And last Friday I spent a few hours making dinner for the people I live with. And we all helped out with the dishes. And there was music in the kitchen. And then I met my other friend in a wine bar where we’re trying to become regulars, and the owner gave us stickers with a picture of his dog.
And there was a bit of a storm outside, and the snow flakes landed on my lipstick and I was laughing when I walked home. This week I’ve spent every day in my painting shirt and I’ve helped my friend decorate her walls and in the mornings I have coffee in different cafes and in the evenings I fall asleep earlier than usual since I started to work out, and life. Life is shaping up. Ups and downs, there’s been a few, and it doesn’t really matter. I’ve been happy for quite a while. The faster life starts running, the slower I walk.
I was watching a video where this girl talks about preparing for a preaching. She was going to talk for about 35 minutes at a conference, and she prepared for it a whole year. First just by keeping it in the back of her mind, but later by starting the actual, practical preparation. She felt like she was supposed to talk about the Bible, which is kind of a big topic. So she spent hours researching, looking at different overviews and thinking about ways to put the whole story into her short teaching. She got up extra early, stayed up extra late, and fell asleep while reading. She preached the story for friends and family to get feedback before landing in the final product, the best way to express what she wanted to say.
And all I could think was: That’s a bit embarrassing. I wonder if the other speakers put in that much effort. And if I did that, I wonder if I would tell everyone I did, or if I’d say ”Ahh I just threw it together, it wasn’t that much work.”
It’s a bit of a subconscious thought pattern, but I was wondering why those thoughts do come up. Why do I feel some kind of second hand embarrassment over someone putting effort into something?
If I give someone a gift, I always act as if it’s not a big deal. As if it’s just a second hand thought. To make sure they don’t feel bad. But why, is that not just a bit rude?
And when doing things, I think my brain naturally plans according to me putting the least effort possible into something. “How quickly could I get this done?” I think it’s leftover thoughts from school, back when I needed to schedule homework and study for tests. “Okay, if I write that in three days, spend a week studying for that, and plan for that presentation the night before, I’ll have time for everything”. But it’s become a bad habit. And the problem is that when I’ve started to think like that, it’s difficult to put in more time than what I’ve calculated for something. If I have a task due in a month and know I could do it in three days, it’s not like I’m gonna do it right now.
It’s practical, to be able to evaluate approximately how much time something will take. But I was thinking, when listening to that woman talk about her preaching, that I should also spend a lot more time on things. When I can at least, and I usually can. And I should care more, or rather admit that I care. Always, so much. There are journalists who follow stories for years, painters who spend hours on the smallest little corner of a painting, people who spend weeks preparing for a dinner party that then passes and turns into a memory. I love that.
So, my thought for this new year (kind of new year, I’m not accepting that it’s almost February already) is this: Let’s care more. Let’s put months of preparation into small artworks, or speeches, or moments. Let’s be overly attentive, overly loving, more than trustworthy. Instead of thinking, how can I get this done in the fastest way possible, think: how can I get it done the slowest? What would that look like?
In the middle of Stockholm there’s a stadium, originally built for the 1912 Olympic Games. In the winter they open it up for skiing, for free. You can just go there and ski in circles on tracks laid along the 400 meter running tracks.
I thought I’d get dizzy from just going in circles, but 400 meters is still enough that it’s not too annoying. The difficult thing is keeping up with how far you’ve gone, after a while I started doubting if I was counting the laps right. I should have made lines for it in the snow at the starting point. Like counting how many days you’ve been in prison on a stone wall.
Anyway. I made it 23 laps before the clock reached 21.30 and they closed down for the night. 25 laps would have been 10 km, so it was annoying. But that’s okay. I’m very happy these days.
Throwback to November. Thessaloniki is a million coffee shops. And coffee stands, that also serve pasta and cocktails, open 24 hours. Down by the ocean the restaurants were pleasantly empty after the summer crowds had left, and you could find a table to have a cheap glass of wine and look straight out at the ocean. Mount Olympus was right there, the pale shape of it half hidden behind the clouds.
We went hiking, not up Mount Olympus, but by some random mountains a bus ride away. We could see Mount Athos across the water, which is an autonomous region where women are not allowed. And they haven’t been, for like a thousand years. The only people who live there are the monks in the monasteries on the mountain.
But we hiked on our little peninsula, next to it, past olive trees and places of prayer. We were a bit frustrated, me and my friend I was traveling with. That feeling you sometimes get when you travel — like you want to find something. Like you’re there for a purpose, but you don’t know what it could be. Hiking helped. And the bus ride there helped, a couple of hours of just listening to music and seeing the landscape pass by.
We’re already looking for tickets back. March, maybe?
I’m in a cafe in a city the south of Sweden. They serve specialty coffee, todays special has a citrusy hint to it or something. And they’re surprisingly kind about my big backpack and the suitcase I’m dragging around, letting me take up space in their clean, modern cafe.
I’ve been staying with a friend for a couple of weeks, and I left her place this morning.
Now I’m in the middle of nowhere. People keep calling me and I keep not answering because I don’t want to explain that I have nothing to explain. There is not a lot to my life these days. A lot of things have been taken from me. And it’s fine. But I have nowhere to stay. No job. Less and less money left. No set path for my future. Whenever I want to start something, I feel God uprooting it. I have left a lot of things and not entered a lot yet.
But also, here’s the thing: this evening I’m taking the night train to stockholm. In the morning I’ll head to the airport. And then I’ll fly to Greece. I booked a cheap hostel, and a friend is coming with me. Im going to walk the streets and swim in the oceans and read the letters to the Thessalonians in the actual city of Thessaloniki.
I’ve been in a time of not having a lot. But at the same time I have had, constantly, just enough of everything. The lack is not actually a lack at all. I have had food for every day. A place to rest my head every night. My life will become a bit more stable, and I will like it, and I will be grateful for it, and I will rest. But I also rest here. In the sun shining into this cafe. In Greece, tomorrow. Everywhere. Everyday, is fine.
The dichotomy of it makes me think of one of my favorite poems, We were emergencies by Buddy Wakefield. The last line goes like this:
You call 9 – 1 – 1. Tell them I’m having a fantastic time.
October. My hands hurt from the cold when I don’t keep them in my pocket. I went on a walk down by the water, and it was so windy that my eyes teared up completely. On the way home I stopped by the supermarket. People looked at me weirdly as I bought milk and bread. I think I looked a bit crazy, windswept, hair messy from the wind and eyes like I’d been crying.
I haven’t caught up completely with the cold, and neither has nature. The moss down by the water was summer green. Most of the leaves as well. I took photos, because there’s something about it that I like so much. The sun, the water that starts without a border. There’s no beach, no rocks or sand. It almost looks like forest, and then just ocean in it. When it’s windy the waves rise and wash over the moss. I want to live in that little place.
Anyway. Blue autumn skies. October is cold, and sad, and bright.
She has a house in the south of Sweden, and she lives in her own basement. Then she rents out the upper floors. She gets up at 3.45 every morning to be on time for her job at a restaurant. Right now she’s thinking about buying another house, to renovate and rent out. She’s a crazy person, really, in the best of ways. And actually the most hard working person I’ve ever met. Here are some photos of her fixing up her extra bike for me to use when I was visiting.
We met when we both lived in America, even though Linda is German. And then she moved here, to Sweden, a few years ago. She’s fluent in Swedish now, but we still speak English to each other out of habit. She has a dream about having a red house here, where she can rent out rooms and have a cafe and give people a place to feel at home. She had that vision and heard there was a lot of red houses in Sweden, so she decided to come here. She learned Swedish by being an au pair. Then she learned the hotel industry by going to Portugal for a bit and working at a hotel there. She went to Switzerland to do a school of baking. And she’s worked at a hotel restaurant here in the south of Sweden. She is a practical person like that, even with the big vision. She’s diligently collecting skills, putting the pieces together. And she’s already doing the things she wants to, by renting out the house she owns now and welcoming people there. It’s not the red house, yet, but she’s stepping into the things she’s dreaming about, bit by bit.
I went to visit Linda this summer, when I needed a place to rest. Disconnect from reality a bit. Her house is just by the train station in a small village, and I arrived while she was at work. Right inside the door there were a pair of slippers waiting. There was a post it note on them, saying that I should not get my feet cold. And then there were more post it notes. One note on the cupboard with a note guiding me to where there’s bowls and cutlery. Another on the fridge telling me to take food and ice cream. Other ones saying I can use the Wi-Fi, and the Netflix password, and that I should take a warm bath.
I kept all the post it notes. Took them off the fridge and wall and cupboards. They’re in my notebook now, bright yellow reminders.
I’m not naturally a very giving person, I think. I’m a bit better at loving through words and conversation. But even the parts we’re good at, we still need to practice, or at least be reminded of using. And we also learn love, from the people we surround ourselves with. It’s a lucky thing, a spoiled thing, that I get to spend time with people I learn from. I take and take. It makes me restless, almost. But I also learn. Hopefully absorb to give, or become.
We spent maybe most of our time painting the ceiling in her attic. White, a thin layer, so the pattern of the wood underneath could be seen through. And then we took breaks to put frozen pizza in the oven and eat it while watching The Office.
We went to the beach less than we had planned. It was a cold July. Humid, sometimes raining. But we did still go. And I went by myself a couple of times, after she’d gone to bed, just taking my own walks.
It’s so different what you need in different seasons. And this was a good trip, giving me exactly what I needed then. Love, pizza, something practical to do, and the sea.
It’s been a summer of rain here in Sweden. It’s been flooding basements and causing roads to collapse. I guess it’s better than the south of Europe, where it’s been all fire instead. But when I came back to Stockholm and wanted to hike, the path was underwater.
At my parents place, taking summer walks.
Anyways. This post is supposed to be an update. And not just about the weather. I wanted to start writing on here again, so I thought I should start by sharing some of what I’ve been up to. I have gotten a degree since last posting, so I’m a journalist now. I guess. I’ve lived in Stockholm for about three years. I’ve gone through a break up, and I’ve spent the summer visiting people I like.
And now it’s fall. Autumn arrived yesterday, that’s how I wrote it in my notes. Dark skies. More rain. I woke up in an apartment I share with some friends and was confused. I knew I was in a familiar bed, but I couldn’t figure out where.
It’s the smell of this place. It reminds me of things, but not just of things that have happened here. This building also smells the same as the church where I grew up. And like old youth camps. So I wake up in the mornings with nostalgia, but I don’t know for what. I feel like my childhood friends should be sleeping on air mattresses next to me. I feel like my ex should be right outside the door. I feel like I’m 12 years old at Sunday school. It’s all blurry.
That’s my update. I’m a bit blue, but also excited for new cities, or old, wherever I’ll end up going. I have a lot of space to do whatever I want and go wherever I want. Horrible, really. I’m not a big fan of all these choices. The only thing I’d hate more would be to not have the choices. Anyways: I should start writing more, for the practice of it. So welcome back to this page. Let’s see where the season takes us.
Autumn is here, and in the beginning of October the lack of sun hit me. Nature was falling asleep, and my body just wanted to join. It got difficult to get out of bed, follow a routine, and really do anything of what’s necessary to stay healthy.
Since then, I’ve had a bit of a breakdown – stayed inside too much, been a bit sad, and almost failed school assignments. That was the culmination really, a weird week where I needed to hand in a text, and I felt like I couldn’t. It’s in times like that you notice how you’re really doing. When you try fighting it. It was such a good week as well, a bunch of great things happened, but I’d been down for so long that it didn’t help.
Anyway. After that, things looked up. Because they had to. A bit of a sad rock bottom, and now I’m doing really well. I’m buying some extra good food for myself, go to the gym, subscribed to the paper edition of the newspaper. Small stuff.
So that’s how I’m doing, how are you? And remember that even if the world is in a certain mood, you don’t have to feel the same.
eirians 