I’ve been making notes. Since February, writing down words and sentences, ideas for posts to write. But there’s been a lack of focus in me. Or rather, a shortage, every drop of it used for thesis. So nothing has been written.
But now I’m in Hundby and suddenly I can think in full sentences again. Now, there’ll be a cavalcade of outdated posts over the coming couple of days. I apologize in advance.
It’s already Monday morning and I have been writing since I woke up Sunday noon. I have a dead-line in eight hours, but I’m going to sleep now. Enough is enough.
I wonder if I’m ever going to grow out of this drowning behavior. Being completely consumed. There’s a fire in it, which is good too. I think.
The rain is pouring down. It is singing against the tin roof outside my window.
Let me just tell you this: I’ve created a folder in my bookmarks bar where I save any links to Youtube clips or articles that I’ve been recommended to watch or read. And I’ve made sure I really want to watch or read them – just not now. My read! folder now has 37 links.
The document with my blog post notes now has the bones for 22 texts. I have 29 photographs or illustrations to accompany them. Things are happening in my life, I just can’t find the focus to finish anything.
And it hit me today: I’ve started to think of my thesis as an individual. Recently, an individual that I actually enjoy spending time with. That doesn’t mean things are going exceptionally well. Things are fine, but I won’t be able to tell, really, until June 1st, if even then. But I have conversations with it, trying to get to know. Where did it come from? Where is it going? What is it good at? What makes it tick?
There isn’t time for anything else.
I just have to say: I have a wonderful dentist. I saw her today and she dug around in my mouth and then she said: “You have beautiful teeth”.
Also, the sun has been shining and there are yellow flowers in bloom by the Geoscience building. Although it feels wrong to say it, considering it’s only the end of February, but it feels like spring in the air.
You know it’s time to call it a day when the land cover classification process has developed into goofing around with the colors for the Landsat bands.
It is pretty, though. The Earth.
Just like some liquids can be fat-dissolving, the album Super Extra Gravity by The Cardigans is angst-dissolving. The heavy base. So loud in the headphones that nothing else can be heard:
I’m hot baby don’t burn your fingers
Sometimes, sleeping is just impossible. It’s 01:49 and I have plenty of things I need to do tomorrow. My brain just won’t stop grinding. And not being able to sleep, lying under the covers in bed, in a dark room, encompassing silence, thoughts slowly turning on themselves. It gives me a kind of claustrophobia. I have now problem with small, cramped spaces – on the contrary, I can even enjoy them. The feeling of being physically contained. But. Being trapped in my own head. It makes me feel like I’m loosing my mind.
I’ve learned that there’s no point in trying to force on the sleep. It won’t come. Sometimes I knit. Watch some stupid crime/murder show. Tonight, I finished copying all my blog posts from January for the archives.
I published 21 218 words in January. The last third of my Burkina Faso and Ghana adventures.
The only time that I’ve written a little bit more on the blog than that, was in July and August 2013. During my solo interrail trip through Europe. During no other month than those three have I written more since starting to blog in December 2006.
I’ve produced the equivalent of a couple of novels over the years, blogging. Not that the quality of what I’m writing is in any way publishable. I was just thinking. If a novel is what I would like to produce some day. Is all this blogging good, as in, practice for the day when I actually have an idea and the time to formulate it properly? Or is it a distraction? I satisfy a need through doing something easier and less challenging, when what I should do is focus this energy on a real story?
I have no idea. I only know writing prose is exhausting, and I don’t have that kind of energy right now. Especially not when I can’t sleep.
Last week, after having been at the breakfast showing of the documentary Cowspiracy (interesting!) together with Hanna, I decided to walk from Hornstull to Skanstull along Årstaviken. The snow was melting, but at least it wasn’t raining, and I had some interesting podcasts to listen to. I don’t know how many times I’ve done that walk – and still, every time I do, there seems to be new, interesting street art on the concrete structures along the water.
Yesterday, three visitors clicked on posts in this blog 242 times. That’s definitely some kind of record.
Two visitors were from the States, and sure enough, the top posts are, as always, the things I wrote about Duckworth farm and about my WWOOFing experience there. One visitor was from Sweden.
It all feels very random. WordPress sends me e-mails about the explosion of traffic on my blog, and I haven’t written in two weeks. Hello.
– – –
Last Friday, this is what met me when I came out of the university tube station and started walking toward the Center:
Now, everything has melted. And snowed back. And melted again. Yesterday, birds were singing and it almost felt like spring. The ambivalence of the weather. I’m not particularly bothered. I have other things on my mind.
Like: I’m (hopefully) graduating in June. What should I do with the rest of my life?
Who would have thought. Kanye West featuring Paul McCartney. Only one.
I’m obsessed.
– – –
Sometimes, the only thing you can do is to take one step at a time.
My lovely little brother let me borrow his webcam. Now I can have even more high-tech TV show Skype dates with Natalia, sitting on either side of the North Sea and the width of Sweden. What more could be wished from life?
Well, some blood oranges maybe. There are plenty of those now too.
Katja Malmborg