When I finished one of the day’s jobs, the customer asked if I wanted a cup of coffee. I politely declined and explained that I had to head to my next appointment. He smiled at me and said: “Oh yes, you have time.” And of course, he was right. Sure, I had another customer to get to, but it really wasn’t that urgent. There was room for a Swedish fika moment.

This blog has moved from Bear and now has a new home on Micro.blog. But it was far from an easy or obvious choice. I posted my first entry on Bear on February 16, 2023, and I still love the platform. My time there has led to several valuable connections, thanks to the fantastic community that has grown around it. Creating the Bearming theme also brought me both joy and new knowledge.

I listened to an interview with the Swedish artist Ernst Billgren. Among other things, he said: If we had half as many opinions, and if the ones we had were half as strong, I think we would live happier lives in a more peaceful world. I am convinced that this is true. There is so much suffering in our world and in our lives that could have been reduced or completely avoided with less strong opinions.

It’s been a pretty challenging week at work — lots of home inspections and a whole lot of driving. I did the math, and on average I’ve been doing six jobs a day and driving twelve Swedish miles (about 75 English miles). Yesterday, during my lunch break, just as I finally sat down to relax, the office called. They asked if I’d be up for working some overtime. I replied with a polite but firm “No”.

Inspired by Juha-Matti Santala’s post, Short History of My Blogging Journey, I decided to write a little about my own blogging journey — which has been a bit bumpy, to say the least. I started blogging about 20 years ago using Movable Type, which was pretty much the only tool available at the time. After about a year, I switched to WordPress. My first blog was called Smidigt (Swedish for “easy/handy”).

I’ve been thinking about why I write… Is it a call for attention? A hope that it might lead to something “big”? A fear of missing out? To be honest—yes, that was true in the past. And it felt good, for a while. But then, it started to itch… A constant sense that nothing was ever good enough, no matter how successful things looked from the outside. Always chasing the next thing, trying to unlock the secret to “success.