A Swedish Christmas.

Like always. I keep thinking that I won’t make it home for Christmas, but this year – again – it just happened to work with my travel plans. Nice, but at some point I also want to be dramatically missed. Sweetly told somewhere that ‘is it not difficult being without your family?’ but also surrounded by good enough people that it isn’t, not really. Maybe next year.

(But to clarify, it is amazing being home. I have an amazingly amazing family. Here we are on a frozen lake my grandma later told us not to walk on.)

IMG-20181226-WA0013_1545826935564-01

IMG-20181226-WA0017-01.jpeg

IMG-20181226-WA0000-01.jpeg

And now, writing this, it’s the dark evening leading up to the new year. My head is pounding and I want to sleep sort of, but I think I’ll read some poetry and stay awake the way you’re supposed to. I’ll wait a bit longer. That’s been the theme of my whole year.

(Does it sound like I’m not happy? I’m happy. Just on my period, ya know girls. I’m good.)

2016

The thing is, 2016 was a good year. Great year, 9/10 (always leave space for things to get better).

Because one of my biggest fears is that – because of fear – I’ll never get to do any of the things I want to do. But this year I moved away from home for the first time, lived abroad. Had several different lifestyles and different jobs. I was challenged and matured and met a whole new family of friends. Got to go to the US, Kenya, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Austria, and then Germany again. That’s actually crazy?? I’ve lived in 2016 for a lifetime. And those are the kind of years I want. Let’s dare to believe that things get even better.

picsart_12-31-10-23-45

Golden paper on the table so that we could make party hats. We look fabulous.

You Will Get What You Want

And you can call that karma or a result of good goal setting or the grace of God, but that desire inside will claw at you until it gets out, you will fail and fall but the itch in your guts won’t stop and so you’ll continue.

The problem is that you have to really want it. Do you want that body more than you want a relaxed day in from of the computer? Do you want to write or do you just want something written to brag about? Do you actually want to be successful or do you just want the money that follows? Humans are passionate creatures, and we pour water to build our waves of success until they become uncontrollable and break and drag you with them, but you have to get there. You have to know that you will let go of it, but then you will come back, because you have no choice. You will get what you really want, you will get results in whatever it is that your inner being can’t stop doing, can’t stop being.

It’s time to continue

It is now day 59 of the new year. 59 days since the beginning and 59 days since we woke up one morning and nothing was different other than the digits making up the number of the year. Yet it was a new beginning, a new start for a lot of people, we’ve made it into a beginning and into an opportunity to create yourself anew. A moment to make decisions resulting in you, after this, being a different person. A better person, more closely moulded into the one you’ve always wanted to be. The truth is that if it’s easier to change that time of the year, it is because other people do it to. Other than that, there is no reason to not have a beginning now. You can make a decision any day, any time, that can change your life and probably do that more than the ones you make on new years eve change you. Because, let’s admit, they’re kinda made to be broken. Or at least suspected to be so. And if you make your promise at any other time, you’re reasons are probably better since they’re not partly that it’s what’s traditional to do.

But, anyway, that’s not what I was really going to talk about. Because the problem does not mainly lie in the beginning, we have so many things we want to start to do it does not take a lot for motivation to suddenly flare up. The problem resurfaces a few days, weeks, months, years later. When you remember why this is something you haven’t done before, or have failed to do for a few increasingly rememberable reasons.

Today, I want to motivate you to continue. To remember to be happy over the bad weather, because then no one else will be jogging and you’ll become just a little bit stronger than them. To continue when everybody else quits because that is what will separate you from them, that is what always separates successful people from less successful. They’re on fire. But more importantly, they don’t burn down, instead brighter.

As time goes by, you’ll perhaps learn to make your promises and dreams into routine. You’ll learn that you’re strong enough to actually keep up with things you never thought you’d go through with, and that confidence will lead you to further believe that you can actually keep doing this, this is what you are now. And the time to start continuing is always.

Image