Mom had struggled with lung cancer for the past few years. She’d done chemo and overcome it. But when she started feeling ill after dad died, it took the doctors a long time and a lot of scans to figure out that, while her lungs were still clean (well, minus all the COPD she also had), the cancer was now in her bones. From there, it went really quickly.

I have no fucking clue what else to write here. Life is miserable right now.

It’s odd how life just.. continues, as if nothing happened. My dad was always a huge presence in my life when I was growing up, and thanks to both my parents I have had a fantastic childhood. They never had a lot, and they gave me more than anyone could have expected from them. He was well known by everyone in town, and he was always kindhearted to everyone, even if they did not deserve it. He struggled with his health for the last few years, and it’s a relief for him and those around him that he’s no longer in constant pain.

I left my home country almost twenty years ago, but I’d been back plenty of times throughout the years, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. I definitely didn’t quite see eye to eye with him in the end. We had too many differences of opinion, and my dad was always “right”, so I didn’t much feel like sticking around for that. I’ve never regretted that decision, and I still don’t. This time, going back to my home town for the funeral, seeing what other people have built up there while I’ve been away, I don’t know how to feel about that. A part of me wishes that I’d also been a part of that, but another part of me knows that I have to make my own path. Just as one can not un-see things, one can not un-experience life, so I think that makes it very difficult for me to go back. I’m very glad to see people who are committed to a lifestyle, a person, a location, so thoroughly, but that is the kind of resolve and determination I just don’t feel about anything or any place, yet. Perhaps that will come later.

So, what next? We deal with the things that are thrown at us, and move on. Life will continue to happen. Let’s make the most of it.

Wear sunscreen.

I’m turning 40 this year. Insert cliché here. Because my past lives were all very real breakpoints in life I think turning 40 doesn’t affect me as much as it might others. If I had lived only one life, I would have a lifetime worth of things I still want to accomplish by now. Instead, I have two past lives’ worth of things that other versions of me wanted to accomplish, and I feel less emotionally attached to those things than I wish I would. I still want to cycle Japan, but it’s not a hobby that current-me would start. I still like going back to Holland, but I can definitely no longer call it my home.

I’d like to write a book. I’d like to build a computer game, from the ground up, by myself. I’d like to be at peace again, the way my past lives were. Despite having it better than ever, I’ve never worried as much as I do now. Though perhaps that’s finally starting to decrease a little. I don’t know if hitting 40, or other upcoming events in my life, will trigger a new life. For the moment at least, I want to make the most of my current life.

I’d write about public events or general content, but those posts tend to require a bit more time and preparation, especially in this day and age where the internet is getting more and more locked down and you can get “cancelled” for saying one wrong word. Blogging has become an ever increasing risk with lower and lower returns. I’d like to keep doing it, but things like the UK Online Safety Bill really make me wonder if it’s still worth it. Running a blog on your own domain with all kinds of cool features has never been easier from a technical point of view, but it’s just increasingly not worth it.

Callback to my post about Firefox vs Chrome: I’m still using both. On the desktop, behind the safety of a Pi Hole and several ad blocking extensions, I’ve completely switched back to Chrome and I love it. The UX just feels that tad bit sharper than Firefox. But on mobile, especially when I’m out of the house, Firefox is still my go-to browser. The lack of ad blockers in Chrome means that I frequently end up with three quarters of my tiny phone screen being filled with video ads and banner ads. That’s just terrible. Youtube has begun to disallow ad blockers on desktop, which is quite worrying in terms of setting a precedent. Enshittification is definitely a thing, and the internet we used to know is gone. If there is a place that preserves the freedom of the old internet I would love to know about it. Now’s the time to switch.

That came as quite a shock to me, even though I knew it shouldn’t. I know I’ve got health issues I should take better care of, but I always seem to get away with things as long as I occasionally do something healthy to counteract all the unhealthy things I’m also doing. That definitely seems over now. I’ll need to severely limit myself in what I eat and drink, otherwise I’m very likely to die. It’s as simple as that.

Initially, when I heard the diagnosis, I felt upset, because I didn’t want to lose what I had. I was happy with my life, I didn’t want to make changes. But now that I’ve thought about it, and now that it’s absolutely clear that it’s just necessary, it just seems fine to me. Just another thing I have to do to survive. I think I can adjust my mindset to accept the new reality, but only time will tell. Time never stops.

The reason I went with Firefox is because of its extensions, and its attitude towards free software. I fundamentally believe that software should be free, and having an open ecosystem for web technologies is something that Firefox contributes to, whereas (again, in my opinion) Chrome tries to take that away. Google would love nothing better for their users to be tightly tied into the Google ecosystem, which is an idea that I really dislike but at the same time benefit greatly from. Chrome’s sync for bookmarks, passwords etc. is just better than Firefox.

Another reason I wanted to switch is that, at the time, there were rumors that Chrome was going to completely get rid of ad blocking extensions in Chrome, and that would have been a dealbreaker for me. As of June 2023 this hasn’t happened though. I’ve also switched from an Android phone to an iOS phone during this time and have found the differences to be less, since both browsers use webkit underneath on iOS.

I’ll get to the core of why I’m switching back: Firefox annoys me. It’s just less user-friendly than Chrome. Here’s some things that Firefox gets wrong on mobile:

• I have a bookmark with the word ‘weather’ in the url, and a different site that I visit every day to check the weather for my area. Chrome is smart enough to present me with the site that I just visited first whenever I search for ‘weather’. Firefox insists on showing me a stale bookmark that I haven’t visited in years and I have to scroll down to actually to get to my recent sites.
• For some reason I’ve also seen the exact opposite behavior in Firefox as well, where I’ll have a bookmark for my online banking site that I want to go when I type ‘bank’, but because I’ve visited some obscure unrelated website that had ‘bank’ in the url, once, five years ago, I keep getting that recommendation rather than the bookmark I visit every month.
• Speaking of bookmarks, I’m probably old-school in this, but I have a lot of bookmarks. One thing I do a lot is bookmark a site on mobile to my bookmark toolbar and then later check it on desktop. Firefox mobile never remembers the last folder I saved my bookmark in, and it always expands all subfolders in all my bookmarks, so I have to scroll down for half an hour and read through every folder name to get to the toolbar folder. It sucks. Chrome usually gets this right and remembers the last folder you used, but if I recall correctly this behavior did vary during the last years or so, so it is or was not perfect either.
• Speaking of sync, I’ve occasionally had issues where the sync just didn’t happen and I sat at my desktop waiting for the bookmark to pop up. Chrome’s is pretty much instant.
• On Firefox sometimes the most frequently visited sites on the start page just disappear. I don’t recall ever seeing this in Chrome.
• Firefox crashes a lot, both on Android and on iOS. I’ll try to navigate to a site and the entire app just goes away and performs a load-from-scratch routine when I next tap the app icon. Again not something I’ve ever seen Chrome do.
• Firefox is just laggy when the phone is on power-saving mode. Seriously, it takes several seconds to close a tab on my iPhone 12? That’s very, very poor. As usual, Chrome’s UX is lightning fast even in power saving mode.
• Controversial ding: Firefox doesn’t know as much about me, so its recommendations are worse. I know, I know.. I say I care about privacy, but I have to admit I just like Chrome’s recommend articles way better than whatever Pocket comes up with. Though on that note, Chrome sucks in a different way: whenever it thinks I’m interested in “Thing A”, it will start recommend me all the local newspaper sites that write about “Thing A”, and I have to blacklist those sites one by one. I really don’t care about what some local town 200 miles away writes about the topic, but Chrome will happily recommend the same thing from a different local town 210 miles away instead.

And here’s a couple more things that Firefox gets wrong on Windows 10 compared to Chrome:

• Firefox mutes tabs once, Chrome mutes sites and remembers it for all eternity.
• Firefox sucks at multi monitor. It never remembers its window size correctly when you have two monitors with different display scales.
• Site compatibility: this is not a huge thing, but some sites just look better in Chrome. I’m not sure what it is: different fonts, minor layout differences, but you can tell. It’s not a good thing because it means the web is over-optimizing for Chrome, but it’s just the way it is.

I know things may improve. I was really hoping that they would, but right now I think Chrome just has more (human) resources to throw at these things, and that, in my opinion, makes it an obviously better browser than Firefox (disclaimer: for my purposes). Perhaps I’ll try this experiment again in the future, but I think the only thing that would make me do that is if Chrome somehow becomes worse. Then again, given the kind of anti-user behavior that Google thinks is ok these days, it’s entirely possible that Chrome will become worse year of year, but for now Chrome is definitely still the clear winner for me. Let’s revisit this in a couple of years and see whether my trust in Chrome turned out to be misplaced or valid.

I’m definitely resonating with the ‘middle’ in middle age lately. A lot of the goals I have are pass-me-ons from my younger self. I remember the enthusiasm I had for my goals back then, but nowadays.. it’s all just kind of faded away. I know that I have to do something with my goals before I hit old age. The reason for that is pretty simple: my family doesn’t age well. Looking at how others in my immediate family have aged, even if I do everything right, it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll have a good quality of life after 70, and personally I wouldn’t bet on my chances after 65 either. If I want to achieve things, it needs to be before then. It reminds me of the Your Life in Weeks post by Wait But Why. We should spend our time wisely.

I always considered myself an Optimistic Nihilist. The nihilist part of that is: I believe that, ultimately, there is no real meaning behind anything, and when we die, that’s it. But the optimist part of that is: if all that’s true and nothing really matters, then we might as well enjoy ourselves while we can and live life to the fullest. This was my belief when I was young, and I believe that I still believe this now, although lately my applied beliefs are more in line with that of a paperclip maximizer. I exist to provide, and I provide to exist. I try to make money so I can exist longer. I try to keep my body somewhat healthy so I can exist longer. I don’t consider any of that a great life goal in and of itself, but, despite literally decades of thinking about this, it’s still the only answer I can give myself, and I’m in a privileged enough position to not have to worry about the simpler challenges in life, like being employed, fed and healthy, for which I am very grateful. For now though, all I’m doing is buying myself more time to think.

I’m still at the lower end of middle age. I have time. I don’t know what to do with that time yet. But I have time. There should be more.

I’m getting older. I’m not the same person I used to be when I lived here, already more than ten years ago. I’ve got different priorities, different hobbies. Being back here feels like I am meeting my past self, exposing all those changes I otherwise don’t really think about. There’s some things that my past self and I have differing opinions on, and being where I used to live a long time ago those differences become readily apparent. It’s a valuable and interesting experience, because it helps me appreciate how I’ve changed, for better and for worse.

Lastly, I was able to test if I could still enjoy Japan in the same way that I used to enjoy it back then. This, at least, is one part of me that hasn’t changed. I don’t think anyone I’ve met here has experienced Japan in quite the same way I did (and that’s only natural – everyone has their own story to tell). The way I intrinsically appreciate Japan is mine and mine alone, and not something I can easily put into words. But even after 17 years that feeling is still there, and I can still find those golden moments here. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of Japan.

Happy new year everyone.

Some banal examples of this are creature comforts: if I’m already happy with decent headphones, why would I want to have better ones? If, ultimately, I’m content with living in a two bed apartment, do I really need a three bed house? Other examples are more fundamental: if I have enough money to take care of myself and my family, do I really need that new job with the higher salary and the fancy job title?

I find that it is difficult to go all-in on something if you’ve already convinced yourself that you don’t need it. Though, out of all these examples, I think the job example is the easiest to justify, because having more wealth will benefit you and those around you. The amount of wealth you’d need for that statement to hit diminish returns is likely beyond most of us. Fancier headphones or better quality coffee are probably a bit harder to justify.

Once you start striving for something seriously, it’s difficult to go back. A two bed apartment might feel huge when you first buy it, but if you used to live in a three bed house you’ll notice the size much more. If you’ve experienced fantastic headphones you’d absolutely notice the lack of fidelity in cheaper models. Lifestyle inflation is a real thing. If you truly want to be zen, you have to make peace with your lifestyle deflating as well.

I believe it is possible to both be content with everything and also strive for better at the same time, but I think you have to deceive yourself a little in order to accomplish that. Being truly zen about your situation means not striving for better, and striving for better means you cannot be truly zen. Doing both means turning a blind eye to that dichotomy.