Write Words

Ladies with a Voice!

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On January 11, 2015

In In English, Life

M heroically battled (and won) the domain war yesterday, which means that Write Words is finally where it’s supposed to be (i.e. .dk instead of .fi). Apparently you can’t own a .fi domain unless you have an address in Finland. No matter, .dk works just fine for me. Well, it does now, anyway. It took several hours to actually configure everything so it works right…

It’s been storming like mad for the past 24 hours, but at least it stopped raining now. The wind is still quite impressive. I’m not planning on setting foot outside the apartment today, so I don’t much care, but it had better calm down for tomorrow, as I’m finally starting the Danish language course again. It started already last week, but I was sick, so I missed the first class. It’s bad enough that I have to ride the bike uphill all the way to where it’s held, so I really don’t need the wind to complicate matters further. (Also, may I point out how odd it is to not have any snow in January? The temperature has been pretty steadily at around 5-8 degrees, which is just unnatural. Not that I’m complaining. I don’t miss the Finnish winter one bit, for now at least.)

Okay, what I really wanted to write about:

Lately my taste in music has veered towards the electronic quite a bit, especially when combined with female vocals. A while back I stumbled upon Lydia Ainsworth, whose Hologram made an especially strong impression on me, although I do like Right from Real as a whole. I also bought Imogen Heap‘s latest release Sparks and listened to it until I practically wore it out. Only a few of the tracks were new to me by the time I got the album, since she’s been releasing them online while working on the whole thing, but it was still a delight to add the CD to my collection. I’ve gone through several phases where different tracks have been my favourite for a period of time, but ultimately I think I love The Listening Chair the most, not only because it resonates on a personal level, but also because the idea of it is so delicious. I look forward to hearing it evolve in the coming years, as Imogen is planning to add a minute to it every seven years.

However, right now my number one “listen to death” project is Emilie Nicolas and her debut album Like I’m a Warrior. It started with Fail, but now there’s also Us, Charge and Put Me Down, and frankly, the entire album is just really, really good. (You can find it on Spotify.) She played a gig in Aarhus in October, but back then I knew nothing about her at all, and now I’m just so miffed I missed it! Here’s hoping she’ll be coming back this way sometime soon.

If anyone can come up with recommendations of other artists in a similar(ish) vein as these ladies, I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

Sink or Swim

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On January 8, 2015

In In English, Musings

I’m home sick and feeling guilty about it. I always feel guilty about it even though I know it’s ridiculous. I didn’t get sick on purpose, and I couldn’t do my job right now even if I tried, so there’s nothing to feel guilty about. Yet… Yeah. So, I decided to try and do something worthwhile with the unexpected free alone time. I’ve been meaning to get this blog running ever since I moved to Denmark almost six months ago, but you know how life gets in the way of all the things you allow yourself to procrastinate over?

See, there are some issues that I haven’t managed to resolve yet when it comes to this blog project, and so it fell entirely dormant for much longer than I had intended. Originally I wanted to document the whole “moving to another country” experience, but frankly, I had enough on my plate just trying to live through it. I had neither the time nor the energy to write about it, too, which is also evident in how little I’ve written to my friends and family back in Finland. It was simply too overwhelming. It’s something I still worry about, because I’m afraid the blog will simply never take off properly. I’ll write for a few weeks and then it’ll be a few posts each month, and then one, and then none. It’s happened before.

I’m also quite unhappy with the way the blog looks right now. It’s been a long time since I designed anything more complex than a single webpage here and there, and I have no skill when it comes to actual graphic design. I have ideas regarding how I might like the blog to look, but I don’t have the skills or the patience to actually pull any of them off, and I feel like the important thing right now is to get the words flowing instead of polishing the site until it glows while there is still no actual content. So, either I’ll end up leaving it as it is, or it’ll go through all kinds of changes in the future. We’ll see.

So, while it’s entirely possible this poor thing will die a sad death before it ever gets off the ground, I’m going to give it a try anyway. I wrote a few blog-like entries on my very first days here, which I may or may not actually end up publishing retroactively, but beyond that, I’ll set myself a goal of posting (at least) once a week. It doesn’t have to be anything grand and exciting, but there needs to be some sort of consistency to the pace or there’s really no point in this. So there we are. Welcome aboard.

Of Hopelessness

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On August 3, 2014

In In English, Musings

I’m starting work tomorrow. It’s been a year since I last had a job, and I quite miss it. I have no idea if I’ll enjoy the actual work or not, but at least it offers the opportunity to learn new things, form new social contacts and generally just have routines in each day, and I welcome all that. Not to mention the ability to earn a living, which is obviously extremely important on its own.

If there is one thing I’d like to avoid from now on, it’s unemployment. I don’t know anything quite as soul-sapping as the hollow feeling of browsing job ads one by one, desperately hoping to find something that is even remotely applicable to your own qualifications and coming up empty again and again. Of course, there are the few exceptions when you find something, write an application for it and for a while you feel like you actually accomplished something worthwhile again – only to receive the dreaded “thank you but no thank you” email in your inbox some days or weeks later. Back to square one. Back to feeling utterly worthless.

It spreads everywhere after a while. As the number on your bank account dwindles, you narrow down your choices little by little. No more shopping for anything but the bare necessities, and even those should be a cheap brand or on discount. You don’t really need cheese on your bread, after all. It’s also best to not meet your friends in the city centre, because that means expenses you can’t really afford, or squirming when they offer to pay instead. Buying presents becomes a nightmare, because you can’t really afford anything anyone would want. If anything breaks, you really need to consider whether you can’t actually survive without it. Repairing or replacing it might well be beyond your means. It’s not real deprivation; not yet. It’s just a slow slide towards the tears in society’s fabric where ultimately you’ll end up incapable of affecting your situation anymore. That way lays hunger, mental and physical illness, and isolation.

I didn’t fall that far. I still had options by the time my soon-to-be employer said yes instead of no thank you. You have no idea how grateful of that I am.

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