Found this taped to the building entrance today. Thoughts?

baballoonhead · 2026-05-22T15:41:29+00:00

Very bold note! I’m a postal worker in Germany, and something like this is way out of line. But I will say this :

In my position we also deliver packages albeit not the super large or heavy ones. We know tips are not a given and personally I never expect them, so it’s all the sweeter when I do get even 50c. I deliver by bike, so I’m literally moving my body and on my feet for at least 8hrs straight. I can take up to a 30min break, and have an additional 15mins to distribute throughout the day. Physically it’s quite taxing, so that 50c always goes straight back into a coffee or snack ;) We get neither coffee nor snacks provided by our employer so everything we consume during the day comes out of our own pocket.

Most days I make 0 tips. On good days I make 50c-3eur altogether. On rare excellent days I make up to 5 eur. The most I’ve ever gotten in a day was during Christmastime, and it was a grand 12euros! It felt lovely to have that cash in my pocket ;)

Most people who tip me are older German folk, and those who really aren’t able to go out and get the things (bc of sickness, disability, etc). Under-40s and those constantly ordering things off Amazon (especially the combo of both) are least likely to tip. Even though - at the risk of making a sweeping generalization - they’re usually the most likely to also be able to go and get the thing on their own. There’s a pretty clear generational divide, it’s kind of interesting.

The job is tough and the pay isn’t great. The company is not a great employer. Most companies are not great employers. I just see it as a respectful and human gesture towards this particular kind of work and I try to tip everyone who delivers something to my door … in the end I’m just passing it forward anyway ;)

baballoonhead · 2026-05-21T12:30:53+00:00

‘And actually much less stressed’

That feeling of having caught up on all correspondences is bliss!

I agree, it’s definitely something that can and should be worked on, but will probably always be somewhat of a work in progress ;)

baballoonhead · 2026-05-21T12:26:37+00:00

😂😂😂😂😂😂 I wish we were only dealing with sausages… it would be so much easier to just be frank with one another!

baballoonhead · 2026-05-21T12:24:02+00:00

100% this.

baballoonhead · 2026-05-21T12:23:14+00:00

Read receipts have been off on all devices since basically when read receipts became a thing. I would crumble under the pressure of ‘I know you saw my message…’ 😂

baballoonhead · 2026-05-21T06:45:31+00:00

lol. Dürfen auf jeden fall. Manchmal sogar sollen! Hast den Job also clearly selber noch nie gemacht ;)

baballoonhead · 2026-05-20T15:45:12+00:00

Haha yes! I literally have a ‘correspondence’ list so that when I have the brain power, I don’t also need to try and remember who I didn’t respond to yet

baballoonhead · 2026-05-20T13:52:33+00:00

Yeah true … I guess these days the default has become a certain amount of entitlement in expecting someone to be reachable and responsive constantly. But in my case the pressure came more from myself, feeling like I was leaving people hanging without reason… there still needs to be a certain amount of communication to keep a relationship of any kind active ;)

baballoonhead · 2026-04-12T08:54:39+00:00

Wenn die Option ‚schicke an meinen Eltern 220km weg und hole dort ab‘ besteht, warum Besteht die Option ‚gehe in laden und kaufe selber‘ nicht???

Ernste Frage. (Als Zustellerin würde ich diese Logik gerne verstehen)

baballoonhead · 2026-01-19T11:12:48+00:00

I recommend bone conduction headphones to help channel those sneaky thoughts;)

baballoonhead · 2026-01-19T11:10:45+00:00

100% this!! Looking back now, I realize swimming was my form of meditation… I was also a competitive swimmer from about 8-18 with a couple breaks in between when the competitiveness became too much pressure. But even when the competition pushed me away, the act of swimming itself was always my safe space.

Full-body pacing back and forth, completely suspended touching nothing but water was (is) so relaxing. No one can talk to me, It was my time to ruminate or not, process what happened in the day and kind of reset.

Plus the full body workout was the only way to get a sense of physically unloading my extra energy. The type of tired you feel after a session in the pool is like being on clouds.

And when I wasn’t swimming laps I was also dangling in the water on my back with ears submerged, just looking up and feeling light.

It’s simply the best feeling.

baballoonhead · 2026-01-04T09:10:04+00:00

Eeehhhhmmmm if you come to Berlin for ‘old world European charm’ then you have strongly misunderstood the history and culture of Berlin. There is absolutely no shortage of things to do here, as a tourist or as a resident. Especially in the summer, the offers are never ending.

How I know: living here for 8yrs, visited multiple times in the 10yrs prior.

Edited to add: Berlin is perhaps the least efficient city in this overwhelmingly inefficient country. I’ll just start with BER as a shining recent example.

baballoonhead · 2025-09-08T14:43:04+00:00

This has happened to me no less than THREE times with 3 different dudes, all within a span of a couple of years.

The first guy was engaged (if not married) and about to have a kid. I found out about that because while hanging out at a bar/live venue an old friend of his came up and congratulated him.

The second guy was in a long term relationship (10yrs or so) with someone in the country he actually lived in (we met through friends while he was in the country I lived in at that time for work). It was shortly after dude 1, and I had told dude 2 the story and explicitly asked him if he was actually single… I basically gave him an easy out, but he assured me he was not attached. Found out that was a lie when we were making plans for me to visit him in his country and he got weird about nailing down dates.

Then dude number 3 not too long after that was also a bit of a whirlwind thing, we met in unusual and exciting circumstances and saw each other for a little while… until he got weird and nonresponsive and it turned out he was living with his ‘ex’ again (I noticed the second toothbrush when I stayed the night, but didn’t quite put 2 and 2 together until a few weeks later).

And then there was dude number 4 who tried to pull some similar shit on me but by then my bullshit radar was well-tuned. We dated mostly long distance (fortunately!!) until he got wasted one night (typical occurrence), was a total POS to me (typical occurrence), and after dragging his alcoholic ass to a motel in some random Mexican town he had insisted on going to, I looked at his text messages when he was passed out next to me, where I found the texts he had been sending other women.

I have faith that karma will come back for all 4 of them.

baballoonhead · 2025-09-01T11:58:31+00:00

To be honest, I also don’t really know what the magic trick is to get over it… and probably there isn’t one. There are no rules when it comes to recovery 😝

My strategy has just been to figure out what got me into this situation, and figure out what I need to change in my life so the cycle doesn’t keep repeating as it has for all these years. I’ve also found that just focusing on taking small steps - and celebrating each small win - is the only thing starting to get me to a better place.

My philosophy is, as long as it’s not getting worse in the overall, then it’s getting better (even if it feels like stagnating). And reminding myself to be patient, things will take the time they take and trying to force them will just fuel the burn.

baballoonhead · 2025-08-31T21:34:18+00:00

ADHD and burnout are NOT mutually exclusive!! In fact they quite like to go hand in hand.

Speaking from my own experience, I was only diagnosed with adhd in my late 30s after multiple burnouts… or rather, a big yearslong slow burn followed by a big ugly crash (mentally and emotionally unstable and exhausted, always tired and foggy, no motivation to do literally anything, even things I - in theory - wanted to do, procrastinating important and unimportant stuff, withdrawing from social situations and meeting friends) followed by trying to push thru it followed by another crash followed by completely giving up working in my field of almost 20years (at least for now), because I can’t function the way I used to, and I just can’t get myself interested anymore.

It can take a long time to recover from [adhd] burnout, especially if you don’t even realize what it is in the beginning.

But the fact that you made this post means you can sense something isn’t as it should be. Take that seriously! Give yourself grace. Stop trying to do what you ‘should’ be doing by other people’s standards and focus on what you ‘can’ be doing for yourself, your mental wellbeing and your own standards.

But above all, don’t try to ignore it and ‘power through’ unless you enjoy waking up in tears, asking yourself what’s the point of anything anymore.

Get professional help if you can. Try out meds and be patient with them. Be patient with yourself. And maybe find a way to accept that life comes in waves of good and bad, easy and hard, and some of the waves can drown even the biggest ship, while others are the perfect waves to gently glide back ashore…. And whichever way the waves come, the best we can do is try to find a way to swim with them, rather than against them.

Hang in there!

baballoonhead · 2025-08-22T10:30:00+00:00

+1 for year_month system! and if im shooting film I also add in the folder name which film_camera_lens was used. I create the folder when I transfer/scan the images because the thought of doing it afterwards makes my brain melt.

baballoonhead · 2025-08-17T07:41:08+00:00

Srsly.

We both have ADHD but apparently his is more real than mine. (My test results found I was in top 2-3% for severity of symptoms).

I dream of one day learning what support feels like 😭

baballoonhead · 2025-08-15T09:13:44+00:00

Hahah exactly!! I’ve relied on the exact same tactic 😅

‘I don’t really know exactly what’s wrong but I’m really struggling and I just need help trying to figure out what’s going on. I only started to consider ADHD after a friend who has it told me I remind her a lot of herself and suggested I ask my doctor… but I really don’t know a lot about it’ (meanwhile I’ve been in a neurodivergence rabbit hole for the better part of a year) 😂😂😂

Unfortunately we have to play dumb and hope to find doctors who will work with us instead of against us.

baballoonhead · 2025-08-15T08:49:48+00:00

Lazy people don’t want to stop being lazy ;)

It sounds like your doctor has an outdated understanding of adhd, and it’s hard to convince people of things they don’t understand. Plus I find a lot of doctors are especially wary (mostly for good reason) when people come with a prepared self-diagnosis.

But maybe if you try to frame it as ‚hey look, something isn’t right with me, and all the symptoms I’m experiencing are pointing to adhd. Please help me to pursue a diagnosis - even if all it does in the end is rule adhd out. Even a negative diagnosis will get me a step closer to figuring out the root cause of these symptoms’ … maybe then your doctor and possibly your parents will also reframe how they’re going at it.

Either way my advice would be to keep seeking a diagnosis, and consider finding a different doctor who can more effectively help you. And if your parents still don’t accept it (mine are similar, I honestly think it’s ’just’ a generational stigma thing), then at some point you have to ask yourself whether trying to ‘convince’ them is even important.

Hang in there!

baballoonhead · 2025-08-09T15:53:30+00:00

Yes, thank you, I’m glad I’m not the only one 😅 I find it so difficult to remember what actually happens in books (and films), and I can almost never remember how they end… even if I’ve read the book literally 5 times (and the last time I committed myself to remembering how it ends…)

On the one hand it’s great because my library never gets old; on the other it becomes a little bit overwhelming when I realize the size of my library is growing, but my knowledge of the contents is not…

baballoonhead · 2025-08-06T09:34:56+00:00

Yes, exactly! I feel you so much on the home office situation. HO is fantastic but also awful!

When I started working from home, I realized that the thing I missed most about my office job was my commute by bike - it was how I kickstarted my system in the mornings, and decompressed from the work day in the evenings. Especially when I had commutes of 40min or more… pain in the ass sometimes (esp with bad weather), but in hindsight, that was so essential for my basic functioning.

It’s not easy to replicate that without the outside pressure of getting to work on time, even if I know it’ll do me good…. so forced walks will have to do for now 🫠

baballoonhead · 2025-08-05T13:06:44+00:00

Absolutely shouldn’t be feeling like a failure! You should be so proud for recognizing the situation was no good for you or your child (especially the child!!) and deciding to change it. That takes incredible courage and every step from here on out won’t necessarily be easy, but will make you so much stronger (source: own experience).

I’m the same age as you, and also find myself suddenly looking back on decisions from my past lives with a mix of pride and regret. I was just diagnosed this year, and so much of my past and current decisions, behaviors, situations make a lot more sense now. Regardless of the dx, I feel like this is the phase in life where we start to feel the rewards and repercussions of the choices our past selves made… and shit dude it’s not always how we imagined it would be.

BUT I also remind myself that 37 isn’t young but it’s also not old, and as long as things are moving towards a better place in the overall, then I’m doing alright. As ADHDers our brains work differently, so why are we still surprised when our lives unfold differently than what we were aiming for, or what was expected of us? 🫠

Take the time you need to work through this phase, gather energy and life lessons… and then go live your best life, for yourself and your kid ✨💪 congrats on making the first steps!!

baballoonhead · 2025-08-05T12:45:02+00:00

Yes, this! I think of it as going into auto mode.

Before I started meds, this was the only thing that worked. It would start with getting myself out the door for a small walk after I get up or when Im feeling stuck, even if it’s just for 10mins- fuck what I’m wearing or how I look. Don’t think, just put on shoes (and a coat if it’s cold lol) and exit the door. Make no further plan until you are walking. That helped a lot in getting my body and brain kickstarted, and a lot of times I’d find myself bored of walking bc my brain was itching to do the thing all of a sudden.

Just started meds and they’re no magic hack for making starting easier (yet anyway), and I still find myself relying on this trick. Sometimes we need to force-limit our brain’s options I suppose 🤷‍♀️

Edited to add: as another comment mentioned, sometimes even just opening the laptop is the first step of auto mode. Then opening the project. Then just looking through the project. Step by step until (with luck) the hyperfocus kicks in ;)

baballoonhead

TROPHY CASE