3 months ago I moved to Barcelona and brought a box of books with me. Novels, short stories, academic papers, and the first-ever book of my roommate from New Yorker. I wanted to read them all, but instead I started to write. I started to write letters—letters to old friends, and letters to a stranger I didn’t know before. I wrote hundr...

I live in Barcelona now. It is only for few months, but for a few months I get to live in Barcelona. To the usual question of how I’m settling in I always reply with the same sentence. ““It’s everything I’ll ever want from life."” I mean it. Barcelona is a place I can see myself spending a bigger part of my life at. It is hot, it is su...

Hi you all :) Here is a text I wrote a month ago. It's an "art memoir" and interpretation of a painting by the Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele. It's about an 8 minute read and I am really happy about how it turned out, even though I took a bit of creative liberty with the geographic references of Vienna. I hope you enjoy it. Egon S...

Hi, beautiful people! This is Tobi, writing to you with a view of the colorful skies above Manhattan at the dawn of night, writing to you after quite some time, now slowly able to breath and feel and live again. New York is a rough city! The transition into a world full of the unknown comes with a heavy weight, one that you partly get ...

As I am spending my last days in Vienna, I use every opportunity to soak in its summer beauty one more time. I spend a lot of time in cafés reading, in bars drinking, in museums embracing. I am present, I live in the moment and enjoy with a deep sense of appreciation. In these moments I don't need anything. All desires are gone, and wi...

When we imagine the future, screens are everywhere. We imagine a world where everyone wakes up and goes to work and sleeps and plays, surrounded by screens. 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, this still seemed futuristic, even a little disturbing. But if we look around closely, it's really not that far from how we life today. Think about...

Every once in a while you meet a person that has a profound impact on your world. Someone that opens your eyes on what you aspire to be. You kind of knew where you are headed in life, but that person is actually doing it. Even the non-conformists appreciate some confirmation! It's not the life itself, it is the attitude, so unexpected ...

The following text has a slightly different touch to it than I'd usually take. It's an experiment, one with many flaws, but I'm happy sharing this with you to get your thoughts on it, the text below. What works, what doesn't? Let me know! The golden walls of optimism I am an optimist. Trusting, not blind. The kind of optimism that expl...

Boredom is the birthplace of creativity. Boredom results from having time, and that is something very few have. Time is consumed by the glutton with many names. The box, that blocks it off my calendar. The contract, that takes it out of my week. The commitments, I should be excited about. It eats up my eagerness to make something out o...

Less is more! Less, but better? Reduce options. Increase focus. Discipline over distraction. Sacrifice. This, is terrible advice. Image 1: Jack Butcher, Distraction vs. discipline (flipped), 2021, twitter.com/visualizevalue, Illustration In fact, it is the opposite that encapsulates everything I have ever done. I played the drums – won...

Recently, I stumbled upon the concept of the present-focused and the future-focused. A fascinating idea, that also helped me grasp why I act the way I do. “"In a present-focused mindset, you live for today and do what feels good right now. You are playful and impulsive, avoid anything boring or repetitive and get fully immersed in the ...

A recent burst of fear and angst made it quite real: In 4 months I will leave my current endeavors in Vienna, a month later I'll have left Austria for good. I'm starting from scratch, and I have realized that I am scared of that. It's not that I am scared of moving to the big city, the gravity of New York City has been a big influence ...