You know how there’s that story that lies within some other story you try to tell? The one without any real connection to the themes of the first one. The one you just have to tell right away, no matter how disconnected it feels like from everything else. Gets annoying to listen to one of those, doesn’t it? Knowing that there was still something in the first one that was waiting to be told.

Sky’s gone asleep, drifted to shades of deep, dark blue. Getting nice and late. Midsummer. June. I’m sitting on the stairs to the veranda of the summer cottage, enjoying a feeling that can almost be described as post-coital. Having a cold drink after a proper hot sauna. Steam rises from my body in the cool night air. Moonlight glistens on surface of the lake. Couple of the people are still heading in for one more dive straight from the sauna. I’ve already had my share for the day. Taking a breather. Enjoying the moment. It’s nice and easy.

Life’s good.

This is probably the best trip here I’ve done in years.

I love spending time at the cottage. Hasn’t always been the case. There was a period, somewhere in my late teens and early twenties, when I couldn’t have cared less about the place. It was too far away (4 hour drive from Helsinki) and inconvenient (wasn’t in Helsinki). The cottage is and always has been surrounded by forest on three sides and a lake on one, so it’s been a place devoid of modern comforts. And I was young and needed to be everywhere at once, and have everything. My TV and my CDs and my computers and my whatnot. These days, the fact that there is nothing modern at the old log cabin just feels like another added bonus to the place.

It’s wonderfully isolated from the normal crap of everyday life. Nothing about my hectic schedules can reach me here. If the cellphone works, it’s a miracle. And nothing that I don’t specifically invite here can cross the threshold. Hell. Of all the people I’ve been in relationships with over the years, I’ve only invited one girlfriend to visit this place, and that was years ago. I don’t really know if that tells more about my relationships with people or with the place, but either way, the cottage is a hideout from normal life.

But at this very moment, I don’t need to hide from anything in particular. Not even the usual suspect, work. Can’t remember now if  I’ve ever given details about what I do for a living, but that doesn’t really matter just now. Advertising is a nice way to sum it up. Art Director is a good term to let you know which part of it. But as said, doesn’t matter. My contract would be expiring in a week, start of July.

So, backtracking a bit on the calendar. It’s a few weeks before Midsummer, and I’m watching the clouds go by, doodling up something or another for the firm. The HR lady walks in my office, with a new contract in her hand. “That time of the year again. As an added bonus, this’ll be the last one you’ll have to sign in a while. It’s not just for a year. You’ll be a part of the firm, properly.”

I promise to take a look at it and return it as soon as possible. My eyes focus on it and the first thing on my mind is… “Run!”

I don’t want to sign. I stare at it like it’s a death sentence.

Air starts running out, panic fills my head. I need to get out of the office and call an old friend who works nearby. Ask if he wants to come get some lunch. He apologizes, saying how he’s quite busy today, but asks what’s up, anyways. I lie, can’t tell I want out now that I’m standing in the middle of the office. We chat for a bit, and out of the blue he asks if I know anyone who would be interested in coming to work for for him. My heart skips a beat. And I move to a place where my co-workers can’t hear me. I half-whisper that I sort of might be interested, but I don’t know about hopping industries. While advertising can be seen as a sibling to entertainment industry, it’s still very different on some core levels. He understands my worries, but ends the call with “Well, I have to run now, but come over tomorrow around noon, we’ll have a chat and see if you could like it here.”

The next day I’m at what turns out to be a job interview, surrounded by important people. My head is pounding with a migraine I managed to acquire from worrying all night about what I should be doing. I wasn’t prepared at all to be scrutinized on if I was a proper candidate for the position or not. And I truly wish I could let you know what were all the magic words I managed to spew out of my mouth at that point, because after the interview they seemed pleased and told me they’d let me know next week if I made it to the second round of interviews. But I can’t. My mind is a total blur of the whole day. Migraine can be a bitch.

So the next week rolls past at a slow, steady pace. Agonizing, even, because I have no idea if I’ve impressed them or made a fool out of myself. I eventually get a call from the company to know I’ve been selected for the second round. Another round of interviewing, this time I know it goes well. All the time, there is a nagging sound in my other ear as my bosses keep asking me when I’ll sign my contract. I tell them about the situation (of course), but doesn’t stop them from asking. I tell them that by next Friday I’ll know. The new company promised to let me know by then if I get the job or not.

Friday comes. No word. I send a text asking my friend what’s up. On Saturday I get a text back saying it’s been a hell of a week and that they’ll let me know on Monday.

Monday comes. No word. I get an email on Monday evening stating that it’s just been so hectic that they’ll sort it out tomorrow.

Tuesday. The person responsible for the process is ill. Will get to know on Thursday.

Thursday. Mind you, this is just a week before my previous contract is expiring. “Sorry, thought they let the people who applied know what had happened already. Will get back to you as soon as possible.”

Guess how stressed I am on Friday evening. Pressure building from all sides at this point. I’m shopping for groceries for our Midsummer’s cottage trip. The phone rings.

So, we’re back on Midsummer. Me, sitting here, watching Nee and Mitch scramble back from the lake into the sauna. I silently toast the night for the fact that come next month, I will be starting work at one of the big entertainment brands here. Doing something I’ve been dreaming of ever since I was a kid. No need to worry.

People call for me from inside. While the work-thing is good, it’s not the reason this has probably been the best trip to the cottage, ever. I’ll get back on that in a moment.

It’s one of these days. Friday morning, I’m driving through the traffic and the snow to go to a Very Important Meeting. Sometimes it feels like that’s all I’m doing these days. At least on these few days a month they seem to be all clustered into. Yesterday was like this, today’s going to be too.

I’d rather just be doing my job, not talk about it with clients. If I liked customers, I’d be doing customer service jobs to begin with.

I survive the meeting, and 3 hours later, I’m grabbing a sandwich for lunch and finally getting to do some actual work. Well, at least until I have to head to the next Very Important Meeting. As said, it’s one of these days.

During that later one, I get 3 texts – Mi (the girl one of Mi&Mi) is in Helsinki and asks if I have time to see her after work; There is an album release gig of a former roommate of a friend of Kat’s later in the evening and I should go; And my sister is heading to Baker’s with some of her work buddies after work, and I absolutely need to be there.

Combine these invitations with that the fact that Pens is having a house party (the legendary sort that you’d be a fool to miss), that there is a house-warming party at another friend’s new place that I’ve sworn I’d be going no matter what comes up, and that I’ve sort of convinced myself to go to eat properly after work.

Yeah, I can already see that I’m going to have a very tight schedule today. Quick look at the time. It’s three in the afternoon. All should be manageable if I don’t spend too much time on one thing. And at least, thinking map-wise, all the places where I should be at are quite near to each other.

Eventually my eight hour work day is over. Time to go grab some actual food (one ham sandwich just isn’t enough for a full day) at the nearby restaurant. The very same where there was that one waitress that my sister thought would really be my type. There is a sort of a perfect moment for it, so I find myself asking her out. She declines. Crap. For some reason “Crash and Burn, Live and Learn” feels like a good motto to adopt right about now. At least I have the perfect answer the next damn time my sis asks “Have you considered asking that waitress out on a date?”

I head out the restaurant (Note to self: Figure out a new lunch place. Also, think of excuses to tell work buddies on why you can no longer go there) and call Mi, who is just heading out from Kiasma.

She tells me, sounding extremely weary, how she’s been to a lot of meetings during the day as well (some important art people maybe? Dunno? Mi is a painter who has sold her works internationally. So my best guess on what’s she’s doing at meetings in Helsinki would be her agent or some future client) and now, according to her words, is “far too tired to see anyone.” She lets out a dramatic sigh (something that would suit a flapper perfectly) and tells me how it would have been delightful to see me again, but that it will just have to wait. She has style. I admit that. I let her know that it’s okay, I’ll live.

And don’t tell her that once the call is over I’m letting out a sigh of relief as my schedule seems to be getting so much easier. Only 20 hours of people to fit into some 6 hours or so remains.

So, next stop. Baker’s. I have mixed feelings about this place. It’s really a wonderful place to go to during the evenings, but gets dreadfully overcrowded and loud once the dance floor opens. Today our table is full of my sister’s work buddies who are celebrating a good week of well-cloned sheep or whatever unethical research it is that they do at the lab. A moment later Mitch joins us. Apparently miraculously cured from whatever it is that was bothering him on Wednesday.

A former co-worker of my sis opens up the subject that I keep talking about a lot these days - Finns feel awfully close to their stereotypes once you’ve spent some time abroad. You just don’t get into conversations with strangers here. He’s been to South America for a year and I find myself agreeing with his points a lot and providing my support for his claims with the experiences I’ve had lately.

My personal sad example on Finns being unapproachable comes from a small party a couple of weeks ago.

I go there because I was invited by one of the Finns I met in Norway last year and was told that it’s going to be a fun event with music, drinks and dancing. Event with a lot of friends, and friends of friends present. So, I mosey there, still fresh from the amazing openness that I’d gotten used to enjoying while abroad, and am greeted with what? Room full of people, huddled in groups of three or four, talking amongst themselves, about the same things they always talk about.

I’m perplexed.

I try to approach. First the few people I sort of know. And then others. While I claim success in the end, I find that it’s actually hard work to get to talk with these people, people who are supposed to be friendlies. Everyone is in their comfort zone with the group they’re there with and a “stranger” just doesn’t fit in.

I have this sense of being the ultimate outsider, the one who has lost the Finnish ability to sit around a table and not say anything until you’re too drunk to say anything intelligent. It really starts to get taxing on my nerves and psyche. I actually feel physically exhausted because of this after the party.

We talk about this sort of experiences for a while at Baker’s and after that I bid the people there farewell and I head out to the neighboring club to listen to the gig with Kat. She’s there with some other friends of her already, and I end up having the same discussion with one of them who has just come back from Miami. Everyone agrees, Finns are very closed and hard to approach and you can’t really talk about anything real with them.

Yeah, it’s paradoxical to keep talking about that with strangers who are Finns. It’s not lost on me.

It sort of feels good to find a peer group of others who share the view.

The band starts to play. I head to the floor. They’re actually damn good.

More talking after the gig. The DJ playing one of my favorite dance tunes of the moment, so dancing. Enjoying the music. Talking with strangers. Talking about strangers. Talk of Singstar. Ah, karaoke, the secret Finnish weakness. I allow myself to enjoy the moment for a while. I still have lots of time.

I get a text message from Pens: “A party of legends! You really should have been here! Where were you?”

I look at the time. It’s 3 a.m.

I look up from my watch. I’m standing outside in the blistering cold, somewhere a few dozen miles North from Helsinki.

Wouldn’t be hard to imagine a wolf howl in the distance right about now. The wind is picking speed.

I suck at making plans. I really do.

Live and learn…

It’s late 2009. I’ve been single now for a couple of months, and I don’t really like it. I’d managed to get used to being in a relationship and it’s been quite hard for me to come back from that. I am quite lost, to be honest. I’m spending too much time thinking about the good things that were, the places we’d gone to, the way things were, and not focusing on what’s going on in my life right now. I’m trapped in the past.

Now, in your mind’s eye, add to this picture, of a man torn by a break-up, the ever darkening Finnish nights and some other really depressing things .. Just something, whatever helps you get into the proper mood – your mother going into surgery, your cat dying, chronic illness. I admit that the things that were bringing me down weren’t really that bad, but when you’re down, everything feels so much worse. So humor me and let your imagination run wild.

Anyhow. It’s a Tuesday, I’m working on some dead-end project that will never, ever get finished. A friend lets me know some more bad news on an IM and after spending a day of fixing other peoples’ problems, I decide I need a break from it all.

I check my bank account. Not much, but enough to get the hell away from Finland for a weekend. I can worry about other things, like living, later.

I surf to a weather service website and start looking at places in the Southern Europe.

Lisbon. Nice, but rains on Saturday.

Rome. Not really nice, in fact it’s a damn storm there all weekend.

Athens. +20°C. Sunny. 4 hours more sunlight per day than Finland. I can live with that.

Next thing I know, it’s Friday and I’m sitting on a plane. Thinking of where I used to fly half a year earlier and how nice that was. Yeah, trapped in the past.

I check in the hostel, drop my bags there and head out into the night. This is the thing I do when in a new city. Walk. Let the city soak in. I come back to the hostel some 5 hours later, but feeling oddly distant to it all. Feels like something’s blocking my senses. I shrug and go to sleep.

Saturday comes and it’s time to go be a tourist, go sightseeing.

The city is a tourist trap. People are selling “THIS IS SPARTA!” t-shirts everywhere. That pretty much sums Athens up.

I am bothered by that sense of “I’m numb” that was there already on the previous night and that still lingers. To fight it I decide to head to the harbor. There’s something about watching big ships always eases my mind, so should be perfect.

I can’t get all the way to the harbor using the Metro since there is some track repair being done, so I continue my trip by walking alongside the tracks. It’s a beautiful day, but the lights and sounds are still strangely muted.

An hour or so later, I decide I should probably take a break. The harbor is further away than I would have thought.

A rustic park bench near an old café is a perfect spot to refreshen myself with some mineral water from a plastic bottle. My eyes wander on the view. The building across the street looks really pretty and I think ”You look so much like that one café corner in Norway, where we…”

And it hits me like a jolt of electricity.

A momentary clarity, a crack in the caul that’s surrounding my senses. Light pouring through into the gray.

It’s not a building in Norway. It doesn’t look anything like that corner in Norway.

I gulp down the water in my mouth, audibly gasp, start panting.

The world is spinning. I notice the tears flowing on my cheeks as I struggle to grasp a hold of the moment.

One memory peels away from clouding my senses after the other.

The palm tree doesn’t remind me of the flowers on that one window sill. The picture of that cat is not like the cat we saw when walking down that street.

I don’t know how long I sit there. I know I’ve been crying. And when I manage to focus again, the world looks different.

I look at the corner across the street. It’s no longer the street corner in Norway and the air doesn’t smell like Latvian summer, and my mind isn’t lost in what has been. The corner is a corner in Athens. I breathing Athens air. I am in Athens.

I jog back to the city. To the first mall I can find. Buy myself a notebook and a pen, and park myself at a café. Here I order giant cups of caramel flavored cafe latte and start writing while I feel like I can still grasp a hold of the moment.

When the place closes, I’ve written 22 pages. Of what has been, what is, who I am, what I want. A complete account of the relationship and my personal thoughts on what it was, thoughts that I’ll never share with anyone. I wobble back to the hostel, send a text message to the ex explaining some things and fall asleep.

The clarity of mind remains even the next morning.

I’m awake, I’m in Athens.

It’s Sunday. It’s winter. It’s 2009.

Besides ripping the caul from around my psyche that had stopped me from enjoying the moment, I have made a strange realization when writing down things. I have recognized the situations where I have been happy in my life.

I spend my last day in Athens walking the same sights I’ve seen the previous days, but this time it feels like I’m seeing them for the first time. I am no longer suffocating.

Monday comes, I hop on a plane, head home. There is a 4 hour stop at Zürich. I am coming home. What do I want to do next?

When I said I realized when I have been happy in my life, I am talking about two situations. When I’ve been at a good relationship, or when I’ve been working in a day job I’ve been good at. I know I need to quit being a Freelancer if I want to sort out my life. I need steady income, and I like the simplicity that comes with working for someone.

I run out of Euro coins surfing on the internet terminal. Buy a sandwich with the last credit on my credit card. Sit back down to read the book. My phone rings.

“Hi, this is <the big boss> from <the company>. You used to work for us a few years ago and you’ve at some point left us a job application. Would you still be interested in coming back to work for us? Want to come over to the office and talk about it today?”

“Well, actually, I’m in Zürich just now, but how about tomorrow?”

On Wednesday, I’m at work.

I’ve had it easy.

Too easy, I feel sometimes.

Especially after listening to people who’ve had trouble in their lives or who have had to endure hardships to get where they are now. Not me. I come from an upper middle-class family. Neither of my parents have an academic background or come from old money families. They worked their way through life to get to a comfortable life. Sailed the high seas, enduring the harsh storms, the risk of being killed by pirates and worst of all, the constant drunken banter their fellow sailors. All this so that, as my mother put it, “I could have a better life than they’ve had.”

So, I grew up in the suburbs of Helsinki, surrounded by other upper middle class families. A very monocultural environment, to be honest. Well-off people, houses with backyards, well-educated folk who had decided to start building a family. I lived in a neighborhood that never really had any problems with crime, or anything else, come think of it. When I was younger, one could pretty much leave your front door open during the days and wouldn’t have to worry about someone breaking in (except for us kids, who could come in and steal your cookies).

A sheltered environment to say the least. My early childhood was very easy.

First 9 grades, I went to the local school, which was filled with us upper middle class kids. The teachers were patient and brilliant, and I was a quiet nerd. The type that was more interested in getting good grades than getting into trouble. Not that there were many kids who were trouble there. The school bully (who later went to business school) would have gotten his butt kicked if he had ventured a couple of neighborhoods east and tried to tease someone there. And not by the bullies there trying to protect their turf. But the losers, who were probably tougher than he was. So, there we were, the young nerds, surrounded by people who weren’t a danger to anyone, studying hard. Shining in things like Mathematics and Physics. And in the evenings, we went to soccer practice and attended boy scout meetings as we were expected to.

From there, I went into a gymnasium (the next step in the academic route of Finnish school system) that was just one step below the “elite” schools here. Quite close to home and again, very safe environment to be in – made good friends, had very high quality teachers, participated in raising the school spirit. And stayed out of trouble. The wonderful thing about being in a good school that’s not an elite one is, that the social norm wasn’t academic overachieving – you could actually have a good time while you were studying. Good time meaning something else than debating about chess or which was the best Star Trek episode ever. In case you didn’t already guess, I started to get out of my “I am an antisocial nerd” cocoon at this point. And even if I there wasn’t too much pressure to succeed, I still got away with a nice grade average.

After gymnasium, it was University.

In Finland, you apply to a University, go take an entrance exam, and if you pass, you’re in. No need to prove your worth year after year. Just once. Once you’re in, you can study for 10 years if you want. This means that for the popular places, you need to really shine to get in. Not uncommon for people to apply for a few places, and if they don’t get where they want, they start studying somewhere else (maybe somewhere that’s that’s a bit like what they wanted to) and then try again to get in the next year. Not unheard of for people to try for five or more years to get to the local Law or Medical Schools.

I got in Helsinki University of Technology on the first try. Computer Science, which was one of the harder ones there. Since that entrance exam, I have applied and gotten in to some other places as well. Metropolia, Åbo Akademi and University of Helsinki. I’ll hopefully get to tell the stories of these transitions at some point in the future as well, but they’re a bit beside the point just now. The only school where I have applied to and haven’t gotten in is the local Art/Design school. So, I’ve been able to study what I’ve been interested in, where-ever I’ve been living. Without extra hassle.

My studies at the Helsinki University of Technology got interrupted when a friend needed a hand with a work thing he was doing and I promised to go help him out for a while. Didn’t have to raise a finger and got a nice job to do while studying. That’s the way it’s been ever since. I know people who know people who need professionals like me. I haven’t been to a job interview where I didn’t already have a foot in the door somehow.

I’ve had it easy. I still have it easy.

You can hate me now if you want to.

And you can bet your ass that it’s not as simple as I just made it sound. I’ll just write about the bad stuff later.

Now I’m off to pack, as my flight to Dubai leaves in about 16 hours.

I haven’t been on a real lecture in a while.

The last one was in Riga, in Latvian, about (amongst other things) theories regarding the year 2012. The language barrier was really bad, as my Latvian vocabulary is limited to say the least. I just couldn’t understand what was being said. So I was there watching the pretty pictures and trying to form some sort of a whole from what I saw, the scraps of Latvian I knew and the few borrowed words that kept coming up. Interesting to say the least.

Ah. Come to think of it, technically that wasn’t the last lecture I’ve been on. I was to that damn conference in Berlin the other week. But when you go and listen to a lecture held by someone you’ve been partying with the night before, it isn’t a real lecture. It just doesn’t count.

But lecture notes. Lecture notes. Lecture notes.

I’m not really the one you should come to about this subject. My history with them is more a series of tragedies than valuable advice.

I remember some years ago back at the University of Technology when I got officially introduced to some fellow student for the first time and they reply to my introduction with “Ah, yes! You! I actually remember you! You were the guy who was always drawing all those awesome pictures during the programming lectures three years ago. I sat behind you a couple of times and stared in awe. Do you still do that?”

I admit, I probably don’t have any written material left from Programming 101. But I do think that my artistic skills improved a lot. Learned a lot about shading and highlights.

But the programming courses weren’t something where taking the notes was really important anyways. You’d learn by doing the practical stuff and reading the tutorials when you did.

Things changed when I switched majors.

Did a complete 180 degree turn with that, from scientist to scholar. From engineering to cultural studies. And the switch from practice to theory became very apparent in how much got written down during the lectures. My notes from American History 101 fill a notebook from cover to cover. Which would be neat and all, but around this time I was really into mind-maps.

The end result is page after page of connections between terms, ideas, people, places, years and everything else.

When the time for the exams came, I looked back at the notebook and I have to admit that it looked like something out of a conspiracy theorist’s closet – wild lines connecting everything to everything else, with small notes sometimes explaining why they’re related. Plus seemingly unrelated notes in the margins.

The closest to actual information you could get out from them was something akin to “The Boy Scouts are influencing Kentucky Fried Chicken and the Southern Baptist Church via Mind-Control Satellites and Chloride in the tap water. THE CAPITAL IS IN FLOROS!”

I still managed to ace the exams, since, as a former Boy Scout, I did know the facts, even if my notes made it look like crazy-talk. But I did learn my lesson and eased with the mind-maps and tried to focus on actual information.

After that debacle, I switched to computers for my lecture note needs. A Mac laptop worked quite well at first, but its battery life started to go down. In the end, to save the battery I had to turn off the display and write my lecture notes blind, relying on muscle memory for the correct letters and sheer luck for the rest. The amount of typos was staggering, and again, come exam time, the notes were a bit hard to follow.

The era of using a computer for lecture notes really came to an end when they started upgrading the campus wireless network. Do you know how much more interesting it is to check on Facebook if someone’s cat has a new toy than write down the list of five most influential robber barons of all times. I do. So to keep myself interested in lectures, I left the computer home and went back to writing notes the old fashioned way.

And speaking of old-fashioned. During a more pretentious phase of my life I tried another tool for writing down my notes. When I say pretentious, I mean the time when I had a leather briefcase with me to the university and wore ties to lectures. Well, I still wear ties, but you get the point. Back then I tried using fountain pens for note-writing. And I tell you this, you do get rocking-looking notes with them and tend to focus on the relevant, as you want the notes to be as awesome as possible.

The thing with fountain pens is that once you screw something up, things escalate from bad to worse quite quickly. To summarize, ink stains can be really hard to get rid of. And there are situations where it becomes cheaper to buy a new shirt than try to clean an old one.

But being a worker drone these days, lecture notes and all that are a thing of the past for me. I must admit that I’ve really started appreciate the feel of a pen and some paper through work. Compared to word processors and well-thought-out emails, I find that I’m more creative when given a corner of a napkin, a pen and a face-to-face brainstorming session. Writing the basic ideas up in physical space as they come along really helps the brain focus on them.

And I guess that is the thing with writing lecture notes. No matter if it was blind-writing on a computer or making raving mad mind-maps on a notebook. When I’m focused on getting information from something and at the same time explain it to myself in some different way (like mind-maps), I form a more firm mental connection about it. Makes recollection so much easier later on.

PS. If you happen to have the list of the five most influential robber barons of all times, mind sending that to me? For some reason I don’t have it…

This year I promise, from the cockles of my heart, to be more a bastard and a better bastard than I ever have been before.

While I do enjoy being the nice guy who gets along with everyone (And by Gods, I’ve become an expert on that), I really need to spend more time focusing my own goals and ideas. My dirty plan regarding this starts with me collecting all those IOUs I’ve left hanging these years (So anyone who has said “I owe you one!” to me in the past will probably regret it dearly during the next 12 months) and using them to start getting things done. With little to no regard to what other people think. If you don’t like what I am, too bad.

On the other hand, if I don’t manage to keep the resolution, I’ll be a nice guy for another year so it is not that bad a thing, really.

Not so much resolutions, but thoughts on what I’ll do next year:

• Work like a mad monkey. Finally back in the digital media ballgame and loving it (even if it took quite a while to get back on track), so dropping the ball at this point would be pretty much stupidity.
• Don’t forget the nerdy heritage. It’s the age of the geek, still, so the occasional gaming or wallowing on teh internets isn’t at all a bad trait on a person. But like most things, it just needs to be taken with moderation. I’m looking at my January calendar and I won’t have too much time to spare as it is, so I should be careful on what to waste that what remains.
• Gym membership. The cost of going to the local pool/gym is getting to my purse, so will have to get one of these, or start doing stuff home instead of going somewhere. Possibly obtainable via the University.
• Travel. I’m thinking if I manage to get away from here a dozen times this year, it’s about the amount of air I need to survive. Starting with Berlin mid-January and then Dubai in February. And Sweden in April. That’s a good start. And not just abroad. Trying to take a look at Finland as well, maybe get a view on something that I’ve missed. Just get out there and find new stuff.
• Draw and write. I really love drawing, so I should draw. It’s really as simple as that. And I have some stuff that needs to be written. This blog being one of them.
• Stop thinking, keep on doing.

I guess that’s it. I’ll try and see if I managed this sometime next year.