Write Words

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.

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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Sink or Swim

Of Hopelessness