40th with the wife, son & homemade blueberry cheesecake.

Reducing Dependence on US & US Corporations

I just had a random thought that occurred to me today. And I like how Chancellor (in waiting) Friedrich Merz put it beautifully; "My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA." Personally, I'm looking into reducing my dependence on American Corporations by prioritising local and regional businesses to the best of my ability. Voting with our wallets seems to work a lot. Case in point: Starbucks & McDonald's.

I have downloaded nearly a thousand of my Kindle books. I'm truly grateful to the YouTube creators and coders for making this process a breeze. 

I want to thank David from the Forking Mad blog for creating Komments. If you haven't used it, please consider giving it a try. You won't regret it. 

I have a thousand Kindle books in my Kindle Library. With Amazon's recent announcement to remove the download option for users who purchased Kindle books by Feb 26th, I'm planning to download them all and stop purchasing ebooks from Amazon altogether. Recently, I moved to Kobo Libra Colour and couldn't be happier. 

Today, I'm grateful for my Apple Watch, which motivates me to move more. Tomorrow, I'm looking forward to time-blocking my one key highlight and two important tasks.

Today, I'm grateful for my morning meditation sessions. I learned Transcendental Meditation (TM) sometime around 2014 and have been practising on and off since then. One thing I have noticed is that whenever I practice TM, I find it easier to regulate my emotions.  Tomorrow, I'm looking forward to following a daily plan to bring back some sort of work-life balance.

Today, I'm grateful for the Scribbles platform because I can experiment with posting one thing I'm grateful for every day for the next 30 days. Tomorrow, I'm looking forward to posting another thing I'm grateful for. 

I'm experimenting with Evernote as my notes app until 1st July 2025, before the subscription renewal. 

I'm so happy to see deadlines in Todoist. It's one of the best updates ever to appear on the app. This should have been implemented a long time ago. Better now than never. 

I feel so distracted and overwhelmed. Too many distractions and wrangling priorities are keeping me stuck. I can't seem to make any visible progress. I guess this situation calls for a mind sweep. 

Year in Review

In January, I intend to complete the Annual Review workbook and set some goals for 2025. Let's go!

Over the next few days, I will reevaluate my subscriptions and intend to cut unnecessary ones ruthlessly. It's nothing personal; it's strictly business. 

I'm still on the edge of renewing my Day One app subscription. With so much data in their hands, I'm concerned about Privacy and who can and cannot access it. 

I have ordered Kobo Libra Colour. This is my first Kobo and I'm pretty excited about it. I have gone with a third-party case. I'm holding off from purchasing their Stylus 2 for now. I might purchase that in a month or two.