Hello 2018!

… Albeit we’re already almost a month in.

Time’s just been flying by. I’ve been trying to get myself more organized. That included going through a lot of my old writing (part embarrassing, part passably good) and cleaning up my notes. I re-read all my space related material and have a new list of things I need to look up and also a list of new, more defined ideas for the actual story part.

I’ve been flexing my writing muscles as well. I didn’t write that much for a long while because of my hand, but these past couple of weeks I’ve tried to get back into the saddle so to say. It’s been fun and I hope I can get some longer stretches in soon.

But to set up some expectations for this year…

I remember I promised not to make any promises. In spirit of keeping that, I’m just going to say that in the name of boosting my productivity and cutting procrastination to the minimum I’ve set some goals for myself.

This year I’m planning on at least starting on my Malleus series. As I’ve said before, it’s heavy reading, but I’ve been trying to come up with ways to split the task up into manageable portions. I’m looking forward to actually writing some posts and not just talking about it.

In spirit of not-promising, I also stated myself the hope of writing a blog post every week. Already totally failed that, so now I can say once a month is a great baseline and everything above that is spectacular. Ahaha. My standards for myself are borderline embarrassing.

To be fair, I have too many plans and too many things to do already. I have to keep pushing the things I want to do ahead and focus on the things I need to do. The house still needs work, obviously, and the yard even more. I need to devote energy and time to finding ways to earn some money – so many plans, so few facts, so much bureaucracy.

Also, in the spirit of sparing the national treasury a bit, here’s hoping our presidential election is solved already tonight. I’m sure the costs of a second round are not that great, but since the nation must check it’s spending…

See you (hopefully) next week, I’ll go check the current score.

What have I been reading?

Since I’ve been occupied outside the house these past weeks I’ve had very little time to sit down and actually write. I thought that once the frost set in I’d have more time at home, but instead I’ve been dragged around with my mother.

Sitting in a car or a bus, I’ve been reading quite a bit. I started my third read through of Gardens of the Moon. I have the feeling I have a few more left before I catch every hint.

I’ve also returned to Sci-Fi after a very long break. I loaned Heinlein’s The Cat who Walks through Walls from the library and I’m just about halfway through. I’ve been enjoying the story and the language quite a bit – although I’d really love to see some of the names and terms in English. I should return it tomorrow, so I’m in a bit of a rush to finish it. I had too much to do to get started on it right away, and now I’m forced to speed through it to avoid late fees. Meh. I’ve been liking it so far, so I guess I’ll loan it out again later.

The library is a bit poor on the Sci-Fi department, many titles I remember seeing in the old days are gone. I guess they got too worn and niche literature is notoriously difficult to replace in Finland. Reprints are rare and focus on the best-selling titles and classics. The market is just too small to justify reprints, even if that means libraries will end up with no copies available and new readers never get to enjoy them. Oh well, what can I do? It’s not like I could afford buying all those titles anyway.

I also bought couple new Agatha Christie pocket books when in Helsinki couple weeks ago. I read the other one at the in-laws’, that being a Tommy & Tuppence book Postern of Fate. I’d never heard of Tommy and Tuppence until about two years ago when Finnish reprints started popping up. (See what I said about classics? There’re at least three existing versions of some Agatha Christie books in multiple printings, but some Fantasy or Sci-Fi series never get completed.) I took a liking to them. Even though they’re quite a bit more ‘hard-boiled’ than, say, Miss Marple, the novels have a light-hearted spirit to them. Yet again there is a distinct voice setting the cycle apart from Poirots or Marples.

Now that I’ve pretty much covered the subject matter of this post I might just as well tell you a bit about what I’ve been up to since last. You can basically stop here if you don’t care about that 😉

There was the Helsinki weekend, a birthday party for two of my husband’s friends. Here we have an interlude of furious gardening after the first snowfall to gain control of the water flow in our yard (our basement floods. A lot.). Then I had to accompany some lady relatives to various shopping trips, and my gosh they can be taxing… I mean, they’re lovely in small doses, but being confined to small spaces with them for hours is sometimes tortuous.

This week the landscaping guys decided to appear, about a month after they said they would. There are so many rocks in my yard you wouldn’t believe! Everywhere. Even in the patch that supposedly was once a field. I have no idea how anything had room to grow there. The guy piled up three huge pile of boulders in different corners of the yard.

I wanted a spot for a rock garden… well, I got a bit more than I hoped for. The spot I picked out for it had three big rocks before. Now there’s a ~5m x ~5m dome of rock about 1,5m high. It’ll take me a decade to get enough plants to make it look anything but a pile of rocks it is. Can’t complain, I got what I asked for. Maybe I’ll post you a picture if there isn’t too much snow tomorrow morning.

Until next time!

So, moving…

I had no idea how long it’d take to get everything in order.

My “construction crew” (read, male relatives) kept finding new things to rip out and leave hanging. My mother kept pestering me about unpacking when I only had my bed in place. People kept calling me to sell me shit I really don’t want and couldn’t understand the meaning of ‘no’. I have all sorts of paperwork to take care of, calls to make and honestly some more unpacking.

I was (am) pretty stressed to say the least. There’s still a ton of things to do, and I should really be there rather than here. I just couldn’t put this off any longer, I feel totally stupid to not have written anything whole summer.

I didn’t have a computer for over a month and a half, but still. Or electricity in 75% of my house for that matter.

I’ve done some reading while waiting for the builders to build and rain to stop raining. I’d thought of doing yard work while people who know how to renovate do their thing. No much luck, it’s been the rainiest and suckiest summer I remember. My yard is infested by plants that want to take the world over and they do not want to die (and seem to thrive when it’s constantly 15°C and raining). Also, I learned cutting bushes in the rain or just after is also awful. Good thing I don’t want those particular bushes in my yard at all.

Most of what I read was trash literature, seeing as my husband managed to pick out all the boxes I didn’t want from our storage room at his parents’. I won’t be reviewing those, because to be honest most of it is truly undeserving of more words beyond “cheap entertainment”.

I did read some fantasy in the form of Steven Erikson. I read the opening volume of his new Kharkanas -trilogy and began the second book. At that point I had to actually start doing “important stuff”, because I finally started getting finished rooms. I have been a huge admirer of Erikson ever since I read Gardens of the Moon, and reading more about some of my favorite characters and their origins is just great. Definitely looking forward to finishing the trilogy. (I’ll write more about both books when I get the second one down.)

I also located both my Bible and Malleus Maleficarum already, so I will be returning to that project. Some of my notes are still missing, but I recall not getting that far with my next post before packing away the books anyway.

Well, now that I’ve let you know that I’m indeed still alive and doing something (while not writing or reading still productive) I’ll get back to organizing. I really need more furniture and a slave or something to get this shit done.

 

Busy, busy

So, lately we’ve been preparing our move.

That has meant I’ve turned my focus away from books for the time being, and unfortunately from writing as well. That is, if we’re talking of something a bit more serious that lists of what to keep and where to store it or bucket lists of stuff yet to do.

I’ve got a ton of those, but I bet you don’t care about them. I don’t personally, but I’ll forget if I won’t write it down.

I had also no idea I had this much stuff. I knew I had a lot (because you cannot own around 600 books and not have a lot of stuff) but I honestly thought I’d led a pretty frugal life outside my beloved bookcases. I’ve come to the conclusion that I won’t need a single new piece of clothing until I’ve worn though about half of what I currently own.

And there’s so much to throw out. I have a way of getting attached to stuff, and I really have to shake the habit now that I have to store my things instead of just moving them from under one roof to another. To be honest, I’ve thrown out a lot, but there’s still a lot to go (like my make-up: I don’t use 90% of it, why do I keep it? No reason).

Yesterday Last week we took my balcony planters to the nearby summer cottage. I wanted to keep them intact, because last summer I had the prettiest scented peas and ipomoeas and I’d really want to see the hybridization the plants managed (pretty, pretty pinks and purples and baby blue). That didn’t go quite as planned though, as my husband took and dumped the biggest planter straight out.

There I am, screeching ” What the hell did you do that for!?!” and him looking at me like I’m a crazy woman. Which I pretty certainly am, but usually he doesn’t give me that look. ( 😀 ) Honestly, I had explained to him in length why we were taking the planters there, but obviously he hadn’t either listened or had forgotten. Sigh.

Oh well. As long as the little birdies didn’t eat all the seeds during the winter I’m pretty sure something will sprout.

---

I managed to read one book over Easter at my folks. (Hooray for someone else doing the cooking and cleaning up!)

It’s called Guns and Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. A very thought-provoking book, so if you’ve managed not to read it since 1997 like I have, do go pick it up. It does a good job explaining the contributing factors that led Europeans to colonize the rest of the globe and not vice versa.

(I won’t spoil the reading experience for those who haven’t already, so I’ll just leave it at that. Even if I’m not completely satisfied with that iteration, it was my seventh attempt and will have to do.)

---

At this point I’ve started and left this text about four times (hence the conversion of yesterday to last week -.-), and I have to admit I’ve pretty much forgotten what else I meant to say. I know there was something.

Well, it’ll make for another post if I do remember.

 

Cleaning Frenzy

I’ve had so much stuff I’ve needed to do around the apartment I’ve had very little time to give to writing. It’s not just physical cleaning I’ve being doing though, I’ve been airing my head as well.

On the positive side though, I’m pretty much done with the most urgent of my chores.

There’s just so much more to do (and even the ‘non-urgent’ list is stuff I should have really done years ago. Shame on me.) that sometimes I don’t know where to start.

I hadn’t even realized how much energy I was spending on working until I stopped doing that. No wonder this place was (and in places still is) a mess. Honestly, though, I’ve learned that no more than 50% of the mess can be my fault and therefore I should expect the creator of the other 50% to take some responsibility. He’s getting there, but sometimes I just have to wonder.

On the stuff more related to this blog, I also frenzied through my bookshelf.

Now you must be wondering what my priorities are, if my bookshelf is on my urgent list. I’ll get there.

I took out all the books I’d read (but had remained under the notion “I just might have time to read this again here”, which is unlikely) and those I plan to take with me to North Karelia. They’re packed up and are waiting for me to take them over to the basement. The box to North Karelia will be staying upstairs. I’m not sure about those yet and I might add stuff – but then I’ll need another box (I’m awful and I have zero impulse control on books).

That’s part of why they were on the urgent list, really. If I get them out from underfoot I’ll have more room to pack some more. We’ve a lot of stuff and this is not a big apartment. (And my furniture is not good for this particular flat, but that’s another story entirely.)

I also vow I’ll buy no more books until the bookshelf is done. I really have to keep this one because I have to carry those things out of here. I love them, but really I need a house to keep them in as is.

There are many interesting books still waiting, so shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Just have to stay home and away from any store in Finland (every grocery store has some pocket books – might not be good, but they’re everywhere).

Regarding my Malleus reading journal though, I realized I’d at some point packed away the Bible I was supposed to cross-reference from. D’oh. Hope it’s not in the basement. I’m NOT opening those boxes again until I’m at my next apartment. (If it’s there the Malleus reading journal is officially on hiatus until next autumn.)

Trying to sort through my inflated worldly possessions has taught me to be better at letting go as well. I have some hoarding tendencies and sometimes get a bit too attached to inanimate objects, but there’s just got to be a line somewhere. I’ve thrown away a lot of stuff I’d kept for ‘that one day when I’ll fix this shit’. Should throw away a lot more, but hey, it’s really a process. Should I capitalize that? Maybe.

Having a clear-set deadline has always been a help for me, and knowing that we won’t be having a place of our own for a couple months really puts pressure into throwing away the unnecessary. I just dread the look on our parents’ faces when they realize what they’ve agreed to…

Anyway, just to let you know I didn’t die over the New Year’s. I’ve been so inspired lately, who knows what’ll happen regarding the actually interesting stuff instead of my housework.

Hopefully. My muses are fickle and cruel.

(And yeah, I’m just posting about doing my chores. I’m so sorry.)

2016 in Retrospect

Slightly early, but since I won’t be home for New Year’s, I figured I’ll do it now.

It’s been a weird year, really.

On one hand, there’s been so much I’ve wanted to do and never the time to do it. On the other, I’ve at times felt at peace like never before.

I have grown to resent my job after just learning to love it again, and I’ve been set free from it. It makes me sad, because a part of me was so unwilling to give up and not ready to let go. But another part says that there’s never a day like today to change (cliché as it may be).

It’s also been a year of personal growth for me, of learning to accept myself better. I’ve come to understand my imperfections better, and I hope I’ve learned to be just a bit more forgiving towards myself, as hard as it may be. (And as any possible deity will know, forgiveness I certainly need.)

I cannot say I’ve been happy, per se, depressed as I’ve been, but there have been moments of bliss and sunshine. The time I spent in Karelia this summer is a bright spot (as always), moments with my siblings’ children another (all 5 are wonderful in small doses, the older 2 for being older now and the boys for being smarter than the older two were at their age – especially the youngest is such a sweetheart).

2016 was also a year of sorrow, not only for all the great artists who have left us this year, but also because of personal loss. My uncle passed away very unexpectedly this autumn, and although I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years it still saddens me deeply to see my uncles leave us one by one. Year after year, family photos become more and more filled with death instead of life. Although the memories are happy, for a time those pictures will be bittersweet.

I have come to see my place in the chain of generations, and all the death in the family in the past few years (since 2001, tbh) has been a difficult but eye-opening experience. I’ve come to see and accept that my parents are aging, and that I may not have them for very long, and that I must take my time with them if I am to have it. It cannot be just “someday when”, it has to be today, because tomorrow just might not be there. My father’s brothers have all passed away before 70 (2 under 65), and my dad just turned 70 this year. The fact of the matter is I just might not have him “someday” (and that hurts like hell, as I’m sure you all can imagine).

I feel 2016 crystallized somewhat what I want to do with my life. We (my husband and I) made a lot of plans throughout the year, and I think we both now have a better picture of the road we must walk. In a way similar to mine I also feel my husband grew a lot as a person this year.

All in all, it must have been the most difficult year of my life, even more difficult than my teens, more difficult than that awful year when my grandmother died. I have at times wished for death, and thought it might just be easier to sleep and never wake up than to go on.

As we say in Finland, though, there’s only one way to go from the bottom, and that’s up.

As I was about to hit Publish I realized none of this actually had anything to do with books or writing, so…

P.S. This year I also read less than I would have wanted to but more than I think I did. I liked most books I read, but also managed to turn some reading into a chore. I hate chores, so that was totally a mistake. I’ll take that back next year. That’s my resolution, and you are free to remind me of it if it seems I forget. (But I’ll finish the reading journal on Malleus Maleficarum, because there’s no other way I’ll get through the biblical references…)

Ehh…

It’s been a while.

Now, I know this might come across like a huge excuse to being lazy, but bear with me.

I cannot go into details much, seeing as that would not be in accordance with the contracts I’ve signed and am legally bound to obey.

But what I can tell you is why I haven’t been writing anything up here. And that is the part anyone interested in this blog really deserves to know.

For the past three years, I’ve had health issues that have prevented me from doing my work properly. This in turn created friction between me and my employer (or the representative of the employer in charge or HR in my unit, but whatever). When it became clear my health problems were of a more permanent nature and would permanently decrease my work performance, the person above decided it was a good idea to try to bully me into resigning.

So, the past year and a half or so, I’ve been given unworkable shifts (literally shifts my doctor has repeatedly told the person I shouldn’t and cannot do) and I’ve been told repeatedly that my colleagues think my “special treatment” is unfair.

I’ve asked my colleagues whether the find my decreased performance a hindrance, and so far no one did, or at least never told me they did. More often than not, they told me I did a good job doing the parts of the job I could do and they didn’t like.

When things got to the point that I started getting written up for minor things, I realized that not only am I broken physically, my employer is also trying to break me mentally.

I went to my doctor and told him quite honestly that I could no longer bear going to a place where I’m so clearly no longer wanted. I told him that being constantly reminder of what is “wrong” with me has created this enormous amount of anxiety and that in times I just want to crawl to a corner and die. I’ve been depressed (and diagnosed) previously, and although I knew the symptoms I had tried to ignore them.

My doctor wrote me an official statement with the basic idea of “this person is not suitable to her assigned task”. He said this would probably get me fired, which here in Finland means you get a few months’ pay (depending on how long you’ve worked there) from your former employer and no ‘quarantine’ from unemployment support. This would be the best option, in regards to finances.

My boss didn’t fire me though. They had no idea what to do with the paper and would have to call their superiors. Please come again.

So, yesterday I resigned with 6 months pay. Apparently, my HR manager’s superiors had put their foot down. I don’t know if this is the fact, but for some reason, she was instructed to pay me out. And knowing that I cannot work in the near future due to my physical injuries and the fact that I’m mentally drained, I took the chance.

I have been brought down so low in the past couple months, that even doing what I most like doing – reading and writing – has become a task too mighty to handle. You can probably tell by the amount of projects I’ve posted vs. the amount of projects I’ve finished. That was me trying to motivate myself and failing.

You should see my home; if I say reading and writing have suffered, the biggest loser is probably chores. The place looks like a dump, which of course doesn’t help me thinking better things about myself (what a pathetic little c*** you are, not even able to take care of your home), nor does it help get the creative juices flowing.

In conjunction with my already low self esteem my treatment at work has made me feel worthless. At the point I was just a week ago, I thought I couldn’t post anything, because that would just make me look an even bigger fool; because I possibly couldn’t have anything  to say that anyone would want to read.

Now, the thing I hate even more than excuses is promises that aren’t kept. So I’m not going to promise anything.

I’m not quitting, though.

Might just be even more sporadic than thus far.

(Yeah and I just cannot come up with a good title for this. Just bad ones. So… ehh)

 

 

How important is your Peace to you?

Sounds like philosophy, but it isn’t.

I was watching House, and there was a girl trying to find her birth parents. Obviously she got sick (It’s House after all), and a question came to me.

“How important is your peace to you?”

One might consider this a writing prompt. That is exactly how I’m presenting it.

Even to myself. I have an idea, but I won’t share it with you just yet.

Not that I’d be afraid you’d go for that one, just that I don’t want to come in the way of your own ideas by planting my take.

My personal interpretation might lean more towards peace of mind, is all.

If this inspires you, I’d really love to see the result. No pressure, though. 😉

Helsinki Book Fair

Today it starts, ends this Sunday.

I’ll only be going today. I have some time off (for once, THANK YOU, wrist!) but taking the train there several days in a row… I love books, but not as much as to take that bloody train any more often than I have to – nothing wrong with the train but the people in it.

The center hold also a food and wine exhibit, but after seeing what it was like last year I doubt I’ll take more than a quick peek. Last year I didn’t get one sample that actually tasted like the product; the sample bites were cut so small they hardly held in the sampling forks. That was due to people stopping to actually eat out of the samples while chatting with the workers. No wonder they don’t want to hand stuff out when you take more than your due, people…

The wine part requires you to buy a tasting cup. I’m not there to get drunk but to buy books, so none of that either. All the things for sale are obviously also higher end and rather expensive, so they wouldn’t fit in my budget anyway.

But the books, oh, they fit in no matter what!

And I’m also going to do some Christmas shopping while there. Wouldn’t do of me to be all selfish and only buy things for me… Or it would, but I hate Christmas shopping so this way I’ll at least get it done.

Yes. There are women who hate shopping. You’ve just met one. It’s really just not for Christmas but for anything except books or food in general. I especially hate fitting rooms and clothes stores. I hate the sales associates (not their fault, I just hate being asked stuff) and I hate the music and the commercials. (And I hate the fact that when you would actually need help no one suddenly wants to help you any more.)

I’ve not looked through the events, but I did spot one ad for the book fair… Apparently, a woman who was first not a suspect, then a suspect and now acquitted of her husband’s murder a few years back is there to promote her book. I personally believe she offed him, but she had plenty of time to get rid of the evidence when the police where off chasing bad leads. Oh well, she was found not guilty and now she wants several millions from the state for the time she spent incarcerated. She has also written this book about her time after the death of her husband (or something like that).

I hope I won’t be there when she is there. I really do not want to hear her talk about any of that stuff over the loudspeakers. The media just shut up about it, I’ve had plenty more than enough.

Let’s take a look though, out of pure curiosity… Who’s there today?

Apparently, the themes this year are nature and “Finnish Public School 150 Years”. So there is some nature photography by Sergey Korshkov on display (and in all likelihood his photo books). Also some discussions seem to border the subject.

School, children and learning have a bigger part of Thursday, likely because on weekdays school classes tend to be there. There’s the opening ceremony for the 150th anniversary of the school system; some guy (never heard of him) has written a book about kids and internet and is there to talk about it, a local science center has a pop-up section; a workshop just for kids and some other stuff as well… Apparently, this year it would be great to be under 12 at the book fair. Alas, those days are far gone for me.

Aaand there it is. Memoirs of the Murder Widow, 12:30-13:00. Craptastic. I’ll just go and see the food expo for that half an hour.

Speaking of which, time to get going! There are a few interesting panels I want to check out before that.

I’ll think I’ll write a little follow-up later on, this was cut a bit short…

Goodreads widget

Spur of the moment addition.

I must remind you, that my Goodreads page is for the moment a work in progress.

I have so far added only about a third of the books in my possession and some of the read/reading/unread -shelves are not exactly correct at the moment.

Insofar as are the books that I have read in my possession, the list is right. The question is more of have I truly finished all of them yet. Some of my books are waiting for bigger shelves in the basement, and I have just mercilessly added them to await the time to actually comb through it and put everything in their correct virtual shelves anyway.

So, as I have warned you before, should you visit in order to see my bookshelves… You will be greeted by a construction site gone horribly wrong.

I’ll let you know when it’s safe to enter without a helmet…