March 2020

1

Lazy morning, giving myself a lie in after a mad few weeks. Finishing off Crime and Punishment while herself sleeps. Hard to appreciate older books and movies without context. I’ll spend some time reading up on Dostoevsky this eve.

2

The health minister here in Indonesia was confident that prayer would keep us safe from coronavirus. No surprise: that didn’t work. Two confirmed cases in Jakarta today. Hopefully now they’ll get their finger out and start taking it seriously.

3

Finished up my finance report for February: $6484 in affiliate income for the month, a new high. Skewed a bit by late payments, but I’m averaging about $3800 in affiliate income the past four months. Tis coming along nicely.

4

Spent a few hours this morning doing research for a future home base. We’ve narrowed it down to two European cities. Lots of factors to consider, but a big one is taxes. The difference between living in one city versus the other for three years could be as much as €50,000.

5

Said I wasn’t going to focus on video but ended up scripting, shooting and editing a 10-minute video today. It’s fairly rough but it’ll do. Probably far more people will see that than all the written content it’s based on.

6

This pandemic scare reminds me how little we appreciate normal times. Like, you know, four months ago. We had it good then, didn’t we? Someday soon we might have epic climate change shit to deal with, too. Today’s problems might seem tame by comparison.

7

Who is the most memorable person you met briefly and never heard of again? I think we’ve all encountered people like that. I’ll always remember that old man doing magic tricks in a Venezuelan bus station. And that macho masseur who spun me around a wet slab in Istanbul.

8

Still no confirmed cases of coronavirus here in Bali. Good chance it’s here and spreading but they simply don’t have the means to test and detect it properly. The streets are emptier than they used to be. We’re due to leave at the end of the month.

9

Scratch that. We leave on Thursday. Good chance we’ll be stuck here if we stay another three weeks, and methinks it’s not the best place to be stuck. Decided not to head home in case I’m carrying. Booked a flight to Tbilisi, Georgia instead.

10

I’m hearing people saying coronavirus is just another flu, that you have more chance of dying in a car crash, etc. This is stupid, shallow thinking. We’re dealing with a different beast here. China shut down its entire economy to stop this thing. That should tell us all we need to know.

11

Pushing close to my edge trying to get everything ready for us to leave tomorrow. It’s been a mad few days, busy and stressful, not good for my immune system. Which makes me more likely to get sick. Which could leave me stuck here.

12

In a taxi on my way to the airport. A lady died from coronavirus in Bali yesterday. She’d been in hospital a week but they had to send her sample to Jakarta to get tested. Give it another week and I expect there will be many more cases here. Glad I’m almost gone.

13

Flying over Iran, one of the hardest-hit countries right now. I see lots of barren land, small towns in the mountains, snow on a few peaks. Read a report earlier that they’ve been digging mass graves down there for victims of the virus. What world is this?

14

Holed up in this Airbnb in Tbilisi, alternating between Netflix marathons and watching the world burn. Okay, so it’s not that bad, but it feels like the news gets worse by the hour. More dead, more infected, more restrictions, more fear, more confusion.

15

2:30am, on the way to the airport to meet my lady. She’ll be here just in time. Tomorrow Russia will shut borders with Georgia and Belarus. Slowly but surely, every door is being closed. It’s one of those rare times when you realize you’re living in history.

16

Happy birthday to me. Turning away from a supermarket because it's too crowded. Paranoid about washing my hands and touching my face. Getting annoyed with people on Facebook saying this is just another swine flu, no big deal.

17

We're the lucky ones. We can work from home and not miss a beat. We can get meals and groceries delivered. We can taxi app all over town. We were able to pack up and move here on short notice. Never felt as rich or as privileged as I do right now.

18

I take refuge in my work. Love that feeling when you're so deep into it that time becomes irrelevant, all wrapped up in Mihaly's flow. Today was the first day in a couple of weeks that life felt normal again, even though the outside world is still in chaos.

19

First proper walk around Tbilisi. It's surreal, so few people about. Found a big fancy mall still open, almost nobody there, employees standing around bored. No community transmissions detected yet in Georgia but clearly people are taking coronavirus seriously anyway.

20

eBiz Facts is constantly getting better but still very far from the grand vision. Thinking of ways to speed it up, produce more content. Got a dose of inspiration from another site today, a competitor of sorts. Might be able to do what they're doing but better.

21

The Georgian Orthodox Church is rejecting calls for them to stop using a shared communion spoon. They say it's holy and therefore people can't get infected from it. Meanwhile, 20+ priests have died of coronavirus in Italy. They mustn't have been holy enough.

22

Sometimes a good day is one where you don't want to work but make yourself sit down and do it anyway. And sometimes a good day is one where you don't want to work and you let yourself be lazy. Maybe the trick is to embrace whichever choice you make.

23

I see people making big money running Facebook ads to affiliate offers on ClickBank. $1000-a-day kinda money. I tell myself I could do similar, but I don't want to promote those products because I don't believe in them. That's what I tell myself.

24

We've never met these men and we don't know their names. But they stop the car, motion us to get in and we do. We park a couple of blocks away and walk towards a building. They don't speak much. We follow them into a darkened stairwell.

25

Barely been paying attention to the coronavirus stuff lately, mainly the occasional check to see if there are any surprises in Georgia. Better for my head and my finances if I focus on what I can control, which is the work I'm doing every day.

26

The numbers in Georgia are good but no knowing if that will last. Trying to take long walks while we still can. Along the peace bridge today and up through the old town. Two stray dogs took a shine to us along the way, joined our walk for a while.

27

Starting to miss the modafinil. Couldn't take it with me out of Indonesia, wasn't worth the risk. You could get it shipped to Georgia normally but right now things aren't normal. Could have used a dose today with the big sluggish head on me.

28

Up here you find a fortress from the 4th century, a fortress the Mongols once ruled. Nearby stands a 20-meter statue, Kartlis Deda, mother of Georgia, holding wine for friends and a sword for enemies. Below you see the entire, 1600-year-old city, blinking to life in the coming dark.

29

Seeing helpful content on other sites that I should have on eBiz Facts by now. Fairly basic stuff, but it all takes time. That gets me down. Working as much as I am, putting as much into this as I can... and there's still so much more to be done.

30

Up to 100 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Georgia now. They're introducing a curfew and shutting down the metro. Seeing more lines outside of grocery stores, more people wearing masks. Still no deaths from COVID-19 in the country. They're doing better than most.

31

Just read back over my batch of Momentos from the second half of February. No mention of coronavirus in there. Seems like the whole world turned upside down this past month. Heading into April, have we ever had so much uncertainty for so many people?