A Lovely Printer (Another)

 I had fully intended to post weekly on this blog, but that's not something I can fully achieve right now. It's not only a matter of "life happens" - which is an expression, I know, but really, what the hell with "life happens"? Life doesn't "happen", life is lived. Gods, sometimes expressions can irk me with their stupidity - but more a matter of me being busy and my head being twice as busy. We had presidential elections last week, and sadly, we had to find out just how profoundly stupid the population can be, how easily they fall prey to demagogues and manipulators. I know, I know, "you shouldn't call stupid the people who choose an autocratic, anti-democratic figure, because they have been let down by previous parties". Can you read that again please? Why would anyone sane enough choose someone who has proven to be abhorrently bad just because twelve years ago someone was somewhat bad? I tell you why? Because people want to believe lies, want permission to be violent and lash out, they take what they have for granted, expect promises of abundance to be kept and threats of exploitation to be "just words. And they vote in real life, with their heads in a bubble, and think that they would be spared of the horror they wish on others.

Explain to me how is that anything other than stupidity, if you were so kind.

Yes, I'm upset, BUT I'll cut that thought thread here and concentrate on pretty things. Like my new portable printer. Goodness, I am in love!

Property of Stormberry

If you are a journaling enthusiast, you may have come across the portable photo printers. A couple of years ago they were the rage. If you followed social media - which I used to do back in the day - you've probably saw the rise of the portable photo printer splashed all over your feed, with wonderful tiny pictures being printed from your phone, idea to be added to your journal, as a way to enrich your record keeping. This allowed you to print out not only photographs you made, but also pictures you've found, interesting quotes and so on.

The first ones I saw in social media were printers that used heat paper to print, and they were mainly monochromatic. The paper was thin and it didn't add bulk to the journal, but I was worried about the longevity of the print, which most influencers using these printers didn't talk about. 

But, how long does a heat print last? Well, if you are used to request and keep the vouchers of your card purchases - you know, that curling strip of paper you can get with your purchases - you may have noticed, that many of them have significantly faded by the time you have to do your tax declaration. I happen to usually keep my recipes for up to two years, thus I know that these prints don't last two years. This bothered me about the heat printed pictures. Why spend money, print and glue down a picture only to have a piece of paper in your journal two days from now that has nothing on it?

Portable photo printers are a luxury. No, not like a luxury bag, but definitively they are not a necessity. Thus, though I was tempted to get one - because being influenced is real thing - I spent years mulling over it, researching options, discarding the idea and then going back again to it.

At one point I found this Kodak P210R Mini 2 Retro printer in a comparison line up, and it came up like the one that produced the longest lasting and best quality photos. They are printed, and you can actually see each color - yellow, magenta, cyan - being laid on the page, and finally being coated, so the end product doesn't look like those pictures printed on photo paper, where the ink clearly sits on top of the upper coat, taking away the satin of the page.

It wasn't easy to synchronize with my phone, and you have to make sure it is on each time you want to print, but other than that, I am pleased (so far) with the printer.

Something I like is that it reminds me of old photographing experiences. Pictures were more precious when you had a roll of 12 or 24 or 36 pictures and you had to make each one count. You would think carefully of each shoot and make it count, consider how many pictures did you had left, and then go and have them revealed. You would sit from time to time with friends and family, or by your own with your photo album and relive those memories. It was so different from today's pictures-in-phone, where people scroll unseeing from loads of pictures to find one they need, and just for a moment. It's like we are so flooded with pictures they loose all their value, all their interest.

A portable photo printer is not going to change the perception people have of pictures, but for some of us it's a way yo go back to those days when photos were scarce, reserved only for special events.

Printer Hell

Property of Stormberry

 My EPSON printer has spent a year - give or take - refusing to print in black. I've been printing stuff in blue but I had enough. So I bought a new printer. Not an EPSON because I didn't want to go through the same ordeal, and my parents recently bought an EPSON ECO tank printer and it decided not to work anymore before it  turned two years old. So yes, no EPSON.

On Wednesday I took my eldest nephew to dinner, to celebrate his birthday, and so I tied that with a couple of errands, that had to do with printing. Specifically, I had to have some documents printed for my mother, so that she can get some healthcare procedures done, and the one place I know of where you can print out things is at the Office Depot. Getting to the Office Depot takes me around 45 minutes. It's not sustainable.

Since I had some surplus money (a financial compromise I had didn't go through), and so I invested that in a printer. A Brother.

Yesterday I tried to install it. It's not the first printer I install, and it's not the first printer I install on my Mac, but this is the first that just don't want to cooperate. Boy. it's driving me crazy.

One of those "planner" times

Property of Stormberry

January could be called "the month of planners", though in the planner community, "planner season" happens somewhere between July and October, depending on the brand of planner or planners you subscribe to. During planner season, people who are into planners, such as myself, hunt down the planners they want to use the next year, and usually put them away until the fated date comes when it's time to start using them and filling them up with annual information such as birthdays, anniversaries, start and end of school/uni periods, tax filing days and so on.

In today's digitalized world, this is not a ritual many people have, as digital calendars (or social media) has all the birthdays already in for eternity loaded and programmed into your calendar (until such a day when you have to renew or update your app), and so with all the other days of appointments, due dates and due-payment days you may have to keep an eye on. Back in the day, before the internet and computers were inserted in every aspect of our lives, you know, when a telephone was always a landline, and stayed on a wall or a table, and not in your pocket, most people had this ritual of noting important dates in the brand new planner or on the calendar. Those planners and calendars, as far as I remember, could be found in school and paper supply stores somewhere around December, and not sooner. And most people spent either the last days of December or the first days of January writing in important dates, like birthdays, anniversaries, payments and check-ups that happened only a handful of times in the year.

Though I do know of cases where people used their planners and calendars to annotate certain events of their daily lives - I do remember I was told I should be keeping the record of my periods when I started having them - but in general planners and calendars were used to know which day it was, to calculate past and future days, and to know if you had something to do that day or in the future. If you wanted a record of your past days in more detail, you've got yourself a journal or a diary, which was a notebook of some kind, in which you wrote about your day. Or so was the idea, at least where I live.

With the era of the internet, you started to learn about other people, and how they did things, what they've got and how they used things. In the case of planners, one could find out that some people did use their planners as a daily log, where the book contained not only their plans and appointments for the day, but they also noted how many hours they did at work, the meds they took, or even a small summary of their day. I guess people started finding different practices interesting, cool or inspiring, and soon we were flooded with ideas of how to do this and that. I imagine that this may be were the planner world got so inundated with different practices and interesting ideas, that it may have given the impression to some, that you have to do all of them. FOMO became A Thing.

Soon you started seeing videos and posts in different platforms, about being confused about how to use a planner/journal, or feeling like they failed with this or that planner/journal, and going through planners and layouts multiple times a year and yet feeling like they are not reaching "planner peace". Goodness, in the 80's and 90's there was no such thing as planner peace. You had a planner you've got on December of the previous year and you worked with that. Your only concern was whether you remembered to check it often, and whether you didn't forget to pencil in all of your tasks and appointments. Today there is such a thing as "planner peace" and lots of people don't get to it.

Back when I had a planner channel on YouTube, I explained my mother about it, and she looked at me like I had sprung another head.

"What is there to explain people about how to use a planner? You open it, you write your appointments and then you check it."

And yet, today, in the era of more information than what you really need, and yet not enough of what you actually need, these are valid concerns.

For a while now I have been scaling back on Social Media, and now I'm off YouTube as well. Through this process I have realized something: I have no FOMO. I have a particular taste in most things, and I'm a little harder to impress, and yet, when I was deep in social media and YouTube, I did found myself wanting many of the things I saw. many I did not buy because I am not so easily convinced (so I went pondering a purchase of weeks and then suddenly it wasn't even that hot), but others I did got (like the six of so Kat Von D liquid lipsticks). After several years of watching unboxings, I finally took the step to get a subscription box, only to discover after some time, that this is not for me. For a while, I was also tempted by luxury bags, and had been seriously considering a Marc Jacobs The Tote Bag, since that was the one that stood closer to my preferred style.

And then I stepped off Social Media and YouTube. And I no longer feel the pull of subscription boxes and all sorts of specialized, strange stationery items that are all the rage. Last year, I went twice to Choosing Keeping in London, a stationery store where people make a line outside to enter. Like at an exclusive club. I went, I saw... and in two visits I spent a whopping £15. Two rolls of washitape and one bottle of ink. I was already de-FOMO-ed. I was no longer wanting a Marc Jacobs tote bag for €220, and instead sought out a €18 Merci Gustave tote bag I've got at the CDG airport, which has become one of my favorite bags. Well, not to mention that my already copious tote bag collection (39 tote bags) grew with the addition of three unexpected tote bags: one from Stonehenge, one from Waterstones and one from The Daunt Books. Two due to bag emergency and one because it came with the books. No FOMO, just need or gift.

This has got me thinking whether much of the issues many people have with their planners and journals and the expectations they set for themselves are due to the content they consume online. Do they really, really need to fill each page of a planner? Do they really, really need to journal everyday, many times, in many different books? Does every little thing has to make it into the planner and the journal? Do they really, really need to have X amount of "top priorities" each day? Do they really have to have to do lists that include things like waking up and eating breakfast? Do they really need mood tracks and reading journals, and morning pages and gratitude, and meal prep, and the-Gods-know-what other stuff?

What would Your planner and your journal and your daily practice look like if you were not spending a single minute on social media and content platforms like YouTube and TikTok? Would you find planner peace or maybe would be at peace with your planner?

End of the Vacations, Beginning of the New Year

Property of Stormberry

 There's something beautiful about ending the year away from home, taking a bit of distance to see things in perspective, recharge, and then come back with fresh energies. I love being in Europe, but my life has lead me to find my chances to work and earn a living outside my beloved continent. That income is the one that made it possible for me to save up and build my house, to be able to pay my debts, and to visit my darling Europe. I really love this place.

I'm writing this in the last minutes I'll spend at the hotel (less than an hour), and I would love to, at least, start journaling a little bit too, all before I have to go across the street, buy a new Navigo card, a new One Day Paris Visit Pass, because yesterday I lost my card. That really got to my nerves. I know, I know, there are larger problems to have, than having lost a public transport card you just recharged with €45,40 (a two day Paris Visit Pass), and now having to pay €33 or so for the card (€2,00) and the one day pass. Why one day and not just one ticket? Because I like being sure I am covered for the day, even if I only have to go from Gare du Nord to Charles de Gaule. I like to be on the safe side. 

I believe the card must have slipped out of my pocket when I put my phone in the same pocket and then pulled it out. Because the card is really gone.

Not having that card ruined a few things for me yesterday. I had plans and once I found my card missing, not only I didn't feel like doing them, at my age (that would be 50 years-old) walking that much, in winter is not as feasible as it used to be when I was 40. Now I like to wander, yes, but having a public transport card in my pocket that can take me back to the hotel when I'm too tired to make another step.

My plans had included going to Foucher, the chocolate shop, to get some chocolate and candied fruit for my mom, and then find a LEGO store to see if I can get a particular LEGO my brother wanted, but I forgot to buy in Budapest. Or check if it was already available. From the hotel, I decided to walk to the chocolate shop (a 31 minute walk that felt like 45 minutes), since the but I was counting on was not available due to construction work on the street. So, at that moment I may have had the card in my pocket, or maybe had already lost it. I went to the chocolate store, bought the chocolates, and when I was out and started looking for my Navigo card to have it ready for swapping at the Metro gates, I noticed it was nowhere to be found. That's when all got pear shaped. 

My next stop would have been Châtelet-Les Halles, where the commercial center was where the LEGO store was... as well as a FNAC. It was going to be a look-for-LEGOs-check-more-books kind of trip. I had no chance but to walk back.

That walk back felt annoying and long and more tiring. Though I logically knew that I could buy a new Navigo Card, that I could recharge it with a new Paris Visit Pass, even again a 2 day one, and honestly €45,40 isn't that steep of a price I couldn't afford, it felt like a catastrophe and ruined my mood. I went back to the hotel, bought food and holed up in my room, annoyed. It was funny because I was anxious about getting that big LEGO for my brother, and how would I get it through customs at the airport, as it surely has no "cabin luggage" size. Now I was off that task because I wasn't getting the LEGO, and still, I felt upset. I felt upset because of the card, and for disappointing my brother. Not like he can't buy the LEGO by himself, and all he wants is to have it before it arrives to Costa Rica, and not like I have the moral obligation to supply my brother with huge LEGOs every time I travel. Gods, I am not a courier! And still, my mood was ruined.

How many times have something small, logically irrelevant ruined your mood? Maybe more times that you care to remember. Through my conversations with psychologists, I realize I tend to rationalize a lot, and my first instinct usually is to think things through rationally. Well, I'm an economist, I work with numbers. However, there are times when logic doesn't help and may even make things worse, for instance when something small, irrelevant gets the best of you. Why bother so much for something that can be fixed so easily? No, I don't have €45,40 laying around idly, and yes, that is still money, BUT the point is that, if there was a real need, like the train is leaving me and I have to jump on it in that moment, I could have paid it again, and only be mildly annoyed about having lost the first card. So, if it was so "grave" why wasn't I going to the next station, look for a ticket seller and getting one? Because the point wasn't rational, it was emotional. I was upset I would not make my brother happy. I was upset he would be sad because I didn't get him the LEGO he wanted.

I was annoyed for the one logical, rational, material little detail - the Navigo Card and the pass already paid and lost - and getting riled up because it was so small and irrelevant and yet, I was thinking it was making me upset. But I wasn't really upset for the card, but concentrating on the card was easier that facing my feelings: I was upset I was disappointing my brother. Once I was ready and willing to face that, I could start working on feeling better, and I will. I still have to work on stop rationalizing everything, accepting that's how I feel and knowing that the feeling will be over once I see him, he makes a sad face and then we will move on. And the world won't end.

Sometimes it is worth to think a little bit deeper about what annoys us, give ourselves time and be willing to ask ourselves not from the logical, rational perspective, but from the emotional one. We are, after all, also emotional beings. All of us.

Getting Sick on Winter Holidays

 It has been happening for a while now, that I tend to get awfully sick during my winter holidays in the Old Continent. And that's not funny. It's annoying. Getting sick is annoying as it is, but getting sick on the holidays is doubly annoying because I can't get sick days out of it. And it's winter! I love winter. Even if it's not snowing - which I definitively adore - I would love to be out, walking in the chilly air, breathing hin the fresh, sharp scents of the season. And yet I am sick.

Last year, on my trip to Europe in winter, I've got very sick in Brussels, after visiting a friend, with some sort of stomach flu that pretty much floored me for days. It wasn't funny at all to drag my carcass from Brussels center to the airport, up the plane, down the plane and then all the way to my family's home. But I made it. I soldiered through it.

After a long period of not traveling - I was engaged building my house, so time and money went entirely into that noble cause - last year's extended trip was the first in a long time. I did remember, due to the symptoms, that I have had a similar experience in the past, also during a trip to Europe in winter, but then I thought it was due to some odd sort of beverage poisoning. (Now I have a different theory.) But now, as I've got sick once again - probably due to having caught a nasty type of flu on the plane here - I've started thinking about how many times have I had to suspend my plans to go places and meet people because I was nursing some sort of sickness. It didn't happen every time, but I have the feeling that it has happened more often than I care to remember. So, something needs to be done. (As for what, I'm still preparing my plans on that front.)

This year I've been to Europe twice, if we don't count that I started the year here already, and my plan is to continue traveling twice a year here: once in winter, which is my favorite season of the year, and once in spring. I don't travel to Europe in summer, because the heat of the summer is intolerable. In Spring, however, I was totally well. I guess that type of weather is closer to what I'm more used to, so I'm better prepared, but still, I don't want to give up winters. So, what should I start to do different to make sure my stays here are better? The things that are expected are: regular medical check ups, keep my vaccines always updated, always be punctual with my meds, though I actually don't take any regular medication right now.

Other things that come to mind always include improve nutrition with more fresh, natural, home made foods, maybe even include superfoods in my diet, though I'm not very fond of those. More exercise and all that, and all that is good, but... I live most of the year in a tropical country, and I come to spend holidays in the winter of Europe, so I suspect that there is a part of all of this that no amount of great nutrition and exercise is going to help me with. Shall I go with supplements? This things keep me thinking.

Then there is the other part of the question: how much will this cost me.

My whole budget plan for 2026 is already planned out, and tweaking it at this point is already quite complicated. My budget is really tight. There is a fund of health, and though I always make my best to get my health matters covered by the Social Security, I'm not sure how much out of pocket money would a potentially extended plan require. These are things I still have to think about.

Considering Going Back to Blogging

 It's been a while since I wrote last here, or more than a year, to be precise. I stopped for many reasons, none of them a conscious reason to actually stop blogging. 

The Reason

I just simply didn't post. My digital footprint was more in the shape of videos for YouTube, where I went from books to planners, both of them in Spanish. I was into booktube for a while, I was part of it with haphazard videos uploaded with no editing and no visible schedule, but that stopped at some point. From there I later moved into the plannerverse, with my own channel on planners and tips for planning. I added to the small community of planners in Spanish, which is not a group as bing as you can find in English.

That channel went well, though I do tend to keep small numbers in most of the things I do. I didn't break into the +1000 world, and was really amazed when people spoke of "small channels with +10k subscriptors". That was not me. I'm smaller than that, and I like it. My channel had a new video every Sunday, and I had a kind of set program that took most of the anxiety out of posting, and I did learn to edit. My format was simple, the editing was minimal and the content was reliable. All was well. Except that I was spending a lot of time in YouTube, and the algorithm was twisting around me with annoyance. I started hating YouTube, as a user.

The way I was using YouTube was as entertainment, also as a way to find information on things I wanted to learn, but then mostly I used it as background noise. I put some video of people talking in a calm way, or instrumental music. This kept me focused during work or at monotonous tasks. Eventually YouTube started bombarding me with annoying adds, all of which, by the end, where scam adds. It didn't matter how much I denounced them, they kept popping up, and they were notoriously scammy. This got to me so much, that I decided to walk off the platform, as a user. However, I couldn't, in good conscience, step out of YouTube as a user, but keep producing content to keep my viewers tied to the platform, subject to the annoyance I just escaped, so I moved out.

Finding your footing once you leave a platform that has consumed you online is quite hard, and yes, I miss the channels I used to follow, but now I'm finding other content and other content creators. I'm going more into podcasts, and searching more for blogs, though those are less common than years before.

The New Project

After all this, I feel that my content creator days are not over yet, and so I've been giving thought for a new idea: a podcast/blog on personal finance.

I've got into personal finance - the commercially available how-to market - last year, after I finished paying my debt on my credit card. I'm usually very skeptical of self-help anything, but after having gone through the process of becoming debt-free, I decided that I wanted more information and started looking for it. I wanted more tips and ideas to improve my finances and invest. Given my background in all-things-money (economics, finance, accounting), I had tools many people didn't have, which allowed me to discern better when someone isn't giving sound advice. I did find great content creators and quite good books, though I have to admit that many of those books are good, if you know what do apply to you and what doesn't.

I talked a lot about that to some of my friends - many of whom gave me input based on their personal experiences with money - and that's how this idea started to form: how about a podcast, a blog or both, where I can help people understand personal finances better, read a book on personal finances and know if they are being scammed or if there are parts that don't apply to their case, how to deal with their own risk tolerance, and how to actually determine if they should take risks with some parts of their financial lives.

I don't know exactly when or how, but I do plan on reading several popular books on personal finance, give them a review, explain what works and what doesn't, and concentrate on the Costa Rican market, how ever small it may be, so I can actually explain things that can be found in books written for the USA, applied to what's available in Costa Rica for the regular people.

I have other plans for the next year and the next few years, but I think I would love to do this.

A Question of "Girl"

Source: https://www.pexels.com/search/girl/

 Often times in our culture women are referred to as "girls". In documentaries about Playboy, for instances, the ladies who posed for the magazine or worked for the club are called "girls". They are legally adult women, but they are still called "girls". A group of women - almost regardless of their age - are often addressed as "girls", particularly if they are pretty.

In some online communities, also, women belonging to it are called girls, such as "planner girl", "bookish girl" and so on. Female power are also called "girl power", and there are a lot of expressions that describe perceived female capabilities (or lack of them) that make use of the word "girl" even when they are understood as expanded to all cisgender women. Here I think of things like "girl math" or "fighting like a girl". Yes, these are demeaning and stupidifying women (last time I checked maths had no gender and the hability of people to use them does not depend on their gender), but that's not my point right now.

One time I was at an online group chat and a lady made mention of something that "every girl needs". I was the youngest of the group (not of the females, but of the whole group) and I'm 48 years old. I felt odd because I'm not a girl and I haven't been a girl for... 36 years? I've lived more years being a woman than the years I lived being a girl, and all the other people who identify as a female were pretty much in the same situation.

At another time, in a podcast, I heard the two podcasters mention that they prefer to be referred to as girls, because "woman" is such a horrible-sounding word, and "girl" is much more nice. But why is that? What do people think of when they think of "a girl"?

Based on the references from media and social networks, online materials and conversations, girls are both young, female children as well as young women. Girls are pretty, innocent, playful but also sexualized. Women are coarser, antagonistic or broken into submission and possibly sexually savvy or frigid, boring. Girls are desirable, women are not so much. Girls are still youthful why women are not. Girls are fun, women complain.

The way we use language and the way language is being used makes "girl" to be the desirable word to be called, and "woman" becomes a label you do well to avoid. But to be called "girl" you must be a girl, or at least act like one and look like one: happy, pretty, fun... and dumb. Girls are not threatening, girls can be tricked. Girls can be manipulated, gaslit. Women would fight back, hard. The label "girl" takes power away from a female human. It diminishes her and make her complains a joke. And at the same time, it's sold as "girl" being a word of "care and tenderness". You are a girl, so I'll take care of you.

Would it be the same if we started calling men "boys"? What would happen if we made the word "boy" desirable and we would call pretty men "boys" and build up a social image that boys are nice, pretty, fun and innocent, while men are annoying, complaining and old (and thus, ugly)? What would happen if we laughed at a man that gets a calculation wrong and say "oh, it's boy math!".

I find the use of "girl" troublesome for the pushing of women into place where they are expected to be just-pretty-not-smart, and always deferential to others, accepting that they are lesser, always afraid of aging, and aging out of the "girl" label, but also because by mixing adult women into the "girl" name, actual girls become part of the same group and those open to be sexualized. Men stop being called "boy" clearly when their childhood ends, but women flow and remain in girlhood for years on end.

I personally don't like even being referred to as a "woman", and I prefer being seen as a person and referred to as a person, but if the situation or the conversation is so that my gender needs to be mentioned, then I am a woman.

I wonder how other people feel about this.