I sold about half of my clothes at Mauerpark flea market today, so much stuff I never wear and still own for some reason. It made me realise I mostly wear the same stuff over and over. I’m probably one of the very few people on the internet who don’t take outfit photos and random full length mirror shots with expensive cameras. But when I’m bored I make random collages and this is a pretty good one of how I actually look like with items I actually really own or that at least look similar.

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December, finally. It’s winter now and cold, twenty-four more days till the end of the year. I spend my days working and my nights curled up in bed. I drink hot chocolate and tea and play silly computer games. It’s my birthday in a week and it scares me. I’m not a birthday person anymore, I don’t enjoy the attention and since my birthdays have become the annual day that I take stock of my life, they scare me even more. It’s not even about the number, I don’t mind it going up. Twenty-two is going to be alright, a lucky number, whatever that means. I really don’t care about numbers and age anymore, it clearly doesn’t say anything about maturity, let alone your character (but we all knew that anyway, didn’t we?).

I’m thinking about moving, again, I keep thinking about topics like that a lot although I know I won’t be doing it for now, simply because I know it wouldn’t change anything. I would love to be somewhere else, more than anything, but I also know I am not willing to give things up here just to start all over again somewhere else, as the same person, with the same mindset, the same everything. I know it wouldn’t be worth it because it wouldn’t change a thing. It might sound a tad depressing but it’s actually a pretty comforting thought: I don’t need to keep running away from everything because it simply doesn’t matter.

I’m leaving Berlin for around ten days on the 23rd of December and I will be spending them celebrating the usual family christmas, holding on to the only routines and traditions that we have left, and I will be spending a lot of time on my own locked in a quiet room waiting for enlightenment, just like last time. I’m looking forward to it, though, and I’m even going to skip New Year’s to have some more time on my own and escape Berlin and any kind of social obligations that come with it. Seven days till my birthday, seventeen days till Christmas and twenty-five days till 2012.

If you ever wondered what and where I like to eat, here you go. This is from the 100th issue of Exberliner.

Photos by Ilse Ruppert, 1980s.

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Well, inspired by all the webdesign talk I decided to give my blog a makeover. It turned out a lot more complex because I just had too much fun playing around with new styles and features, I forgot how much fun it was to make a website, especially my own, and how much of a nerd I really am. In the end I recycled the logo from a very old design of mine from a couple of years ago (the layout was titled “I’ve broken mum’s heart” referring to a newspaper article I used), got rid of all the unnecessary clutter and added a few new – hopefully not too gimmicky – features. I really want to update this blog more frequently (once again, I know) and reading all my old posts from the past year made me realise how much I actually enjoy this.

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This was originally going to be yet another “Meet My Flatmates” post but I got too caught up in nostalgic ramblings. My new flatmate Michi and I often end up in the kitchen talking till 5am, topics ranging from the philosophy of life to zoophilia, and last weekend we realised we have a lot more in common than we initially thought. We both grew into the internet the same way.

When I bought this domain at the age of 14 I was quite active in the whole teenage web design scene. To publish yourself back then you had to make an effort and that’s what it was all about. I’ve seen so much amazing talent in so very young people with great skills and an impressive sense of aesthetics. We actually did amazing shit with Photoshop, HTML, CSS and PHP, from small iframe designs to big blog layouts, we connected over our love for these things, looked up to our web design heroes, chatted the nights away on MSN messenger and spent hours talking about designs, coding and our favourite music on various online forums. We lived in our own worlds, yet it seemed all somewhat useful. We were doing something real.

It’s hard to explain this to people who spent their (online) youth differently or people who grew into the internet with Blogspot and Tumblr. The internet is constantly evolving and adapting to the people’s needs – while back in the days, publishing yourself online was already a big deal, it’s something everybody can do nowadays. It’s not about the skills you have anymore, it’s about what and how you share. Facebook now allows you to tell the world if you gave birth, moved or simply broke a bone, even giving you an option to upload photos with it and tag locations and friends who witnessed the whole “life event”. Your personal info will soon look like a CV, making your profile a documentation of your life in a timeline format.

While you come across a lot of controversy concerning the evolution of Facebook, the internet itself and the whole social web, it’s more of a natural thing to me, a natural response to our needs. We want to share, we want to overshare, we’re all voyeurs and want to watch, it’s a part of us and society is adapting to that. I haven’t been anonymous online in years and I got used to it, it’s a part of me. I still enjoy making websites and still enjoy looking at my old design – it brings back all the memories of what it was like to be online back then and trying not to sound too pathetic, it makes me realise, I’m getting old.

Yet another bunch of photos, cooking & eating sessions and Halloween. (I can’t believe this was a year ago! This time I accidentally ended up hosting a Halloween party in our flat, for some reason loosely themed “Star Wars” but it’s not like anyone cared, apart from Max and Freddy who went as Luke Skywalker and Han Solo.)

When I got my universe done, Mia came to visit me, distract me from the pain and take some photos (of course). I need one more session now for the touch up, then I can slowly start planning my next one (I knew this would be addictive but I want to take it easy, my plan is to have my life on my body, not two full sleeves by the age of 25.)

Artist Robekkah @ Tatau Obscur, photos by Mia Leifsdotter, published on OBERLINER.

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You clearly meet the weirdest people at night. And some of the best, too. Like that guy who comforted me while I was sobbing away in a photo booth just off Oberbaumbrücke last year or so. Or the homeless guy who told me about the situation in the Middle East, which was his main subject in university back in the days.

The other night, I was walking home, only stopping at a takeaway to get a big piece of artichoke pizza that I didn’t even want. I was just putting it down on a bench for someone hungrier than me when an older guy came up to me. ”You look sad. What upsets you so much in your life? You need to tap this point on your hand and it will take the negativity away, I promise.” He showed me the side of his hands and I let him grab mine. I’m not gonna lie, my first thought was, alright, if this guy gets creepy, we’re on an open street in Kreuzberg so I can always just kick him in the balls and run. But it turned out I didn’t have to. I’ve never been a believer in spiritual stuff and esoterism, I’ve read a lot on that Emotional Freedom stuff and figured out it doesn’t work for me, at all, but I do agree that tapping certain areas of the body does have an effect on the body, obviously, and possibly the mind, too. Whatever effect that may be.

“You’re not being very nice to yourself, are you?” He proceeded with his full-body acupressure treatment. “I learned this from my grandfather, it will take the negativity out of your body.” It went on for about an hour, a full acupressure session on the busy streets of Berlin at around 5am, he was relaxing my muscles, whispering some voodoo-sounding stuff and I tried to ignore the voice in my head asking my why on earth I would let anyone do this to me in the first place. He told me to take care after myself and told me it’d spoil the whole thing if he gave me his number now. “I know we will meet again and then you can thank me.” Alright, I thought, puzzled, and walked home.

I’ve been feeling a bit weird ever since, I must admit. Whether it’s placebo or not, maybe that guy took some of my negativity with him and helped me to breathe freely, if only for a while. Maybe I should get myself an acupressure therapist, maybe it’s all bullshit anyway. It probably doesn’t even matter.

A bunch of photos so old I don’t even remember taking them. Berlin Festival, gigs, pub football & random nights.