Today a new chapter has begun

No river can return to its source, yet all rivers must have a beginning

Dear friend,

This week, I moved to Düsseldorf together with my girlfriend. I don’t know what you think about moving together with another person, for me, though, that’s profound.

Don’t get me wrong. I couldn’t be more grateful. I’ve been waiting for this day for months. Yet, it seems like a new chapter in my life has begun.

Now, with my dearest girlfriend, I not only share time but also space. And with time and space shared, we have to find new ways to harmonize the way we live.

I would say I’m not the “easiest flatmate”. I try to systemize my whole life so that I can do more of the things I love, and I love many things others don’t.

For instance, I usually spend a maximum of 15 minutes eating lunch/dinner. I use to eat while standing – often even out of the pan – so that I have more time for work, YouTube, or this newsletter.

The same goes for sleep: I know that sleep is crucial, but I wouldn’t sleep any minute longer than I had to. Hence, I love being awake early even at the weekend.

Even though my girlfriend and I have many similarities, there are still differences in the way we live our daily life. For instance, she clearly prioritizes a healthy amount of sleep. So, she will usually sleep longer than I do. As I don’t want to wake her up early in the morning, we have to find ways to reconcile our sleeping habits.

What I learned from my past relationship with my ex-girlfriend is that communication is crucial. And it’s not just about talking but listening. I made it a habit that I ask whenever something isn’t clear to me. For example, I don’t just wake up early at the weekend as I use to but I have a conversation with my girlfriend about how we’re going to reconcile our different waking times. Or, I don’t just prepare my 10-minute lunch but I have a conversation with her about how we’re going to reconcile our eating habits.

Another “success factor” is that I’m pragmatic. I don’t want to be right but find a solution. I would never insist on something that doesn’t perfectly work if I could try another approach. For instance, we had to pick up a washing machine. I was greatly convinced of my approach on how to tie it down in the transporter but it doesn’t seem to work. My girlfriend proposed another approach on how to do it, but I wasn’t really convinced. Yet, as my approach didn’t perfectly work, I tried her approach, which worked pretty well. As you can imagine that hurt my ego, but that saved us an argument for sure.

As you can imagine, moving to another apartment takes some time. We’ve got like 30-40 boxes of stuff – hard to imagine how much we accumulated over the past few years. Hence, there won’t be a longer blog article today. I wish you a great Sunday and start into the new week.