Weeknotes 2025 W48: Starting tomorrow

November 24​–​30, 2025

Quick bits:

Shower thoughts:

I am starting a new job literally tomorrow.

This new job came together rather last-minute. I’ll tell more about it later, but I there is a decent chance that this job might be one that fits me really well, and might sustain me for many years.

I have been unemployed since end of June, just over five months ago. I haven’t worked in a long time, and I worry that I’ll struggle to cope with working full-time again.

I am feeling a mixture of excitement and apprehension. But in all likelihood, it’ll be just fine.

The traffic in Berlin is bonkers — even wilder than usual.

Lately, I’ve seen cars driving against the direction of traffic, on the left hand side, going straight through intersections where it is green for pedestrians (me). This is not a one-off occurrence.

An arterial road nearby has been closed off, and the traffic is now funneled through my area, where the roads are clogged and intersections are full, even on weekend nights. Even when it is green for pedestrians, cars will drive through anyway, not yielding to pedestrians.

I’ve recently seen car drivers use bike paths as a shortcut, drive on sidewalks, and even drive on pedestrian-only promenades, not yielding to pedestrians, honking, shouting obscenities at people who are “in their way.”

I’ve recently seen cars going 2× or 3× the speed limit.

I’ve recently seen multiple cars drive through tram stops, into and through the crowd of people who are entering and exiting. This is the sort of behavior that literally ends lives.

I’ve recently seen people blatantly break traffic rules right in front of police vehicles, and the police don't give a damn.

I am having a hard time believing the extent of this chaos. All of it is astoundingly bad, and it has steadily been getting worse.

One problem I have when it comes to fiction writing is that I don’t truly know which medium I want to write for.

It doesn’t have to be short stories, novels or novellas. Frankly, I’m not particularly interested in writing a novel, and I’m not very motivated to write short stories either.

I’ve done some screenwriting, but the disadvantage of a written script is that it is pretty much useless unless you can find someone to produce it. That is far from easy. I’ve given playwriting a try, but that too is difficult; you’d need to find the people to make that play a reality.

Recently, though, I’ve been toying with making an audio drama. Audio dramas are much easier and cheaper to produce, and good voice acting, sound design and editing can add significant value over written form. It is a medium that I quite like as a consumer, too; I’ve got quite the handful of fiction podcasts that I listen to.

An audio drama is not too hard to produce, especially when I limit the scope. I’ve got some experience in voice acting, editing and sound design. If it turns out that I like this, I have the option of getting more people involved. But to start off, it really does not have to be much, and it is a step in a direction that I find exciting.

I have one other struggle when it comes to fiction writing: the feeling that whatever I am working on right now is not the right thing. I’ve got a hundred ideas for stories, but every time I start fleshing one out, there is a voice telling me that there is another story idea that is somehow better — a voice that almost makes me feel guilty for not working on the “right” story.

This feeling often surfaces when I am getting down into the weeds of fleshing out a story idea, when the initial excitement of the story idea has worn off, and I’m just working on getting words down.

The result is that quite often, I end up abandoning the story I am working on. I have dozens and dozens of unfinished stories, and even more ideas that I have barely touched upon.

Despite having a lot of ideas and plenty of time — being unemployed for five months — I have not managed to get a single story out. A common piece of advice is to just get the damn draft out and refine it later — or even rewrite it from scratch, if needed — but I cannot get myself to even begin on the first draft.1

I am terrified of Scrivener’s Manuscript folder. Is this writer’s block?

To combat this, I’ve been experimenting with a new approach, which is keeping a journal where I think out loud about the stories I write. Every day, I open it up and start writing down new thoughts, new ideas, new questions, and everything else that comes up, building on what I jotted down previously. Out of this journal comes clarity that I need for writing drafts. Scrivener’s project-based nature is rather well-suited for this approach.

There’s another complication with fiction writing: there is no instant gratification — far from it. It can take months or years for something to be ready. Writing needs an astounding amount of patience. A good writer, I assume, is someone who fundamentally understands this, and can push through. But it’ll be hard nonetheless; not getting any validation for such a long period is taxing.

The BVG app has a piece of UX that confuses me every time. Take a look at this screenshot which shows a four-trip ticket:

A piece of a screenshot of the BVG app. It says “4-Fahrten-Karte Berlin AB” and shows three out of four trips used up.

I have used up three trips in this ticket, and have thus only one trip left. But the iconography, in my opinion, tells the opposite story, and I keep interpreting it the icons as if I had three trips left and only one used.

Maybe the used-up trips need to be grayed out, and the available ones need to remain in black. That would, to me, make a lot more sense.

Entertainment:

Toots and skeets:

Links:

Tech links:

  1. Ironically, I do follow this advice for my week­notes. During the week, I write chunks of text that are borderline a blight on the eyes, but as Sunday draws closer, I edit and rewrite — an approach that works quite well for me. ↩︎

  2. The Dinner Plan, directed by Patrick Willems, written by Jacob Torpey and Michael Curran (Dinner Plan Production, Patrick H Willems, 2025). ↩︎

  3. The Protagonists, directed by Luca Guadagnino (Surf Film, Medusa Film, Tele+, 1999). ↩︎

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