An Annoyingly Deep Post

I haven’t said much here. I’ve always used this blog as a place to moan and bitch and be annoyingly philosophical (and occasionally to gush about geeky stuff). 

I saw this blog as a relatively safe place to be negative and whiny.

But there’s never a safe place to do that. You shouldn’t try to minimize the pain you inflict on others. You should try to figure out why you have this need to whine or be negative in the first place.

I got a roommate when I moved over here. She told me I needed to get out of my own head. She said it was okay that I bitched, moaned and complained to her. She wanted me to come out of my shell. It’s not that I’m shy. I’m not. But I protect myself from the world (side-effect: protecting the world from me).

Being that level of open with another person might seem trivial to those who already know how to do that, but it’s a whole new world to me.

The thing is, once you start to open up, once there’s somebody else than yourself listening to your thoughts, it becomes clear that something isn’t right.

So far in my life I’ve managed to create coping mechanisms (deny, deny, deny all the problems). But I don’t want to deny my problems. I don’t want to develop coping mechanisms. I want to not have a need for them anymore.

No more thinking 15 steps ahead, trying to anticipate the actions of others, to try to figure out how they will end up hurting me.

Did you know that if you think 15 steps ahead, everybody will potentially hurt you? And then you begin to take steps to avoid them hurting you. You try to please them. Try to make them like you, so they will nice to you in return.

The underlying assumption is that they will hurt you. They might not intend to, but they will end up doing it anyway. It’s just a matter of time (this is a lesson learned through experience). And since they don’t mean to, it’s up to you to stop it.

Crap has happened to me and I’ve been hurt. I guess it has happened to a lot of people. My personal way to deal with it has been to say that it was okay, because the person responsible for the sending the shit-storm my way didn’t know better.

But you know what? That’s fucking bullshit.

People should know better than to bully each other. To torment each other. To lie. To use violence.

I’d like to think I am this complex mess. That my problems are truly unique. That at least in my level of fucked-up-ness I can be something special. But I’m really not. My personal set of problems are just a regular round of trust issues, coupled with mild anxiety and debilitating feeling of guilt.

Trust more. Worry less. Forgive those around you and yourself.

Yeah.

Fuck if I know how, though.

Observations of the American People

Once you go somewhere that doesn't have this, you immediately want it. 

You are generally more open and engaging towards strangers than Danes. You say what’s on your mind, and I kind of like that about you.

You are seriously obsessed with the flu. Get over it. You do not need to get a vaccine. If you get ill, you’ll still survive. I promise.

People in Washington really do love to hike.

You are incapable of pronouncing Danish words (including my name). It’s highly entertaining to hear you try though.

You really do need a car to get around. Mostly also because campus is kind of boring.

Everybody in college wears sweats. I only packed my pretty clothes (because, really, why do anything else?) and while I do feel fabulous all the time, I’m also aware that I’m most likely the only one to be in a skirt and heels.

Apparently the general consensus of Americans is that if a female has short hair, she must be a lesbian. And while it’s always nice to know that I’m welcome in the Diversity Center, it’s a little overwhelming to be surrounded by a flock of shorthaired lesbians/bi/whatever, who assume I need a ‘safe place’ to hang out.

Also, why are there no taxes in Oregon? It’s like this mythical place of wonder and Voodoo Donuts and no taxes.

... yeah.

It happened. I officially lost another boyfriend.

No, I didn’t misplace him. He’s not that kind of lost.

I left him in Denmark. I told him I didn’t want a long distance relationship.

And now, a month later the gravity of the situation has hit him.* He changed his status to single on facebook.

Everything has an expiration date.

I don’t know what I expected. That nobody was gonna get hurt, I think.

Ugh, I am such a bitch.

But whatever. We had a good run. It ended. Time to look to the future, I guess.

What I really want to do is watch Fight Club on repeat. But I'll settle for this video of Joseph Gordon-Levitt singing Lithium.

*A side-effect of being honest: You hurt people. 

The Irrationality of Rationality

I had an existential crisis the other night. I had moved into campus and met my new roommates. We were talking about decorating the living room area by putting up posters and fairy lights. I got on amazon looking for posters. And that’s when the ‘fun’ started.

I looked through what must have been thousands of posters, and even though I tried,  I truly couldn’t pick out something fit for hanging in a living room. It was ridiculous.

I kept looking for that perfect thing that would fit in and give a sense of ‘home’ to the white walls. Nothing was good enough. And the few posters I did find, I wasn’t comfortable buying, because what if my roomies didn’t have the same taste as me? What if they didn’t like them? There was just too many variables to take into account.

My roomie saw me struggling and promptly told me to back of the poster-searching. That she would take care of it.

“You don’t need to put that much thought into it, you know? It’s just posters,” she said.

I wanted to agree with her, because somewhere in the back of my mind I knew she was right. But I just looked at her and hyperventilated slightly, my fingers still itching for browsing through just one more page of posters, because maybe the poster would be there.

She shook her head in disbelief. “God, how did you ever choose a college?”

The truth is I didn’t. I stumbled over it and thought ‘Why the hell not?’

I know that’s not what you’re supposed to say. I’m supposed to say that I chose to do this because it is a dream of mine (which it is). But I never dreamt of Pacific Lutheran University. I dreamt of the states. So how did I end up here in Tacoma? A combination of availability, timing and the will to act (I can feel that I’m a student again, because I immediately thought of the garbage can theory).

I spent one of my exams last year, arguing to my professor that it didn’t matter what actions what taken. What was importance was the simple fact that an action was in fact taken. The human mind and its inclination to eliminate cognitive dissonance would soon come up with more than enough reasons for why that particular action was taken.

You didn’t need a rationale beforehand. That would manifest itself soon enough as your need for a personal narrative would take over and create a story that incorporated your actions and made sense.

Even though I know that there is no way to act rational, I always try to do it. I look at all the posters to find the best one (and do you know how many posters amazon has? It’s freaking daunting). I try on all the shoes in the store in my size before buying any (if that). I routinely browse ikea.com and the likes in order to find the perfect bookcase (three year into the search, and it still hasn’t happened [but does that mean I give up and just buy something that is ‘good enough’? Of course not, because I’m stupid like that]. The result? All my books are piled in countless stacks on the floor).

It’s not perfectionism, as my roommate assumed.

It’s not stupidity, as I’m inclined to believe.

It is a deeply irrational attempt at acting rational. Or rather, it’s an attempt to control the world around me by collecting all relevant data (even though that’s impossible).

I think I’ll stop trying to do that. It’s quite stressful.

A Bite out of New York City

I’m alone.

For the first time since Thursday I’ve spent more than 20 minutes by myself.

I’m sitting at a café a block and a half down from the hotel. It was deemed an acceptable distance by my sister. She takes her responsibilities as Big Sister very seriously and I can’t blame her. I wouldn’t have my parents be pissed/disappointed at me either. And as my father would say, “New York is a very big and a very dangerous city”. While that is true, you guys would cringe if I told you some of the stuff my parents have lectured me about before I left. Suffice to say my father is capable of some very creative thinking regarding things to be wary of. I never knew he had such an active imagination

I’ve come to accept that as the youngest of 4 siblings I’ll always be the baby even though I’m 25. And not just to my parents – my siblings as well, to some extent anyway.

I’ve been in NYC for 3½ days now. It’s an overwhelmingly big city. But I’ve found the café I’m sitting on right now and it’s beginning to feel more like a city I actually like – and not just this huge grey mass of buildings and people dotted with yellow cabs.

I never really feel at home in any city before I’ve found a café I ‘click’ with.

Anyway. The amount of stuff I’ve done and things I’ve seen is overwhelming. The days seem to go on and on and on. I mean this in a good way. But it’s definitely also exhausting.

By the way, how come it’s so freaking difficult to find any apples in a city nicknamed ‘The Big Apple’? I looked in every shop I came near. Finally I located some and promptly bought them. I happily paid the 2 dollars a piece that they cost.

And then I take a bite and it tastes sour and sorta tangy. I had wanted something sweet and juicy and this wasn’t it.

Maybe it’s the universe’s way of being ironic. Or maybe New York City really is like a big apple. Or maybe I'm reading too much into one bad apple.

I'll talk you soon.

Anxiety a.k.a The Great Perhaps

I’m sitting at my local café, looking at an Ikea catalog and getting inspiration for how I might decorate my apartment. I’m thinking about getting some new pictures and a bookcase. I have no bookcase. My many, many books are piled and stacked against the wall of my living room. It’s not pretty. It used to have some sort of chaotic charm to it. But then the stacks got tipped and books just spilled all over the floor.

So yeah. I need to do something about that.

But it’s a moot point for the moment. My plane for New York leaves in less than 18 hours.

I figure this need to decorate the apartment is my coping mechanism against the great unknown which I’ll find myself in very soon. I get a sinking feeling in my stomach; a mixture of excitement and anxiety, when I think about where I’ll be this time next week.

Some people clean when they feel this way. I trawl through Ikea’s website and the sites of any other furniture outlet I know of (and I know quite a few).

I can’t believe how many times I’ve said goodbye in the past week. It’s weird. It’s hard. And I can’t help but look forward to just be on the plane, flying away from everything. Away to the great and wonderful ‘perhaps’ that is my future.

See you in 4 months, Denmark.

The US is Different (1)*

“Americans are different than Danes and Swedes,” the resident American at my job told me one morning.

“How so?” I ask. I know Americans are generally more open. Danes are notorious for their lack of openness towards strangers.

“They are more …“ he said and his voice faltered as he searched for the right words. “Eccentricity is more accepted.”

I’m looking at him and wondering if this is his way of telling me that everybody I meet over there will be a replica of Woody Allen.

“It’s more accepted to be eccentric over there,” he said. “Everybody develops their own quirks.”

I smile and nod as if I understand what he’s trying to convey to me. “Don’t worry,” I say. “My mom was born and raised in America, so I can handle their weirdness. I’m used to it.”

Later I think about whether or not this conversation was some sort of warning regarding his friend from Seattle who he told me to look up.

Might have been. But it’s okay. I’m strangely comfortable around eccentric people.

* I expect to find more differences as I actually go there to live, so this might turn into a series of sort.

Pityful Party Ahead

I feel weird.

Leaving is hard.

Why did I decide to do this to myself?

I feel like I'm deliberately trying to cut the strings that bind me to my life and to my loved ones. It hurts.

Photo credit

Maybe I'm just being melodramatic.

This wasn't  something I'd expected I'd feel. Truth be told, I don't know what I expected.

They never tell you about this part. Some smile and envy you. Others tell you that it will be hard. But they never tell you the details.

How do you decide who you spend the last few days with? How do you say goodbye to your boyfriend? How do you smile and stay strong so your family won't worry?

I can do all of the above. I know I can. It's just seems hard right now.

Choosing to be Bad Ass

I’ve spent entirely too much time thinking and worrying about what might come. I have had enough of my annoying anxiety. It’s useless, anyway.

The downside to having an active imagination and just a dash of anxiety is that my mind tends to go bananas when presented with too much uncertainty.

I want it to stop. I want to be able to close my eyes and sleep blissfully. I want to be able to enjoy the next couple of weeks here in Denmark. 

So I’m choosing to not give a fuck. 

I don’t know what to pack? I don’t give a fuck.

I don’t know the extent to which this will indebt me? I don’t give a fuck

I don’t know if my boyfriend will be my boyfriend when I get back? Still don’t give a fuck.

I don’t know if it’ll even be worth it? I can’t even tell you the amount of fucks which I do not give. 

Photo credit

Doctor? Doctor.

I’m watching Suits. It’s a show about lawyers. I have an exam about the status quo of the legal framework for digital letters of employment next week. So in a way I’m studying, right? Right.

Anyway, after catching the latest episode I went on youtube to find some videos of the show for you guys. I found some pretty great ones. And then I found this:

It’s hilarious.

My beloved Supernatural did a spoof the whole “Doctor”-thing as well:

And because I mentioned Supernatural, I give you a hunky Jensen Ackles.

Yes. This post really didn't have much purpose. 

All I Want to do is Sleep

I always crash after an exam. The adrenaline that kept me going for the final push has disappeared and I’m left feeling like I haven’t slept for years.

Cue coffee-drinking.

Anyway. Next up is a lot of coffee and some prep-work I have to do for the report I’ll be writing in July. And then I have to read up on a report I wrote this May. I have an exam on it next week.

This is boring. My life right now is boring. It’s all exams and work and studying.

But there will be some fun times to be had this summer as well.

Have I mentioned that I’m going to Roskilde Festival next week? Beer, rain, music and the most awesome people. I’m looking forward to it. The paper I'm going to write this July is about the festival and the tools used to ochestrate the work-schedule of the 20.000 volunteers. So I'll get to interview a bunch of volunteers and hopefully learn something new.

This is Roskilde Festival, opening night in 2011.
Hopefully this year will feature a little less rain than the last time I was there.

The observant reader might have noticed something: My exam and the festival are in the same week.

Yes. Yes indeed they are. Even though all exams for this semester were supposed to be done by June 30th, the kind people at my school wanted to sprinkle my vacation with som extra fun.

Thank you, ITU. I've always felt that the one thing vacations lacked was exams and studying. And you've rectified that horrible mistake.

To end this post on a good note: I am so happy that Suits is back on the air. How can you not dig a drama-show about lawyers that is litered with pop-references from Star Wars, The Godfather and Highlander? 

 

Photo credit

Warning: This Post Contains Anger

I fucking hate incompetent people.

How freaking hard can it be to look at an application, determine that I’m a e-buss student and forward it to the right person? It has to take you FIVE FUCKING weeks? Not to mention you wouldn’t even have done that, if I hadn’t sent an inquiry regarding the status of my application. It was supposed to have been approved by now. 

There is a special place in hell reserved for incompetent people, where they are only exposed to other equally incompetent miserable excuses for human beings.

Woooooosaaaaa.

Woooooosaaaaa…

I feel better now. It helped to get that off my chest.

(this post is quite possibly going to be deleted very soon, when I realize that I’m not a person that actually hate other people)

Just give me the money

Why does it have to be so hard every step of the way?

When I started applying for a University in the US I foolishly thought that getting all those documents together (motivational application, recommendations from teachers, certified originals of gradesheets) would be the hard part. That once I was accepted, it would be all champagne and strawberries from there.

Well. It’s not.

Right now I’m writing applications for scholarships and it is downright hard. Asking complete strangers for money is not easy. Especially when you really want the money. What can you say that will make them give you the money? What magical phrase will unlock their treasures?

I don’t deserve their money. I don’t even really need it. My parents will front me the cash I need. In the end it’s just a question of how much money I’ll end up owing them.
So how do you craft an application that represents you as someone who is worthy of strangers’ money?

I’m on complete rewrite number 4 right now, and have the angle of being honest. The application contains no BS about ‘enriching my academic profile’ or ‘bringing competitive advantage back to Denmark’. Instead I simply state that I think I will grow as a person as a consequence of going to the states for 5 months. And that this personal growth is the reason for why I’m going.

It’s the truth. And I do believe that honesty is the best policy.

Whether it will result in me getting any cash is another question.

I will let you know. I mean, this could even turn out to be a study of whether or not honesty in an application really is the best policy or not.

... Is it time to wake up now?

This really great and awesome thing happened to me.



[dramatic pause]



I got an acceptance letter from a University abroad.

It was something I was hoping for. Something I had actually been dreaming about ever since I was a little kid. What would it be like to go to another country? To study with all sorts of new and cool people?

I always imagined it must be the most best and coolest thing in the whole world (yeah -- 10-year old me didn't really have that big a vocabulary).

And fall 2012 I’ll be on a different continent for 4 months, living this dream.

I am an optimist by heart. I always see potential and opportunity and have always told myself that dreams do come true.

And now they have.

And I am scared shitless.

What do I do now? How do I cope? Now that I actually got what I wanted, I have all these things to do. Letters to write and send. People to talk to. Tuition-fee to pay. Plane-tickets to buy.

I’m overwhelmed and all I really want to do is hide in my bed with a bowl of chocolate icecream.

But I can’t.

My normal life is still going about its merry way. I still have to write school-projects. I still have obligations at work. I still have to do my freaking taxes. I still have to do the dishes (unfortunately).

I have these two realities, my dream-life and my ‘normal’-life, and right now they are crashing into each other.

Is this what it always feels like when dreams come true?

The Goo vs. The Cat

This has become a battle of wills, and I refuse to lose.

The goo from the brain has vacated the premises. It’s left a very red nose, though. And I’m now waging a battle to suppress the Evil Cough. Little does it know that I’m planning a counterattack of tea with fresh lemon and ginger.

It won’t stand a chance.

Oh well. At least I’m getting some exercise from all this coughing (coughing counts as exercise, right?)

And just to stress the fact that I’m not sick, I’m going out tonight to paint the city red with a friend of mine. She found a grey hair and is freaking out. She’s only 23 years old and she regularly colors her hair, so I don’t see how she could possibly have a grey hair. But who am I to question a perfectly good excuse to get drunk and dance the night away?

I’ll probably wake up tomorrow with no voice and a craving for pizza and Coca-Cola. Good times are to be had.

I’ll go make myself some tea now.

Have a lovely Friday.

A House of Cards

I’m sitting at a cafe in central Copenhagen. I’m sick, in the traditional way with fever shakes, sore throat and goo trying to escape my nose.

But life doesn’t stop just because I want it too. I still have places to go and people to see.

The worst part is that I actually WANT to go to these places and WANT to see these people.

And at the same time I just want to curl up like a sleeping cat lying in the sun. And hiss at everything that disturbs my slumber.

When I was a teenager my parents would look at me solemnly and shake their heads in worry. “You’re burning your candle in both ends, dear. It’s not good for you.”

I’d shrug them off and insist that I was able to handle it. I knew the limits of my own capabilities, or so I thought.

Here I am, almost 10 years later, and I still haven’t learned my lesson. I’m beginning to doubt if I ever will.

There is just so much stuff that I want to do and I’ll be damned if I let one of those awesome opportunities slip away from me. So I work 25-30 hours a week at an awesome job. And I study for my masters at an awesome school. I see my awesome friends and my awesome family and I and try to keep my apartment clean. (yeah, let’s be honest – that last one doesn’t really happen)

And I’m usually able to keep on top of everything. I really am able to handle it.

But then something as stupid as the common cold comes around and knocks me out and the pretty house of cards that I’ve built around myself falls apart.

Yeah. I need to sleep. And then tomorrow I’ll rebuild my house of cards. I'll make it real pretty this time. And it will hold for a couple of months again. And that is fine. All I need is a couple a months.

Changes are acoming.

But for now, please excuse me while I get on with the 'going to places' and the 'seeing people'. And then tonight I'll have my much deserved sleep.

/cat yawn

The tripple 'A'

I’ll be turning 25 shortly. And when I think about my life, I really like it.

I like my job. I like my day-to-day life. I like the coffee-shop just around the corner from where I live and where I spend far too much of my money. I like my home and all the things I’ve filled it with. I like my life and all the people in it (including you, my dear interweb-friend).

But. . . I also feel trapped.

I’m ashamed of admitting it. How dare I feel trapped when my life is so good? Why can’t I be content with what I’ve got? My life is a plethora of awesome, compared to the lives of others.

But it still feels as though I am in a prison of my own making.

And sure, I really like this place I’m in. It’s great. I get to spend my time with people I love, doing things I enjoy. I shouldn’t feel trapped.

But to be perfectly honest? I do feel trapped.

And even as I try to escape this place I’m in, I get more tangled in it.

I want a life filled with adventure, action (instead of just thoughts) and awesome people. I want to be silly. I want to say yes, more than I say no. I want to get lost and find something more than just the way back home.

Ideally the Doctor would come in his TARDIS and show me the universe. But while I'm stuck here on Earth, I might as well make the best of it, and explore it a little bit.

Any suggestions for adventures I could go on?

Good advice

Q: How do I stop feeling so darned lost?
A: Feeling lost implies some sort of emotional, intellectual or physical destination. You’ll stop feeling lost when you realize that there is no destination. There is only the present moment.

- CokeTalk, January 4th 2012

January blues

I feel like all I do is wrong.

Yeah. Even that sentence was off.

Question: Why does the bad stuff matter more than the good?
Answer: Because I let it.
Solution: To smile. Yes really; just smile.

I've been smiling now. And I've realised something. 

I don’t want to be amazing.

Now, I wouldn't mind if you all think I am. I mean. It's not a bad adjective at all. But to actually strive to be amazing? That is hard work.

I don't want to be amazing.

I simply want to be amazed.