we made it this far

what a weird week. already on tuesday, it felt pretty long, though in honor of the auspicious date, i was determined to look at everything from a positive perspective. then wednesday came along and it only got longer. it wasn't a great day. i got a reminder that when you switch jobs, you will be surprised and maybe even blindsided and you will have to adjust to the new situation. i also sent a silent prayer of apology to anyone from an agency that i had worked with and who i hadn't treated very well. i'm so sorry! but then i picked up the positivity again and reminded myself how much of a difference i could make if i looked at it from a different perspective. 

that's what changing jobs was about - learning new things, stretching myself, thinking in new ways, doing things from a different perspective. and that's what wednesday gave me, so i can't really complain.

and then on wednesday evening, i went to an amazing event in a small castle turned school that's in the area. i heard very interesting, experimental music from two up and coming young artists - one who performed in the beautiful setting of a church from the middle ages and the other, which was accompanied by a most amazing set of synesthetic visuals. and an established artist, teitur, whom i didn't know before that day. he's from the faroe islands and his songs all tell a story and he performed at a grand piano in an amazing room of the castle and was so authentic and down-to-earth and lovely and genuinely talented and it was bliss. seriously, look for him on spotify and definitely listen to the song called clara. he told the story behind it and it was lovely, but you'll get it even without the story. it's a song of our times.

for most of the day on thursday, i thought it was friday. alas, it was not and that was a disappointment. world war 3 started, for no reason that anyone can discern, other than that putin has gone completely mad. i'm certain he has issues at home that no one knows about. and i think the only way to stop him will be for the west to freeze all his bank accounts, take his yacht and his house(s) on the french rivera. make it hurt. but i fear many innocent ukrainian citizens will be hurt before it works.

and now it's friday. and we made it. and the weekend is ahead. and despite learning that an old colleague is unexpectedly a trumpanzee, and world war 3 has begun, and gas prices are skyrocketing, we will go on. and i will get up and go for a long walk and then i'll settle in to work. and maybe do a bit of sewing and or weaving. and probably feel like crap about the lot of it, because of the aforementioned ww3. what can we do? if i knew, i'd do it.

22/02/2022

it's one of those auspicious dates. at least according to the internet. and since 22 has always been my number (thanks to my birthday being march 22), it does genuinely feel like it might be. all the woo woo folks on tiktok (there is something i love about how buttery and reassuring this woman's voice is) are saying you should send your wildest dreams out into the universe today, because on this auspicious date, the universe will be listening. i'm not sure i really buy that, but it does seem worth a try.

what's makes me think there might be something to it is that when i went out to feed the chickens and the outdoor kitties, it was sunny and there was a hint of spring in the air. the birds were all twittering like they could feel it too. 

i think what i most want to manifest on this day is positivity. it can be so easy to fall into negativity and complaining, especially when you're a person who says sarcastic or cynical things for a laugh. but i want positivity in my life, so it seems like the best thing to manifest on this auspicious day. so i'm going to be positive and spread positive vibes. when i would go for the laugh with a negative wisecrack or say something shady (also for a laugh), i'm going to be positive instead. sending positivity into the universe will surely bring it back to me - and with it will be all those other things that people manifest, like success and wealth and health and love. and who can't use more of those things? in any case, it's worth a try. 

what are you manifesting today?

occasionally (not often enough), when i feel down, i visit the daily delights on darrel bristow bovey's website. they make me want to price tickets to athens and get my ass down there. i especially loved the one from february 5. i wanted athens to be my favorite capital city all of a sudden. i've been there once and enjoyed it, but i'm not sure it's my favorite capital city. that's probably copenhagen, which seems a bit lame, given that i actually live in the country of which it's a capital. 

but copenhagen really is wonderful. it's colorful, walkable, beautiful. there are art museums, history museums, design museums, the oldest amusement park in the world, the #1 restaurant in the world, the best burger joint ever (gasoline grill)...i could go on. 

i was gobsmacked yesterday when someone i know, who is danish, said she hadn't been in copenhagen since 2016 and had, in fact, only been there 4-5 times in her whole life. i expressed surprise, perhaps too vehemently, and she got a little offended and said, "what would i need there? it's expensive," which is admittedly, true. but still. it's wonderful. though i didn't mean to offend her. i just can't understand that anyone wouldn't appreciate copenhagen. 

before i changed jobs, i was going more or less once a week. and i'm definitely suffering from withdrawal. that must mean it's my favorite capital city. 

those weird feelings you can't put your finger on...

i have the weirdest feeling when i go to our creative group's atelier up on the top floor of our local library. something about being there just makes me feel prickly, negative and a little defensive. i think it's been going on for awhile, but i only just was able to put my finger on the feeling last evening. i don't know why, but knowing that is a step towards figuring that out. 

i can feel that i put up a wall around myself. and that the wall actually prevents me from being present and open. it's like it appears without my knowledge and i find myself behind it, feeling a bit negative and out of sorts. 

or maybe it's just that i'm sensitive to negative energy. and there's loads of negativity there. i'm not sure that i've always felt it. at the beginning of the pandemic, i spent a lot of time there, as the library has a good internet connection and ours at home was iffy at best. so i worked there many days during the time we had to work from home. maybe that's it. some kind of corona-induced anxiety kicks in when i'm there. but why would that make me defensive and negative? 

it's also the scene where someone questioned how i was raised because i had wanted to send flowers from our group to the funeral of our group's founder's father. the other members of the board were against that idea, by the way. i'm still wondering how on earth that makes me the one who is badly raised. but i live outside my own culture, so perhaps it's just one of those things that's impossible for me to understand. but perhaps i associate it with the place. 

but how do i shake it off? i can feel that it prevents me from enjoying getting together with women i genuinely like in a place that's made for creativity. do i need to burn some sage up there? exorcise the demons? how do i get rid of this feeling so that i can enjoy being there again and be present for the people who i like being with? 

i don't mean to imply that i don't take responsibility for this feeling in myself. i just don't know the source of it, nor how to get rid of it. 

officially living the right life for 23 years

23 years with this guy. we're older than we were back then (though not so much in this picture, it's from last november), but he's still completely and utterly the one for me. i would have totally lived the wrong life without him. but with him, even when things get weird, it's always the right life. so here's to the next 23 years. and hopefully even more. 

recovery time

as i get older, it seems to take me more and more time to recover from the big events. back at the end of november, i gave my notice at my job after a tumultuous almost two years of working during a pandemic in a branch that experienced exponential growth because people were sitting at home, working and homeschooling from their kitchens and thinking, "damn, i need a new kitchen." that resulted in a lot of crazy mad ambitious projects that were legitimately "business critical," (though i hate buzzwords like that). 

it was fun and i had really great colleagues, but it was also really intense and hard and in the autumn, i fell prey to the thoughts that many people are having these days...is this really what i want to be doing? do i want to write about black friday deals and affordable prices for the rest of my career? i am approaching an age where i have to think about these things. because soon it will get more difficult for me to switch jobs. even though age is just a number. and with basically 0% unemployment (ok, it's 2.8%, but that might as well be 0%), things aren't that bad. yet. but still, it gave me pause. 

i'd been courted by a headhunter since the summer holiday and i'd turned them down once, but they approached me again in the autumn as fatigue set in. a very big project was dragging out, a boss that went down with stress, tried to come back, couldn't accept the changes that happened in his absence and then left, leaving that very big project in one giant mess and with no one at the helm, made me say yes the second time around. 

but before i said yes, i had a day with the new team, basically interviewing them. it's that kind of job market these days. and i really liked them and it felt like the right thing to do, so i said yes. but i agreed to give my old job an extra month (in denmark, you tend to give you notice at the end of one month and you finish at the end of the next one). i owed that to those good colleagues and we'd been through so much together. and i also felt that i'd poured so much work and caring (i always care too much a great deal) and thought and sweat and tears into the project, that i wanted to leave it at a milestone, rather than just leaving in the middle of everything.

and hit that milestone we did. confetti canons and all. and i felt grateful and privileged to have worked so hard with such a group of talented people. and although i've gone on to that new job with an undoubtedly talented new group of people, damn, i miss them. we went through the hellfire together. we laughed, we swore (some more than others...and by we i mean me), we inspired one another, we leaned on one another, on occasion we had a few too many drinks, we got mad, we yelled, some of us mansplained (you know who you are), then we made up and got over it and got to work again. and it was special and awesome and although i chose it myself, i'm sad it's over. and i miss them so much. 

and it all makes me realize that it's possible to be sad and happy at the same time. i'm excited about what's ahead and so happy to get to know a whole new group of colleagues, but the transition is hard. you don't just get over such an intense period of work in a day. and you have doubts and grief over losing the daily contact with those you shared it all with. guys, you will all have a very special place in my heart. and there will always be a g&t waiting for you if you drop by. but be sure you wear a t-rex or guy riding a chicken costume, because damned if you aren't going to end up on tiktok with me. that's the only way we're going to recover from this...as the danes say (and you're all danes), "you only have the fun you make yourself." i had a lot of fun with you and it was a privilege. thank you all. 

here's to brighter days ahead. 🥂✨ 

we will recover from this, it will just take a little time. so let's give ourselves that time. 

the beginner's mind

a recent episode of the ezra kline show was one of the best podcast episodes i've heard in a long time. he interviewed writer ruth ozeki. i wasn't familiar with her work before hearing the episode, but now i've ordered a couple of her books from the library. she's a zen buddhist priest as well as a novelist and i loved her views on writing and well, life in general. she talked about writing and meditation and the connection between the body and the mind and the body and writing. it's so good and so packed full of profound thoughts that i've actually listened to it twice.

she talked about the buddhist notion of having a beginner's mind. she said that the possibilities are endless when you have a beginner's mind, because you meet everything you encounter with curiosity and openness. i have a beginner's mind right now, as i start a new job. or at least i am trying very hard to do so. it's so hard to shut down the part of my mind that wants to assess and categorize everything and make judgements about it, before even knowing the story or even the outlines of it. but to do that shuts off so much potential...for other stories, for other points of view, for openness and curiosity. as ozeki said in the interview, not knowing is so intimate, it give us an intimacy to the world around us, because we're open to it and to experiencing it and can thereby be more IN it.

so i'm working hard to just be IN my beginner's mind. and taking long walks in the cold, crisp air, to at the same time be IN my not-so-beginner's body. and to breathe deeply and be open and start just experiencing without judgement. and to stop second-guessing myself. and to just experience the thrilling experience of learning new things and getting to know new people and seeing where it leads. 

i miss my good colleagues from my old job, but i genuinely don't think i made the wrong decision. it's possible to feel sad and to miss my friends and the level of comfort and camaraderie we had together, but to feel that i made the right decision. i can hold all these things in my mind and yes, in my body at once. because we humans are full of contradictions and there's room for them within us. the world isn't as black and white as we've tried to make it over the past couple of decades, it's full of shades of grey. and we should be more curious about our own minds and feelings, be better at sitting with them and experiencing them. it's not too late to have a beginner's mind. 

beautiful things

absolutely loving this beautiful collaboration on the marginalian. an animated version of emily dickenson's bloom with music by joan as police woman. it's breathtaking and it was exactly what i needed on this dark, cold, rainy february day.

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heather moore (of skinny la minx fame) is doing a great noticing project #theattentionproject on instagram. in january, it was weeds, now it's "just before you let go." i definitely noticed a lot of picturesque weeds on my january walks. now i need to take a closer look at the things i'm about to toss (or should be tossing).

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loving the @dear_white_staffers account on instagram. they're giving me hope for the world. or at least for the country of my birth. still hoping not to be stateless. 

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have you binge-listened to the trojan horse affair yet? it's so, so good. like first season of serial good. we need more podcasts like this in our lives.