Month: August 2026

“I feel like there’s something there,” my friend Herbert keeps telling me. What he refers to is my knowledge of Pokémon and, particularly, Pokémon cards.

At his suggestion, I started a draft of a book proposal covering Pokémon card collecting. I had a lot of fun and early momentum with it, but, eventually, I started questioning whether it wasn’t just a distraction from other books I cared about writing more. For now, it rests on the shelf.

Since I got back into collecting, I occasionally post on Reddit. Cards I pulled from booster packs, binder pages I put together, rare finds I made a deal on. Several of my posts got way more traction than I expected, and twice now I’ve accidentally caused a shitstorm of epic proportions. 400,000 views, hundreds of comments, the works. There’s always so much to learn from the comments.

Like most collectors, I religiously frequent various Youtube channels for updates on the market, cards that are currently cheaply priced, and the occasional pack opening to watch. Lately, I’m itching to start my own, as it feels like the fastest, most efficient way to get my ideas out there.

Every month, I tell myself, “Okay, I’m done for now. No more card buying, selling products, or investing into new stuff.” But then every month, more amazing stuff happens, and I just keep going. However, it’s not only the hobby itself that keeps pulling me in. It’s that after almost three years of intense study and activity, I have so much pent up knowledge I’m dying to share. It’s as if the universe is telling me, “Yo, you really need to make something here.”

“Make” is my theme for the year. When it started, I was working on a new nonfiction book and a novel. And of course, I’ll never stop writing. But if I want to stay true to my theme, it shouldn’t matter all that much what I make, should it? After more than a year, I finally found a new video format I can try to keep my Youtube channel alive. I released the first one. That, too, was making something.

It’s rarely easy to find the time and right channel, but if you’ve acquired a lot of knowledge and are excited about the possibility of sharing it, don’t wait. Launch small experiments, check if you get traction, and who knows? Maybe a new career is already waiting for you. Or a nice side gig. Or, if your hobby is meant to stay a hobby, you’ll find that out, too.

Knowledge wants to get out there. Share it freely, and see how the world reacts.

My fiancée’s last birthday was a lucky day. After making breakfast for her, giving her my gift, and spending some time together, I opened a lot of Pokémon booster packs I had bought from someone on a local chat group. It was a rare opportunity to get some packs in English from a coveted set, and he sold them slightly below market value, so I figured, “Why not?“

The pulls were what you’d expect until I was halfway through the pile. Before I knew it, it sat there. The “Treekachu,” as collectors endearingly call it. An elusive, special illustration rare of Pikachu standing next to a tree in a forest. Rough market value? 1000 €. It was one of the few occasions when opening packs was actually worth it financially.

Of course, I was over the moon. I showed the card to my partner, friends, and family. I shared it in some online chat groups and forums. What luck to hit the second-most expensive card in an already-expensive set!

A while later, however, as I reflected on my day, I realized that, despite the extraordinary luck I had had, pulling the card had not been the highlight of my day. In the morning hours, I had written my partner’s birthday card. That was an emotional, beautiful moment. So was watching her read the card over breakfast. And then opening the puzzle box in which I had hidden her gift.

There are obvious moments in our lives we’ll remember forever. Beating the odds of 1500 to 1 and pulling this card will probably become one of them for me. But that doesn’t mean these highs will define us, let alone that we must keep chasing them. A tiny but meaningful memory can hold more power than even the biggest win.

The highs are relative. To the lows. To the boring days. And even to one another. Value is what you decide. Choose in a way that’ll bring you both contentment and resilience.

I spent most of my Master’s working. I’d be in the college study room all day, but I rarely began looking at slides and scripts before 4 PM. Minimizing the time I spent studying forced me to focus on the essentials.

I’d go through the material end-to-end, try to capture every page in one sentence, then memorize my four, eight, or ten pages of summary. I walked up and down in the hallway, remembered what I could, then showed up to the exam. Most of the time, it worked well enough.

I sat on the floor a lot, too, in that same hallway. Occasionally, there weren’t any seats left in the study room. I’d just plop down next to a plug, charge my laptop, and go. Back against the wall, feet stretched out. Working.

Right now, I’m leaning against the wooden headboard of a bed in a room in a three-star hotel. I’m attending my best man’s wedding in an hour. It’s a little bit comfier here than on the floor of Munich’s university—but not too much. That’s a good thing.

Sometimes, it’s good to have your back against the wall. Maybe not in an “I have no idea how to get out of this situation”–sense, but definitely in a “there’s not much to work with here”–sense. Reduce the conveniences. Afford yourself the minimum. Eat ramen on purpose.

The thing about a back resting against a wall is that it’s always straight. You can’t slouch, drag, or bend. Your shoulders, your feet, the rules. Posture has a way of carrying through to our minds. He who has little to work with tends to stand up, do his best, and accept whatever result may follow.

You don’t need portafilter coffee to start your day. You don’t need an agent to sell your book to a publisher. And you don’t need to sit in a zen garden to write good stuff. Special is nice, but special is optional.

You can win with your back against the wall. Most likely, you might do so because of it.

“And for part two of this training, be sure to join my online course,” the creator says on the webinar. Except the course costs $500, and, without it, you can’t really exercise the skill she promised to teach in the free online session.

“I promise, after you’ve read part three of this blog series, it’ll all make sense!” That happens a lot on Substack, Medium, and co these days.

The first season of House of the Dragon contained 10 episodes and ended on a rewarding dragon battle with a tragic death scene. The second season only had eight episodes, and the big battle at the end was cut. All we got was a bunch of characters staring angrily at the sunset with music swelling in the background.

Even back when I was in college, our professors gave us printed scripts which were supposed to include all the material we’d need to pass each subject’s exam. In reality, you had to buy their books to make sense of just half of what was going on, let alone have a chance at a decent grade.

I bought my last iPhone in December 2024. It was supposed to be “ready for Apple Intelligence,” Apple’s long-promised AI improvements to their operating system. Over 18 months later, Siri can still barely tell me about today’s weather, and whatever will eventually arrive will likely require better hardware than mine to unfold its full potential.

Incompleteness is no longer as frowned upon as it used to be. In fact, some people take pride in only shipping half the work. And companies charge for products they haven’t yet delivered.

Big projects take much time and effort because they’re supposed to. If everyone could build a Lamborghini on a weekend, they wouldn’t cost half a million dollars. But just because we can does not mean it’s good practice to ship in pieces what’s meant to be one cohesive unit. At the very least, if you’re going to test the market, make an effort to let each test stand on its own.

For over 1,500 days in a row, every post on this blog has been self-contained. Each is a tiny but complete lesson. You can like it, dislike it, or not have much of a reaction at all—but in every single one, you have a beginning, a middle, and an end you can assess as one complete package.

No blog post is an ad. There are no announcements. That’s what the newsletter is for. Might that change one day in the future? Perhaps. But it feels right that, once a day, I show up, start, and finish a piece of work. Hitting “Schedule” is often the most satisfying part of my day.

Everybody needs to make a living. Good art takes time. But if we don’t routinely ship complete units of work, we’ll eventually forget how to deliver finished projects altogether. Whether it’s in a small arena or by staying patient until the work is done, practice releasing the self-contained.

In my 20s, I always wore contact lenses, even though I spent most of my time staring at a screen. I was never extremely worried about my appearance, but I paid a lot more heed to it than I do now. Part of that was being single, I guess, and waiting for Mrs. Right. But part was also insecurity.

Many years ago, I bought some polarized sunglasses. They’re great and still in use 14 years later, but the lenses didn’t come with any power. For a long time, I believed my only option was to wear contact lenses, then put on the sunglasses. But two years ago or so, I realized: With the glasses I have now, actually, I can just wear my sunglasses right on top of them. This has now become the default.

On close inspection, the getup looks ridiculous. In many photos, you can clearly see the gold rim of my normal glasses peek out from behind the sunglasses. Every time a friend or family member sees me pop on my shades, they break out in laughter. But you know what? I don’t care anymore. It’s functional. It’s easy. And that’s good enough for me.

We’re all quirky if we’re authentic. The only question is how long will it take us until we embrace it? Enjoy the additional courage to be yourself you’ll gain with each passing year—and don’t worry so much about what it looks like.

After 10 years of living here, the list of local restaurants in Munich I enjoy is already quite long. Still, there’s always room for new recommendations. During my sister’s wedding, my cousin made some. She had seen a Youtuber, “Schmiddi Schmeckts,” gather tips from Michelin-starred chefs in the city for a day, then try their favorite casual spots.

At the start of the video, Schmiddi admits to, for once, having actually prepared for the day’s shoot by sending his target chefs messages in advance. Why? “You don’t just randomly bump into a Michelin-starred chef on the street every day.” Except, less than a minute later, that’s exactly what happens.

As we watch Schmiddi approach JAN, the fastest German restaurant ever to achieve three Michelin stars, which it did in just six months, the owner, Jan Hartwig, literally strolls along the sidewalk in front of him. Even Schmiddi can’t believe his luck: “Oh my god, that’s him!” He rushes over, explains his request, and another minute later, he has his recommendation: Weinhaus Neuner, Munich’s oldest wine bar.

For an influencer like Schmiddi, I imagine chance encounters are quite common. Yet, this one caught even him off guard. And since approaching strangers for a living sounds like a personal nightmare to me, I appreciate not just Schmiddi’s public service, but his courage and the timeless theme underneath it: He who dares wins.

Head out, and give the world a try. The odds might be better than you think.

In the fall of 2023, I was three months away from my next chapter.

After many years of juggling different income streams, I had finally doubled down on the one that was working best, Four Minute Books. Everything was going swell. The business had several legs to stand on, and traffic and revenue were growing. It all seemed stable enough at a level that would soon allow me to spend half my days or so writing books while still making good money. That chapter was to begin in early 2024.

But then, in September, Google changed its algorithm, my traffic started plummeting, and everything I had built over the course of eight years basically collapsed within a few months. Oops!

I didn’t expect to spend my 2024 grasping at straws. I certainly didn’t expect I’d be applying to jobs for the first time ever. And if you had told me I’ll have been working a job for 18 months by summer 2026, I’d have called you crazy. Yet here we are.

We usually have an idea of what we want our next chapter in life to look like. But sometimes, that chapter never comes. The question is how will we write the one we’ve ultimately ended up in? Because even when we turn pages we never could have imagined, we are still writing our story. Not alone, but together. With life. With friends. With allies, adversaries, and wholly unexpected characters.

Since watching my mini empire crumble, I’ve had to make a lot of adjustments. But I also have been working more than ever on new books. I’ve even started a novel, which I’d never done before.

The next chapter you had in mind may never arrive—but there will be a next chapter, and it just might surprise you.

The black widow spider is one of the few poisonous spiders you can find in Germany. This morning, I was in for a shock when I spotted one on my living room wall. I went closer, tried to see if I correctly guessed its colored pattern, and attempted to take a picture with my phone by zooming in.

For better or worse, the spider was struggling to stay on the wall, repeatedly almost falling off, making it harder to snap a good photo, let alone catch the beast. I approached with a tissue, but, wedged between the TV cabinet and some electronics, I missed my usually accurate bug snap with three fingers—and plummet to the floor the spider did.

I started scrambling. I removed all of the items in the niche and pulled out the power strip from behind the cabinet. No spider. Uahhh! Eventually, I lifted the power strip, and it dropped to the floor. Smack! Our culprit was caught. Finally!

I plopped down on the couch, uploaded the photo I had taken to AI, and asked it for an analysis. Result? That was not a black widow at all. It was a false black widow, because yes, these also exist and, as successfully evidenced by my scare, their mere imitation of the real villain works wonders to drive off potential predators.

The whole incident cost me a solid 10 minutes. Today, those 10 minutes hurt a little more than usual. I had slept poorly and woken up 10 minutes before my alarm. With a jolt, I’d gotten up and decided to get a head start. That advantage was now gone, and I was feeling cranky.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained” goes the 1,000-year-old saying. But of course, venturing comes with the potential to lose, and that’s why we often avoid it. What I realized from my spider-catching detour, however, was that even if we lose, we still also gain. My head start had gone awry, but I had received an education in spiders in return—and that is to say nothing of this blog post.

Every door that shuts in your face opens up new paths. Where do you go from here? Left? Right? To a door along the way from whence you came?

There is no reason not to venture, for even in failing where you hope to go, you’re bound to find new treasure. It may not look or feel like treasure, but it’ll have value nonetheless.

It’s a soothing lullaby for all timid adventurers: something lost, something gained—and even what’s lost can usually be found once more.

A Swiss vendor wrote “can ship from Germany” into his profile. “Amazing!” I thought. He had cheap prices for Pokémon cards, and if he could mail items from Germany, there wouldn’t be the usual hassle with customs, never mind the additional fees. We went back and forth a bit, then I placed an order. A few weeks later, another.

Recently, I went back to this vendor to inquire about the latest set. “Unfortunately, I can’t ship from Germany anymore,” he wrote back. A friend received the same message. The way it read, it sounded almost as if some adversarial event had happened.

I don’t know the true reasons, but at that point, for the first time, it occurred to me this guy may simply have been smuggling Pokémon cards across the border. Plenty of people buy all kinds of items in Switzerland, drive back into Germany, and don’t declare the goods, hoping customs won’t pull them over. Maybe this guy was doing the same. Take his wares, drive to a family member or friend in Germany, and pray at the border crossing.

The mind can be like a bird. Wherever it sees justifications for what it wants to believe, it instinctively pecks at them. “Yum! That tastes good! Why would I consider any other explanation? I like this one!”

When I first discovered my vendor, I automatically assumed he had some official system in place. “Wow, finally someone who’s figured this out!” Maybe he had a special, cross-border business arrangement or stores in both locations. My mind heard what it wanted to hear, then filled in the outline with a few blobs of colors. Nothing too exact, you know? But there was a resemblance of a possible explanation, and that was enough.

Our brains are so used to dreaming up justifications, they can do it while literally dreaming. During last night’s sleep, a friend told me of a mutual college buddy of ours. “You know, he’s actually one of the original five cofounders of Five Guys,” he said. For a split second, dream-me was suspicious: “But that’s an American fast food chain. How could a German guy be a cofounder?” Immediately, my mind came up with an answer: “He must simply be a cofounder of the German branch!” “Oh, sure, that makes sense,” came the answer. There are many Five Guys restaurants in Germany, and that was good enough for my mind. From then on, I was fully focused on my friend’s stories about the guy, from how he was getting married to him moving to Italy afterwards, and how much his net worth was.

After I woke up and had laughed off this strange dream, I realized: I had duped myself! Even while sound asleep, the mind keeps playing tricks on itself. The cofounders of a business don’t change, even once it expands overseas—and our friend isn’t even remotely old enough to have anything to do with Five Guys in its early days.

It’s nice to hear them singing, but don’t get it confused: Your brain is not a bird. Some events can be taken at face value, but most deserve a second look. Invest the time to separate the two. Don’t peck too much at justifications.

The worst part of worse-before-better is not the worse that’s about to come. It’s the time we spend trying to avoid looking the worse in the face.

Once we expect another downturn before we can resume our path back up, the rest is…not easy—but easy enough. You can go back to hoping. To waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel. The fact that it’s dark right now becomes secondary.

Whether you’re going through a tough time at work, losing conviction in an investment that should long have paid off, or having some personal struggles, remember: The hurt comes before the pain and, actually, the worst pain is fear.

Put it back into the small glass where it belongs, peek behind the clouds, and even if all you find is rain, you’ll still see the path forward more clearly.