Why can't it just work?

We are still missing the dividends as of December 31, 2024 regarding BlackRock TCP Capital Corp. Common Shares (TCPC) in our endowment insurances at Nordnet AB. Even before we receive these, albeit small, dividends, it has been established that December is our best dividend month for all of 2024.

Needing the dividends worth a modest $79 before I can close both December and all of 2024 is incredibly frustrating. Hopefully I'll see a notification on my phone tomorrow when I wake up, otherwise I'll have to contact Nordnet.

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I was like a bull in a china shop

When I enter work mode, I lose both space and time. Apart from having to manually enter each individual dividend into the correct cell and delete by hand them at the end of the year, my Google Sheet is fully automatic and calculates everything via connections between the different pages in my spreadsheet and Google Finance. Even if I could, I would never give Google Sheet access to our endowment insurances.

After being in my own world for almost two hours, deleting all the 2024 dividends and making some minor adjustments, I got a feeling that something was wrong, very wrong. And then it hit me, I had forgotten to make a copy and had made all the changes in the spreadsheet for 2024 and not 2025, meaning all the information about 2024 was completely gone. When I discovered the error it was 11:10 p.m. and the world's most perfect husband called it a night.

Which was good, because when I calmed down the next day, I realized that I should have been able to restore the document to before I made all the changes. Luckily, it was extremely easy to restore the document to the "correct" version and the only thing I lost was two hours of work.

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The movements are too steep

For transparency and my own agenda, I strongly dislike our previous government, the Social Democrats with the support of the Green Party and the tacit acceptance of the Left Party, who ruled Sweden for 8 years. At the last election, I voted for the current government. I deeply dislike socialism, communism and wokeism.

There is an invisible pendulum that swings back and forth and if you are lucky you are in the "zero position" of the pendulum when you are in the hot spot. For example, I went to primary school in a municipal Swedish school during the 1980s when the pendulum was in the "zero position". During this decade, the Swedish school system was absolutely top-notch.

We had competent, qualified teachers who led the school classes with discipline and authority without hitting the children like the teachers did when my parents were in school. All parents received a letter from the Swedish National Agency for Education with instructions on which school and what time their child was expected to be present. The best part was that it was even difficult to find a bad or neglected school, whether in the big cities or in the countryside at that time.

In 1992, the independent school reform was introduced and the Swedish school system was fundamentally changed, and the pendulum began to swing. Today, it is up to each individual parent to ensure that their offspring ends up in the absolute best school. If you have a parent who doesn't care, you are guaranteed to end up in some of the neglected municipal schools.

The difference between a good school and a bad school is like night and day, even if it's only a 15-minute walk between them. Furthermore, discipline has long been gone and there are no longer any demands placed on the students. The pendulum has swung far too far to the left.

Since Mr. Elon Musk bought X, it feels like the pendulum has started to swing back and common sense is prioritized over having the "right" values. The process accelerated with the outcome of the US presidential election last fall.

I myself am incredibly grateful and really hope that everything related to woke is erased forever. However, I fear that the pendulum will swing far too far the other way, just as it did during the woke era. Imagine if we could limit the pendulum movements so we could avoid the absolute worst madness.

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It is very easy to be wise in hindsight

The world's most perfect teenager has been reading aloud to me from the memoirs of a Norwegian/Swedish actor/singer throughout the winter break to expand his vocabulary with Swedish words. All on behalf of his current Swedish teacher who discovered this during the fall semester.

In my naivety, I thought Junior's Swedish was better than it actually is, I'm almost shocked at how poorly he understands Swedish words. He can neither read nor understand many words. It feels like I've been taken back twelve years to when I started teaching him to read.

We have always read books together, Junior and I, but always in English as we have always been told that since he has two 100% ethnic Swedish parents, he must prioritize English. I thought he would get the Swedish language "for free", but that wasn't the case. In retrospect, I realize that we should have read every other book in Swedish.

At first he read from a book his teacher had chosen, but if it became too difficult we were allowed to change. She said quote "The most important thing is that he reads, secondarily what he reads" unquote. After struggling with the origin book for ten pages, we had to switch to the autobiography he is now reading.

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Fun causes time to vanish

The flu is finally starting to loosen its grip on me. The fever is down and the sore throat is almost completely gone. The only thing that really remains is the pain in the joints. The positive thing about being sick is that I have actually been "off work" for these three days. Apart from these sick days, I have worked every day, weekdays and holidays, between Christmas and the Epiphany weekend even though we were supposed to be off.

My guys are sad for me that I'm sick but at the same time happy for themselves because they got some free time from their wife/mom who always wants to do something together as a family. Tomorrow is our "last day off," but we have to go to the store to compile all the products in advance because the plumbers are coming at 7 a.m. on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, I have to take the time to answer all the questions the accounting assistant has about this year's audit. I really have to muster all my available patience to answer all the irrelevant questions, after thirty years I still haven't met a single accounting assistant who asks relevant questions. I hate playing this game.

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