This blog post is rather personal so a few warnings:

Intro

The red WC light is blinking in the train where I sit backwards as it seems to be fully packed on the second Christmas Day. It is foggy outside and I am listening to my favorite radio show: golden glades by Sandra Zettpunkt (Z. I think it’s hilarious)on byte.fm. Warm sounds are expanding from my small white EarPods to my ears. Overall a peaceful passing of time I am sitting here.

I told everyone I met the last few weeks that I would love to be alone, have mellow weather and low temperatures outside. I wanted the space and the time to reflect on my life for a couple of days without feeling guilty or lonely. This is the true spiritual feeling of the days between Christmas and new year in my opinion. Just to chill and curl up next to a hot chocolate sitting in your lap. Sadly this years holidays felt a bit direction less and detached from the festive tone, as me and my family don’t really have many rituals for Christmas. And they are only decreasing every year more and more.

Earlier today I did some household chores and watered our little jungle at home so the plants live in a not complete dried out pot. While watering I was watching a vlog: something something burnout and content related where a middle aged women was trying to tell her viewers that she was losing joy and was feeling stressed meanwhile trying to reassure them that she will upload C O N T E N T the next year as well. And maybe this is how I feel about this year:

Working

In 2024 I started to work in my current office in the function I wanted and not only the function of learning my dayjob. I became better with getting the numbers of cases assigned to me done and I was still able to treat most of the humans that entered my office with respect and actually listing to them instead of forcing them down an conversation tree. This might not be my job forever but maybe for next ten years? When I studied what I studied I was never fully invested. I was not displeased but would rather not nerd about it with you. It was and now very much is a way to finance the life I am living and trying to portray here. That is why I finally reduced me hours from 41h to 30h. This has been my goal since starting the job and even university as I wrote myself a letter when I began to study that our mentor gave to us back some months into the actual job where I wrote down: be creative and don’t work 41h Kai!! Thanks past Kai for your guiding words.

Toxic

Besides making money I stopped spending time with certain people and it still hurts so much. This year I lost my entire friends group because their leader is a really a bad friend and I just couldn’t keep up of the poisoning image she had of me. This was and still is really hard as she really didn’t try to smooth things over. So here is my end of the year advice for your: cut out „toxic“ people that make you feel exhausted. This year I got to know many incredibly people and I can even call some my friends now that I have the space in my head for them. In my chest the feeling of anger and frustration is growing even 11 months after the last real talk so let’s move on.

Festivals

I went to a bunch of concerts this year. For some artist it was their last show ever or their first in Hamburg but what I noticed about me: I became incredibly depressed in crowds just standing and listening. -> something to explore in therapy maybe? But for now I just stopped going to concerts as often (or even alone which is a thing I also started this year) especially if there are no vocals and therefore really makes my head spiral ever deeper. But I still enjoyed to go to „smaller“ festivals here with indie musicians even though a lot of people are jerks (sorry to bring these news to you).

And I not only went to music festivals but to the AMAZE Interactive Festivals where I wanted to go for years as a student. There are the most loveable and open people I met all year, who are also just big nerds! I am still thankful for the person that saw me standing there with a smartphone and who asked if they could talk to me to feel me welcomed and tell me that everyone there is just chill and open to talking. That is how a community should welcome new people in my opinion. (Bonus I also went to the PLAY festival later in the year too and even though I didn’t fully vibe with the educational angle but it’s still nice to have it in the city every year). (BONUS bonus I even helped out at my local comic festival where I was mostly sitting in a cold room but the times where I talked with my friends or cooked are such nice memories to hold tight).

Joy Joy and even more joy

A thing that is incredibly sparking joy for me every year and where I convinced three friends to get a member card and met a mural again in our local library. It is amazing to bike to it and then just take everything you want for 0€. It is incredible that humans thought about this collective community oriented service. Event though not all mediums are fairly preserved as their Games section is at least five years behind and very hidden.

Also sparking joy for years is as always the Famicase exhibition in Tokyo that I went to last year but could participate again this year with Zenmen Tenbou. The longer I stay at the same places or do the same thing I notice the people who are also staying on the AGBIC discord, fami.club forum or just designing Famicase as well. It feels like a nice circle back point every year.

me and THE video games

And I say this even though I must admit that I lost interest in videogames period. This was and still is a very cumbersome thing for me to say but the crushing truth is that I played almost no video games. When I met people I rather just listen to them and play with the paper on the beer bottle in front of me. My relationship with video games is not over as I share a long past but it is rather just different and more distant as it still carries a lot of things I am still fascinated about. But that is why I started drawing comics and building websites (also RIP CoHost) and trying to fill this inner void. I hoped for the one fitting piece that video games hold only to notice that this was kinda the problem that brought me to this emptiness . Now I (try to) fill my life with a dozen little things rather than on monolith of purpose.

This is maybe why this year I started going to Comics & Cake which I kinda now organize and try to build a community around it. As it is a IRL Event with comic like minded FLINTA* humans it is really fitting for me. But I must admit that making my comics is not my next obsession like video games were always to me. But it’s nice to draw a page or two about whatever that is on my mind and not looking at a screen for once.

I started building more websites or upgrading this blog for example. I made one for a local club I joined as well with an interactive calendar that is powered by a google spreadsheet after the example of chia (also RIP Twitter). And I am absolutely not proud of the mental angle I took to learn JavaScript. It felt like I must, must fucking must learn it. My self worth and productivity were back tangled up in the projects I worked on. I never want to revisit this dark way of getting myself to work on stuff. A reason almost no one noticed how I build this website is because I don’t have a platform to share these small nuggets with a GIF or Screenshoot (in a easy way except mastodon) and I distanced myself from my real life friends in this phase of working. I hate it and I just hope it won’t come back around. I have to do zero shit in this life besides feeding myself and paying my bills.

Time-Tracking

While we are on the theme of doing stuff. Earlier this year I got the feeling I was only doing household chores and working. That’s why I started to track my time with Timly and IOS app for two weeks. At the end of the two weeks I noticed: first I don’t like tracking my time or second having my phone to track it next to me at all times. But for what it is worth I spend my life with:

  1. working & commuting 30%€
  2. Sleeping and routines supporting that sleeping 17%
  3. doing hobbies 12%
  4. Leisure 10%
  5. 9% creative stuff
  6. 9% feeding myself
  7. 7% meeting with friends
  8. 4% household.

I am still amazed by these numbers at the time as I knew that working and sleeping would be high but that I am not seeing friends that much and even doing household chores would be way higher. But also the times I just carry stuff back to the place it lives in my home is of course not tracked. But that is also only a snapshot and I got no memory where I put drawing with friends back then. I concluded that I got enough time to scroll YouTube or to read books but should do what sparks joy. Likewise I know that is better for me to commit to one thing rather than try to be open and do multitasking.

Leisure

But when I went out with friends this year I not only went to concerts, workshops, dance evenings, museums (pretending I still study to get these sweet discounts ;) ), a theme park, political demos or art markets but also tried to listen to their stories more. When we sat at our balcony it always felt like a chill way to glide into the night.

Sitting at our balcony was also a great spot as I started to do more gardening this year. At one time I had 107 successful seeds of our chili plant from our last years harvest. Which we of course only could gift away to friends and family. I still got no idea about gardening but it feels now more grounding that at the beginning. There it felt like another stressful to-do to care about. This year was also the time me and my partner went to the botanical gardens here and even got to visit the closed down greenhouse. We just saw a flyer when we were out and about and send out a quick mail. Loved both of these days to just watch flowers and run around in them. Gardening and baking, which became another very little side hobby I took up this year, are playful versions of what our ancestors had to do to survive maybe that is why they feel rewarding or it in the small scale and seeing what you created.

These hobbies allowed me to suck again and be a beginner at things. That’s why I made more pixel art and renders in blender3D this year maybe. It is fun to learn new thing (again yay!) even though it is hard, slow and you feel like an idiot while starting. But it’s still a thing I have to learn next year as well as at the end I started building my PC (blender renders almost in light speed now!) and since it is still not booting without hassle and that’s even after the third rebuild and exchanging of parts it makes me crazy in the same way the JavaScript calendar thing does. —> that is for sure a thing for therapy in the new year.

More experiences

The small experiences in rapid fire so this blog post is still readable:

What did I learn this year about myself? I learned that I can always just start new things, that I can organize events, live proudly the life I build myself, am allowed to have fun to its fullest, feel the feelings that are inside myself and you can cut out people and won’t end up alone.

So who is Kai after reading this long blog post? A proud and out trans women that is doing a little bit of gardening, is rooted in north Germany, not running after the latest tech but teaching herself coding and whatever other she is interessed in. Phographing and taking part in the communities she is a part of while hopefully being a good friend to people that care. ~ for now

I hope next year I do more TTRPGs with like minded people and doing ceramics more than once, at least until all plants have nice pots. I still want to suck at more new things and feeling okay with this. And likewise start to travel by bike longer tours again to discover the world on a human scal, which I couldn’t do because my hand hurt so much.

I mostly don’t write about my partner but in my humble opinion I supported her well and my life is always better with them in it so I hope that this continues in the next year.

Thanks for reading and until then everyone - Kai