Mild winter, extreme translation-related stress, course weekends, a gleaming Christmas with a fragrant Christmas tree, lots of time curled up with a book, existential anxiety, choir practice, eight-hour industry work weeks, kind-of poverty.
New experiences: an overnight stay alone in an empty hotel in a blizzard, distributing Christmas packages to the poor, acting as private interpreter for an ambassador.
A winter of worries - work, health, money. Apart from a gleaming Christmas and a few fascinating course weekends, I'd rather forget most of it.
But mountains have been moved for me. It's time to live, listen to the birds, and write sometimes.
I have washed puppy pee from my jeans and sang I see a red door and I want it painted black...
Science and princes with ancient table manners, glamorous dresses and food ...
A yellow light flashing, a steel door gliding open by itself. Shouted loudly come out and play ...
Oh ye'll take the high road and I'll take the low road
and I'll be in Scotland a'fore ye
I cry for the loss of love when what I really mean is the loss of warmth. Love is found in the sun. Late bloomer, they said once. What about never-bloomer?
I'm already in eternity, just a few more bumps in the road before heaven opens up.
Clutching a double-shot cappuccino like a lifeline, trying to focus on a book. Listening to the Eastern-European guys ...
A gentle hand steadied me.
... on a quest for God's love and an easy breath.
... obliquely through the dandelion clocks around us ...
Pandemic restrictions have been lifted and I can go to church again, if I want. I don't know if I want.
"Let's go to France this summer and explore castles and drink red wine," a friend said.
December is another planet than June.
They say there might not be enough electricity this winter, and is there a good way to finish this blog entry? No, there isn't.
There was a woman, once. This is not my story.
I have managed to set my hair on fire twice. (Must have had some fun parties!)
As a kid: nearly drowned once, was chased by a pedophile another time.
As a carefree student travelling by bicycle in every kind of weather: close encounters with moving cars at least three times, with the ground a few more.
I was hit by a bus while walking, and survived.
Thank you, God.
Winter weather clues in the morning:
A cool bedroom: it's been a cold night. Slightly too warm: milder weather. A soft, blueish light: snow on the ground. The rumbling of snowplows or an eerie silence outside: lots of new snow. The sound of someone scraping ice off their car: frost. A bright light with the sky high as a cathedral outside my window: very cold. The sound of dripping wetness: thaw. Noisy crackling under the wheels of passing cars: thawed snow that has frozen over again. Dirty yellow air: a blizzard approaching.
This month has heaped miseries upon me. What I long for right now:
Joy, peace, Christmas, chocolate, the good old days when I curled up on the couch and wrote, my father, dinner with friends, dogs, childhood, weeks of rest surrounded by books, easy health, a feeling of invincibility, God, my university days, fastlagsbullar with lots of cream, the feeling of falling in love, the smell of turf smoke in an Irish village on a winter's day, birdsong.
2024 was the year I only just dragged my business through another crisis year, launched my skills on a foreign market, started training my mind for new trade.
I found a new gym and a real choir - and found my voice, after decades of silence. I took up volleyball again, against better judgment and wobbly knees. I gave up cheese and took strict control over my money.
The winter was six months long and everyone important to me seemed to suffer from serious illness. There was constant struggle and worry for a 90-year-old with broken bones, dementia and loneliness. She didn't really feel like my mother anymore. The spring was a bit easier, summer peaceful. Work and money ran out in the autumn, bringing stress along with new challenges and a new direction.
It was the year I read 137 books and (according to Spotify) listened to royalcore concert band classical and academic strut pop, once for a whole day straight. I rediscovered my love for the Swedish language.
Highlights:
* New Year with friends, pizza and prosecco.
* Graffiti art exibition in an abandoned warehouse in freezing cold - a ghost town and fairytale in one. The kind of art I enjoy. Wandered around wearing double-layer wool and winter boots. Spooky funfair games, broken dolls, fairy lights in discarded boots, monsters, urinals and everything spray-painted.
* Joining a choir, a version of the one I lived in and loved 30 years ago. Loved this one too. Good for the soul and the soul voice.
* Funeral of a beloved aunt, among many other beloved aunts and uncles. My sister and I attended, feeling newly orphaned. The old and wise took us in, embraced us in their love. A church with ancient avenging angels in the ceiling, coffee in venerable poet Topelius' home.
* Age signs: christening of my second grand-niece, laser treatment of my eye, my first ever permanent medication.
* Helsinki weekend with friends, wine, Finnish pentecostals, great food, a twilight walk in icy Eira, the National Library, hunt for the most atmospheric café.
* "Rainbow mass" that I attended out of curiosity.
* Last evening in the town's only (almost) real Irish pub before it closed for renovation. Joyful dancing with a friend, meaningful conversation with my brother.
* Deepening crisis in the garment industry, losing customers and suppliers, not amenably.
* Discovery, by my dentist, of my first ever tooth cavity since the late Eighties.
* Choir weekend with hundreds of singers, two fun concerts and an unexpected icecream break in the snow.
* Sand from the Sahara that rained down on my car.
* Trip to Larsmo to look at a boat and a spring flood. Played a car game that involved heavy accents and collision avoidance.
* South African evening with rusk, lots of interesting facts and the sales price of giraffes.
* Trip of the year, a week in Spain: the Alhambra, tapas, history, sun, swifts and oranges, and a decadent life.
* Birthday: a gorgeous Andalusian dawn with both sun and moon, a champagne party on a plane with a view over Atlantic sand dunes, a good friend and Washington Irving's fairytales, a dinner eaten standing up on a train going 170 kph.
* My first book fair: history, crime fiction, fantasy, and recruiting a published author to our book club.
* Two funerals in one day, involving many tears and the bishop of Burma.
* Dinner with cousins, aunts and uncles - lots of love, home and belonging. Much needed.
* Barbecue and angling lessons on a summer's eve. The fish didn't bite, fortunately.
* Picnics and brunches with praying women, easing this year's feelings of loneliness.
* Massive air show with fighter jets, tanker aircraft and serious-looking helicopters. None of them crashed, despite their complicated maneuvers and my predictions, but I was almost killed by the shuttle bus to the car park.
* Luxury brunch with best friend, under some stuffed deer heads. It started with mimosas and ended with a chocolate fountain.
* Midsummer with the Midsummer people, some old-new additions and a very pregnant cat. Sometimes it's a wonderful feeling to be surrounded by people who all went to the same school at the same time and know the same things.
* Various road trips with mother - a favourite pastime for us both. (I made it my summer project to visit as many summer cafés as possible.) Other trips, with various people, saw Kaskö and the famous greenhouse restaurant, Kokkola and a summer yardsale in the idyllic old town, and phenomena such as old church ladies, honeybeer and the only British warship ever lost to the enemy (i.e. the Finns, who probably were as surprised by this as the Brits).
* Bubbles, good food and sangria nightlife by the seafront, with my industrial cohorts K & K.
* Guided cemetery tours: this summer's educational project (alongside reading Leo Tolstoy's shortest novel, very short indeed). Learned, among many other things, that ghosts of musicians like to play Mozart's "Sleigh Ride" and that my home town has many interesting characters.
* A day spent sipping various drinks at various sidewalk cafés with various people - perfection!
* The Olympics in Paris: watching weird sports on a laptop in the wilderness cottage.
* Night of the Arts: a viking ship, tacos, secret orders, rich red wine and the usual magnificent chaos.
* Unusual nature observations: two hares in a boxing match, a baby cuckoo, egrets.
* Close encounter with a venomous snake: almost picked it up with my bare hands. Not on purpose.
* A fight lost against AI (bad AI-generated subtitling): also lost a lot of work, and a lot of work motivation, as a result.
* Fourth funeral of the year, this time finding family love among my mother's cousins.
* Dramatic end to the summer cottage season: after a long, lonely but wonderful summer, I came home in September by bus, my car by tow truck. I decided then that summer was definitely over.
* Mental trainer course: new career I suddenly decided to embark on, maybe. Fascinating subject, weekends with fascinating people, a lot of soul searching.
* Rock gig at the jazz club.
* Exploration of the very small town of Vörå - a mountain, fake Roman ruins, runes.
* A garage roof project I was called in to help with: complicated and kind of fun, with teenagers and single ladies and a darkening evening.
* Battle against cholesterol and against doctors who disagreed about my cholesterol.
* Battle against subtitling software, extremely demoralizing.
* Tampere weekend with sister: cafés, chasing famous donuts, a museum, Indian food, cozy evenings with cozy crime series, pear truffles from the best chocolate shop in the world.
* African birthday celebration in a blizzard, with power cuts and a pro cake.
* Software license, extremely expensive, bought from a nice Danish lady to kickstart my new career as a subtitler for Swedish TV.
* A night in a horror movie setting: me and a friend all alone in an unstaffed hotel, in the middle of nowhere, in a blizzard. I slept peacefully.
* Volunteering for a charity project: taking food and Christmas presents to suffering families, receiving beautiful smiles in return. Also found my way blocked by a gigantic horse.
* Christmas days: family celebration of the coziest kind, a dinner with former Afghan missionaries and TV producers, a brunch with firefighters and bohemians, and a trip to the last outpost on the Ostrobothnian plains where an eerie purple light shines over snow and traditional hymns are combined with mulled wine around a fire pit.
* New Year's Eve: my sister, a church service, a water/fire show and (the best part) a café. At midnight, I watched the fireworks alone and cried.
A difficult year is over.