I got a TV.

I haven’t owned a TV in years, ever since I moved out of the apartment my ex-boyfriend and I shared, and I never knew I missed it. But I got a great deal on a 40” flat-screen, HD, smarter-than-ever TV, so on a whim I got it. And I have to admit, Netflix does look a lot better on a 40” TV than on a 13” MacBook.

Sitting on my big, comfy couch watching my big, highly defined TV makes me think, though. First of all, obviously, it makes me think that I seem to be putting down roots in this apartment, this place, this city. Having my own comfy couch, my own TV, decorating for Christmas – what is happening to me? Is this becoming a – gasp! – home?

Second of all, Stevie (the first thing I did after I turned on my new TV was, of course, changing the device name in the settings to “Stevie the TV”, what else) reminds me of the last time I had a TV, and of all that came with it. Sitting on that other couch, watching that other TV, M. and the cats next to me. Ugh. Do I want to be reminded of that?

On Sundays, M. and I used to watch Formula 1 and NASCAR. Hanging on the couch, cuddling the cats, cuddling each other. A ritual, a wonderful ritual. I miss it. Watching cars racing in circles by myself, without a man and two cats next to me just isn’t the same.

M. also liked to watch those old re-runs of Columbo they showed on some channel late at night. I always made fun of the horrible dubbing on German TV, but I watched it with him nonetheless, eagerly awaiting Detective Columbo to come up with that “one more thing” moment, at which we high-fived - yay Columbo!

The Austrian band Wanda has a song called ‘Columbo” on their latest album that struck quite a sentimental chord with me, just like the TV does.

“Heute gehn wir gar nicht raus Wir bleiben im Pyjama zu Haus Nur wir zwei wie im Traum und Columbo schaun …

… am Ende faellt Columbo etwas ein lass es unsere Rettung sein”

Ugh. Living alone, without the man, without the cats, isn’t for the faint-hearted. It’s hard. But Columbo didn’t save us, after all, and it was my decision to move out. To have my own life, my own apartment, my own couch, my own TV.

And I manage. I’m okay. It turns out I’m my own Rettung.

I started blogging in January 2006. Not exactly the earliest of adopters; some first-generation bloggers had been around for 10 years by then. In my defense, I’m much too young to have started blogging back in the 90s, haha. Anyway, I started blogging on a Japanese platform (for what reason I can’t remember), then moved to twoday.net and later to Wordpress. What I really wanted, though, was an Antville blog. All the cool kids had Antville blogs, right? The reason why Antville was the coolest, of course, was that it was so exclusive. You couldn’t get an Antville blog unless you had signed up way back when.

So I blogged happily on twoday.net and Wordpress, connected with the blogosphere, met people in real life, had fun. Until about 2013, when it just … meh.

Obviously, blogging has been declared dead for 10 years now. Over and over again. The death of blogs has been lamented in many a blogpost (ha!) in 2007, in 2017, and pretty much every year in between. Twitter has been blamed, Instagram has been blamed, people’s non-existent attention spans have been blamed. For me, I’m sure, it was Facebook. Twitter not so much, that’s just for tiny tidbits and thoughts. Instagram neither, that’s just for photos. But Facebook, that evil mindsucking disease of a platform. It killed my blogging mojo.

I’ve been feeling uncomfortable on Facebook for a while now. I don’t have to quote all those very smart articles out there on how horrible Facebook is. It gets you addicted to the likes, it takes all your data and does God knows what with it, it doesn’t actually show you your friends' posts due to the creepy algorithm. (The latter being not such a horrible thing actually when you make the mistake of accepting friend requests from coworkers and realize how mind-numbingly stupid those people are. Nobody wants to see the “funny” pictures and creatively spelled thoughts most people on Facebook share.)

I stayed on Facebook way too long because … I don’t know. I guess because a lot of my acquaintances from all over the world are on Facebook and it’s pretty much the only way to stay in contact with them. But is it? And if it is, is that such a bad thing? Are these people friends? If they are, and they want to stay in contact with me, there will be a way.

What finally did it for me, what made me quit a month ago, was the fact that Facebook suddenly suggested becoming friends with a guy I had given my phone number to at a party a few months before. I didn’t even know the guy’s last name until then, but I recognized his profile picture. I had never ever given Facebook permission to access the contacts on my phone – and I didn’t have to. Apparently the guy had given Facebook permission to access his contacts, and there I was. For some reason, that angered me. Really, really angered me. If I want guys to know my last name, I’ll tell them myself. I certainly don’t want Facebook to tell them.

So, on November 1, I left Facebook. I closed the tab in my browser like one closes a door behind oneself. I deleted the app from my phone and my iPad. No more stupid memes and “funny” pictures for me. No more misspelled political thoughts from my coworkers. So sad.

Instead, I’ll be time-traveling to 2007 and blog about whatever my brain wants to get rid of. No likes, not even readers I guess. Good. Very good.

Lorem ipsum yada yada yada. Here we go, blogging like it's 2007.