When you have no one else who can say this to you, let me

You are not strange or normal or different or anything else that is not a description of you but a comparison to something and anyone and anything else. Do not get stuck in yourself believing that you are you and the world is the world, but remember that you are you and someone else is someone else, and the world is just a temporary home for a bunch of people at least as screwed up as you are (because God help me, do we need help). We’re not meant to do this alone so find someone who can pull pieces from the darkness and show you the light of being a part of this terrifying place, even though that means knowing that no one actually is. We’re outstanding, a species consisting of individuals existing within their own heads. Generation after generation, all believing they’re as alone in their thoughts and opinions and feelings as we think we are. Just be. And know that someone else is too.

(find someone in the sea of faces)

Surviving school (or not)

So yesterday I got ready for my first day at school. Clothes, breakfast, makeup.. only to get there and realise I didn’t have to go to my first class and could come back six hours later. Wandering home my heels made my feet ache and slip on the ice that was somehow still there even though the snow melted the day before, and I don’t think the sky ever turned bright. Back to school later and then back home. It wasn’t horrible. I met some nice people and stuff. And then I went to bed at like seven and thought I was gonna get up later and do everything I had to. Spoiler alert: I didn’t. I slept more than eleven hours. Something about school and the darkness and.. school just makes me want to sleep.

But this is my last term. Thank God, because I am so sick of this. I realised a while ago I chose the wrong subjects to study and that does not help the motivation. I got an awesome backpack for christmas and I just want to go away, travel the world.

But for now I’ll stay here and obviously survive and hopefully live. It’s not bad, it’s just too much of not what I would have chosen to do. And my backpack stands in the corner of my cabin like a promise.
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Ego

I’m made of flaws, insecurities stitched together. I’m the most confident person in the world, yet people terrify me. I don’t trust them, I trust me, but I do not trust them to not judge me whenever I’m trying to make a joke or laugh too loud. It’s so beautiful being around people you love, and whom you know love you back. Still, I egoistically rejoice in the feeling of having people love you more than you love them. Simply because it’s an ego-boost. The problem of the world lies in us trying to fall in love with ourselves instead of simply being ourselves and falling in love with other people.

Artists dream

I just want to create stuff and get enough sleep. I want the contrasts, the darkness of the world and the brightest soul humanly possible. I want the world and I want to get out of it, be more than it to be able to look down at what it really is. I want late swedish summer evenings, when the sun doesn’t set and I can sit next to my big window painting in the light from it. I want to travel the world and I do not want to own my own heart. I want to be no one and I want to be the person everyone dreams to become. Freedoms lies in the traces of my decisions, rests in the way my heart could never be locked in a city to long, and belongs in the wilderness of nature and the love that makes me run.

How to get inspired

I want to sparkle. Not in a twilighty, Edward Cullen kind of way but I feel a bit boring, a bit tired and empty, the corners of my mouth turned down in something else than artistic sadness. I’ve lost my inspiration and I’m thinking about what to do to get it back.

  • Dance. Which I just did, and it kinda helped.
  • Go for a walk. Man, it’s raining outside and it’s the perfect weather for running around on the empty streets like you just don’t care.
  • Create anyways. Well I’m writing now, am I not.
  • Love people. My flaw. Or well, the flaw lies in me not wanting to be around people at all times. And not now. But I do need them, I always need them to make me happy.
  • Log out of the freakin’ computer. So I will.

How to live now (or Thoughts from the gym – a treadmill lesson)

Why is it so much easier working out in a gym than it is to put on those workout clothes at home? To me it’s partly because the gym makes me feel awfully cool. But there’s something else to.

When I go cross-country skiing for more than perhaps 20 kilometers, I always have this problem with breathing. And so I break down. And my tactic to get back up again is to focus on what is going on at the exact moment. Look ahead of me, but keep all of my attention at what my body is doing and not on the road that’s still to go.

I think that’s the reason I like the treadmill. I am always right there, I can never put my eyes on the road 20 meters away and think about how much it’s going to take to get me there. I do love running outside but it’s harder for me.

The same lesson applies to life. Focus on the now and you’ll get a future, focus on the future and you’ll live your entire life in something that’s not happening. Start everyday with thinking through what you have to do, then sort out the things you can actually do today from all the things that perhaps needs to be done tomorrow or the day after that. Then push the things you’re not gonna do today out of your mind. Do not worry about them until their time comes. Stop resting the world on your shoulders and stop procrastinating.

Take a deep breath and do what you need to do today.

Procrastination and self doubt

I never quite realized the connection between those two, procrastination and self doubt. I guess it’s obvious though, self-doubt; as in believing (or not) that you can do it, and procrastination; as in doing it (or not). I suppose I’ve just always seen myself as so confident. In a way not, because I was always the shy little kid, but still, because I was the one who didn’t want to hang out with them, because whenever people didn’t like me, my unconscious though process went: Wow, what’s wrong with them? Always them, never me, and I’ve always thought that was the main difference between confident and non confident people. Either you think Wow what’s wrong with them, when they don’t like you, or you think Wow, what did I suddenly do right? when they do.

Childhood stories and my unsuccessful try at psychology aside, I’ve kind of realized that I’ve always thought of myself as the complete opposite to self doubting (okay, not really psychology aside). So to the point that even when I do doubt myself, I don’t realize it. I don’t realize that the reason behind sudden dips in my mood might be a sudden disbelief in myself. And now, looking back, I wonder how many times that’s happened without me even noticing it.

Now, though, it has showed up in my homework. My ability (well, disability) to get it done. The school I’m in now is so much tougher, the people I hang out spends about 37,8 % of their time worrying about their grades, and I think that’s getting to me. Me always agreeing that yeah, the tasks are impossible, when I used to honestly believe that I could be fine with studying to a test for about one hour. But you can’t just say that to people that it wouldn’t work for. And let’s not blame this only on that development, because I don’t know (and don’t want to know) where my grades would have ended up without those extra few hours of studying, but now I’m one of the people never doing things, until the point where I stop believing I can. Or maybe that’s the reason why I’m not doing it, I don’t even know.

I’ve postponed my essays because I don’t think I could write them if I tried, not because I think I don’t need to spend that much time on them. But I’ve noticed that the big, tremendous difference lies in how I look at the blinking cursor. And looking at it while thinking about how good I am at this, trying to scare my self doubt away to the dark corners of my brain, and then starving it back to death, is how I’ve written this post. So now I’m gonna go try it on some homework.

Never settle for less than the best

Several of my closest friends have done things similar to this, and I hate it. It annoys me to no end. They settle down with people they think they kinda like. Settle down might be a slight exaggeration, but they think that’s enough. It’s like an article I read recently, that told you to marry the equivalent of your best friend, not of the colleague you can have a beer with after work. They settle with people that aren’t the best. And this is nothing negative to their beloved ones, because this has got nothing to do with those, but is instead about the way they work together. They shouldn’t settle for someone they don’t feel enough for.

How to follow through

When I really want something I’m almost afraid of saying it out loud. It goes with things I want to quit, want to start or want to be really successful in. But I’ve noticed that it doesn’t work like that and that it destroys my goals rather than builds them. As human beings we need community, we need to share and show and talk about things and I want to shout at God for creating us that way at the same time as I want to thank him.

I want to be able to do everything by myself. I really do. But lately I’ve told a few people about a few things that were really important to me. Some of them I never even realized I’d kept as secrets, while some of them were things I’d thought I’d never tell a living soul. And that’s the only thing that worked. Things I’ve thought about quitting for years, my secret dreams of what I would really like to do when I quit school and grow up. If there is one thing I’ve heard way to many times, it is that you should share goals you really want to keep. With family, friends, or someone on the internet. But it was one of those quotes I never thought applied to me until I noticed that it really does.