Logbook

Second day of the break continues with binge watching new Stranger Things episodes until waiting for the finale on January 1st.

This dividing into 3 parts was so unnecessary, I think, from a consumer perspective. But we live in a new world where content is stretched and released strategically to maximize engagement and subscriptions.

Still, it's nice to have something to look forward to.

First day of the Christmas break. Went for Christmas visits and took it easy. It was more about rest than anything else, stepping away from work and projects, letting the mind unwind, and just being present with family.

The morning started slow—no rush, no deadlines, no code to write or features to ship. Just coffee, quiet moments, and the anticipation of spending time with loved ones. There's something special about that first day of a break when you consciously decide to disconnect. The mental shift is almost tangible.

The visits were warm and genuine. Conversations flowed naturally without the background noise of work thoughts or project concerns. It's funny how when you truly step away, you realize how much mental space those things were occupying. Today, that space was filled with laughter, stories, and the simple joy of being together.

I made a conscious effort to keep my phone away, to not check emails or messages, to not think about what needs to be done next week. It's harder than it sounds, but so worth it. The mind needs these breaks to reset, to process, to just be.

A good reset before the break continues. Looking forward to more days like this—unstructured, unhurried, and fully present.

Today was the last working day before the Christmas break, and I needed to finish all my open topics at work. I didn't have much creative power left, but I still continued adding new lists to listpie to play around and figure out the best layout and workflow.

Experimenting with the process

Rather than building new features, I focused on adding content and seeing how the current system handles different types of lists. I even added a little AI helper to make modifications I want, which makes the editing process smoother.

This helped me understand:

• What layouts work best for different list categories
• How the admin panel feels when used repeatedly
• Where the friction points are in the workflow

The goal is to establish a sustainable process for maintaining new lists. If adding a new list feels too heavy, I won't do it consistently. But if the workflow is smooth enough, it becomes something I can do naturally when inspiration strikes.

Low energy, high value

Even on a low-energy day, this kind of experimentation is valuable. It's not about building something new, but about refining the system so it works better when I do have creative energy.

Now I can step into the break knowing the foundation is solid, and I have a clearer sense of how to maintain this project in the new year.

After working with dummy data, I decided to create a small admin panel to create lists and do post-editing before publishing them.

The workflow

The panel has a basic authentication view that helps me connect with a Google AI library to draft the lists and generate preview images. It usually struggles with connecting links, for example: IMDB links for movies, so I still do some post-editing, but it saves tremendous time.

Now whenever I feel inspired with a new marathon or have a new idea, I can just login and draft new lists and publish them. The friction is minimal, which means I'm more likely to actually add content when inspiration strikes.

Setting up for signals

I also added analytics and search console connection, which will give me signals in a few months if it's taking off organically. This is a very low effort project for us, and we have many small bets like this.

These kinds of projects also allow us to have different types of easy boilerplates to start new interests along the way with each iteration. They're not meant to be huge commitments, but rather experiments that can grow naturally if there's genuine interest.

The admin panel makes the whole process sustainable: low maintenance, high potential for organic discovery.

Today I started working on prototyping listpie.app.

I wanted a retro style and took inspiration from nano banana for the design direction. After many back and forth iterations, I finally started building the base.

The pivot: admin-only lists

Initially, I was thinking about letting users create lists by AI: it seemed like a natural fit for generating marathon lists on the fly. But after some reflection, I decided to go with admin-only created lists instead, at least in the beginning.

This approach gives me more control over quality and ensures each list feels curated and meaningful. It turned out great! I really liked both the design and usability that emerged from this constraint.

The core idea

This is my quick bet on user-like list styles to track progress, especially for people like me who love checking off lists. Think of it as a tool for tracking personal marathons:

• Watching all Oscar best picture winners of 50 years
• Reading 100 classical books
• Completing a series of challenges or goals

The satisfaction of checking items off a well-designed list is real, and I think there's good potential here.

Next steps

I want to start its base now so I can come back to it from time to time in the new year. It's not meant to be a full sprint, but rather a project I can nurture gradually — adding lists, refining the experience, and seeing where it naturally wants to go.

A solid foundation is in place, and I'm excited to see how it evolves.

Today I finally sat down to design a very simple marketing plan focused on Kit of Happiness but can be applied generally later.

It wasn’t about building a huge funnel or mapping out complex campaigns. Instead, I wanted something that removes friction and laziness: a small script that tells me what to make each week, so I don’t have to overthink it every time I sit down to create.

For the one week Christmas break, I studied ideas for the first video set: how to introduce the Kit of Happiness world, the brand language, and the backstory of how it was born. None of this is super detailed yet, but it’s enough to give the camera a direction and my brain a starting point.

Weekly video rhythm

The core idea is to separate thinking from doing:

• once a week: brainstorm three short video ideas for Kit of Happiness
  small, focused pieces (Reels/Shorts/TikToks) that highlight:
  • kit moments (cutting, gluing, crafting)
  • eye-level details (badges, missions, tiny stories)
  • behind-the-scenes desk shots from the craft station
• during a full break: add one longer YouTube-style video
  a calm timelapse or “come together” video where all the pages turn into a finished kit, mostly for parents who want to see the whole journey.

The goal is not to be everywhere, but to have a steady script I can reuse:
three small videos + one deeper piece when there is more time.

Testing the system first on Kit of Happiness

For now, this experiment lives only inside Kit of Happiness.

I want to see if this lightweight rhythm actually works for us:

• Does it make showing up easier, even on low-energy weeks?
• Can I keep the process playful enough that it doesn’t feel like “content grind”?

If it feels natural and sustainable, the next step will be to apply the same structure to other projects with their own weekly focus.

For now, it’s just a small script on paper/tablet in that manner.

But it already makes my brain feel lighter: less “What should I post?” and more “Okay, let’s film idea #1.”

Today I went a bit deeper into Stampie, exploring the idea of turning it into a small collection of digital goodies rather than just a companion app.

I added a Shop area where users can create personalized poster-style products using the stamps and countries. The idea is simple: you pick the stamps, or select countries, and the tool converts everything into a PDF ready to download.

For now, the checkout flow is just a free simulation with a loading state. I’m intentionally keeping it open and playful until I collect more feedback and improve along the way.

Initial products shipped

I started with two simple but surprisingly satisfying products:

• 📮 Travel Stamp Poster: Turning your travels into a beautiful stamp collection poster.

• 🗺️ Travel World Map Poster: Visualizing your travel journey on a clean world map poster.

Both are implemented in a very basic v1 form, but honestly… they already look nice enough just to get the idea.

Technical notes for next iteration

Things to solve when I pick this up again:

• Exporting PDFs without quality loss
• Converting stamp assets to SVG
• Keeping preview and PDF layouts perfectly in sync
• Making the export device-independent, likely via server-side rendering

But all of that can wait.

Right now, this project is intentionally expectation-free.
It’s here to nurture creativity, to experiment, and to explore ideas without pressure.

If you’d like to try it, for a last-minute gift or just for fun, everything is free for now.

A good day of shipping small, joyful things.

Today I went through the domains we currently own, something I like to do from time to time to stay conscious about what we’re carrying forward versus what we’re just renewing out of habit.

We have 12 domains in total. Two of them don’t have anything deployed at the moment, but they’re still part of ideas we care about, so instead of letting them sit empty, I decided to give them a minimal base again — something that can slowly find its organic place until we’re ready to pick them up properly.

• listpie.app [log]

  This was the very first app I built while learning Swift: also my first iOS app published after graduation. Over time, maintaining it became hard as my experience and priorities shifted. Still, it holds emotional value, so I want to bring it back in a simpler form.

• runwildpeanut.com
  Originally bought for a small apparel brand idea. It requires far more dedication than we can give right now, but I don’t want it to be an empty placeholder either.

I already ran a few small prototype experiments for both, just enough so they’re alive again while we keep renewing them. I will be taking a few days for each to finalise and publish.

2026 focus pyramid (docs-style)

Inspired by the visual pyramid, this is how things look going into next year:

#### Main focus
1. Kit of Happiness

#### Keep alive
2. Mockup Generator  
3. Temettü

#### Seed & observe
4. Stampie  
5. OneWeek.dev  
6. Listpie

#### Plant & forget (for now)
7. Langnotes
8. Go Berliner  
9. Run Wild Peanut  
10. Infie  
11. Kvik
12. Noe Crafts (main studio landing)

This structure feels honest. It removes pressure from everything needing to “perform” immediately and gives each project a clear intention.

Side note:
I also finally gave up and bought a new computer today. They were asking for another screen replacement again, which no longer felt reliable. It was time for a reset, tools matter when you’re building for the long run.

Overall, today felt less about output and more about alignment.
Putting things in their right place makes the next steps feel lighter.

This morning started with picking up my permanent residency card. After that, it was a fairly regular workday, nothing special on the surface, but mentally it felt like a shift.

In the evening, I finally gave up on my no-computer days. While still waiting for Apple’s diagnostic results, I created a temporary profile on one of the team’s personal machines just to regain some speed and freedom.

If you know me personally, you know this already:
I can live without my phone.
But not without a computer.

As soon as I had access again, I pulled a few small projects and ran them locally. Just that simple act, seeing things boot up, opening a terminal, touching the code was enough to unlock some inspiration.

That’s when Stampie Stamps came back into focus.

I started thinking about serving the passport stamp illustrations I originally generated during Shipaton directly on the web. The stamps are genuinely beautiful, and even if the project stays small, I like the idea of letting them exist quietly online with their detail pages with some metadata and map, building a bit of SEO foundation, letting them find their place organically, without pressure.

That’s pretty much the pattern behind all my small ideas:

• low expectations
• small surface area
• real care
• time to breathe

Just putting things into the world and letting them grow at their own pace.

These days I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of taking a gap year — which, if it happens, would be the third one in my life.

The first was right after graduation.
Pure exploration, freedom, and figuring out who I was before fully stepping into work life.

The second came when I was already feeling burned out during COVID times, and everything shifted in an unexpected way. That break turned into relocation to another country, rebuilding life from scratch, even redoing things like getting a driving license again. It reset everything, but it also came with constraints: needing to stay employed for residency reasons, keeping things stable for three years.

Now, something important is changing.

I’m finally receiving my permanent residency, which removes the requirement of having an employer to stay. That one condition has shaped so many decisions over the last years and suddenly, it’s gone.

With that, a new kind of freedom appears.

So today I officially started thinking about it more seriously:

• Do I stay with my employer for another 1–2 years, build more security, and keep things safe?

• Or do I take the leap, slow down, and focus more intentionally on side projects and ideas I genuinely care about?

There’s no decision yet. Just questions, pros and cons, and a lot of honest reflection.

But I feel excited, not anxious and that tells me something.

Tomorrow I’ll officially pick up my new residency card, and with it, the option to choose more freely than I’ve been able to for a long time.

For now, I’m letting the idea sit and seeing where it wants to grow.