Today, I learned to live without Internet

Waking up this morning was weird. I grabbed my phone, wanted to check for some news on Twitter, WhatsApp, you name it. Full Wi-Fi. No internet connection.

Several retries later, still same result. After I went downstairs to check the Internet router. No Internet. Checking the splitter resulted in: No Internet.

Do I called my provider. Deutsche Telekom actually has a good reputation in customer service. At least they 're not as bad as the other internet providers. After spending some minutes in the waiting line and some more minutes, the first free available slot for a technician to come by is: next Friday. One week without internet. Hooray.

Okay, not really. It sucks. But on the other hand: I am kinda happy about the possibility to explore life without internet. I am forced to do so, yes. I did not choose it, yes. But I'm still a little bit thrilled about this possibility.

Instead of mindless surfing shopping websites, you would to do something else. Instead of watching YouTube, you would have to do something else. Instead of being absent minded with fluff, you would have to find a way to be absent minded with fluff you can touch, like books.

Frankly, this is just a mere fantasy. Instead of lonely surfing the Internet, I fantasize about being Super Dad, having the deepest relationship with my wife ever possible, my understanding of my career material exploding, learning to play the guitar and become fluent in Russian and Japanese within this week, just because of the lack of the internet. Reality will be different. But reality will be great, nevertheless. I just have to take it as it is.

So, now, after having spent my first internet-free afternoon for weeks, I'll create myself an awesome, super delicious Cappuccino and will continue reading a book of my choice.

You need less than you think to be happy. And you need less than you think to be thankful.

Today I learned: Choose your battles wisely.

Currently, I read the neat book "Don't sweat the small stuff ...and it's all small stuff"

One chapter is called "Choose your battles wisely". In this chapter the author argues that winning each and every argument is a bad bad strategy for every relationship.

Not only I would burn out if you want to correct each and every misbehavior of your kids, but I would be a really, annoying wisenheimer if I got into battle for every mistake my wife makes.

Frankly, sometimes I am a wisenheimer. I loose myself in arguments about small stuff nobody gives a dump about. I sometimes still search for arguments when others say to me: "You're right and I have my peace" -- meaning they still think they're right, just leaving me with my arguments alone.

So, instead of trying to be right all the time, I found it's better to be kind most times. And to debate in important stuff only.

My son notoriously mixes his right and left shoe up. So he put his right shoe on his left foot and vice-versa. Do I want my son to get his shoes in his right feet? Surely, I do. Do I correct him every time I see he makes an mistake? No. Why not? Because it's not important. Usually he walks only some meters with his shoe setup before he has to take them off again. It's just not worth it. Someday he'll be old enough to recognize it by himself.

My wife sometimes tells stories a little bit differently than I have them in my memory. Do I corrected her every time? Sadly: yes. Way too often. This is something I have to work on.

My colleagues do want to implement something differently than I wanted it to be. I think my solution is the better one. Shall I fight for my solution? In my (current) opinion: Only if it's worth it for me.

I might piss people, even close and loved ones, off with my statements. I might hurt someone.

So it's better worth fighting for. Being right for the sake of being right is not worth it.

Today I learned: You can have joy with kids even when you're sick.

We had a series of talks at our church. It was about relationships. It was about the fundamentals of relationships, about the relationship between a man and a woman and between children and parents.

Todays talk was about enjoying family life.

Many people talk negatively about their family. I am guilty of this one, too. On friday, I said to a schoolfellow, whom I haven't seen in years, (Larissa and I were without kids that day) that doing the shopping without kids is great. What an idiot I was. It's not great. Maybe it's faster. Maybe it's a less nerve-racking experience some of the time. But it's not great.

Family life is great. Or I should say: Can be great.
Today, being still a little bit sick, I would have preferred to lay in bed the whole day.
I did sleep a little bit today, but not much. Quite a lot of the time I spend reading two stories from "Lustige Taschenbüber". And although I was sleepy, I loved cuddling with my kids while reading silly stories about Donald Duck trying to steal an old locomotive for Scrooge McDuck because of some super-secret-and-super-advanced-metal in that old locomotive.

Then I started to fight with my kids. Or better, to wrestle with them. I hold them and they had to figure out how to get free by themselves. I wanted to show them, that they can do something by themselves to change things. We played bulls, pushing each others head with one owns head as strong as possible. We played tortoises. One is an old tortoise (lying facedown on ones knees) and the other tortoises have to turn that old tortoise around without using hands.

They loved it.
And I did, too.

Besides learning "cool" new stuff about programming, about server, clients, frontend, frameworks, and much much much much more, I have to become an expert about my family. And the latter one is much more important. And make more fun, in general. :)

I Deactivated My Facebook Account

I deactivated my facebook account. One year after reducing my amount of so-called friends on facebook, I decided to let go of facebook. At least for one month, period.

Why? Because facebook does not add much real value to my life. When I look closely at the content which my acquaintances on facebook write, it's entertaining for short period of time, at best. And just a waste of time, at worst. And just because some clicks on a button, or writes a comment, doesn't mean he or she genuinely cares about what you write: I told somebody something he actually already knew, because I wrote something about that on facebook. We had a short conversation about that topic on facebook. But when talking face-to-face, I realized, that he already has completely forgotten about that. Probably becuase he just doesn't care. On the other hand: The things I talked to him in person about, he did still remember, more than one year later.

Facebook is also a tool of shallow, but instant gratification. They will never implement a dislike button, just to keep the experience as positive as possible. The worst thing, that can happen, after you wrote something or uploaded a picture, is that nobody replies. But it's likely that some of your "friends" will click that button, to express he likes that. And boom: there's you instant gratification. And instant gratification is how addictions work, especially the internet addiction.

It's quite noteworthy, that facebook tries very hard to stay active. So they present you this text:

Yeah, sure.

All my 67 friends will no loger be able to keep in touch with me. Oh, really? Most of these friends have my e-mail adress, my phone number, the knwo where I live. And if they don't: It's not hard to find out. I wonder, how many people actually believed that.

So, I think, I will miss nothing. And if I do, it won't be important.

And yeah, this one-month-abstinence from facebook is also to fight my mild facebook addiction: Although I also deactivated my facebook account on my phone, I wanted to check status updates on it today.