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.