Last week, me and a couple of classmates went to the Young Professionals Day at the Stockholm World Water Week. It is this big event for scientists, politicians, entrepreneurs and policy makers. Basically, it’s a huge science fair for grown-ups.

I was quite excited about going, and it turned out to be interesting, but not for the reasons that I expected it to be. What I realized was: This is not an environment that I want to spend a lot of time in. Once in a while is fine, but having a profession where going to meetings and seminars and negotiations in big, impersonal fair halls, wearing a suit and heels to work most days, is not a job I think I want to have. The waiting and the smiling and having to muster up the interest for things even after having spent hours in oxygen-poor dark rooms – it just drained me of all my energy, despite the general subject of all the seminars and lectures was really interesting and important. It was the venue, and the set-up, and the inactivity.

Especially the wearing a suit part scared me. Don’t get me wrong, I like dressing up occasionally. Personally, I think a pencil skirt and tight hairdos can look great on me. It’s just, I wouldn’t be able to stand having to think about what I’m wearing every single day. It would be like being back in the reception all over again. I want to be allowed to wear ill-fitting trousers and t-shirts with those small holes that always appear at the bottom, right below the navel. The majority of my wardrobe falls under that category of clothes, anyway.

So, I probably shouldn’t become a politician, or work in the EU or UN. Academia is still fine, I’ve had professors who’ve looked like they stepped right out of bed and into the lecture hall. There, the question might be if I’ll be able to handle the pressure. Well, I’ll have to keep on searching, I guess.

But we got a really pretty water bottle, at least. I have it on my desk now, in the master’s dungeon at the center. (And hey, Johan Kuylenstierna, director of Stockholm Environmental Institute and rumored to be the most powerful person in Sweden when it comes to environmental issues, is sitting behind it!)

I’m at the prep course and I’m exhausted. Parts of it is old, some new, certain things really interesting, but everything put together makes the days incredibly intense and my brain is working on over-drive.

I get inspired.

I have so many ideas, things that I should write about.

There is so much substance that I should put up here, things that engage me: human rights and research ethics and global responsibility and the situation in the world, sustainable development. My role in all of that, as an academic, a sustainability scientist, a representative from Stockholm Resilience Centre, Swedish, young, woman. Different aspects of my master’s project.

But I need to sleep, like always, and I’m afraid that all of these ideas will disappear.

Maybe I should think of this as part of my project. To formulate ideas and thoughts about my thesis and its context here, as a way to practice my skills of communication and outreach.

It seemed to be a crazy day for this blog today: There’s been readers from Sweden, Canada, USA, Germany, Brazil and South Africa.

Maybe I’ll even spread a little piece of sustainability knowledge to other parts of the world. Something that should definitely be considered.

Tomorrow. On the train. Possibly.

I’m sitting on a train again. This time, headed north. Härnösand, to be precise. The sun was shining when we left Stockholm at noon, but now it’s half past three and the clouds are a dull grey. I’m going to a course, a prerequisite to get the money from the grant I got as funding for my field work in Burkina Faso. There’s a buffé at six. I’m starving already, despite just having eaten a sandwich and an egg. I’m incredibly sleepy. I feel I don’t really know how this will turn out. In a general sense, this fall, things are on the move. Life, you know.

There are so many red houses around here. Falu-red with white around the windows and on the corners. Horses. Hills covered with conifers. We’re approaching Sundsvall. Which is where my grandfather grew up. But personally, I’ve never been. I won’t go, this time either. Härnösand is even further north.

I made my bed, cleared the desk, put away things from the floor in my room.

Some things need space. A clutter-free environment. A physical respect and stillness. Quiet and undivided attention.

One of those things is listening to a new Hello Saferide album for the first time. And this is how it starts, with a soft drum machine:

To hear a song like that, to have it spoon your sad little heart. It didn’t give me a better outlook on life but it told me: ”I’ve been there too and I turned it into art”. That made all the difference to me.

That made all the difference to me.

And I forgot about songs, I forgot about what they are to me. I forgot how they hold me, how they sooth me and carry me. I forgot about violins, I forgot how they see me. Try me and taunt me, and how they finally breathe me. I forgot about chord changes where the base tone stays intact. I forgot about drums and voices with a tendency to crack. Well, they make all the difference to me.

They make all the difference to me.

/…/

And you’re so young, you’re so young and you come up to me. And you tell me it helped you through something bad, you say, and you hang your head, but the song helped you through.

I get home and kick my books: Fuck you Knowledge. I was never on your team, never one of your fighters. I was born a romantic for a reason, not to be learned, but to be a song writer.

And I could keep on going, with the next song, and the next. I won’t be able to do her justice, so I’ll skip trying to explain her greatness.

But I remember seeing her live at a festival in 2006, and falling like a ripe apple from a tree. She had me, with her sincerity, humor, intelligence, honesty. And she has me now.

I bought the actual CD, because I like collecting and I have all her other albums. It came in the post, signed. Annika Norlin has touched this CD. It amazes me. I’ll build an altar around it, one of these days.

* *

But just one more thing. About her kicking Knowledge and being a song writer. I remember reading somewhere that she took a break from music several years ago to go to university and become a psychologist. I interpret those last lines in the song as something coming from that. From all her lyrics and interviews, I get the feeling that she wants to be a person who makes the world a better place. Happier.

But. There are so many different ways to achieve that. I’ve thought about that a lot. What should I do, with my particular talents and abilities, do to make as good an impact on the world as possible. It is not the same for everyone. I would not be a good doctor or primary school teacher. Is what I’m doing right now the best thing that I could do? I don’t know.

Annika Norlin (Hello Saferide) has definitely made at least my world better with her songs. That doesn’t mean that she wouldn’t be a great phsychologist either, I know nothing abou that. But in her music, she’s definitely found a truly good contribution that she can make to the world. I envy her, and am so thankful that she decided to learn to play the guitar all those years ago.

I was biking home from the comfortably lukewarm Friday evening at a pub. The faint smell of rotting apples was in the air, and the mist made the moon look like a heavy, half-eaten cheddar above the tree tops. I was listening to Hello Saferide’s second album.

And then I saw a fox. It strolled out on the bicycle path, stopped for a second and looked at me coming, with the long, bushy tail like a second creature behind it, and then it ran out onto the dewy football field.

Annika Norlin sang:

I’m not stupid, I understand that it would be convenient if I was better at conversation. /…/

And I try, I try, but I just want to spend more time with my mind. You know, it surprises me every time, and none of you ever do.

It doesn’t mean that I don’t love you.

And that’s me too. Well, not tonight (who wouldn’t love spending time with the pun masters at Carmen), but in general. The only difference is that, for me, it will take years before I love you.

(Bad inside joke. I apologize.)

At home, the new Hello Saferide album was waiting for me. The fox, the hunter and Hello Saferide. I will listen to it tomorrow. My kind of holy.

I’m tired, OK.

I have an amazing ability to do my absolute best when it doesn’t really matter. Now, my focus is elsewhere.

This has not been the best of days. Mostly because I disappoint myself by expecting more from people than what they can give. I should work on acceptance. I don’t understand how we’re expected to manage to fit everything a person is supposed to be in one body. The pragmatic and ambitious and spiritual and understanding and wise.

But Hello Saferide is releasing her new album on September 3rd. I’ve been listening to “I was Jesus” on repeat today. It will be a good week yet, you’ll see.

I was biking across the Skanstull bridge in the morning sunshine, on my way in to the center, listening to the radio in one ear. A new song came on, I already knew in the intro that this was something special – and then the singing started.

A NEW HELLO SAFERIDE SONG!

Oh, this must mean that this week will be special. Sunshine, on a bike, and a new, superfeminist song by my personal goddess Annika Norlin in Hello Saferide’s “I was Jesus”. And the video is awesome too!

Nothing can bring me down now, not this week.

I just saw Legends of the Fall. A bit too heroic for my taste, a bit too melodramatic, but Brad Pitt is a beautiful man. Terrifyingly so. Destructively so.

And I’ve learned to stay away from that now. Not in a movie, there’s no danger in that, but in life. There is beauty that consumes, and I am very susceptible.

I want to go to Montana and work on a ranch. Train young horses in the roundpen with mountains bordering the horizon, and the sky.

I need to figure out all these wants of mine.

I went back to school on Monday, to start working on my thesis. However, already on Monday evening, I started feeling weird, and by Tuesday morning I had developed a fully-fledged cold. Sore throat, fever, my entire body aching. Same morning, the Polish contractors came and started work on our bathroom. I got closed into my room, the door covered in plastic.

I felt like I’ve been put in quarantine.

I drank lots of tea. Which, as it turned out, wasn’t that smart, because when Polish contractors are stripping everything from the walls and floors of the bathroom, access to the toilet is very limited.

Not a good start on this thesis. I’m only supposed to have worked on it for a week, and I’m already behind. But I’m feeling better now. I’ll work double speed next week.