It´s 1:24 am. I´m listening to one of my favorite Google Tunes I recently downloaded to have it for my latest youtube video (sounds more as it is because I only have uploaded 2 videos so far). Now I´m sitting in front of my “Winston-Typewriter” App and typing down some thoughts that run through my mind at the moment.
Isn´t that a kind of crazy to have a virtual typewriter? Actually, for me may it´s a kind of nostalgic thing as so many stuff I currently re-discover. I started with film photography this year again. 2 years ago I started to collect Vinyl again. All this stuff you can count as “back in the days”. But honestly speaking, it feels good. It feels good to listen to Vinyl. Those cracks that you hear when you pop the needle on the Vinyl and the first tones come out of the speakers. It feels good to do photography again in a classic way because it helped me a lot to focus on the things that are important in photography. And to be honest it feels much better to write a text with this sound of a typewriter. Those “clack clack clacks” with every letter and the “Bing” at the end of each line. It reminds me that there was some time that I define as good and normal in a world that seems to get more and more out of control.

This is my 7th week in home office. I get up normally now 45 min earlier than normal when I go to the office, I make my breakfast after I had my shower and dressing me up for the working day. So while I´m eating my breakfast, I usually start reading my first mails that dropped in the day before after I shut down my Macbook, while sipping on my Starbucks Mug the first coffee of the day.

Basically, it takes me 5 seconds from the kitchen table to my office desk. Gosh…there were times I´d wish to have this more. But now after 7 weeks, I can not wait to get back to the office to see my colleagues. I fed up with sitting in my office back home from 8:30 am to 6:00 pm then shutting down the Macbook to take a walk for an hour or so….just to get out of the apartment. While the world is praising the new kind of working via Zoom and Hangouts and what so ever, I come to the conclusion for myself that I can work that way if I need to but I really REALLY appreciate the human company. But this is high-level complaining. I mean, I´m blessed…I HAVE a job. I´m healthy, my wife is healthy and so far no one in my closer environment is affected by this CORONA virus. I can go outside for a walk and enjoy the spring sun. So this is pretty cool.

But I need to remind myself from time to time that I´m one of the lucky ones. I always check the numbers on the Robert Koch Institute and the John Hopkins Institute on a daily base and think “good lord this is a global mess!” … I mean…2020 was just to begin and basically, it already ended in March with the shutdown. I have no expectations to go on holiday this year. All kinds of concerts and mass events in Germany are canceled until September (so far). And there is no guarantee that it won´t be extended. At least I save some money. But I need to do that because I don´t know what is coming in the months ahead. I can not be sure to have a job at the end of this year. But who has this job security at the moment, except you work in Pharmacy or the undertaker business?

No, this year 2020 will be memorable for us all. I need to smile right now because I thought about this song “Wake me up when September ends”…true.

So what are my expectations for this year? Well, first in line: Stay healthy, as well as hopefully everyone I know. Focus on the things that matter the most. I think a lot about my parents those days, and while we talked every 3-4 weeks before this crisis… we are talking now every 2 days. Just a quick call to check that everything is alright and to hear the voice of my mum and my dad. Nothing big…just the voice. I wish my dad would be a little bit more techie so that he can install Skype or something on his mobile or the iPad so that I can see them and wave into the camera. But well…they stopped with technology somewhere between 1990 and 2000. This is one of the first things I will do when I go to visit them to get them on an Online-Communication. No, communication is important today. Mostly important. Talk with the people you like. Stay in touch…do something…don´t sit at home and get depressive. This world is mad enough. You don´t be part of that. This what I tell myself already a couple of times.

I read a lot of Twitter as well, although I have to say that it´s not good for my blood pressure because there is a lot of tweeting going on by this guy in the White House in Washington D.C… I don´t know why I still read his tweets. It´s always the same procedure:

• I read the Tweets
• I read the comments by his supporters and the opposite ones I wonder how completely screwed the USA are today
• I wonder how this country will ever be able to be “the United States of America” again.

For me, this country is still one of the best ones in the world. so much space, land of the free, home of the brave. And one of my lifetime goals is still today to climb on an AMTRAK train to travel from East Coast to West Coast with my camera. But when I read those comments below the Tweets I see a country that is split up worse than back in the 1960s. Maybe it´s a thing that goes deep into the roots of the country, but since Donald Trump took power back in 2016 his actions made it easy that those differences between the two-party members broke out and in such a dramatic way, that I can hardly follow. I miss this “good feeling” when I look over to the United States as a partner, a lighthouse of Democracy…a country where dreams can come true.

Today I mostly see from the media a country that is divided, full of prejudice and fear of everything that comes from “outside”. “America first!” Donald Trump declared 3.5 years ago…and honestly reflecting he TRIED pretty hard. I put “tried” in capital letters for the reason that he pretty hardly failed. He wants to mess up with Europe AND Asian at the same time. He claimed that those would do “bad deals” with the USA.

For example cars. European car manufacturers sell more cars in the US and the US sell cars in Europe. Well, that´s true. Why? Well, honestly speaking. They are better. As simple as that.

Europeans don´t have that much interest in large cars (because of space is limited over here). We like fuel-efficient cars over here in Europe. Why? Gas is nearly 3 times more expensive over here as it is in the USA. And we have a different understanding of environmental thinking. And honestly speaking…they are less plastic. I know what I´m talking about. I worked for one of the big US car manufacturers. But these are subjective impressions by me. Others may think differently. Back to Donald J. Trump. What I really can not stand is this attitude this man has “I´m the best…I can do everything the best…and if I do something wrong, it´s always the fault of someone else.” This is the way I see this man. A narcissistic, mentally pretty damaged person with a huge amount of people that buy his story. And this is where I don´t understand the US citizens.

They applaud and defend him no matter what comes along. This is the point that I can´t take because it leaves a feeling in me that a huge group of US citizens is either blind or stupid…maybe they are both when I read the comments below the Tweets of this so-called “Leader of the free world”.

What horrifies me is the fact that these are patterns of behavior that I only know from history books. Blindly following, a little reflection, and less and less tolerance. These are all factors that can lead to a dangerous situation. I don´t want to call it because there is a long way to fascism. But no one can tell me that there no similarities. This “America first”, “Make America great again”, combined with fear boosted by the political leadership. Back in the 1920s, it was the great depression, a lost war, and a vacuum of strong leadership. And then there came one guy along, telling to make “Germany great again”…and that there was ONE group of people that are destroying the German economy and racial health. Sounds familiar?

I do not say that we are heading to a new “1930s” but in my point of view we are heading for a new type of country egoism based on the understanding that “my country is better than yours”. I times of global problems I can not think that this is the right way. We are facing global issues. Whether it´s climate, pollution, or pandemics. Those are problems that don´t stop at country borders. I don´t know who can believe that. But it seems a lot of people think that way. And it is very present if you have a look at the USA today.

Where is this Star Trek future, where mankind gets together solving problems as ONE race? We are blessed…I mean look outside into space. Where is the next planet with life like it is here on this wonderful planet? We don´t even know. We are guessing that there might be living in this universe and it would be foolish to assume that we are the only ones in this universe, but so far we are the only ones and we should appreciate that. And we should do this as ONE, not as a fragmented group of one species. Otherwise, I´m quite sure that in some thousand years archeologists from this world or another will discover the remains of our species and wonder how mankind disappears and they will say something like “Gosh, they were so advanced in their technology but unable to gain the most out of it. Instead, they did everything to wipe out themselves.”

Mankind can overcome ANY kind of challenge. If we combine global power we can overcome global problems of any kind. – Pollution – Poverty – Pandemics
We can do that…I convinced by this by 100%. But not as long as we take the country over mankind, my benefit over your benefit. I hope someday this might come true. I don´t think that this will happen in my lifetime, but hopefully in the years to come.