i tried a therabot on chatgpt

my sister moving back to the town where we grew up has surfaced a lot of old memories. her move back coincided with my high school class's 40th reunion, which i did not attend, being that i live 7 time zones away across the atlantic. less than half the class attended, as it turns out and most didn't have the excuse of living in another country. i did exchange a few mails with one of the organizers and she sent a few pictures. this resulted in me learning some unsettling news about some of my old classmates that i had been blissfully unaware of. and now that i'm no longer blissfully unaware, i find myself thinking about it quite a lot. which is honestly just about the last thing i want to do. but brains don't always do what we would like them to. 

enter chatgpt. i tried a therabot gpt that was made by someone who does logotherapy. i didn't really know what that was, but i decided to give it a whirl. and can i just say that it was incredibly helpful. like rather unbelievably so. great insight and it really helped me reframe the thoughts i was having. i was able to dig into why i was so shaken by the news that i learned and it gave me multiple helpful ways of thinking about it and processing it. 

and i realize this all sounds very vague, but since it's related to a story that is most decidedly not mine to tell, i have to be vague. but i just wanted to say that although i have mixed feelings about large language models, the conversation i had with the therabot really genuinely helped me. ten out of ten, highly recommend. 

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. 

how does grief look?

as i said in my post the other day, one of the things i've been thinking about is the individual nature of grief. and how grief hits you at the strangest moments and in the strangest ways. 

maybe it's just autumn, and the changing of the seasons, but i think it started a few weeks ago. i went to a gourmet knitting day that someone i know holds regularly. she's an amazing knitter and even participated in the knitting equivalent of the great british baking show. only knitting. and in denmark. and since i eternally hope to learn to knit and i like food, i went. so there, in a room full of knitters, i found myself talking about my mom's alzheimer's and how on some level i hadn't forgiven her for it. 

i know how terrible that sounds.

but there you have it.

and i found myself explaining to them the way we found, at the height of my realization of how bad it was with mom in 2016, what we thought were dad's bowling balls in mom's car and discovered instead that it was a case full of pistols and a case full of ammo. and how i still feel shocked by that. and unable to forgive her for what she could have done with those weapons. in that moment of finding them, i clearly saw in my mind's eye, my beautiful, amazing daughter, knocking on mom's door to visit her and mom not recognizing her in the throes of her diseased brain and taking one of those guns and shooting her own granddaughter. that didn't happen, but the fact that it could have takes my breath away, still to this day, as i write these words. and i can't forgive her for it. i can't forgive her cracked brain - for having all those guns, for loading them into her car, for the shooting of her granddaughter that she didn't do. and i can't forgive the state of south dakota for renewing her fucking permit to carry just days after they took her driver's license. what kind of a fucked up world do we live in that that's even possible.

the lovely knitting ladies were fascinated and horrified that such a thing could happen. it couldn't happen in denmark, that's for sure. and though i didn't know them, they listened to me and understood me and gave me space and that was a great deal of comfort that i'm not sure i've felt before. and i wonder if explaining it all in danish put me an emotional step away from it that helped me. and i think it may have been a baby step towards forgiving her, though i haven't done so yet.

i'm more certain than ever that this grief thing is a process and one of which we have very little control. 

but in the days since, i've felt pangs of missing mom. weirdly, mostly in connection with putting on my socks. which i realize also sounds weird. mom was a sock snob and i have a lot of her high end socks in my sock drawer. and enough time has passed that most of them are quite threadbare from wear and in recent weeks, i've felt sorrow about that. like when her socks are gone, she will really be gone. though she's been gone for more than two years now and because of the disease, she was gone for quite a lot longer than that. 

why does my grief manifest in a sock? i've got multiple pairs in my darning basket, but i've yet to darn them. would darning them darn my own soul? would it help? is this how my grief looks?

at least i feel i've stopped telling myself how my grief should look and started accepting how it looks. for me, in my own individual situation. right here and now.  

so many things to ponder

whoa, it's been awhile. things have been busy. it's been a pretty intense period and there's no end in sight. i've been trying to take creative breaks - a lovely weekend away with my creative group, the yearly trip with my weaving group, going to weaving, going to a gourmet knitting day, a pampering event with a friend (think facial and foot bath), followed by an art show and a really nice lunch, several work trips to copenhagen - but it has all left little time to think about personal writing. i miss the way this space allowed me to process things and it would be nice to get back into the habit. odin knows there's plenty to process.

today, as i made dinner - a roast chicken, jerusalem artichokes freshly dug from the garden and some roasted beets, plus a salad with avocado, mango and tomato - i found myself pondering topics to write in the way that i used to and it made me think it would be nice to be back here again. 

things that crossed my mind...the need that everyone seems to have acquired to have a diagnosis, the latest james bond, growing older, the individual nature of grief, what lumke would have wanted to be could she have chosen anything, how to best talk about kitchens from a warm, sympathetic perspective, the natural order of adjectives (thanks, molly), an obsession with growing things from seeds extracted in the kitchen (see the mango plant above, which i started myself), old friends i got to see again this week, sharing what i love about copenhagen, our upcoming trip to arizona (i SO need a holiday), tomorrow's make-your-own-ravioli dinner with friends, what tattoo to get next (i'm thinking a cactus), the chestnut man on netflix. so many things to ponder and write about.  

i think i need to start blogging again like it's 2010 and no one is reading. because, after all, it always came back to me. and it's extremely likely that no one is reading.

* * *

wow, what a story that was released on the day of the seafarer a few months ago (yes, i started this post awhile ago). tales of politics, containers, big tobacco, cancer and whitewashed company histories. i worked for maersk for 5 years and never even heard a whisper of this - only that sealand represented the great maersk move towards containerization. that and the banana plantation that they bought somewhere in africa to push containerization of bananas, which were hauled on refrigerated bulk carriers before containers came along. 

* * *

a national geographic piece on adult fans of lego that, if you ask me, doesn't give enough credit to the actual fans themselves. 

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best ad for wearing a bike helmet ever. the danes are just so good at these things.

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fantastic cooperation between marina abramovic and wetransfer.

a fresh start

i spent most of july on a freight ferry. now, i've been on freight ferries before, usually with a film crew in tow, but this time was different. this time, i was a member of the crew. lowest on the totem pole - but i finally got that elusive title that i'd never had - stewardess. or the very elevated "ship owner's assistant," that they tried to upgrade the title to at some point along the way. but that doesn't hide that the job consists of cleaning cabins and helping in the mess with dishes and such.

you might be thinking, "are you completely crazy? why would you do a job like that?" but, i can tell you that it was so good for me. after the past few tumultuous months, realizing the new job i took in january wasn't at all what they promised and that the guy at the helm was quite likely a ruthless psychopath, add to that my mother's death, and my only child's impending move to arizona, i needed to do something completely different. something where the only thing that mattered was the routine and where i wouldn't get embroiled in any foolish office politics. to be a place where i'd have plenty of time to think, listen to podcasts and stare out at the sea and maybe write a bit and find my way back to myself. and so, for two weeks, i sailed between gothenburg and ghent with a stop once a week in norway and then the final week, we sailed between gothenburg and immingham on the humber river in the uk, also with the stop in brevik. and just look at the fjord up to brevik, it's stunning:

i fell into the rhythms of the journey. up at 6, working until 1 or 1:30, a break until 4, then working again until 7 or so. long days, but i went to bed tired from physical work that somehow seems more honest than the kind of tired you get from sitting in front of a computer all day or gossiping with colleagues around the coffee machine. when the weather was fine, i sat out on the top deck during my breaks, reading a book or writing. i wrote a daily diary entry while i was on board and it felt good to be writing regularly again, even if it much of it was boring drivel. it's something i want to get back to and there's no reason not to do it right here.

i was heartened by a recent post on exactly this over topic on pret a voyager. a blog is the perfect place to do daily writing, and even though blogging has changed dramatically over the years, i was always doing this primarily for me anyway. i just somehow let it slip away from me and i got out of the habit. and when i really think about it, i miss figuring out what i think about the world through blogging. so i'm going to make a daily practice again. starting right here and now.

energy leech

i spent the day in the company of an energy leech. you know the type. hyper, never stops talking, never stops offering unsolicited and unwanted opinions, never stops awkward attempts at what's supposed to be flattery, but widely misses the mark. your heart sinks from the moment you realize she's there, wondering why? why? why? and once again being utterly convinced that god must not exist, because if s/he did, s/he would never let this happen. like a black hole, sucking all of the good vibes, energy and positivity out of the room. perhaps that's not fair, because she is weirdly positive, aside from the snide remarks about how you're not taking the right norwegian fish oil and you probably should be (since it's apparently what's making her withstand chemo without feeling a thing (never mind that it probably gave her the cancer in the first place (but i digress. (oops, was that out loud?)))). and in the end, you can no longer see whether that grading is giving things a yellow or green or blue or purple tinge, because she has stolen every last bit of your energy. and did i mention that she never stops talking? and you miss yoga class because the edit runs two hours and fifteen minutes past the scheduled time (did i mention the incessant talking?) and so you stumble onto the street and rush to h&m to get new tights and pony tail holders and stop by sephora to check out rihanna's fenty line of highlighters to console yourself. and you get a golden milk (almond milk + turmeric) to fortify (in lieu of that carcinogenic fish oil), which turns out to be your dinner (by choice). and you wonder if you're too old for such things and if you can bill someone for time you'll never have back.

it always comes back to you

i read a blog post late last night (after briefly falling asleep watching crossing lines on netflix, which my body/mind interpreted as a nap and then kept me up 'til 2 a.m. ... but i digress) that just really hit me the wrong way and frankly, rather royally pissed me off. i enjoy #stuckinplastic and i've even written a post or two for them on occasion. but this one really hit me wrong. it seemed so snobbish and arrogant. and frankly, people, you're taking pictures of toys, so how snotty can you be? get over yourself. this is supposed to be fun.

anyone sharing their life or their passion or their hobby online...whether via blogging or instagram or facebook or twitter or snapchat or whatever, has to be prepared for things to change. the communities change, the medium changes, those who are participating changes. you have to be doing these things for yourself, first and foremost and not for the sake of the likes or the audience or the reaction or the adoration or the discussion. it actually has to be about you. and i mean that in the best sense. that you do it for the love of it. for what it brings you personally. for where you feel it takes you. and not for anyone else. not for the comments. not for the likes. and for odin's sake, not because you want to be emulated (or not be emulated, as the case may be). do it for you. for your sanity. to find out what you think. to see where it takes you. and forget everyone else. this actually is the thing that's all about you. so enjoy it, will you? if it's not making you happy, stop doing it.

writing my way back to myself

i feel that facebook is sucking the life out of me. it steals my time, it steals my sleep, it bores me, it infuriates me, it exposes me to horrible things (like that live on-air shooting of the poor t.v. reporter in virginia) that i wish i hadn't seen (see also all coverage of donald trump). it makes me feel passive aggressive. it keeps me indoors when i should be outdoors. it never lets me be alone with my thoughts. it stops me from writing here in this space (which my sanity misses very much). or seeking inspiration about things to write about here. in short, i think it's really bad for me. and yet i go back again and again. out of habit. for the social interaction with friends who are far away, for the laughs, for the cat videos and the buzzfeed quizzes and the oatmeal and humans of new york. 

and not writing often enough in this space leaves my brain and perhaps even my soul, feeling congested. it's not only facebook, but also the constant holding pattern i feel i've been in for the whole of this year. eternally waiting to see what might be next. i used to love the liminal space, for what i perceived as the vastness of the possibilities contained within it. but these days, it gives me a kind of powerless feeling, a paralysis. i am unable to fill the waiting with much of anything productive (i pin prolifically on pinterest, but don't make anything). and it seems that all of the gargantuan efforts that i put forward towards moving out of the liminal space are stymied again and again and i am forced back into the waiting position. and i'll admit i feel a bit lost, like i'm wandering in the labyrinth of the liminal space and i can't find my way - neither to the center, nor out again. and it's an uncomfortable place to be. 

which all sounds pretty morbid, i realize. i don't think i knew how morbid i actually felt until the words came out here onto the page (hence that congested feeling). and i do get through my days feeling reasonably happy - finding joy in a visit from an inspiring friend, picking vegetables from the garden for dinner, taking photos of minifigs, finding vintage burberry items for the child on eBay, watching battlestar galactica (again, again) with husband. it's not a joyless life, by any means. but i would like to have some of the spark back, the spark that feels so dim in the midst of all of this waiting. i don't feel it's gone out, but it could definitely use a breath of fresh air to fan it into a stronger, bright, warm flame again. 

maybe finally writing again here will help. that and some time away from facebook. 

* * *

great article in rolling stone on the republican clown car.

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if you need a laugh, this guy from mashable who dressed like prince george for a week will do it.

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dang. harper lee's lawyer is definitely of the shadier sort.

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feeling stressed? here's a cat purr generator for those times when your cat isn't handy.

what i was trying to say as i unsuccessfully tried to say it a.k.a. thank you bill

following immediately on the heels of last evening's musings on owning my own copyright, a friend posted this article on facebook. and while i can swear like a sailor myself when it's warranted, it does feature rather excessive use of "fuck," and isn't for the faint of heart if you're not in the mood to read that word quite a few times. but the message is good - about learning when to give a fuck and about how very often we're not very good at recognizing those times and that we essentially give a fuck way too often. and it is also about how not giving a fuck is different than not caring. it could be quite freeing to give less fucks, frankly, but i suppose that once you reach a certain point in life, mortgage and obligations and even age intervene and we find ourselves having to give a fuck about things we would like not to.

things like ending a sentence with a preposition (or infinitive marker as the case may be). which i clearly do not give a fuck about (there's the preposition).

time passes. i stare at the screen....the words won't loosen, the floodgates won't open. not yet.

while i was sitting here, staring at the screen, trying to uncork the bottle of words that have accumulated inside of me over recent months, bill wrote this on my previous post...and he says it all more powerfully than i can right now, so i will share it with you here in case you didn't check the comments....

I’ve never believed our synapses fire with precision or orderliness …

We are both victims and perpetrators of our own chaos, our own timeline … and then we die.

You and me and most everyone we meet has agreed to behave as if not agreeing to behave within boundaries will produce the downfall of civilizations and a spate of crabgrass in everyone’s window boxes.

We accept norms of behavior, organization or minutia and future planning as if our lives depend upon the reality of hopes and dreams.

And yet … a few individuals ignore prescribed rituals and predetermined lives and they create … art and science, being, in my estimation, the two grandest of human endeavors.

But there’s a pratfall … a quicksand … a nemesis to individual creativeness… that despicable noun and/or adjective … the word is, of course, derivative.

To search within one’s psyche to fine the non-derivative and the unique is truly a life-long chase. A lucky few find it early in their life. Sadly, I suspect, there are far too many that discover their own uniqueness and creativity when their journey is ending.

That quest for non-derivative creativity is beguiling … it and love are the only two things I think and believe are important.

Sure, sure, it’s important to feed the dog, to vote, bathe regularly, to brush your teeth, to quest after knowledge, to search out the best and brightness and/or find kindred souls … nonetheless, all these secondary elements are but kindling and energy bars for the internal fires of creativity.

That’s it; we can do nothing else of importance.

and that, my friends, is what we should give a fuck about...

you own the copyright on your life

a scene much more serene than i feel on the inside

"you own the copyright on your life." what a powerful thought that is. i just read it here. i'm not familiar with ntozake shange otherwise, but that thought is precisely what i needed to hear. i think it resonates with me in the same way that elizabeth gilbert's "own your shit" did some time ago. it gives me a dose of courage that i've been lacking, making me think that all of the multitude of things i've been holding back from writing about should be allowed to come out, because i own them - they are me and my life and my story and even my copyright, with the emphasis on the latter syllable. but at the same time, i have to wonder how interesting they would be to anyone else. maybe it doesn't matter, i am, as always, blogging first and foremost for myself, to work out what i think and feel about things (it's cheaper than therapy after all). and with the state of blogs these days, perhaps it doesn't matter much what anyone else thinks as no one is reading anyway (i'm much less bitter about that than it may sound). but it is also daunting and it feels impossible to truly write something that encompasses all of the minutiae that make up the complexity of a life, even if i did attempt to write it all out.

i say this because i have, of late, fallen in love with norwegian writer karl ove knausgaard's writing and recently tried to read volume 1 of his six volume autobiographical novel-esque opus, my struggle. i say tried because i just couldn't finish it, despite really and truly loving his writing. it's a bit proustian in its level of detail and i never could finish proust either. but i just read a review of volume 4 in the new york review of books and i think i'll have to give that volume a whirl. he is fearless in his truth telling, and in his examination of the minutiae of life and when he began, he was nobody, so why shouldn't i be equally fearless?

there are many good reasons i've held back. no one wants to read a bunch of sad whining. i don't want to hang anyone out to dry (well maybe a little). i don't want to hurt anyone's feelings (and the fact is that sometimes the truth hurts). it might get in the way of whatever is next. writing it out will make it all that much more real. life is painful and hard at times and getting older is no fun, but who wants to hear that? and who wants to admit it? this all makes it sound like something much bigger than the regular disappointments and sorrows that life throws our way and it's not that. but sometimes when those small sorrows and disappointments accumulate, it can seem like too much. and so i've put off and put off writing about them. and i suppose that's why i don't feel particularly light-hearted and funny in this space anymore.

i think it's time to start owning the copyright on my life. i recently saw a quote on pinterest that went something like, "you own everything that happened to you. tell your stories. if people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better."

i am not worried

things about which i am not worried:

~ putin.

~ the ukraine.

~ the coming nutella shortage (we have an 8 kilo stockpile).

~ ebola.

~ the middle east (i probably should be worried about this).

~ running out of gin (we were just in germany and i stocked up).

~ aging gracefully.

~ bills.

things which worry me a little bit:

~ finding the right shampoo.

~ what if i never find the right shampoo?

~ that my daughter's camera is way better than mine.

~ pixel-wise, mine still has that thing where i choose where it focuses.

~ the size of the new iPhone.

~ what if i never get to cape town again?

things which i worry about a lot:

~ stepping on kittens (i have an entirely too vivid picture in my head of the result of this).

~ cats getting run over.

~ there whereabouts of the feral hen.

~ how behind my child is in math and german thanks to the school she used to attend.

~ how can you know as a parent how bad a school really is?

~ will karma bite that dominatrix principal in the ass? (i know it will, but i'd honestly like to know when.)

~ with the amount of tax we pay, why couldn't our local school get its act together?

* * *

ahh, the jazz life in manila.

* * *

remind me again why we don't live in the world's most liveable city anymore?

* * *

and speaking of which, why do we lie about where we live?
(in my defense, i did live in copenhagen at one time and sabin was born there.)

* * *
the secret life of pronouns.
because words matter.

life lessons revisited

three years ago, almost to the day, i did a post on life lessons. on this rainy, grey, early dark (after the time change) afternoon we have going on, with candles glowing on the window ledge above my desk, and a contented cat in my lap, it felt like a good time to revisit the notion and make a new list. which is not to say that i don't stand by the first list, more just that i do love me a list...

~ words matter.

~ to appreciate the sunshine, you need a little rain.

~ time really does fly.

~ moisturizer is really quite important.

~ people will often disappoint you, but you will get over it.

~ it's good to see the place where you live through fresh eyes.

~ you grow more patient as you age.

~ but you also tend to take less crap.

~ you are never too old for glitter nail polish.

~ you are never too old to dress up for halloween.

~ nothing beats a logical argument. but those are few and far between.

~ so much of who your child is is already there in the child. it's up to you to nurture it.

~ everyone is pretending at something.

~ don't ever go to work for a friend.

~ a glass of wine has healing powers.

~ sometimes you just need girl talk (best paired with above-referenced wine).

~ it is possible to do something creative every day.

~ many of life's most satisfying moments happen in the kitchen.

~ spending time alone is good for the soul.

~ chickens are smarter than you think.

~ a good night's sleep will restore you.

~ there is always a good book to read, it's just a matter of finding it.

~ the internet is huge.

~ blogging is cheaper than therapy.

~ sometimes you don't know what you think until you write about it.

~ you're never too old to learn something new.

~ you can learn from your mistakes, but it might take a couple of tries.

~ it's totally normal to listen to the same song over and over again.

and that's my list. for now. play along if you'd like (please let me know, so i can read your list as well). it's surprisingly cathartic.

* * *

you never know who those people are.

flying by

i can't believe how quickly this week has flown by. it's nearly friday. it feels both like much has happened and also very little. some weeks are like that. normally, i use this space to sort it all out, but at the moment, it seems to all be stuck in my head, so i'm going to bed. a good night's sleep cures anything, right?

on travel and home and the passive aggressive nature of facebook

this morning, i read what suzanne (eggdipdip) wrote about home and going back and how the reality of your life is never as you imagined it would be. and i also read this charming little new yorker piece on guests, family and growing older by david sedaris. even before reading these i was pondering questions of family, home, visits, travels and belonging. 

last week, i got all bent out of shape at my sister, who hadn't shared any pictures, or more importantly, any stories, from the rest of their trip (they went on to london and paris after leaving denmark), except for a couple of iPhone photos sent from the road. for all i knew, she was still combing paris for some raspberry pastries that she had vowed to eat all of before returning home. i'd asked her a couple of times on facebook when she was going to start sharing her photos and got some smarty pants answer about how she was going old school and going to have them printed this time. 

the more time that went by with no sharing of stories and experiences and photographic evidence, the more pissy i became. and then it all exploded last week after she nagged me (on facebook) about not handling molly's kittens too much. and facebook, being the passive aggressive central station that it is, escalated things, until we were both mad at each other. and she was issuing "apologies" where in she said she was sorry that i was mad, not that she was sorry she hadn't shared any photos or stories. which is different than apologizing. and possibly could be classified as not apologizing at all.  ahh, sisters, they know better than anyone else how to wind you up. 

but the bottom line was, that i was feeling left out of the rest of the trip and at first it made me sad and then it made me mad. the timing wasn't right for us to tag along to london and omaha beach and paris, so when they left us after their visit, we had to live vicariously through their travels. and if the ones you're living vicariously through don't share what's happening, what you experience is far from vicarious enjoyment. 

then of course, she got home and life intervened and she didn't get the photos downloaded and sorted from various cameras and iDevices and soon several weeks had gone by. but you can never really know what it's like inside of someone else's home life, so if you're far away and not aware of how loan closings and baseball games and trips to the emergency room intervened, you just sit in your own home environment, which is calm and quite uneventful and wait. and grow impatient and a little bit pissy. 

which i guess brings me to what this all got me thinking about...that having visitors upsets the natural rhythms of home in ways that are both good and bad (tho' i will say that my family's visit wasn't long enough to have moved on to the bad part, tho' we could have done without the constant references to the 1990 miss south dakota pageant). a visit pushes you out of your usual routines - you look around you with a different set of eyes - suddenly noticing all of those signs with the word "fart" on them again and being reminded that that's hilarious. you end up filled with expectations, both voiced and unvoiced. and when it all goes back to the routine, you feel a little disrupted and restless. and it takes awhile to find your footing again.

it's the same for the one traveling, there's a re-entry period, where they jump back into life at home and maybe find there's not time to download all of those photos and look through to select the ones to share.   and meanwhile, you sit impatiently waiting to live vicariously through the rest of their travels, to let them transport you as well for a few moments, outside the confines of home. 

blogs are being diluted by other social media

friday, i wrote a little ditty about the way that social media has diluted blogging over on across ø/öresund. i'll admit that i am quite guilty of it myself - i share small, ostensibly pithy thoughts on facebook in a way that i would have once shared them here in a random list. my photos go up instantly on instagram, so what i'm doing at a given moment is documented there. twitter, i use mostly to share links to blog posts and my instagram photos, but i don't hang out there much. i'd like to use google+ more and i use it to save links to things that i want to find again, because i've learned that you can't depend on facebook for that, with all of their "improvements" coming along and preventing you from seeing more than just what they deem the highlights of your own timeline. but it wasn't my intention to recap that post here...

as i visited molly's blog in order to link to her below, i stayed and caught up. because i've gotten horrible myself about properly reading all of the blogs i once loved. this is partially because people are writing less often and partly because i interact with molly regularly on facebook, so i don't have the same need to click in to see what she's said on her blog because i feel like i know what's going on with her (to the extent that facebook reflects what's actually going on in people's lives (that's probably the stuff of a whole 'nother post)). and really, that's silly. because blogs and facebook are not the same thing and there's so much more depth (usually) to a blog post than to a facebook status update. spending some time reading molly's recent posts provoked me to think and feel and reflect in ways that facebook never does (truth be told, facebook doesn't do much of anything other than make me feel passive aggressive). blogging lets us go so much deeper - into our own thoughts, our own psyches, our own patterns and processes - and gives us so much more insight, both into ourselves and others. i guess i needed that reminder. i've got to get more selective with the time i spend with social media.

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this is a bit frightening, but also hilarious:

thank you, molly.

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fascinating little miniature coffins.

i found them through mr. finch. 

who i am not stalking. nuh-uh.

there's a bit more about the little coffins here.

dabbling

just catching up on my blog reader (in flipboard, still thru google reader, while it lasts)...also writing this on the iPad mini my sis gave to me (how fabulous is she?)...and having this sinking feeling, as i read blogs i subscribed to ages ago, that i do not sufficiently stick with the things that i try...whether stitching or dyeing or felting or sewing or quilting or whatever....i am a dabbler. it means that while bloggers i long ago followed continue to share their particular area of interest, ever more honed and refined, ever evolving, their techniques more and more beautiful, i dabble and never get any better at anything, continuously flitting from one thing to the next.

what holds me back, prevents me from embracing a thing that is me? or even figuring out what it might be? i'm honestly not sure. it's surely bound up in all kinds of unutterable fears - of failure, of success, of exhausting ideas, of never having another one again, of being derivative, of being unique, of critique, of praise, of it becoming humdrum and boring (hmm, seems i could utter a few of those fears after all).

there are a few things i stick with - breathing, writing, taking photos and cooking. with cooking, i've slogged through a recent slump, cooking daily anyway, despite not feeling like it. at all. i suppose on that front, i'm driven largely by hunger. but it's the same with daily photos - i'm not always inspired to take one, but i persevere anyway, always finding something to notice and photograph. but even there, i don't think i've pushed my photography forward in any meaningful way in a long time.

where do people find their motivation? their dedication? their confidence? their belief? their dogged persistence? their spark?

i don't really have trouble at all finding sparks, it's more that i find too many of them. i am an ideas person. i love new ideas and spending time with people who give me new ideas.  i love thinking of new ideas, but i also love letting go of them again and moving on to a new one. and that doesn't lend itself very well to developing a craft. or a job. or a business. because those take persistently and consistently developing and pushing the ideas further and further. and that's what i admire about so many of the blogs in my reader - the ability their creators have to keep working on their ideas, pushing them further, honing them and polishing them and perfecting them.

maybe my thing is initiating ideas and i need to do a better job of passing them to people who will nurture them. i don't think that i ever need worry about running out. now, to turn that into a viable business...

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perhaps i should just go read this article on finding fulfilling work.

whispering voices

my absolutely exquisite brooch by cathy cullis arrived yesterday. the multiple faces just spoke to me. she calls it part of her tumbling dreamers series, but to me, it whispers of the multiple voices we all have in our heads, vying (dying?) for our attention and trying to lead us in all directions. i think i saw it first on flickr and couldn't believe my luck when it was still in her shop. it feels so much like it represents where i am right now, at this moment, it's like it was meant to be mine. i am at once disturbed and comforted by the whispers of the voices.

and i am still thinking about her post on art supplies. that and wanting some black gouache now. 

cathy cullis' blog. and etsy (where i scored my brooch).

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crazy awesome, thought-provoking embroidery here. 

it made me a little bit unable to breathe.

giving myself a pep talk

i am working hard at not letting my actions (or inactions as the case may be) be driven by fear and worry. because i don't believe that's the recipe for success. to succeed you have to dare, you can't hold back, just because you're worried. because it closes you off and you give off big waves of desperation. and i want to be open, not closed and i most definitely do not want to be desperate. i want to soar, not stay on the ground. i want to dare, not cower on the sidelines. i want to open new doors and to do that, some must close. and stay closed. i want to walk the tightrope without a safety net. i'm coming to think it's the only way.

and we don't have to be completely without a safety net if we choose the right people to walk the rope with. they can be a safety net of sorts. and if we're lucky, we might even be able to fly.

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apropos worries and fears...
what *should* we be worried about? that's edge's question for 2013.
here are some answers.

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i guess we should have realized that color is the stuff of consumerism.

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i love the work of nathan sawaya - he's a LEGO artist, but he doesn't drink the kool-aid work for them.
here's the interesting article where i learned of him.

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*these snow photos are from this morning. when the sun was on its way up. they don't really have anything to do with the post. i just liked them. they feel peaceful to me.

no. 2000

back in 2004 when i started this blog, i had just been unexpectedly fired from my job in microsoft (it was proven to be an unlawful firing - turns out you can't get top marks on all your evaluations and be fired for no reason). but the funny thing about it was that i didn't feel sad, i felt set free. it seems that radical change will do that to you. i soon found a new job that took me around the world and back (for 150 days of 2006 and 180 days of 2007) and lost myself a little bit again. and i also didn't blog again until late 2007. i was a little surprised to find the blog here waiting for me (i had called it moments of perfect clarity from the beginning), but waiting it was. in the meantime, blogger had been bought by google, but that seemed ok, so i dusted it off and started writing for the sake of my sanity once again. and it seems that hasn't really let up since. i've been through highs and lows, moves and travels, i've shared dreams and sadness and happiness and i've asked a lot of questions and pondered the hell out of a lot of things. somewhere along the way, i learned how to take proper photos (most of the time). in the beginning, i used capital letters, but that fell away already by the 6th post, sort of instinctively.

this space has been a source of comfort, excitement, friendship, laughter and tears. i've made a lot of great friends and some of them i've even met in real life. this is where i keep my memories and where i work things out. it's been the center of my sanity in earnest for four years and 2000 posts. thank you for reading along, i really do appreciate it. 

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looking for collaboration? look no further than here.
i'm in love with their tiny stories books.
thank you andi, for pointing me to them!

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loved this piece about the economist on the nytimes blogs.
especially the bit about adorable british spellings.
found my way to this one from that one. it's good too.

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what is up with the russians?

updating "about me"

it seemed like it was about time to update my "about me." so i did.

waves hello!  this is me. or at least my feet (if you like them, you can see more of them over here). i'm american, but i've been living in the little land of denmark for nigh on 14 years. i met a lovely danish boy in the balkans in 1997 when i was on a fulbright there and i followed him home (after going back home to the states to get rid of that starter husband take care of a few things). it's really true that a fulbright can change your life.

i thought i was going to be a professor of russian literature, as russian literature is my first love but life took me in another direction and i've worked for some of the biggest companies in the world. however, now, together with a couple of friends, i have a very tiny little consultancy specializing in all kinds of communications and strategy development in english. and that suits me just fine.

at that point in life where you're supposed to be settled down, enjoying your career, your volvo and your perfect house in the suburbs, we gave it all up and moved to a falling down house on a little 17 acre farm property in the middle of nowhere in denmark. i live there with that danish husband (and i really do call him husband) and our daughter who is not quite a teenager, but starting to show signs. we actually live in a town called give, which i feel makes me a little bit kinder and gentler towards the world, just because of what it means. actually, being kinder and gentler towards the world is something i'm working on - both literally (in terms of consuming less) and internally (in terms of trying to turn off my evil corporate persona, which, if i think about it, started out as an evil academic persona). and i don't always succeed. but hey, it's a process. (damn you apple and your shiny, appealing products. and damn you cult company who made me drink the blue kool-aid for four years.)

we have horses and chickens and bunnies and cats and bees. and one end of a beautiful lake. we've planted cider apple trees and 15 rows of potatoes. we have a big kitchen garden and want to live a more sustainable life, knowing where our food has come from and how it's been treated. but that too is a process. i share a bit of it here.

i struggle and laugh and love and try to make sense of the danes. i am trying to be involved in my community. i don't travel as much as i used to. i miss that a little bit. but i want different things now - to open a little posh bed and breakfast, to have a rustic office space in the back garden, to hold creativity weekends where people can get back in touch with themselves and their creativity. husband, he just bought equipment for a sawmill, so he clearly wants something new as well. oddly, with all these things we want, we are also feeling quite content with how things are right here and now.

this blog is where i work out what i think about things. after all, blogging is cheaper than therapy.