Getting up to snuff

Life is good. I really do enjoy my job these days. It feels more like "work" and less like a "job", if you know what I mean.

I've been reading a new book (I know, shocking): Barbara Sher - I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was. I'm still reading it, working my way through chapter 3 which features a lot of exercises such as "What does meaningful work mean to you", "Describe the job from heaven / hell", and "Who says" to figure out where the voices in your head come from and who is saying what.

So at the moment I spend a lot of time with my beloved mindmaps. Mindjet published an app with all the basic features included for free, so that one plus dropbox currently make up my most important tools for combining thoughts, train rides, and laptop. I am still a huge fan of old-fashioned paper notebooks & pen, but I have already noticed a significant decrease in height of piles of scribbled notes about Lord knows how many different topics on my desk. :o) Mindmaps just work well for my thought process - think it, write it, read it, structure it, learn from it.

In the past two weeks, I treated myself to two consumerist purchases. One was a necklace in surfer-style with gecko. Absolutely love it! The other is a hazelnut-colored nightstand. Originally, I had thought about building my own as I wasn't able to find anything goodlooking, affordable, that fit the measurements of the space we have available. Then I did find a 30€ solution and must say I quite like it:

My greens are doing fine as well. One onion is climbing the heavens, the other is unhappy with something I can't seem to figure out.

The red peppers are continuing to grow though the larger ones have definitely slowed their growth and focus more on leave production.

In this past week, I added an avocado seed and tomatos! The avocado will probably take forever to develop roots and produce that astonishingly vital green stick of a plant that will just keep growing, no matter how many times you'll cut off the leafy top, only to come back with at least twice the amount of stems.

For the tomato seeds (bought at the store for 0,15€), I built a new greenhouse - this time using a cheese box and a sauce container. We'll see how that'll work.

So, things keep plugging along merrily :o)

Garden Update

Just a quick garden update:

Although it's -12°C outside (a temperature I can't recall ever having occured in these regions during my (short :o)) life-time), both the peppers and the onions are doing fantastically great! I'm starting to think that my thumb has finally found some of that green that it was lacking so obviously :o)

I also bought tomato seeds! So once this frost outside has moved on, I'll give the mini-greenhouse another try!

Freu :o)

Do I HAVE to garden TONIGHT?!

I really didn't feel like it. Should I? I can always wait another day.

That's what I've been thinking for more or less a week regarding re-planting the red pepper seedlings on my window sill.

The only reason that I actually went to the basement, grabbed all the stuff, cleared a kitchen surface, and got myself some gravedigger fingernails is that I wasn't sure whether those poor tiny creatures would still be alive by tommorrow.

And I must say, I'm glad I did it - roughly 20 minutes of work, all in all, and now I look what I've got:

The three strong ones with leaves are now roomies - hope they'll make it!

When something is starting to look like a tiny forest, I can't just dump them in the garbage and call it quits...! Large puppy-eye-syndrom, I'm afraid.

And this one's just heading for the sky - upside down :o)

And the strong prevail!

Or... Let Nature Run Its Course Part II

Just sharing some small victories with you! I didn't give up on them, and they didn't give up on me either :o)

GO NATURE - GO NATURE :o))))))

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Heeeeello!

What a great day! I had a spectacular time at work today, made it to the train just in time before a huge downpour started, and kept reading in the entrepreneur magazine that I bought for an outraging 8,80€.

And I have to say - I LOVE IT! I get so many ideas from reading this magazine! Although there is so much info in it that I probably won't be able to finish any given edition that I am about to read, I have decided to go ahead and subscribe for a year :o) Now I'm very excited for the future issues to arrive! Being an international reader, I'll have to be patient for 10-12 weeks until the first delivery finds its way to my home, but the meantime will be filled with sweet anticipation :o)))

I was thinking about posting a bit of the article that I found so fascinating in the magazine but now I'm opting to update you on my kitchen greenery - or the partial lack thereof. Remember back when I planted onions and red pepper and mandarine seeds? Well, turns out I'm not being so lucky with the seedling part of the activity. Both of the mini greenhouses started producing bunches of fluffy mould today... not a good sign for the pepper seeds. And upon seeing the fluff, I checked on the mandarine seeds, and found itsy-bitsy pieces of fluff on there as well... I haven't given up on either yet, but it doesn't look too good.

The onions, however, are growing very happily :o) Already on the second day of being plunged into soil, tiny white roots found their way out of the pot to the puddle of water. Their greens have been "on the sprout" ever since! Not so much in height, but in number, firmness, and over all greenness :o) Those make me happy every morning!

Good night, Peopz!

Back to business as usual...?

Today is January, 11. Eleven days into the new year. That is 8 working days.

You know, I was just about to complain. Writing something like "we're just halfway through the second week at work, and already I am sleep-deprived. That's... not ideal" and so on.

But actually I don't really have any reason to be complaining, to be honest. I am having really great days at work at the moment. I am getting to speak tons of languages, get to structure and analyze things, and get to do a lot of thought-intensive work, which I find pretty stimulating creatively.

In addition, I somehow manage to be home earlier, or at least use my home-time in a more relaxing way than I used to. So it feels like I have more time. (hm, here's a thought - that might be in direct positive correlation with the fact that I stay up later, hence the sleep deprivation ;o))

Granted, I haven't done much goal-work in the past two days, but I think that's ok. I have more than 42 weekends left, plus VACATIONS :o) So no need to worry just yet.

Oh, and actually I did do some research for "writing my business plan" today! It turned out that a good friend of my lover's happens to be selling dental equipment online - very niche dental equipment :o) So I have found myself a life sample of how e-commerce can work. Well, according to his description, he currently thinks it's not (yet) working ideally, but I'm sure I can learn from that as well.

Not sure how familiar you guys are with e-commerce slang and internet marketing pass phrases. But I did, for a while, look more closely into dropshipping. Then I realized that US law is quite different from German law in some terms. I tend to get ideas and inspiration from American media / books / people, but frequently I stop dead in my tracks when realizing that some concepts are not as easily applicable to other markets. Which of course is an excuse, I am shamely aware. (Shamely aware? Is that even a word?!) Well, I am ashamed to admit. That's what I wanted to be saying. Moving on now.

I also went to a start-up counselling agency a couple of months back, whose folks warned me about the dire effect that German warranty laws can have on a small business. And this weekend, when speaking to a former (physical) business owner friend of mine, I heard the same sermon again. Which brings me to the conclusion that either German folks are willingly putting up with a lot more crap than other people do, or they are not aware of the differences - or, of course, haven't taken too close a look at what better ways to do business are out there. Well, that's what this whole business plan writing exercise is about - collecting ideas, information, facts & fiction, learning the rules (so I can break them properly ;o)), and - most important of all - figure out a business style that suits me and my lifestyle (desired lifestyle, that is - although I guess it will have to fit my current lifestyle first to be going anywhere besides nowhere...)

This is getting confusing, I'll stop now.

To leave you with a cheerful note, I have an announcement to make:
My onions are grabbing hold of their new habitat! The shoots are a bright green, have pulled themselves upright, and are now perkily finding their way into the sunlight :) Go, onions!

Wonderful Sundays

Could the year begin with anything better than a Sunday?

It's incredibly mild outside today, so a distinct feeling of spring time is sneaking around the house :o)

Which brought me to starting some prep work for tackling my goals. From our fruit chocolate fondue last night, I saved mandarin seeds. A little while ago, I also dried the seeds of red peppers.

It seems that, when rearranging our kitchen, I apparently didn't do too good a job of storing the onions (supposedly in a dark place), therefore I have two prime examples for sprouting onions now :o) I just read that onions should grow into leek when you stick them in soil. I guess I'll give that a try! Should work the same with garlic, they said.

Regarding the peppers, I just learned that the red ones are the ripest of the bunch, so seeds from red peppers are the most likely to succeed! Lucky me :o) Now I just have to find a way to avoid the disastrous effects of my missing green thumbs ;o) At green-24.de they had all sorts of helpful information. Google is your friend after all. I am tempted to ignore the time frames they give though - I will give it a shot to let them sprout in the middle of the winter, indoors.

And the mandarin seeds seem to sprout best in a dark surrounding and damp soil, and once the greens appear, move them to a sunny place.

Hah, I just found a lady that created a photo series on how to build your own mini greenhouse out of a juice box :o) It's in German, but the pictures are self-explanatory! Things like this make me happy :o)

Will keep ya posted and have a great start into the new year!