A year I wouldn’t change
I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed this year. It started with a lot of unknowns. It ends with a lot of unknowns too. But I loved how one project led to another and how they all cross-pollinated. Instead of pulling on the grass to make it grow, it felt like planting seeds and watching them develop on their own.
I learned a lot about myself. Most notably, that I thrive at the intersection between fields. I’ve ended up there before, in previous jobs. Strangely in between things. For a long time, that felt like a problem. Like I needed to settle and make a home somewhere. To arrive and find the thing. Or at least a thing.
I’ve heard this described as a scanner personality, sometimes even framed as a sign of ADHD. To me, that feels a bit dismissive. Maybe if you only skim the surface of every new interest, “scanning” fits. But what I’m interested in is systems. And you can’t connect dots if you maintain a laser focus on a single point.
How 2024 made 2025 possible
2024 was the year where Long Covid really brought me to my knees.
By then, I had already more or less given up on the idea of returning to my fairly cognitive day job. Instead, I decided to take part in an eight-week career change seminar (in Feburary 2024). It gave me new wings and then promptly led to the worst crash I’d had in three years of this illness.
That was awful but it finally forced me to give something up: my expectations of how things had to happen to be acceptable.
I let go of the idea that I could
- “fix” my health when even my doctors had no clear answers- and come out stronger and wiser,
- find an ultimately fulfilling career where I’d work less, earn more, and have three times as much fun (I know, I know… a girl can dream),
- or become a mother who never raises her voice because she’s permanently calm and regulated.
Yes, my expectations have always been high, and giving them up was bitter. Not just bitter but I had also subscribed to the view that without goals to reach I would surely turn into a jelly puddle over time.
But this is not what happened. Instead it made space for life to unfold without me constantly judging it, steering it, or trying to optimise every outcome (resistance was futile).
By the end of that year, I was finally ready to try things without needing them to go a particular way. It’s the only way to do anything when you never know how much you are able to give at any point in time. A bonus gift was the realisation that this is the only way I can do things at all without sliding straight into major procrastination. That attitude shaped everything that followed. So after an incredibly chilled second half of the year let’s head into 2025.
A Shock to the System
Why I Needed a Different Way to Work
At the end of the year I’d decided that I’d like to ‘trial’ self-employment of some sort. I didn’t know what and how but my health situation felt totally incompatible with steady employment where you need to show up every day. I’d have long periods of immune system and energy crashes where I could barely get out of bed. Followed by periods where I was totally fine. So I felt that I needed something that could be dialed up and down. I had no idea where to start but in my career change course I had identified health, food, and baking as areas of interest.
A Risk-Free Experiment
I thought that starting a baking blog would be cool but I never had a website or a blog. I spent several months wondering how to set up the website rather than worrying about the actual blogging. Stellar procrastination. In the end I came across a blog challenge…that did not manage to make me publish that first article. But I subscribed to the newsletter and there I read that he woman behind the blog had worked with a business coach and was still involved in her programs seven years later. That made her feel much more trustworthy. So I subscribed to her newsletter as well. I ended up joining her 12 week program Somba Kickstart which is a very intense online course on how to create your own online course. The difference to other coaching is that you go through the entire process in practise rather than just talk about it and that was exactly what I wanted: taking the leap from dreaming about doing something to doing it.
And I didn’t have to do it alone: I was in a group with nearly 500 other people (mostly women). It was a fantastic community without which I couldn’t have accomplished it.
The program goes from finding a course idea to doing a review to narrow down the topic, and then creating a course name and description followed by a landing page. Then we had two or three weeks to find people to sign up for our course before running the four-week course. Finally, the coach showed us how to create an offer for the people who wanted to continue working with us. I skipped this step because I was still unemployed. Making money from self-employment- even a symbolic euro- would have resulted in me being officially a freelancer and I wasn’t ready for that.
What Came Easily (and What Didn’t)
However, it was a great experience and I learned a lot. It pushed me way out of my comfort zone to do the online marketing. The sudden jump into visibility after ten years of not even writing a single facebook post (let alone any other social media engagement) was judged by my nervous system as life threatening. It caused quite a few sleepless nights and countless pangs of anxiety. The fact that I DID NOT die was probably the prime lesson of the year. It sounds dramatic but I think many of us have a deep fear of being seen. Intellectually I can explain most of it away but with this experience I could show my whole system that the danger was less real than imagined and it took with it a whole bundle of anxieties.
It did not make me into a new person. I still dislike online marketing. It’s hard not to take a lack of engagement as a value judgement. But I learned to do it anyway and it does get easier.
We tend to really focus on our weaknesses. They stand out because they require a lot of energy to overcome in some way. On the other hand, what comes naturally fades into the background because it requires no attention. I noticed that the tech part: setting up email automations for the sign-ups, writing a landing page, connecting various software tools and debugging was easy for me. That felt quite reassuring after not working in my old job for a while: the skills were still there. Moreover and even better I had fun doing it. And I also enjoyed helping others in my course community to get over their tech challenges and struggles.
And while I didn’t like publishing my posts, I did enjoy writing them. As someone who cannot journal for the life of her it felt cathartic to write (and here we are).
Choosing Meal Planning
I was really torn about the topic of my online course. I thought about ‘Teaching women how to code for fun’ with the aim to break down some tech barriers and to view coding as a hobby like any other: knitting, painting, soap making- every hobby requires skills of some nature. Why not coding? There is even a Python advent calendar and you don’t need to be a ‘hacker’ to get started.
My other course idea went towards nutrition. I did not want to do a course on weight loss although I did realise it’s a topic that keeps on selling. Weight loss is nice. But I think we do ourselves much more of a favor when we work towards being strong and healthy rather than thin (which might come as a consequence- or not). In dealing with long covid I did make quite a few changes to my diet and I do think it was the single most effective intervention. It also touched perimenopause and respecting my menstrual cycle. However, I felt quite unqualified to run a course on this.
So I decided to make a meal planning course instead. Because frankly, you can have the best diet plan in the world but if it falls apart in the real world there is no point to it. I wanted to give some inspiration on how to integrate healthy eating habits into daily life so that they have the best chance of sticking long-term as well as encourage my participants to start eating experiments of their own. I don’t believe there’s a perfect diet to suit everyone. Or even the same diet over the course of a life.
Here is a gallery of what I ate during the course. Every picture represents one day of eating.
Where this experience has left me
I would repeat the whole experience in a heartbeat. Despite that, I chose not to continue with Sigrun. One major reason was that I was very tired by the end of the 12 weeks. Part of that was from the workload and all that nervous system stuff. Another reason was that I hadn’t fully found my own voice yet. We were taught not to sell knowledge but a transformation. And that’s a good idea. I have been transformed myself by this course. The problem is that I don’t want to sell SMART* goal transformations. It felt dishonest to me (it really depends on the topic of course). Why?
1) The Transformation Gap You might not reach the transformation I promise you. This actually happened to me in this course: yes I ran my own course. But that certainly wasn’t enough to start a fully fledged business. For some participants it works out well but when it came to that part of Kickstart there was quite a dip in the mood when participants realised that they might have been somewhat overpromised.
2) The Deficiency Hook: A core tenet of most self-improvement/coaching offers and marketing is to make you believe that something is wrong with you. You do visit my page because you have a problem and you want a solution. That’s why businesses of any kind exist. However, in the case of coaching it becomes exploitative in my opinion when I feed into your insecurities. There is nothing wrong with you.
Nonetheless, we are social animals. We are born for cooperation. I can absolutely and successfully help you lose 5kg of weight for example, if that is your problem. But this is not my end goal. What I want is to give you enough support, guidance and orientation to be able to find your own solutions. I want to help you navigate a modern food environment that still makes it hard to make good choices. I want to help you liberate from using food to make your emotions bearable. I want to show you how to support the wonderful tool that is your body at all stages of life to function as well as it can.
I also realised that the container I chose may not have fitted what I was trying to do. In my meal planning course, I was trying to teach food freedom. And at times I worried that I was shying away from “concrete” solutions and becoming overly nuanced. With hindsight, I think something else was going on: four weeks is not much time, and a free course simply doesn’t create a lot of commitment.
Meaningful change around food isn’t something I can deliver to people. It’s something we have to build together. When things are calm, many approaches work. But food freedom has a habit of falling apart when life gets hard. When you’re tired, overwhelmed, grieving, stressed, or sick, most systems fail.
What I care about is helping this relationship with food sink so deeply that you and your body recognise it even then. That eating well isn’t a burden or another thing to get right, but an act of care- sometimes even the most accessible one- when everything else feels shaky.
This is how I changed myself: from emotional overeating to a lasting sense of ease around food. In sickness and in health. I don’t do it perfectly. But I require very little discipline. My food system holds under pressure.
And that’s what I want for the people I work with.
My own health also kept up through those first three months of the year which was reassuring but I try not to take it for granted anymore or rely on it.
My life going forward just has to be fluid as much as I can arrange it. The one thing I found the most detrimental is ‘pushing through’ and it’s an ongoing tough lesson to learn that- especially when I’m having fun. But on the bright side, it forces me to get my satisfaction more out of what’s directly in front of me rather than out of the attainment of a far away goal. We rightfully teach delayed gratification to our kids. But I think I overabsorbed this lesson.
The Language Barrier
I live in Luxembourg which has three official languages: German, French, and Luxembourgish. German is my native language but -unfortunately for me- also the least spoken one. However, Luxembourgish and German are relatively closely related.
Due to the mix of languages spoken and the habit of multilinguals to just switch mid-sentence to whatever is the easiest language of communication it is hard to pick up a language by immersion.
Making Friends With French
I decided at the end of 2024 that if I ever was to be self-employed or start my own business here I wanted to know all the common languages. I studied French in school and gave it another go when we arrived in Luxembourg at the end of 2013. But I never reached fluency…my first job here was with a US company so that ended my language efforts at that point.
I (re)started with Duolingo and signed up for a French conversation class in January. Together, those really helped me to get to a functional French level. I still try to practice French half an hour every day and for the first time I really came to like the language. I am quite proud that I have managed to establish this habit.
Holidays!!
After all that excitement thankfully we had a holiday scheduled at Easter in Greece together with another family that was such a success that we decided to repeat it next year. It was lovely to experience the Greek Easter traditions. When we returned I finally decided to start that blog (you’re on it) and almost like a sign- or just effective online presence- the woman behind the blog challenge who connected me to the business coach hosted her annual meet-up in Stuttgart. I decided to both join her program and go to the meetup and it was so lovely to see people live after all that online business. I also made a new friend for which I am very grateful.
Going with the Flow
Just say yes
I am not sure whether it was because of this but I mentioned in my first article on biohacking that I did yoga to recover. A few weeks later a friend approached me to ask whether I wanted to do yoga lessons at the stable where she was an instructor. I tried to tell her and the manager that I am not a teacher…and in the process signed up for yoga teacher training. I am still not quite finished with it but I really loved learning about yoga from a teaching aspect. It also made me feel quite ambivalent about the western yoga tradition. I haven’t fully resolved that internal conflict yet. I am very proud to say though that I did teach two yoga classes in the summer. For me- introverted and a chicken cerebral- actually doing classes rather than just learning about it was a really big step.
Starting a Degree
At the same time as I started the blog I also looked for formal training as nutritionist. After much deliberation I settled on a BSc in Nutritional Science at IU Berlin. It’s fully remote, can be started at any time and I can do it at my own pace. So pretty much the only way that would be workable for me. On the other hand there are zero external deadlines and that is hard. Even exams can be taken online and spontaneously (it only requires some setup: clearing one’s desk and positioning multiple cameras for the online invigilators to be able to see everything you’re doing). That spontaneity sounds nice in practice…but given one is never 100% prepared for any exam (and it would be a waste of time) I am finding it hard to just.do.it.
I also vowed to start a newsletter as I had a 50 people email list after my online course…but I procrastinated on that to the end of the year. Because what does little me have interesting to say and oh I don’t want to create more spam than you already get in your inbox…
By May then I had these concurrent projects: an online degree, yoga teacher training, learning French, and a new blog and website. Each of those can be done as a full-time thing but they don’t have to be. I just worked on whatever I felt like working on at any time and gave it as much energy as I had.
The Summer- a digital break
In the summer we went to France for a two week camping holiday. Where I ironically nearly lost my French Duolingo streak due to bad internet. We had a wonderful time with a week in the volcanic region of Auvergne eating more cheese than seems advisable and a second one at a Hippie campsite in the Vosges.
A Slightly too early job
In October I went to a spontaneous family meet-up. It was the family of my grandma’s half siblings (they shared the same fathers). They hadn’t had a meeting of this sort for ages so it made me feel less like the odd one out and they were all lovely. I also sent out quite a few applications, one of them as a hotel receptionist. I didn’t think they would invite me for an interview but they did. The job was supposed to start in January and officially required Luxembourgish which I understand but not speak, so I signed up for a 6 week intensive Luxembourgish class that started in the middle of November- 10 hours per week spread over four days for six weeks.
At the end of October we also went away for a week to England to celebrate my husband’s 40th birthday with all the family. We had a really great time. Such a great time in fact that we forgot to take an official group picture (there was lamentation). Of course, I promptly got sick on our return. At the end of November the hotel called me to ask whether I could start early after all because of a sick colleague.
Biscuit Advent Calendar
And I also made the somewhat last minute decision to do a biscuit advent calendar. My blog mentor hosts a mini course every year to set up a digital advent calendar. I didn’t join it because I was already so busy but I had been wanting to write about baking since May- I made it a corner of my blog that stayed empty- and I also wanted to start that newsletter which I never got round to chickened out of. This was an opportunity to combine both in a way that seemed like fun.
I created a landing page this time on my own website (so satisfying), connected it with mailerlite (the setup of which I had already completed in May because…tech is fun 😀 ), did a few days of advertising (I think I had four or five) and ended up sharing 24 Christmas biscuit recipes. I was extremely proud that I managed that especially since the whole family was sick (including me) at the beginning of December and I was still working and doing the Luxembourgish class.
Speaking of Baking
I dabbled in starting a food business directly. I started baking for friends and friends of friends. It made me realize how much work it would be to bake for a living and also -for fun- I calculated how much I’d have to charge to even make minimum wage…a lot. Also, when a hobby becomes a job it risks not being fun anymore. And finally there are quite some administrative hurdles to overcome. Here are some of my bakes of this year.
Coming to my desk smiling
One thing I noticed, looking back over the year, is how often I came to my desk smiling. In the first quarter, I smiled because I was working autonomously. Deciding what to do, how to do it, and when to stop. No one telling me how things should be done. That kind of freedom felt deeply right.
In the middle of the year, I came to my desk smiling to write. Writing is an activity that was completely off my radar as I needed it neither professionally (tech and office language are fairly formalized) or educationally (Mathematics coursework is symbolic and curt) nor personally. It’s a big surprise to me how enjoyable I am finding it.
Following my curiosity down every rabbit hole it wanted to go, while studying has also been a breath of fresh air.
And in the last two months of the year, I also came to my desk at the hotel smiling. The work there has a particular serenity to it: the problems are real and immediate, but they’re also well-defined, contained, and generally solvable. That felt surprisingly novel after years of dealing with abstract, open-ended complexity.
No I haven’t turned into a blissed-out Buddha. But there was a lot of low-key satisfaction this year.
And finally: it could have been a lonely year with all these projects and no work colleagues for the most part. But it wasn’t.
On the contrary, this year was full of unexpected connection and an enormous amount of human support. Thank you to all of you, family, acquaintances, old friends and new ones. You make life worth living.
A Movement Reversal
One more thing stood out this year: how my relationship with movement changed. For a long time, I used exercise as a way out of my head. On the bike, my thoughts would magically sort themselves. Solutions to long-standing problems would simply present themselves somewhere between kilometre five and ten. Movement was escape and mental hygiene. The yoga teacher training flowed in the opposite direction.
Instead of moving away from my body, it asked me to move into it. Learning about muscles, bones, and breath and then noticing all of it play out in real time was delicious. Paying attention rather than overriding signals. Letting awareness replace momentum, instead of using speed to quiet everything down. It’s still novel to me.
But it allowed me to make friends again with a body I had felt betrayed by for the last few years. To be honest, I had spent a long time shutting down its signals. Not out of toughness or stoicism, but because they felt inconvenient. Mind over matter and all that. Pushing through had worked for me for a long time, until it didn’t.
What shifted was the realisation that exhaustion and pain are the nervous system communicating. The trigger may be external: an injury, inflammation, overload, but the ‘negative feeling’ itself is an internal signal. Drowning it out doesn’t make the message disappear; it just forces the system to shout louder. And lastly the system doesn’t just have a right to be heard because it’s a democracy but because it does have useful things to say.
Project Edgedance
If you’re still reading: thank you. That gives me the courage to share how I personally integrated all this change and gave myself some midyear coherence.
In May, I started calling all these interweaving strands Project Edgedance: being at home at the intersection of things, and embracing an outsider’s perspective on whatever I’m doing. It’s about balancing productivity and rest, structure and playfulness, solitude and connection, being and doing.
To make this work, I stopped trying to be one consistent way. Different situations call for different points of view. I began thinking in terms of an internal council: different aspects of my personality getting a seat at the table. The idea felt intuitive long before I later encountered it described elsewhere under different names. I imagine these aspects as animals:
- Areion, the analytical racehorse, loves systems, complexity, and momentum. He gets things done- and tends to overdo it.
- (Mr) Mürrli, the gruff marmot, is the safety-conscious realist. He watches limits, rules, and physical reality. Picture a hard hat and a spreadsheet.
- Vela, the red squirrel, follows curiosity and energy. She works non-linearly, jumps straight in, and somehow produces surprisingly creative results.
- Nyx, the owl, brings patience and the long view. She doesn’t speak much, but she sees more than the others.
None of them is “the boss”. But together, they make decisions that I can actually live with.
The Life Orientation Test
I’ve read about this test (sorry it is both cheesy and morbid but there is a lot of truth in it nonetheless). If you were to die today would you feel like you should have done things differently? As I look back over this year I feel that I lived it to the fullest of my capacities and I wouldn’t change a thing. That is a first.
By the Numbers
- Books read: 25
- Cakes baked: 17
- Blog posts written: 16
- Of which are published: 9
- Languages practised (badly but enthusiastically): 2
- Gratitude list entries: many
- Times I thought “this is too much”: quite a few
- Times I did it anyway: enough
- To-Want Lists writen: just one- it felt too linear
- Rude French encounters on holiday: 0