. And it turned out to be enough for the six months I was allowed to keep the rest of my belongings in temporary storage. I did buy some basic furniture when I arrived and I did miss two or three items, but I forgot about all the rest. The day my belongings finally arrived in Madrid, I watched the movers carry in box after box and wondered what I would have felt if everything had been lost or damaged beyond repair during storage. Probably not that much.

And yet, some damage that actually happened upset me. Fortunately, not for long.

"Relax," I thought. "Nothing makes it harder to relax than telling yourself to relax!" I scolded myself. "Any better ideas, you know-it-all?" I shot back. "Breathe in, breathe out," I tried. "Great, now we are breathing like a machine," I mocked. With every exchange, I felt the knot tighten. I rolled over in bed. "Try thinking of something else," I advised myself. An image of the bathroom sink came to mind. The drain had a knot of its own—water was backing up in the sink. "I really need to get that fixed," I thought with a sigh. I imagined unclogging the drain. Water flowed freely through it. Clean water, soapy water, dirty water. Some of it might be unpleasant, but what mattered was that it kept flowing. And somehow, that image brought me relief. Nobody said it would always be easy or joyful, but perhaps thoughts were like water. They just needed to keep flowing. The knot loosened a little. A few minutes later, I fell asleep.

Had to unclog this one a few times—unpleasant business.

“You are older than ten?” the little girl asked my mom, wide-eyed. “Yes, older than ten,” my mom replied, amused, as she waited to pick me up from preschool. For the little girl, anyone older than ten was really, really old. She didn’t even have enough fingers to count that. Without realizing it, she had already discovered a theme that most of us struggle with for the rest of our lives. Decades feel like frightening reminders of our own ageing and mortality, with one notable exception—twenty. I guess nobody complains about turning twenty. An age that stands for youth, freedom, and energy. Today, this blog turns twenty years old, embodying those same three values for me. A place where I can explore ideas with the open mind of a young person, where I am free from the tyranny of social media mechanics, and where I have the energy to create anything I can imagine in words. A place where I can look at everything with the same wide-eyed wonder as that little girl.

Wonder where the path goes? Only one way to know.

We got a table on the street. Most restaurants were already closed for the night, but the city of Zadar was livelier than ever. The restaurant 4 Kantuna was right at the intersection of two rather narrow pedestrian streets. Most importantly, the crossing was slightly offset. To continue on the same street, one had to move slightly sideways. At our table, I had a front-row seat to the wonderful effect this had. People strolled along the streets enjoying the warm summer evening, laughing and chatting. The offset crossing made them pause for a second, decide where to go, and continue. If the streets had been aligned, they might not even have noticed the intersection. This short pause was a sort of magic moment. A moment of awareness of our surroundings, which we often miss because we are too caught up in the continuous stream of thoughts and feelings that filter our perception. A short interruption that helps us see what is actually there.

Unfortunately, I did not take an actual picture of the crossing

It was a special offer. Three months of ChatGPT for free. I was hesitant at first, but then I thought of all the things I could use it for. I signed up, determined to cancel as soon as I had to start paying. By the end of the third month, I "just this once" let it run for another month. And then another one. And another one. I kept rescheduling the reminder to cancel, yet the reason was not increased productivity. Or easier access to information. Not at all. It took me a while to identify why exactly it felt addictive. I knew the trick. Immediacy and infinitude—a companion that is ready to discuss any topic, at any time, for as long as you want. A new form of brain rot. Real friends have time and energy limits, but AI does not. You are no longer forced to sit alone with a feeling and deal with it. You can just outsource emotional regulation. Like any tool, improper use may result in serious injury or death, yet this one does not come with a label on it.

I'm not saying AI is bad. Neither is a hammer. You just shouldn't hit your thumb with it.

I cannot decide how a plant grows. I can plant the seed, I can water it, I can give it the perfect light, temperature, and humidity conditions. I can try to influence how fast it grows. I can try to fight pests and insects. I can try to guide its shape with plant stakes. But I cannot control the growth itself. I cannot guarantee its survival. I cannot decide where and when flowers will bloom. And perhaps that is the beauty of it. I hope for a shape and admire the likely different result. Very much like human relationships. They evolve, they grow, they surprise. One can tend, nurture, and cultivate them. But their course is not under the control of any single individual participating in them. They are the result of countless intertwined branches, often beyond the reach of anyone involved. Releasing the need to determine their outcome and instead investing effort in creating conditions for growth is perhaps the way to enjoy them the most. And a flourishing garden.

I gave the plant light, soil, and water. The rest was never mine to decide.

It has been almost two months, but the grocery store in Munich is still my reference. I close my eyes and replay my usual path through the store to figure out what I am missing when grocery shopping in Madrid. I see the aisles of the store and what I would pick in each of them. Every week roughly the same products, for years and years. Habits are difficult to change. Ah, right, I forgot honey. But I am not only trying to find fruits and vegetables. Two months after returning to my hometown, I am mostly trying to find myself. In the past year, I tried the impossible and failed at it catastrophically. I tried to be in two countries at the same time and be fully committed to both—building a family in Germany while being present for my parents in Spain. I tried to convince myself that everything is possible if one just tries hard enough. And in the middle of that storm, I lost myself. And the eggs. Second aisle from the entrance.

As irony would have it, a German grocery shop lies on my daily route through Madrid

I thought my last days in Munich would be a storm of feelings. Instead, I felt numb. The past months had exhausted me completely. I was giving up almost everything. Job. Apartment. City. Country. Friends. Partner. All of it. And all of it at once. The change felt immense. In those final days, my only goal was to make it to that last flight back to Madrid. Everything else became steps to complete. Goodbye parties. Packing for the move. Donating furniture. Cleaning the apartment. By the time I handed over the keys to the landlord, I barely registered that I was seeing my home for the last time. My mind was too exhausted for emotion. When the apartment door closed behind me, it almost felt as if the last defenses of my body collapsed and illness finally rushed in. I could hear a faint inner voice insisting that this moment mattered. But it drowned beneath the exhaustion that only wanted the final stretch to end.

I had to give away the red sofa that had been through so much with me in Munich

I had never noticed how loud cars are. The human ear adapts so quickly to the noise on a busy road that it had never bothered me—until I tried to listen to an audiobook on the go. Even with great noise cancelling earphones, the voice of the narrator barely stands out against the noise of cars driving by. The earphones need to crank up the volume to what feels like an order of magnitude higher for the narrator to be clearly audible. And that noise is there all the time. We just got used to it. I realized that the same goes for visual noise. As I type out these thoughts, I am sitting in my almost empty apartment in Munich, getting ready for my relocation to Madrid. Like with the earphones, emptying the apartment made me understand how much visual noise I was used to seeing every day. Now the space is void, and a surprising calm takes over me as I sit here. No more things to be arranged, kept, cleaned, or maintained—just space and serenity.

Imagine if streets were as noiseless as an empty apartment

I stood on the bridge and looked at the rail yard below. I like watching trains being sorted and shunted along the tracks leading to Munich's central station. In my first months in the city, I took endless pictures of tracks crossing, splitting, and joining. Tracks arriving from somewhere, leading elsewhere. But over the years, I became too busy to pause and watch the trains. As I studied the maze of tracks, I realized that the rail yard mirrored the shape of my struggles over the past months. Tough decisions are like track crossings. If a crossing has switches, it is a real decision—with just a slight adjustment, a train can glide safely and almost effortlessly onto either track. Otherwise, the decision is not a real choice. Any attempt to change tracks will inevitably cause a train to derail. The only safe way forward is to stay on it. After weeks of obsessing over how to shape the next years of my life, that thought gave me peace of mind.

A crossing with switches—the choice is real