Author: Trotzendorff

A person uses a hand plane to smooth a piece of wood on a workbench in a well-organized workshop with tools mounted on the wall.

You’re Not Your Job. Fine. Now What?

Published by Trotzendorff

It usu­al­ly hap­pens in a very ordi­nary moment. Some­one asks what you do. At din­ner. On a train. Between two meet­ings. You answer almost auto­mat­i­cal­ly, but not quite. There is always that tiny pause before the sen­tence lands. »I’m a lawyer.« »I’m in health care.« »I’m a car­pen­ter.« »I work in mar­ket­ing.« It sounds like a small dif­fer­ence. It isn’t. Because in that moment, you are not just shar­ing infor­ma­tion. You are reveal­ing a rela­tion­ship to your work, and maybe to yourself.

A person pours freshly brewed coffee from a glass carafe into a tall glass while preparing a pour-over at a café counter.

Some Things Need Tuning, Others Need Leaving

Published by Trotzendorff

There’s a cer­tain kind of sto­ry the inter­net instant­ly falls for. You know the for­mat: some­one with just enough sta­tus to sound unques­tion­able, sim­plic­i­ty, a sym­bol­ic detail like a black cof­fee, a min­i­mal­ist detail like a black cof­fee, and one sharp sen­tence deliv­ered with enough detach­ment to pass for life phi­los­o­phy: »I stopped adding sug­ar to things that were bitter.«

A tattooed person in a short dress balances with outstretched arms while walking along the edge of a rooftop, with city buildings and a clear sky in the background.

Free somebody

Published by Trotzendorff

You did every­thing right. You stud­ied. You worked hard. You built the résumé peo­ple told you to build. Degree, intern­ships, late nights, pro­mo­tions. The qui­et promise behind all of it was sim­ple: if you put in the effort, you would even­tu­al­ly gain some­thing that feels like freedom.

A barista carefully pulls a lever on a chrome espresso machine while preparing a shot of coffee, as a colleague watches in the background inside a café.

To Taste Everything

Published by Trotzendorff

»Dump the first espres­so of the day.« That was the advice, I saw in a reel the oth­er day. A guy stand­ing in a spot­less kitchen, speak­ing with qui­et author­i­ty. No dra­ma, no irony. Just a clean instruc­tion. Even if you sin­gle dose. Even if you weigh your beans to the tenth of a gram. The cof­fee sit­ting in the dead space of the grinder overnight will have oxi­dized. It will dull the shot. It is not worth drinking.