the color of my soul

husband's bestie has sold his place and is moving away at the end of the month. he's a truly lovely person, a retired pilot, and i will miss him because he's been a staple dinner guest at our house for over a decade, but husband will miss him even more. in fact, i'm a little worried about husband without him. a young couple has bought his place and the wife is apparently a fellow american. husband has briefly met them, but i haven't. they won't be the same, but if i've learned one thing, it's that things don't stay the same and you have to be open to what comes next. 

i've been reading a lot of new substacks of late and many are focused on the new years resolution genre. i guess it's just that time of year. a surprising number of them quote rumi. kind of weird how appropriated his work has been by the gratitude/self-help set. i can't decide if it's good that it pushes it to a wider audience or if it somehow cheapens it. maybe it's a bit of both. but anyway susan cain asks in the new year's edition of the quiet life, what color is your soul now? what color do you want it to be? which she doesn't attribute to rumi (though she does quote him in the stack), but marcus aurelius, "your soul takes on the color of your thoughts."

affected by the time of year, i think my soul is currently that wintery nordic greyish blue. it's not a terrible color for your soul to be. it's peaceful and quiet, if a little cold. it seems a little lighter and more tending towards the blue than the grey after yesterday's scream in the forest. it feels in tune with the slight slowly returning after the solstice. i think the color i want it to be is a sunny, bright yellow. and that will surely come with summer and the buzzing yellow of the canola fields. and it will no doubt pass through that brilliant light green of the first beech leaves as they unfurl in the spring on the way there. our souls aren't just one color, but the whole spectrum and that color can change with the season or even from day to day or minute to minute. but susan is right, that it's worth thinking about what you're feeding your soul. and currently, i want to feed mine light. 

the isolation journals five lists

on this rainy, grey first day of january, i was catching up on my substack feed, waiting for it to clear up a bit so that i can go for a walk. i read suleika jouoad's isolation journals sunday prompt on the five lists and it seemed like a good activity to indulge in while i wait for a break in the rain. it's always nice to do a bit of reflecting on the first day of a fresh, new year. 

1. what in the last year are you proud of?

the first thing that springs to mind is the podcast i'm creating at work. it's something that i always wanted to do and while it's not perfect, i have learned so much along the way and i got to have a lot of great conversations with a lot of interesting people. i have really grown professionally making this work. and it wasn't the only great project i was part of at work. we also worked with a top agency to make some really great short videos that tell some emotional stories that all take place in a kitchen - it was a completely different and new kind of content for us as a company and i'm really proud to have been part of pushing us in that direction. 

i'm really proud of my brave, beautiful child and how hard she works at school and how she's managed to surround herself with good friends and how she bravely makes her way through the world, 9 time zones away from us. she's a wonderful young woman and i'm so proud of her. 

and lastly, i'm proud of my weight loss. yes, i have used the help that wegovy gives me, and i have zero shame for that. i am healthier, my cholesterol numbers are down and i just feel about a thousand times better. plus, i also look so much better and i realize that matters more to me than i imagined it would. i have definitely been hiding underneath over-sized, drab clothing choices for some years now and it feels so good to not need to do that anymore. i can actually find items on the sale rack in size medium and even small and they fit me! and damn, it makes me happy and proud.

2. what did this year leave you yearning for?

i have struggled this year to restart a social life after the corona years. it seems overwhelming to invite people over like we used to. we would have spontaneous game nights and do dinner together with friends, and now we almost never do that. it doesn't help that the main friends we did that with moved a bit further away. and after that and corona, we just drifted apart. but i find myself yearning for more time with friends and good conversations and evenings filled with good food and laughter. we had a few of those over the past year, but not nearly enough.

3. what's causing you anxiety?

i think money is always a source of anxiety. one could always do with more of it. it's not really that we lack, per se, but we could do things faster and complete more of the house projects if we had a bit more. i shouldn't complain, as we do have two good incomes in our household, i guess i wish that i had less anxiety about it.

naturally, the state of the world causes a lot of anxiety and in light of that, it feels a little meaningless to be worried about money. but world issues feel so huge and insurmountable, that maybe it's easier to look at one's own life and try to grab onto an anxiety that's closer to home. 

i'm pretty apprehensive about the election in november, but if i let myself fully stare that one in the face, i'll completely destroy what's left of my back teeth after the first trump administration, since that anxiety manifests as clenching my jaw in my sleep to the point where i wake up with a swollen cheek.

4. what resources, skills and practices can you rely on in the next year?

this one feels the most like setting new year's resolutions and i'm finding it a little difficult. i suppose the main resource that i rely on in general is my fearlessness in just jumping into things with both feet. i also, despite my advancing age, love to learn new things and stay up-to-date on trends and technology, and try out all the new things that are popping up all the time - ai, tiktok, blue sky, etc. i don't know really know whether these are resources or skills that i possess, but it's what comes to mind. staying curious is probably the best thing i can do to keep growing and developing.

as for the practice that i can rely on, it's my dogged determination to take a photo every day. i've been doing it since may 2008 and i don't intend to stop now. and if i can keep that commitment for such a long time, i can surely keep other commitments - like dry january, and taking a walk or jog every day, finding a regular yoga class to attend, inviting people over once a month, learning to knit, reading a book instead of endlessly scrolling on my phone...

5. what are your wildest, most harebrained ideas and dreams?

i would love to have a small podcast production company, making limited series podcasts for companies, to help them tell their stories. it would be a great way to keep getting to talk to interesting people and learn new things. 

one day, i want to have a little café right here in the countryside. this one has been in the back of my mind for some years. it would only have a few seats and maybe limited opening hours, but it would be a destination worth seeking out. everything in the café would also be for sale - it would be furnished with antiques and the serving dishes/cups/plates would be cool ceramics from local artists and you would be able to buy anything that struck your fancy.

i'd also like to make the old part of the house into a couple of rooms that we could put up on airbnb, so i could get back some of the feeling i used to have when we had couchsurfers on a regular basis. meeting interesting people and sharing our space, especially our outdoor spaces, with them. 

i want to do another art project/exhibition together with my friend christina. and just generally develop my creative practice. maybe something with pinhole photography?

i'm sure there are other things, but these are the ones that come to mind. it was nice to spend an hour or so pondering these questions. let me know if you do it too. 

and here's hoping 2024 will be a good year for all of us.

mood: bleak

i'm sick. i haven't been sick like this in a long time. it started yesterday when i was driving with a colleague to copenhagen. i suddenly knew i was going to throw up and luckily he pulled over quickly. then despite attending a workshop, i continued to throw up the rest of the day. by the time we drove home, i was getting achy all over and i'm sure i had a low grade fever. miserable. i went to bed immediately with a kitten and tiktok and slept for 10 hours. so far today, no throwing up, but the thought of food still turns my stomach. i have kept a cup of tea down, so that's something. 

so i'm hanging out in bed with travis, my comfort kitten, candles burning and my laptop on my lap. and i'm thinking about all the madness in the world. in the early days of this blog, i would have been on the barricades, writing about it. the incomprehensible slaughter of innocent women and children in gaza, the way the war in ukraine drags on, but seems to have been forgotten in the face of the horrors being committed by israel and hamas. the criminal trump's increasingly fascist behavior and his likelihood of being the nominee. i just don't know what to say. or do. i feel rather helpless in the face of it all. 

here i am, tucked up in my cozy, warm bed, fretting about some stupid bureaucracy imposed on our little creative group by the local bank and recovering from the flu while the world rages out there. and i can't help but berate myself for it, wondering if it's similar to how ordinary germans just sat back and let hitler do all he did. did they feel as helpless and wrapped up in their own pettiness? 

what does it mean?

"memory is a kind of ceaseless remodeling." - this is from that harper's piece on memory. i kept reading and kept thinking about it. 

and then old friend of the blog, malorie, wrote a lovely piece on the weirdness of the pandemic time on her substack. her thoughts are far more eloquent than mine. but i thought it might be time to start to figure out what i think about it and what it did to me.

to be honest, we didn't have it that bad. we already live in the countryside, away from people. i took more walks than normal - i discovered a new path around our lake after ten years of living here. it was actually quite nice. even though i started a new job just as the pandemic started, even that worked out very well, though i wondered in the beginning if it would. 

where things have changed is on the social front. i find it hard to restart a social life. we used to have people over for dinner regularly. these days, we hardly ever do so. we are having some people over for friendsgiving this weekend. it's a smaller group than it has been some years. husband and i discussed the guest list and we just couldn't get our heads around a bigger group. so we'll be 8. i used to not blink at 20. i think this difference is one of the consequences of corona time. 

but i don't know what else is. it feels so hard to judge something when you don't have enough distance to it. and when it feels like everyone has forgotten it. i don't hear anything about it at all here in denmark. they haven't even recommended a booster shot this year for the new variants. and i haven't even had it. at least not that i know of. it's kind of like everyone has forgotten. but i suspect our bodies and our psyches haven't forgotten. but what it means? i have no idea. what do you think it means?

unspoken rules

we've worked at home a lot over the past two and a half years. it's been both good and bad. we're mostly back in the office these days, but i do still work some days at home when i really have to concentrate. or because my back is hurting, which it has been lately. i'm having flashbacks to the back surgery in 2015 and hoping to avoid it happening again. though working at home probably contributes to it, as i tend to sit much more when i'm home - forgetting to take breaks or eat lunch. 

but it can also be weird being back in the office. a whole new set of rules came about while we worked at home. and many are unspoken and just understood. or not understood. and it's weird, since they're unspoken, to feel disappointed or annoyed when the rules are broken, but the fact remains that i find myself feeling disappointed and annoyed of late.

a couple of examples: 

1) calling on teams: when you call someone on teams, you send a message first to ask them if they have time. so it's super annoying and jarring when when someone just calls out of the blue. often when you're in the middle of a meeting, so they don't even pay attention to the little red bubble that shows that you're busy. 

2) meetings in an open office environment: during corona, we all sat at home and could therefore hold meetings out loud and not bother anyone but the cat. back in the office, it's an open environment and there are some phone booths for meetings where you're the only one, or there are plenty of meeting rooms if you're several people meeting with others on teams. however, i've noticed that some of my colleagues continue to hold their teams meetings in the open environment. they put on headphones and don't realize that they're shouting. one colleague actually had a meeting on teams with the person sitting directly across from him. hello? go to a meeting room, or just go around to the other side and talk to one another! by the end of the day, i was utterly exhausted from listening to his shouting during all his meetings and i was too mad to say anything about it. but seriously, has two years of working from home rendered him so unaware of other humans that he doesn't realize he's being utterly rude to his colleagues?

how is company culture formed? who decides the etiquette? and how does everyone agree on it without talking about it out loud? and when someone utterly violates it, how do you talk to that person about it nicely? i know for sure that you don't let yourself steam about it all day and get so angry that you know you won't be able to be nice about it. but then the moment passes and maybe now his way of just holding meetings with headphones and shouting has moved everyone towards establishing a different company culture than the one you thought was there. and it's all unspoken. and it makes being back in the office less fun than it should be, because it truly is nice to be around your colleagues again.

but i still think a combination will be best. i need a couple of days of being able to concentrate at home and a few days of being with my colleagues in the office. they're two completely different ways of working. and i like the variety, but i do just wish we all agreed on the culture.

stitching together a lovely, messy, chaotic life

nearly a month after my disappointment at not getting hold of a kit that would enable me to participate in the dataspejlet community art project at trapholt museum, i was at a friend's house for a board meeting. i saw that she had a kit and i told her how sad i was that i missed out on getting one. i snapped a picture of it there on her side table, but that sense of sadness and being on the outside of something i wanted to be part of welled up in me again and i found it almost too painful to look at. i even thought the colors she had gotten were great and would have been so much fun to work with. she told me that her neighbor also had one and she would ask her if she was going to use it. i went away a little bit hopeful, but still mostly resigned to not getting one.

then, a week or so later, my friend sent me a message, telling me she'd left me something up in our creative group's workshop at the library. i crossed my fingers that i knew what it was and i was delighted to find that she gave me her own kit. i breathed a sign of relief. 

oddly, i didn't start stitching on it right away. i got out my data files and chose the words i wanted to work with and i drew a sketch on some graph paper that husband had lying around on his desk. and then, i went around pondering it in the back of my head for a couple of weeks. i'm one who always works best close to a looming deadline. and i wasn't doing nothing - i was pinning stitch inspiration on pinterest and thinking about how i wanted to express the words i'd chosen. i was also keeping an eye on the #dataspejlet hashtag on instagram, but not a lot of posts were being shared and i didn't want to have to open the dreaded facebook to go see what people were posting in the group. plus, i figured it was best to do it my way anyway, without too much inspiration/influence from others.

but during our long weekend, i finally got stitching. it was beautiful out in the garden, on the pillow-covered bench between the greenhouses. i started with the circle representing husband. it has a circle within it that represents sabin. 

i chose the golden mustard color for husband and pink for sabin - my colors were those, plus purple. i probably would have chosen other colors if i were choosing myself, but these were what i had to work with and i do like them. i decided to  completely fill those two circles with stitches, because they represent the two people who complete me. 

the next circles that i worked on were the overlapping ones representing time/reality and cats - funny that those overlapped, but i think the time/reality comes from posts i did about reading murakami and of course, cats figure heavily on my facebook page. i chose to leave more "air" in those circles, not filling them out completely with stitches and there, where they overlapped, i used both colors, plus i added the third color, to show that the interesting part is where my preoccupations overlap. 

and then i turned to the similarly overlapping circles representing ships and LEGO. i filled those out with little + signs (i should note that we were only allowed to use stitches that go horizonal or vertical, no side-ways or curves or french knots or fancy stuff). and i stitched three hearts in the space where they overlapped, to signify how much i do love both. they are both from my work life, but both have become something of who i am.

i really enjoyed sitting in the sunshine, stitching. when i needed a break, i'd get up and pull a few weeds or water the plants or plant a few seeds. and i picked myself a small bouquet of fragrant lilacs, my favorite flower, to have at hand while i stitched. i sat in the sun with my big sun hat on and enjoyed the meditative stitching, seeing where it would take me and what thoughts it would provoke.

i didn't get it all finished on the weekend, so monday after work, i started my second to last circle. this is the one where i chose a group of words from the data, as they all seemed related and harmonious together. they were: story, fabulous, beautiful, sunshine, awesome. and reality was in that circle as well. i think it's my favorite circle - the three colors complementing one another best. it was also one i stitched most intuitively, letting the colors tell me where they wanted to be and how many stitches and the length. it simply felt freer than the others, which felt careful and deliberate. i liked this one best.

it was getting a bit dark by the time i finished, but i took a picture anyway. i'm pleased with the result. and then on tuesday, i had only one circle left to do. the bad one. 

we were given white thread to use for stitching those bits that we wished weren't there or which we didn't want anyone to see. for me, that circle came down in the left lower quadrant, far from the other circles, which was good, as i hate to have this word touching any of the positive words. and the word for that circle was trump. i used couching, i think wanting to keep that embarrassing evil clown under control, limiting him and tying him down. that stitch came to me naturally and intuitively as well. funny how those last two circles were the most intuitive, like i had to have warmed up to the stitching before i could let myself go.

and i thought a lot about stitching outside the circles and i can see now that others have done so - stitching connections between them and such. and i thought i wanted to do that as well. but as i began - trying to make a joyful spray of stitches surround my favorite circle at the top - they came out awkward and not at all how i envisioned them, so i picked them up. i think it would have worked if i could have used french knots, but alas, they weren't allowed. so, i decided i was content to only show what the data showed and keep the rest of my lovely, chaotic, messy, awesome life for myself.

i'm so happy i got to participate after all and i'm very grateful to my friend for giving me her kit. it meant a lot and the meditative stitching time was just what i needed during a very busy time at work. i can't wait to see how my work will fit into the larger work that astrid skibsted puts together at trapholt this autumn.  it will inevitably be a dialogue with the many other embroiderers and the whole will be so much greater than the individual parts and yet they will be beautiful and unique on their own. and i'll bet it will be harmonious and lovely, messy and chaotic, just like all the lives that went into the data that went into all those stitches. and we will all belong exactly where we are in the work. 

this awesome, beautiful, fabulous life

i submitted my dataspejlet work to trapholt electronically today, so now, i only have to drop it off. i still need to write a post about how i got my hands on a kit, but i'll do that next. 

they have a form to fill out where you can write a 1000 character description of your work. that's a crazy small amount for all the thought and hours that went into it. here's what mine said:

i loathe facebook, but have been there for many years, so it made sense to use it for my dataspejl. interestingly, the data did rather accurately reveal what's important to me - husband (yes, i call him that, like it's his name) and daughter, their circles overlapping, very fittingly. the next circles, all very close in size represent other things i love - like cats and ships and LEGO. my #2 circle featured words like "time" and "reality," which surely come from reading and posting about Murakami books. i chose to do one circle in white, as the frequent word there is one i'd like to forget - trump. it's also an outlier on my grid - away from the others, which seems right. but to end on a happy note, the circle where i used all three colors in a crazy quilt sort of pattern was full of words like "story," "fabulous," "beautiful," "sunshine," "awesome" and again, "reality," - leading me to my title and to the realization that yes, my colorful, loud, messy life is rather fabulous.

submitted this process photo - as i thoroughly enjoyed sitting in the sunshine in the garden, stitching away last weekend.

* * *

you also had to fill out which words you chose to work with and mine were:

husband, sabin (which i submitted as daughter, for the sake of anonymity), cats, ships, LEGO, time, reality, story, fabulous, beautiful, sunshine, awesome and yes, trump. 

so weird to boil my life down to 8 circles and a dozen or so words. it seems so paltry and yet still, it did capture something. i tried stitching outside the circles a bit, to indicate that my life is much more than just those 8 confined and sometimes overlapping circles, but took it away again, because it felt like it didn't capture it. instead, i chose to go with the snapshot those 8 circles offer and keep for myself the messy chaos of the rest of this awesome, beautiful, fabulous life. 

doing hard things

a moment of serenity in the greenhouse when i got home.

dang, today was hard. a very long project is about to come to fruition. a year and a half of work. and weirdly, today, one day before launch, we found ourselves in a holding pattern. there was a major bug and the development team was working frantically, and the rest of us just had to wait. finally, the decision was made to just roll back, without really figuring out what the hell caused the bug. and although most of the day was spent waiting and not really doing all that much, damn, it takes a psychological toll. i swear, we're all going to need therapy after this. i am completely wrung out this evening. i was going to keep editing and checking pages, but instead, i'm telling myself that no one will actually read all. the. pages. tomorrow when we launch in the first two languages, so, as the danes say, "det skal nok gå." (it'll be all right) and i'm taking myself off to bed after a long, hot shower and a rather large glass of wine. i'll put a cozy mystery (this time, the royal spyness series by rhys bowen), curl up with a cat and fall asleep. the hard part isn't over yet, but it will all be easier after a good night's sleep. and thank odin for good colleagues. 

of data mirrors and a sense of belonging

part of the dataspejlet (data mirror) project at trapholt museum is small piece of personal embroidery. you actually download your data from facebook and your search history from google chrome and send it in to a model/algorithm that the museum has created for the project, and it returns a quadrant diagram with circles on it representing the words that appear most frequently. if you click on the numbered circles, the words change, so you can select the ones you wish to think of while you embroider and create your personal "data mirror." 

i think because the algorithm is surely set to danish, it has returned some weird words for me - like "lov" which is surely actually "love" in my posts and not "promise" if it were danish and the "ll" that's surely from "we'll" and "it'll" and other contractions. i have no idea what the placement of the circles on the quadrant means. 

the museum had kits available in set colors - you get two colors to use, plus white, which you should use for the words that appear a lot, but which you don't want to count in your stitched picture of your data. unfortunately, i didn't get my hands on a kit, not imagining that there were only a few available, but i suppose it makes sense since the artwork can only be the size it can be. i have felt more disappointed than is warranted that i didn't get a kit. i plan to work with the graphs on my own anyway and this way, i get to keep them. and decide to use as many colors as i wish.

and i am getting to participate in the woven part of the work, so i am still a part of the larger work. in my disappointment over not getting a kit, i realized, once again, that being part of a community is important to me. i wanted to see my stitched data mirror in dialogue with all the other stitched data mirrors - to have a visual depiction of how and where i fit in the scheme of things. to contribute to something beautiful that only becomes more beautiful in dialogue with everyone else's work. i feel genuinely sad that i don't get to be part of that. and it triggers that old familiar feeling of being on the outside (i really should get therapy for that).

i think i also wanted something beautiful to come of all that data i stupidly gave to facebook all those years. it was nice to think that something good would come it somehow, when they've used it for nothing but evil and nefarious purposes. 

my chrome history diagram is much less interesting since it's so full of work-related stuff like kitchens (in no less than four languages) and dashboards and the project management software asana - which i visit regularly. i wanted to submit my blog data, but their algorithm couldn't handle the amount of data. i don't think my google visits say that much about me as a private person, but they do say something about me as a work person. 

but i guess that whatever i make of it is for myself. and maybe that's ok. but i would have liked it to be part of something bigger. sigh.

how we make decisions or how do we make decisions?

i started a new job nearly two months ago and two weeks ago, when i got the opportunity to return to my old job, i accepted it. i hadn't made the decision to leave lightly and when i made it, i felt it was the right decision. some very big things changed at the new workplace in the interim and when i got there, i discovered that it was very much not the right decision. i am privileged to be able to go back to my old job, where i know that i have great colleagues and where my work is appreciated and makes a difference.

i'm finishing up at the new job this week and trying my best to finish up all the projects i'm involved in. it's so disheartening to have the reasons that made me regret the new job underlined for me again today. the main person that i have to work with (not a co-worker, more the client) seems to be actively working against me. i've asked her multiple questions today and she hasn't answered any of them. i can't finish today's work without her answers. i even tried to book her for a quick teams meeting and she suggested a time tomorrow, even though she wants the article i'm working on today. it feels like she wants me to do a bad job so that she can be confirmed in her opinion that the agency i work for doesn't provide good work. 

i'm trying not to take it personally, but i really don't understand it.

* ~ * ~ *

and this stupid blow-by-blow timeline is boring the hell out of me. i should find a way to tell it in metaphor. or as a fairytale. if i did, it would undoubtedly involve a naive, well-meaning character who trusts too much and a dragon that turns out to be an ugly troll. and who will indulge in even more intense troll-like behavior the next day, though i didn't know that at the time i wrote the paragraphs above.

* ~ * ~ *

but it all has me thinking about decisions and how we make them. we make them with a combination of thought, cost-benefit analysis, and excitement with a bit of gut feeling thrown in. and in any decision, one of those will weigh a bit more than the others and be what tips the scales. in this case, i made a big list of pros and cons of each job, thought about it endlessly, discussed it with husband even more endlessly and then went with my gut, which told me to take the new job. but it seems my gut didn't know the whole story. 

but was it my gut? any decision is a complex thing. i got the new job through a headhunter who contacted me last summer. at that time, things were a bit rocky at my job, my boss was going down with stress and making himself and everyone else miserable and i'd spent that first year of covid doing a whole lot of things that were not what i was hired to do. and i'll admit, it's awfully flattering to be contacted by a headhunter. and i'm susceptible to that sort of flattery. it's always nice to be wanted. 

but was that it? i think it was part of it. the other part was some baggage created by the aforementioned stressed manager. he had done his best to convince me that he doubted my abilities, though how he knew what they were when he hadn't let me do any of the tasks i was hired for, i don't know. he even criticized me for how many tabs i kept open on my computer, as if that was any of his business. or as if it had any meaning whatsover. he actually wanted to use that fact to deny me the chance to actually start doing what i had been hired to do. he also spent half of my development talk waxing on and on about how awesome my colleague was. so yes, there was baggage. and despite him actually having left the company by the time i accepted the new job, it was still a big factor. carrying all that baggage around is hard work.

so what about my decision to go back to that job? that's a complex thing as well. it's partially the danish karen who was my main client at the new job and it's once again, a bit of flattery. it's flattering when your old boss calls and asks if you'd like to return. and if you're in the middle of something that wasn't what you expected it to be and you don't think it looks like you can actually do anything about making it better, it's that much more appealing. i'll admit that i was also missing my old team - we were close and it felt so comfortable and fun. i missed laughing and having a good time with them (hmm, i wonder if that's the most important factor in decision making? feeling like you belong?). and so i said yes.

and today, i started anew. and it really did feel like a fresh start. like i could leave the baggage of the old boss on the platform and start anew, on more secure footing and feeling like i was appreciated for what my new boss (who was the old boss' boss) knows that i can do. it also helps that i have a proper job description this time and that i find all the tasks in it to be right up my alley.

and so, it feels like the right decision. for a whole variety of reasons. and time will tell if they hold up. but for now, my gut tells me that they will. 

we made it this far

what a weird week. already on tuesday, it felt pretty long, though in honor of the auspicious date, i was determined to look at everything from a positive perspective. then wednesday came along and it only got longer. it wasn't a great day. i got a reminder that when you switch jobs, you will be surprised and maybe even blindsided and you will have to adjust to the new situation. i also sent a silent prayer of apology to anyone from an agency that i had worked with and who i hadn't treated very well. i'm so sorry! but then i picked up the positivity again and reminded myself how much of a difference i could make if i looked at it from a different perspective. 

that's what changing jobs was about - learning new things, stretching myself, thinking in new ways, doing things from a different perspective. and that's what wednesday gave me, so i can't really complain.

and then on wednesday evening, i went to an amazing event in a small castle turned school that's in the area. i heard very interesting, experimental music from two up and coming young artists - one who performed in the beautiful setting of a church from the middle ages and the other, which was accompanied by a most amazing set of synesthetic visuals. and an established artist, teitur, whom i didn't know before that day. he's from the faroe islands and his songs all tell a story and he performed at a grand piano in an amazing room of the castle and was so authentic and down-to-earth and lovely and genuinely talented and it was bliss. seriously, look for him on spotify and definitely listen to the song called clara. he told the story behind it and it was lovely, but you'll get it even without the story. it's a song of our times.

for most of the day on thursday, i thought it was friday. alas, it was not and that was a disappointment. world war 3 started, for no reason that anyone can discern, other than that putin has gone completely mad. i'm certain he has issues at home that no one knows about. and i think the only way to stop him will be for the west to freeze all his bank accounts, take his yacht and his house(s) on the french rivera. make it hurt. but i fear many innocent ukrainian citizens will be hurt before it works.

and now it's friday. and we made it. and the weekend is ahead. and despite learning that an old colleague is unexpectedly a trumpanzee, and world war 3 has begun, and gas prices are skyrocketing, we will go on. and i will get up and go for a long walk and then i'll settle in to work. and maybe do a bit of sewing and or weaving. and probably feel like crap about the lot of it, because of the aforementioned ww3. what can we do? if i knew, i'd do it.

those weird feelings you can't put your finger on...

i have the weirdest feeling when i go to our creative group's atelier up on the top floor of our local library. something about being there just makes me feel prickly, negative and a little defensive. i think it's been going on for awhile, but i only just was able to put my finger on the feeling last evening. i don't know why, but knowing that is a step towards figuring that out. 

i can feel that i put up a wall around myself. and that the wall actually prevents me from being present and open. it's like it appears without my knowledge and i find myself behind it, feeling a bit negative and out of sorts. 

or maybe it's just that i'm sensitive to negative energy. and there's loads of negativity there. i'm not sure that i've always felt it. at the beginning of the pandemic, i spent a lot of time there, as the library has a good internet connection and ours at home was iffy at best. so i worked there many days during the time we had to work from home. maybe that's it. some kind of corona-induced anxiety kicks in when i'm there. but why would that make me defensive and negative? 

it's also the scene where someone questioned how i was raised because i had wanted to send flowers from our group to the funeral of our group's founder's father. the other members of the board were against that idea, by the way. i'm still wondering how on earth that makes me the one who is badly raised. but i live outside my own culture, so perhaps it's just one of those things that's impossible for me to understand. but perhaps i associate it with the place. 

but how do i shake it off? i can feel that it prevents me from enjoying getting together with women i genuinely like in a place that's made for creativity. do i need to burn some sage up there? exorcise the demons? how do i get rid of this feeling so that i can enjoy being there again and be present for the people who i like being with? 

i don't mean to imply that i don't take responsibility for this feeling in myself. i just don't know the source of it, nor how to get rid of it. 

recovery time

as i get older, it seems to take me more and more time to recover from the big events. back at the end of november, i gave my notice at my job after a tumultuous almost two years of working during a pandemic in a branch that experienced exponential growth because people were sitting at home, working and homeschooling from their kitchens and thinking, "damn, i need a new kitchen." that resulted in a lot of crazy mad ambitious projects that were legitimately "business critical," (though i hate buzzwords like that). 

it was fun and i had really great colleagues, but it was also really intense and hard and in the autumn, i fell prey to the thoughts that many people are having these days...is this really what i want to be doing? do i want to write about black friday deals and affordable prices for the rest of my career? i am approaching an age where i have to think about these things. because soon it will get more difficult for me to switch jobs. even though age is just a number. and with basically 0% unemployment (ok, it's 2.8%, but that might as well be 0%), things aren't that bad. yet. but still, it gave me pause. 

i'd been courted by a headhunter since the summer holiday and i'd turned them down once, but they approached me again in the autumn as fatigue set in. a very big project was dragging out, a boss that went down with stress, tried to come back, couldn't accept the changes that happened in his absence and then left, leaving that very big project in one giant mess and with no one at the helm, made me say yes the second time around. 

but before i said yes, i had a day with the new team, basically interviewing them. it's that kind of job market these days. and i really liked them and it felt like the right thing to do, so i said yes. but i agreed to give my old job an extra month (in denmark, you tend to give you notice at the end of one month and you finish at the end of the next one). i owed that to those good colleagues and we'd been through so much together. and i also felt that i'd poured so much work and caring (i always care too much a great deal) and thought and sweat and tears into the project, that i wanted to leave it at a milestone, rather than just leaving in the middle of everything.

and hit that milestone we did. confetti canons and all. and i felt grateful and privileged to have worked so hard with such a group of talented people. and although i've gone on to that new job with an undoubtedly talented new group of people, damn, i miss them. we went through the hellfire together. we laughed, we swore (some more than others...and by we i mean me), we inspired one another, we leaned on one another, on occasion we had a few too many drinks, we got mad, we yelled, some of us mansplained (you know who you are), then we made up and got over it and got to work again. and it was special and awesome and although i chose it myself, i'm sad it's over. and i miss them so much. 

and it all makes me realize that it's possible to be sad and happy at the same time. i'm excited about what's ahead and so happy to get to know a whole new group of colleagues, but the transition is hard. you don't just get over such an intense period of work in a day. and you have doubts and grief over losing the daily contact with those you shared it all with. guys, you will all have a very special place in my heart. and there will always be a g&t waiting for you if you drop by. but be sure you wear a t-rex or guy riding a chicken costume, because damned if you aren't going to end up on tiktok with me. that's the only way we're going to recover from this...as the danes say (and you're all danes), "you only have the fun you make yourself." i had a lot of fun with you and it was a privilege. thank you all. 

here's to brighter days ahead. 🥂✨ 

we will recover from this, it will just take a little time. so let's give ourselves that time. 

the beginner's mind

a recent episode of the ezra kline show was one of the best podcast episodes i've heard in a long time. he interviewed writer ruth ozeki. i wasn't familiar with her work before hearing the episode, but now i've ordered a couple of her books from the library. she's a zen buddhist priest as well as a novelist and i loved her views on writing and well, life in general. she talked about writing and meditation and the connection between the body and the mind and the body and writing. it's so good and so packed full of profound thoughts that i've actually listened to it twice.

she talked about the buddhist notion of having a beginner's mind. she said that the possibilities are endless when you have a beginner's mind, because you meet everything you encounter with curiosity and openness. i have a beginner's mind right now, as i start a new job. or at least i am trying very hard to do so. it's so hard to shut down the part of my mind that wants to assess and categorize everything and make judgements about it, before even knowing the story or even the outlines of it. but to do that shuts off so much potential...for other stories, for other points of view, for openness and curiosity. as ozeki said in the interview, not knowing is so intimate, it give us an intimacy to the world around us, because we're open to it and to experiencing it and can thereby be more IN it.

so i'm working hard to just be IN my beginner's mind. and taking long walks in the cold, crisp air, to at the same time be IN my not-so-beginner's body. and to breathe deeply and be open and start just experiencing without judgement. and to stop second-guessing myself. and to just experience the thrilling experience of learning new things and getting to know new people and seeing where it leads. 

i miss my good colleagues from my old job, but i genuinely don't think i made the wrong decision. it's possible to feel sad and to miss my friends and the level of comfort and camaraderie we had together, but to feel that i made the right decision. i can hold all these things in my mind and yes, in my body at once. because we humans are full of contradictions and there's room for them within us. the world isn't as black and white as we've tried to make it over the past couple of decades, it's full of shades of grey. and we should be more curious about our own minds and feelings, be better at sitting with them and experiencing them. it's not too late to have a beginner's mind. 

how can we be better?

is alison roman racist? i know this whole kerfuffle took place awhile ago, but i ran across it again today. and i find myself, a generally pretty privileged, middle-aged white woman, wondering how i can do better and be better? do i have to stop making curries? or middle eastern food? or listening to that album i bought when i was in south africa in 2007? where is the line between exploitation and just really loving the flavors or sounds another culture has put together? of course, i realize it's different for me as an ordinary person and not a (former) food writer for the new york times, but it's worth thinking about how we negotiate these times. i think hiding away in our own homes for the past year has been a good start, but people are getting vaccinated and that can't last forever. 

in the wake of yesterday's much-deserved guilty verdict for derek chauvin, it seems more important than ever that we, as people who have, knowingly or not, enjoyed all the privileges of the color of our skin, pay attention and try to do better. though i'll also admit that i have no idea what that looks like. so what i'm trying to do is sit in the discomfort of it. and talk about it. and think about it. and read about it. 

i cannot even imagine how terrible it must be to have to explain to your child at a ridiculously young age that they have to behave in a certain way towards the police because if they don't, they might get killed. my child is 9 time zones away and i worry about her, but i don't worry about her being stopped for some flimsy reason and harassed or murdered. and that, right there, is white privilege. and i don't know what to do with it, other than sit in an awareness of my discomfort, because on some level, i can't help being white. i don't know how i can make the police behave differently. i'd join the protests if i were closer to them, but i'm not. i'm so far away and it feels like such an enormous, overwhelming, insurmountable problem. it makes me feel genuinely helpless and deeply sad. 

i have so much sympathy and empathy for the families who have lost their loved ones so senselessly to the ignorance and bigotry of police. and the insult of an excuse in which the police officer with 20+ years of experience says she didn't know the difference between her taser and her gun is just breathtaking in its awfulness. what was she doing with either one in that situation? use your words, lady. 

the conviction of derek chauvin is a start - it is nice to finally see a police officer getting the punishment he deserves. but how did the situation happen in the first place? and the trauma all of those who watched him kill george floyd - how will they ever get over it? the girl who made the film - what an admirable presence of mind she had - but how difficult that must have been. but thank goodness she did it. but how can she live with it? how do you live with watching a policeman, who is meant to protect and serve, kill a man for no reason in the slowest and most awful way right before your very eyes and your camera? and how helpless everyone looking on must have felt. they couldn't do a thing, because those four policemen all had guns. all they could do was bear witness. and at least in this instance, it paid off and finally, a policeman was held responsible for his heinous actions. but still, they have to live with that. at least chauvin will, hopefully, have a long time to ponder his actions in jail and will hopefully never see the outside of a cell again (just as he will never see that 140 pounds the defense claimed he weighed. please. we have eyes.)

but the rest of us have to ponder our actions as well. whether it's crediting the cultures whose food we make and love, rather than appropriating them and claiming them as our own, or whether it's sitting in the discomfort. i genuinely can't help that i was born white into a middle class family in the latter half of the twentieth century, so i can't undo that. but i can at least try to recognize that that fact has brought me great privilege, perhaps in ways that i don't yet even see. but i can begin to think about it and try to do better towards those who didn't have the same good fortune as me. and i can demand change by voting for those who are willing to make it. 

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have you seen this amazing one-shot drone video in a bowling alley?

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daily delight - february 27

you might think that the molly dolly in the sunshine is today's delight. and she does delight me daily. but today's delight was something unexpected and hard to photograph. it was a phone call. i'm not normally that thrilled by phone calls, but this one was very nice. it was a great opportunity to talk through the recent strife in our little creative group and i felt immeasurably better afterwards. she managed to put things in perspective for me and i understood what happened a whole lot better. 

these are such strange times. we're all more vulnerable and fragile than usual. we take things harder and more personally. or at least i did this week. it was a stressful week. very intense. things moved quickly and i worked some really long days. it was both exhilarating and exhausting. energy-giving and energy-draining. things can be two things at once, even seemingly opposite things. we can be happy and sad. we can be disappointed and surprised. we can be curious and unable to understand. and people usually reveal themselves in so many ways and yet we can still be blind to them. we all both hide and give away more than we imagine. and it's human. and as bewildering as it may sometimes be, it's also delightful.

guarding my energy

as they always say in the nytimes cooking facebook group - a kitten for the algorithm

the older i get, the more i feel aware of my energy and how the people i am around affect it. especially in these times when we're not around people all that much, it becomes much more apparent who gives you energy and who doesn't. and i find my lifelong desire to be part of a group (who doesn't have that?) at odds with whether or not that group gives me energy. and as i sit here on a zoom with one of those groups, i can tell you that it does not give me energy and in fact, i feel it draining what energy i had left at the end of a long and very busy day. and i am going to have to put aside my desire to belong and protect myself and my energy. my energy is more important than being part of a group. i don't think i've been very good at that equation for most of my life - too often choosing to persevere and go for the belonging, so it's high time i started listening to myself and my needs.

and now it's over and i have an overwhelming urge to cry. the pettiness and the snark. i just can't take it from people anymore. i think these times have left me feeling raw and even a little bit broken. i don't have anything in common with several of these people. they don't give me anything, least of all energy and frankly not even just general kindness. i have to not second guess the feeling in my heart that it's simply not worth it. and the ones in the group who i do like, i can still like them without being on this board. the snarky, energy leeches take too much. 

in these strange times, we need people who give us kindness and creativity and energy and we need to stay as far away as we can from those who don't. it's really that simple. maybe that's the good thing about this time we're living in, it has given me a lot of time to consider what's important and who deserves my time and energy. damn, i want my two hours back.

a few random things i've been thinking about

into the fog

after listening to that great episode of the ezra klein show with george saunders yesterday, i've definitely been pondering how to get more ideas and less netflix into my life. one big step would be just to read more actual books. after four years of being glued to my phone by the latest antics of the former guy (twitter's new name for him, thanks to biden), i feel like i got dumber. hell, the whole world did. i think we're going to have to have to claw our way back to intelligence, one great book at a time.  and we need to have deep conversations about those books. in fact, we need to have more deep conversations in general. 

i feel like my ability to understand the world has degraded. perhaps because i more or less stopped reading books. i didn't stop reading - i just do most of it on my phone these days. and that's clearly not good for me, nor for my understanding of the world. after four years of constant abuse at the hands of a sadistic narcissist, i feel bruised and damaged and my brain is fogged and confused and it honestly feels harder to make sense of things. mostly because truth is so strangely up for debate. i hope it's not a permanent state, but i feel like i will need to work hard to make sure that it's not.

even just my ability to understand people and their motivations and actions feels like it's degraded. perhaps it's from working at home and not seeing or being around other people - more or less not really seeing anyone but husband these days. and all those old people i try to avoid at the grocery store don't count. i feel like i'm forgetting how to be around people. and communicating via messenger and email and teams doesn't help.

as usual, i find myself bewildered by people who don't look like who they are. that's kind of ironic, since right here on this blog, i wrote a post about how i didn't look like who i was. but in this case, the person looks super creative and alternative and fun and turns out to have the equivalent of a very straight-laced, persnickity, finger-wagging, rule-following accountant on the inside, without actually being an  accountant, in fact, i don't really know what this person does for a living, but it must involve following lots of rules and even coming up with new ones to also follow. maybe i object because it's so disappointing. i think if it was the other way around - someone who looked like a straight-laced accountant, but was actually super creative and alternative - i wouldn't be disappointed, but pleasantly surprised. and maybe even a little bit giddy. which is maybe why the actual situation leaves me confused and maybe even a bit sad.

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oh oh, bye-bye laughing emoji. i guess it's gone the way of thumbs up.

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found a new substack - psychopolitica
i'm hoping it helps with the whole deeper thoughts and conversations thing.

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there's also the sad news that they will stop making the dumle suckers. that delectable caramel, chocolate-covered goodness handed out in danish primary schools. the child is bereft. and i may be wondering if we can get into germany at the moment, so i could run for the border shops.

thank you, corona

it's the winter solstice. the longest, darkest day of the year, in what's been a long, dark year. 2020 has tried to kick our asses. and it has mostly succeeded. but, i’ll admit that as far as i’m concerned, it also has been pretty good to me. and i’ll also admit that it feels a little problematic of me to say that. but, honestly, it has. i started a new job two days before denmark shut down the first time and said that everyone who chould work at home should work at home. i’ll admit that i was a little freaked out on that friday. i had just returned from a long-planned holiday in barcelona that we didn’t cancel. we didn’t know then how bad the virus would become. we had planned the previous october to meet sabin in barcelona and have a family vacation. and we did it. husband did go home early, because it had rained all of february and the water table was high and leaking at an alarming rate into the pantry adjacent to our kitchen. but we had a wonderful holiday together and even after husband left, sabin and i enjoyed our time together. we had fabulous cocktails, we shopped and ate great food. it really couldn’t have been better. 

 

on that weird friday, two days into my job and with the virus hanging over all of us, it was windy and i stopped at the grocery store in the little town where i work. the wind blew the car door out of my hand as i got out and i was so distracted, i didn’t even notice that it hit the vehicle next to me. unfortunately, the girlfriend of the guy who owned the vehicle did notice and pointed out that my car door had rubbed the dirt off her door when i returned to my car. her hysterical boyfriend rode his bike over to talk to me. i stupidly and distractedly gave them my phone number and they actually reported to insurance that the dirt was rubbed off their door and convinced their friend to declare that the entire car needed repainting. which ended up on my insurance. but i digress. and it was all because i was distracted. and stupidly and unlike me, didn’t take a picture at the scene, so i couldn’t dispute it. i also stupidly let on that i spoke danish. that was dumb. and possibly 2020 getting the best of me. 

but it may have been the only place where it did. because even two days into my new job, i was already included in a big and business critical project. and we managed to do something utterly amazing that i’ve never seen any other company do so quickly. it was pretty amazing and even exhilarating to be part of. and that damn virus made it possible. it was the kind of project that would been hemmed and hawed about and made into smaller pilot projects over a two-year period and we did it in 10 days. thank you, corona. and it’s continued at the same level and pace ever since and i have been continually amazed at the talent of my collagues and the things we can do together. i don’t think this would have become so apparent to me so quickly without the virus. we may be building the plane as we fly it, but damn, we are flying it. thank you, corona. 

my child hasn’t had the ideal start to college that we would have wanted, but she has had a pretty good time and she joined a sorority and made a lot of friends and one of her good friends from high school has transferred to asu as well. and thanks to my privileged position as an american citizen who is a permanent resident of denmark, i could travel to arizona to help her move out of her apartment and into the dorm. with a pitstop at my own asu professor’s home. and even though corona was raging, we wore our masks, we got some essential help from an old bloggy friend who lives in arizona now and we drank quite a lot of coronas (the good kind) by the pool. it was honestly, a lovely summer. and we never tested positive for corona. 

and now, she’s been home for nearly a month and while the darkness and lack of sunshine has been difficult for her, it’s also been great to have her home. she argues with her father and makes him admit defeat. he has to recognize that he is defeated in his white male privilege by the strong women he has raised. and it’s good for him. we’ve had a corona scare this week. a good friend of sabin’s spent the weekend with us last weekend and then tested positive last tuesday. we’ve been tested and tested again and are still negative. we start to wonder if we have some strange immunity that we don’t deserve. but while we await the vaccine, we will take what we can get. and in the meantime, we will eat good food, laugh and play games together and we will appreciate more than we counted on of 2020. thank you, corona, for reminding us of what’s important.

looking for the elusive red thread

we got together in our local creative group on sunday and made small "flexigon" books together, inspired by places that mean something to us. because i love the little museum down in randbøldal, where i go to weaving every other wednesday, i wanted to make that the focus of my little foldable book. i selected some photos that i'd taken there, as well as a photo of the runner for my kitchen that i wove there at the museum. many of the photos i chose were of that work in progress and the one in the middle is of the new runner that i just started last saturday. what i wanted to ponder in my little book was the magic of the place. because it really is a magical place. 

and what came out was something else entirely. i began to think about the way that we trace red threads of meaning through our lives. or the way that we probably should do that and don't always do so. and my little book became a kind of meditation on that. perhaps because i have used red strips cloth in my rug, or because i often struggle to figure out whether there is a cohesive meaning to my life. it can feel like i'm really just bumbling along. 

but it's strange that wasn't what i sat down to create. i wanted to create a little book that expressed the magic i feel in the air when i'm at the museum. it's a really special place. it makes me feel calm and centered and present. i feel it immediately when i step out of my car, my shoulders relax and i breathe deeply. it's in a little valley, on the curve of a creek, nestled down in the trees. part of the magic is the group of women which gathers there, especially the leader of that group, who is a lovely, spry, can-do woman who makes things happen. she's a big part of the magic. but the place itself has something special as well. maybe it's on just the right vortex, or just the way it's placed, there on the creek, nestled at the base of a tree-covered hill, is perfect. and i wanted to try to capture that in my little book, but instead, it ended as a search for a red thread. 

i guess i unconsciously chose that myself when i chose the pictures that i did. i have many other pictures that capture the magic, but the ones i chose were nearly all of my own weaving and in that way, i guess i did control the direction it took, even if it maybe felt like i didn't. i guess i'm just looking for that elusive red thread.