Today being Christmas, of course I thought it would be a perfect time to book a ticket to fly home. Empty airports… friendly fares… friendlier cabin crew.
And so I did it.
It was a beautiful and sunny morning as I took off from Barcelona today around 9am. The sky was perfectly clear so I could see every gleaming little house as we edged along the Mediterranean coast, by Marseilles and Cannes, and then as we turned inland over the Alps.
The plane flew over thousands of sunny and snowy peaks, and down into the Bavarian flatlands. We landed in Munich.
45 mins later, another plane lifted me up again. More snowy peaks — Germany, Austria, Slovenia, then into Croatia.
The winter clouds finally started to gather as we reached the smoggy grey fortress that is my hometown of Zagreb. But even here, there was still some sunlight — magical for central Europe in December.
Like Little Red Riding Hood, I took the shortest path to my grandmother’s place. What followed was a typically overwhelming Christmas lunch — an appetizer made up of minced pork meat wrapped in sauerkraut, then some sort of beef soup, then a greasy duck with the local mlinci, then a chocolate cake which was the only part of the feast I was allowed to skip as I cited medical and psychological reasons to avoiding sugar.
Now as I write this, I am on the couch recovering from the travel and the food.
It would be easy to shrug, say I don’t have anything more to share with you, and just tell you to enjoy your Christmas.
But the fact is this:
Since I was deprived of Internet in general and email in particular the whole day until just now, I actually found my brain bursting with bunches of ideas as I looked down onto the Alps.
I will share one of those ideas with you tomorrow — a way to grow my health newsletter via paid ads, while not paying nothin’ for the ads.
I don’t know whether this idea will work, but I plan to test it out starting right after the holidays. And you can try it too if you find out tomorrow what I have in mind.
For today, I will simply say that good things happen when you cut off the stupid Internet, including that social media channel known as your email inbox.
Try it. You might be inspired by the ideas that you invent in the absence of constant digital input. Plus you might enoy the holidays much more.
And if you find yourself bored and craving stimulation while you go into airplane mode with the Internet, then try reaching for a book.
I have one I wrote that I keep recommending. You can find it below. Whether or now you choose to get it, merry Christmas.