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I’ve been tagged by Silvia and Sara (and some other people), so here goes:

Players list 8 facts/habits about themselves. At the end of the post, players then tag 8 people by posting their names and making sure they know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at the tagee’s blog.

1. While packing I realised I own only three tea spoons but about twenty pairs of shoes… that’s priorities for you.
2. I am tall, 177cm. I am trying to learn to wear heels regardless.
3. When I was a kid my mother (true feminist and leftist) bought me also boy’s toys so I wouldn’t grow up too bound up with gender roles. Yet I was the girliest girl ever and refused all the play cars and stuff. These days I am not that girly… and grew up very much a feminist.
4. If I wouldn’t work in design I’d like to study neuropsychology or, more likely, go to business school.
5. I like reading personal finance and business blogs. For fun.
6. I think I underuse my brain most of the time. I can feel when it turns on sometimes.
7. I’ve had a blog of some sort for over five years now.
8. I (almost) always get asked for ID when going to a bar or at the liquor store.

And now I break the rules and won’t tag anyone. But play along if you want!

P.S. The moving went fine. We were done with both moves in two hours!

All the work got done. Moving is still not done…

Yesterday all packed and ready to go, we got cancelled by the moving company. They couldn’t offer us any good time slot and since we have so little stuff we decided to hire a van instead and do it by ourselves. Only the only available van we found is for today at night. Yes, night, 22-06.

We? Yes. Incidentally my best friend Kaisa is moving too so we decided to synchronize our moves. And the best thing is that she will be my neighbour, living in the same apartment complex. We will live across each other, only separated by an inner yard, so we can wave each other from the windows, pop in for a morning coffee in pajamas even. I am happy to have her so close by.

And tomorrow.. all my stuff is here and I can start making it a real home at last.

P.S. This - a suitable theme song for today, eh?

“This should help” - I lived on the Moon - animation Yannick Puig

Lately, everything I hear seems to be bad news, so many people going through hard times… what is it with this summer? Maybe it’s true, “This year is not good to people.”

Seeing India.Arie was so wonderful… I have no words for it. The same warmth she puts in her music, she puts in her performance. She just glows with good energy. I am glad she played a lot of old material, especially this, a prayer -she said. It is a good prayer.

Yesterday I started packing. I will be moving on Sunday. Between that and work, I need to take a blogging break, until next week, maybe.

Take care <3

This week I’ve been working, painting and trying to shake a terrible migraine by just resting and watching movies.

I am already stressed about next week’s lot: finishing a big work project and finally packing and moving the rest of my stuff (books, furniture) out of Tuukka’s place. It’s going to be difficult, just being there, in what was our home… I’ve been having it easy, being the one who moved out.

Otherwise, after the dust has settled, it’s not easy, just very lonely and generally blah. I am not much joy to be around these days. But I don’t really see anyone so that works out well… just kidding, I know I’ve got to start living again.

The rest of the week I’ll be in Pori, visiting my mother and listening music at the Pori Jazz Festival. Can’t wait to see India.arie <3

Just a quick post today, because I need to work on some exhibition pieces. (No, not a solo show yet, something smaller, but exciting still.) Other happy things: a new espresso mocca-pot and the most perfect teacups. Now I want to have someone over for an espresso (I have the most beautiful espresso cups too, ones I haven’t used in ages, because -no coffee pot), will you come? I have chocolate too.

Courage and fear - I am still thinking about those. I have this mindgame that I play all the time “what would I do if I had no fear”. And then I try to do it.

on repeat: fink - this is the thing

And the things that keep us apart
Keep me alive
And the things that keep me alive
Keep me alone
This is the thing

came home from Berlin to this package from Sia.

Today I like being just where I am. Today is about rainy day things: work, emails, tea, crafting. Listening to slow things like maps and diagrams. I want to have time to decorate, a workspace with an inspiration wire, now that I have room. (I can hang out all my treasures and postcards!) I want to bake cupcakes. I want candles. See, the little things are starting to feel good again, slowly.

Sia and I were talking about that laser quote (pale … glow) again. I think you need reminders like that around. I am sick of being so afraid of everything. I am sick of constantly worrying about what other people might think of me and the things that I do. I am sick of my blog-writing being so constrained, not to appear too boring or flakey… to appear cool (what an absurd thing to want to be at 26, surely I am over that). Perhaps I am shedding skin.

this I jotted down at the jewish museum:
If we don’t use our physical and mental capabilities, we lose them. I notice in conversations that I have to look for words that I often used in the past but can’t remember now because I no longer use them…
-from Jean Heinemann’s notebook

I feel like this a lot. In totally different context, of course. Growing up seems to be about missing some parts of yourself… has something better taken place?

——-
Over the weekend I worked on this:

These are (were) my favourite shoes of all time, but so “well worn” they were starting to hurt my feet. I thought they deserved a proper funeral… It was so much fun to craft! I need to do more this type of projects. Some t-shirts, maybe.

A week is too little time in Berlin, You’d need a year, at least. We only got started… Now I am in throws of travel sickness (=homesick in reverse), there is always that when you come back.

Berlin is a giant. Travel twenty minutes with U-bahn and there is another main street, another Mitte, more beautiful old houses, vast parks… Too big to explore by foot, the city feels unmanageable. (And why would you need to manage a city?). You are just a grain of sand. That is freeing, and scary.

Our Berlin was:
The Jewish Museum, that comes in definite first. Daft Punk at Velodrom, one of the best gigs of my life. The U-bahn in general. Friedrichshain nightlife. A quiet Sunday night dinner in a restaurant where they played music from Amelie. Lots of good wine. Hellen van Meene at c/o Berlin. The whole Prenzlauer Berg. The stylish berliners in their black/gray attire… and so much more.

It’s a cliche but travel is a bit like meditation. A stuck in a motion kind of thing. You impatiently start to wait to get home, to do things, life, differently. To drink more espresso, to make more likeminded friends, to stay up all night talking, to make art… to hang onto yourself in every little way.

Even though I know the language, I didn’t get that ‘at home’ feeling in Berlin. I have no idea why I have that in Holland. And why Finland is a constant low level depression for me, however immature thing that is to say. All this I thought about a lot while away.

Scared and inspired, that’s what I feel like these days. It’s not a bad thing.

P.S. Most of the pics up now.

And oh! We seek to be pale, while we could glow.

Home again - full of post-travel-emptiness. What now? Really, what is there?

I didn’t fall in love with Berlin straight away. I even hated it, at times. But then I got thinking maybe cities are kind of like people. You forget about this, all wrapped in easy comfort. And then you meet someone who makes you terrified, and that’s the only way it is supposed to be.

(at home, this was in my emails)

some Berlin pics up, I have 250 in total, so be patient..