Daily Prompt

Stop GEZ

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Daily writing prompt
What’s something you’d love to see in the future, but know you probably won’t live to witness?
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In my country there is an institution called GEZ (Gebühreneinzugszentrale). In Great Britain they have something similar. We have to pay for public TV regardless if we actually watch it or not. Every household has to pay it, roughly 20 Euro a month, even blind and deaf people have to pay it. In the past they actually send people around to force you to pay but since a lot of people refused (why should I pay something I do not want) and got creative in hiding their TV sets. Then they just changed the law and now every single household has to pay, there is no exceptions. I don’t watch it, but still, I have to pay. It’s legalized robbery. And to make a point, if people don’t pay, they send them to jail. All about shitty TV nobody wants to watch. You can tell, it’s something I really really really hate. A fair system would be if they would just turn it into a subscription service, like Netflix or Paramount, but they know, nobody would subscribe. So yes, that is the one thing I really would love to see go away for good, but I doubt it will ever happen.

Daily Prompt

Tidy

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Daily writing prompt
Do you believe in minimalism?
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Do I believe in minimalism? Nope! I do believe in clutter free, in keeping everything tidy and clean, but this minimalism movement is nothing for me. I do need my surrounding to look beautiful. I enjoy nice pieces of decoration, not too many tho. Instead of stuffing my entire home with all sorts of random decoration pieces I rather go with a few handpicked special items, like this 160 years old kitchen scale in my kitchen or this little gargoyle statuette by the tree in my roof garden. For me, decoration does add some happiness to the home. It just should not get out of control, because that would end in clutter and that is something I want to avoid at all cost. Clutter is anti happiness. So I follow the simple rule: Do I really need that? And does it make me happy? If it doesn’t make me happy, it has to go.

Daily Prompt

Books!

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Daily writing prompt
What’s the first book you ever finished and still remember to this day?
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Honestly, I do not remember. My childhood wasn’t nice, there was a lot of loneliness, abuse and trauma. My parents where not good parents. So I turned to books. I started early and I read whatever I could get my hands on. The first ones where the typical German kids books, like “Peterchen’s Mondfahrt”, “Räuber Hotzenplotz” und “Die kleine Hexe”, then everything from Enid Blyton and Astrid Lindgren of course. As a teenager I turned to books for grown ups. Jaws, long before the movie was out, the biography of Rose Kennedy, Lord of the Rings of course. There was this one book that hit my like a truck. “Das Mädchenorchester von Auschwitz” (The musicians of Auschwitz), a autobiography of Fania Fénelon. I remember, I started in the early afternoon and read the entire book without break through the entire night, crying along the way. I still start to cry when thinking about that book. That day I learned that the cruelty of humans has no limits.

Today I’m at the end of my 50ish and I still “read” (I switched to audio and ebooks at some point, because my home is too small for all the books) every day. I adore Terry Pratchett and I miss Marion Zimmer-Bradley. The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher are a must every year. There are so many awesome authors that I never run out of books I want to listen to.

Hhhmm still can’t remember the first book I ever finished. Can you?