It's your fault, but then — it's not.

And how to start »fixing that«, but first coffee and doughnuts.

When I left the university after finishing my thesis, a new phase of my life began. Of course, it had to start with me taking my first steps into a yet unknown job market. As I come from Berlin, obviously I focused on trying to get a role there, so I had a few job interviews there, but I kept looking a bit over the rim of my teacup, too. Soon I also had some phone calls to distant sites within Germany — and an interview in Munich.

When I finally got the position there, I had something completely new to do — to get ready to move somewhere else without a car. Carried away in a one-way train into the great wide open. Like I always do, I put up a to-do list and organized things mostly quite well. The only surprise when I got there was that the groceries and drug stores where I bought a few things, such as some spare toothpaste and some rinsing agent, would suddenly close on that Tuesday afternoon, as in Bavaria, they were surprisingly attuned to celebrating carnival. Oh, really!

It’s like almost everything — some celebrate it, while others don’t.

How about myself? I enjoy the colourful TV shows with comedians and carnival jester’s speeches — yes, that requires a good understanding of the different accents — accompanied by some doughnuts. I must explain it a bit, as in Germany, they don’t have that ring shape; in Bavaria, they are called “Krapfen”, from elsewhere I’ve heard of “Berliner”. To avoid this word, people in Berlin call them “Pfannkuchen”, to then say “Eierkuchen” when we are talking about those flat things known as pancakes.

A new life, a new place — new issues

Oh, how I loved strolling around during the weekends there on my own. Walking along a river, avoiding the loud road if I could, or walking there at a good pace to get something done. By end of March, we had over 20°C, so it felt like summer, and I was just immersing myself in it all. Improvising some stuff I needed, doing what was best for the weather when it was raining.

Yet, a few months went by, until I ran into an issue I had not experienced before. Just below my office there, construction workers began to punch some thick holes into the street ground to fill in some concrete to stabilize the ceiling of the subway station. On top of that, it was summer, so I had to open one of the windows to breathe — and let even more of the noise in and part of my focused deep-work thoughts out…

This put me in an awkward situation.

I was on trial, which meant that both sides can decide to quit within (usually) two weeks’ notice period without a reason. You can easily imagine that I didn’t want to look like a coward, so I forced myself to do what later I learned is called masking: I played strong, kept quiet and tried to cope with it without saying a word until I finally had to.

Why? Because otherwise my manager probably would consider me as not at all able to work under pressure. I really was, though, if you only looked closer. I looked at the details, resolved some tricky issues of interdisciplinary engineering paperwork, just not as fast as they had expected…

I tried to get better with some silicon earplugs I had bought, but with them in, I felt awkwardly plugged. While I could still hear the alleviated sound of the construction work, I was too much tuned into myself — always hearing my own breath and body, so it was not right for that version of myself at that time, always setting myself on the hurry.

With that echo chamber of a brain: No stillness of heart, not enough focus on work. So, I had to go on without them.

👉Dear reader, now that this issue has been resolved, I really enjoy wearing noise-reducing earplugs when I need them. 💡So, please: Don’t give up on new tools, devices, or methods that maybe just don’t work at first try!

Berlin S-Bahn (Photo by Ross Sneddon on Unsplash)

One day, my body said no, sending a notice to my brain, so I had to call in sick and call a doctor, who would have sent me to an expert a few weeks from then — if not for that illness disappearing in a bit as soon as I was safe from that awful noise, staying in my little town! And if not for the layoff I got on the table soon…

I felt as if I was about to collapse, but then took a breath, pulled myself together and carried my clouded mind back to the place I called home, where I tossed my bags into a dusty corner and headed back to a restaurant nearby for some fine Greek food. That little ouzo, accompanied by some open words about my situation, was good, so I went back rather clarified than tipsy. Next day, I called some friends, who invited me to a barbecue, and over some self-made guac on bread, we made some new plans.

Gallery of failures

Things like these can happen at any time.

In life, it can happen that we get into a situation which gets us down — and as it seems to be, there’s no easy way out. Yet, it is possible to improve what we do next and how we deal with it, not necessarily looking as grumpy as that guy on this video:

I have some collection of experience I later found some good ways to handle, while other people didn’t see what I was really going through — they said it was »personal«.

• The seemingly endless search for a flat, seemingly out of luck, not yet knowing the parameters of that hidden market algorithm or what to »brag about« — personal.

• Suffocating in dozens of passengers’ sweat clouds, holding tight on a greasy steel bar behind almost not closing train doors, escaping on an almost last breath onto an overcrowded platform — personal.

• Staring at an information plate saying that the next train is coming in two minutes, but saying so for a quarter of an hour without any trace of an update, let alone a train carrying you to some fresh air, even if it’s going another way than yours… To make matters worse, all this happens on a muggy Monday morning while you are already late — personal.

The message

In life, it can happen that we get into a situation we cannot change. However, what we can change is our attitude. To learn this, how about not carrying home a 25-point bullet list you’d soon forget, but find something that sticks immediately?

It seems that some part of my brain was made for shortening sentences and drawing connections between examples that look different, however showing a pattern.

So here it is — the message line connecting those daily hurdles we face:

It’s both wrong and true in one spot.
It’s personal — but then: it’s not!

Look:

It’s true, because we’re responsible for our wellbeing — not our managers.

But at the same time:

It’s wrong, because most of the time it’s just not our fault.

Photo by Jan KIM on Unsplash

💡We can play the blaming game: Blame it on the train service they won’t fix anyway, blame it on the weather, on the mosquitos that were buzzing at night, xyz …

💡Or, we can look at this from a mathematical perspective:

• One manager cannot care at full time for a dozen employees’ private situations. If it’s about noise, they can put money on the table and afford some active noise-cancelling headphones for everyone at the office, or arrange WFH. But obviously, they won’t just be everybody’s 1:1 coach.

• The flat search (data: Statista, Munich tenants’ association, summarized by Perplexity): The vacancy rate for residential properties in Munich is at a historically low level of around 0.1% (as of 2023/2024). By comparison, the German average vacancy rate is around 2.8%. People pay at least 20 euros/m². The average living space per person in Munich is approximately 38 m².
  TL;DR: No wonder if nobody wants to move. A long search is just ordinary life, and the closer to the center, you’ll pay more for less, more or less.

We are responsible.

However, we can go ahead and bring our own “tools” with us.

We can:

• Improve flat-searching chances: I invested ten minutes of my lunch break on it, answering the new emails, not waiting until 9 p.m., when I’m number 100 on their inbox. To save time, I took my phone and made a shortcut text snippet. So I’d type something funny and short to let that little machine write three sentences for me.

• Go to work earlier to avoid both the heat and the crowd, whether you can clock in earlier or even not. On your way back, leave a crowded station to get some fresh air, buy some groceries and a ripe banana or something like that to eat right there and come back after the crowd has gone.

• Do stuff like, for examp… Waaaait!

Before I go bananas 🍌and give you three pages of points of a bullet list you toss under your fridge next day, let me say it differently, easy to carry:

We can decide how we act, we can find ways to cope with it.

💡We can use mathematical reasoning again here — times add up, no matter the order of them. So why not shuffle to-dos around a bit to unblock yourself, make the to-dos better fit in your day and thereby be less tired or have more fun? Some call it “job crafting”, I would call it “crafting those mundane tasks you just can’t avoid”.

When I understood this, I was still going to the same places, doing the same things — but I was better at them, faster, did more of them.

Like that bad day I started with here, we can decide how our “bad days” shall go on.

And after all, believe me or not, we are the only ones to do so.

That disappointing meeting? Let it be followed by a walk to get some steps in, making photos of some colourful autumn trees.

The train that stopped in the middle of nowhere? It won’t get faster if you rant at it. Right? But you’ll feel better if you recap what went good today, practice gratefulness, enjoy what you see, don’t doom-scroll off your last monthly data capacity, but answer that message from a friend.

Epilogue, unfinished

I had to learn this, too.
A way made of steps.
I’m still learning this a bit, every day.
But back then, I began to see that it worked.

Worrying because a train comes late?
Confused by 100 lines of code, busy with overthinking?
Water under the bridge now.

Waaaaait. A post without a poem? Not really. Let me search… here is one.

---

I failed. Crashed. Had to unwind.
Failed again. Debugged and found why.
A way made of steps
A few of regrets
Now when my build fails
I don’t bite my nails
But ask copilot can you help fly that thing?

---

Things changed, those mundane tasks were fun,
With a good feeling just begun,
It was right there, though out of reach,
I understood how it could teach
Me pick my stuff without complain
About long days, commuting pain
My giggling at the typos made
The autumn town feel somewhat great…

---

I went down the stairs feeling half as heavy, whistling while doing the ironing.
Now when I’m doing some ironing, I can listen to Substack reader talking to me.
Not a bad idea actually, looking at the many good articles making us drown in email.
Soon you can do this with my posts, too, I guess so.

Not ironing? What about listening to the radio or some posts here while doing the dishes. Sounds cool?

Things have changed.

Things can change.