I hate being predictable. But right on time I’m having the predictable “where’s my life”-going thoughts that everyone has when they turn 30. Or is it “should have”? I’ve never had a problem with any of it, but here I am. And ofcourse it doesn’t help when speaking to an old collegue that just became a father (congrats Anton!), and other friends settling down and stuff. But I ain’t mad. It’s just a number 🙂
Over the past few days I’ve been corresponding with a person in the USA about some of the stuff I wrote in my essay-things a while back. “A while back” in this case is 2001. But since then I’ve done alot and seen alot and I realise that I was pretty naive and inexperienced when I wrote some of those a few years back. So to use the same cliché again – “if I knew then what I know now”. So I really should go through and update them. But I didn’t know people still read them!
I think I may very well be a hypochondriac. And thinking you’re a hypochondriac pretty much proves it, doesn’t it? I think I’ve gone through all kinds of theories behind this ever lasting headache, from simple wisdomtooth to tumor and I don’t know how many times I’ve killed myself with all deceases I’ve given myself! And today I woke up with pain in my abdomen, but that I just blame on my pills of iron I’m taking to make up for the blood donation the other day. But not after thinking my appendix was about to burst. As I said, hyponcriac alert! Is that the price you pay for watching too much ER?
You know what I can’t get? Sunglasses for $500?? Exactly what do they do that the ones I buy ($20) don’t? I’m not a cheap guy, I paid extra for my projector because it had features and i/o ports that I needed so I’ll pay for something with more features and stuff. But sunglasses? They only have two features – fade and look cool. That’s it! So why would do people sell and buy glasses for $500??? I’ve never understood that. And since I go through 3-4 per year you can imagine why I only buy cheap ones.
I hate wanting to kick myself in the ass saying “if I knew then what I know now…”. I usually say it when thinking about how I hated school or something that’s a few years off, but in the past two days I’ve gone through my last two years of updates and reading all the stuff when I was travelling and all I have to say to myself is “if I knew then what I know now”. But “then” in this case is only two years ago. Which means I must’ve learnt alot of stuff in the past two years. Maybe that’s why I’m feeling so indifferent to my current job, cause let’s face it, you can’t beat travelling the world, staying for 2 weeks in every country, living in hotels, doing something you’re good at, eating at restaurants everyday, making tons of money and everything on the tax payers dollars.
(yes Ricki, I know!)
Well the past 24 hours have been really, really depressing! One of the things I hate about life is when good things end, which as everyone knows has to happen. Like when you get fired from your job and thus losing touch with alot of friends. Or when you’ve gotten used to travelling around the world and all of a sudden that ends. Well on friday night I finally saw the last episodes of “Babylon 5” (still one of the best written TV shows ever!) and the last two episodes are all about this, good things that come to an end. And today I saw the last episode of modern Star Trek. End of an era. For the first time since 1987 there won’t be a new Star Trek episode made for quite a while. And before I was ready to accept that, Sweden got knocked out of the world championship in one of the best games I’ve seen in a long, long time. So yeah, all good things still come to an end. But still, this was a very rewarding saturday.
Yesterday as I was walking along Kungsgatan I noticed a bunch of people putting up tents and stuff and forming a long line outside one of our biggest cinema’s, Rigoletto. To any normal average Joe this might’ve looked weird and stupid and made no sense what so ever. Not to me. To me it’s inspiring to see how this many people can be so dedicated to a movie saga that they’ll sleep on the streets just to be sure to get the tickets for the first showing of the new Star Wars movie. Other people may think it’s geeky and looooooser-style, but I respect it. If I didn’t have a job, if sweden was knocked out of the hockey championship and if I had a tent, I might have joined them. But nah, I’ll just wait ’til Monday when I can order the tickets online!
My doctor just called. All the tests they did on all my blod last friday showed that I’m… in perfect health. I don’t even have a high sugar- or cholesterol level. Which makes me think they must’ve messed up ’cause with all the junkfood, and the bag of crisps I had the day before, there’s no way everything should be normal. But it is. Which eliminates most theories about my headache.
Ever since Christmas I’ve had this small tiny itsy-bitsy headache. I haven’t felt it that much and haven’t even been bothered by it since most of the time I don’t even think about it. But when I’m sitting still not getting much sensory input from anything I’ve always felt it. And in the past month it’s gotten worse and started to bother me so I finally gave up and went to see the Doctor – AGAIN! Ever since my salmonella I’ve been in and out of there more than I ever thought possible for a normal healthy close-to-30 person. I was ready for anything from brain tumor to just lack of B12 or whatever. But headaches are such a non-descriptive thing that she really didn’t know what was wrong. She took tons of blood to analyze (6 vials!) and I’m off to the dentist to make sure it’s not a wisdom tooth that’s creating tension in my head. But she wrote off the tumor thing way too quickly though. Here’s hoping she knows more than Mr. “I’ve watched ER too much”. She also ordered more sun.. ? I thought that was just something your parents said when they think you’re spending too much time in front of the computer! (and yes, I have TFT screens both at home and work so it’s not that!)
Wanna hear something depressing and deep? Well, you’re gonna:
Somehow your standard of living got stuck on survive.
Again my life has fallen into a comfortable weekly routine that I’m just going along with waiting for something to happen. First time I got this feeling I ended up travelling around the world. Second time I got it I ended up unemoployed. So I wonder what’s in store for me this time… and oh yeah, quote by Jewel. Ofcourse.
I tried donating blood the other day. Everytime I’ve done that I’ve had to fill in a yes/no form asking stuff like “have you been in africa” or “have you gotten a new tattoo” and stuff like that, basically make sure you haven’t done anything that could change the composition of your blood since the last time you donated. I’ve never really paid that much attention to it (and I’m suppose to work at a lawfirm!). Well, there’s one in there saying “Have you had a new sexual partner”. Well, if you check the “yes”-box there, you’re not allowed to donate blood for three months afterwards. FYI.
You know, I wish something REALLY exciting could happen so I can post something.. I mean, I’ve been Bush-bashing for over a year now so that’s boring. And I could post about the terrible state of music when an idiotic & uncharacteristic song like “Money for nothing” is played all day here in sweden but it feels like I’ve done that enough too. Or maybe I’m just too busy playing World of Warcraft to notice what’s going on.
Still WoW-ing all my free time away. Most interesting thing to happen recently was … my first parking ticket!! Being a bit too stressed I made an “ass” out of “u” and “mption” and thought it was free parking from 8pm when in fact it was free parking from 9pm. So I got a parking ticket at 8:26, annoying that 34 minutes cost me 420 SEK, but it was a fair cop. Up’till now I was one of those people who are described in spy movies as a made up person without as much as a parking ticket. But now I’m not. How sad…
This is getting rediculous! My routine now is “wake up – go to work – work my ass off – go home – start wow – go to bed – wake up…” and so on! Everything else has taken a backseat! My apartment looks like crap, my fridge is empty and my friends and family don’t even know if I’m alive half of the time since I never hear the phone and hardly ever update this place. But what can I do – WoW is way too addictive…
Where did all my free time go? Not only am I back to working 8-5 (as opposed to 9-ish to 4-ish as I’ve been doing the past few months on Pulsen since there was no work to do), but I also bought World of Warcraft which is really sucking up my free time! It’s totally time consuming game and should have like a timer with a “max 6 hours per day” limit or something…
One thing that the past weeks… no, make that two years, have taught me is the joy of waking up in the morning and the first systems check shows an itch you can’t reach! I mean, if that’s the extent of your physical and psychological state when waking up, you’re doing very OK! In the past two years I’ve gone from physical highs like when I’d gotten 5 vaccination shots in preparation for my world tour to the physical low of salmonella sickness in Africa, the mental highs of sitting by the Danube with a cold beer on a hot sunny summer day to the mental low of facing long term unemployment and the ensuing almost paralyzing dyspepsia! After all of this, today I woke up and only had an itch I couldn’t reach. 🙂
Whenever I think about how close I was to being unemployed and all the shit that comes with it I can’t help but to feel like a complete asshole. I’m almost 30 and I’ve been unemployed a full 3 days since my 15th birthday. Although I’ve had a few close calls, that’s the fact. Compare that to my friend who’s been unemployed a long, long time (3 years+). And he’s got a house and family and stuff, I’ve just got me. So even though me being unemployed doesn’t sound fun at all, other’s have had it much worse. But still manage. Let’s just hope I don’t have to manage…
But today that all changed ’cause he’s finally got a job! Congrats! 🙂
So how’s 2005 been for you? For me it’s been terrible. Only 2002 beet this year when it came to bad starts, but we’only 2 weeks in here so I don’t know where this’ll end. Not gonna bore you with details, but you know me – “it could be worse”, “it’s not as bad as it seems” and “it’ll be ok” are my mottos when stuff goes does the drain. 🙂
What a depressing week this have been. Hearing all the tragic stories of peoples fate and losses in the disaster, some makes you cry just reading about them. And yesterday I tuned in for the reality Discovery show “American Casino” that usually offers some comic relief with the banter between Ninya and Michael Tato. Unfortunately this was the episode when Michael actually dies! How depressing was that, I liked the little guy! Oh well, tonight is the 8 year anniversary of our gaming clan so BIIIIG party tonight. Fortunately I’ve got NOTHING on the schedule tomorrow 🙂
I’m one of those people who think that the best way to see if a person is well suited for his/her job, especially if it involves management, is to see how he/she performs his/her job under extreme preassure, when things are going to hell and people’s lifes are in the balance. By that meassure there are two people who should be fired. Obvious # 1 is Bush that didn’t do anything when he heard about the plane hitting the WCT and still nothing after the second one hit. And for a person who occupies the job as, as the americans call it, “the most powerful man in the world” that’s a pretty sucky thing to do.
But the close runner-up is now Laila Freivalds, our secretary of state. When I first heard about the disaster in asia when I got up on sunday 26th I kinda understood it was serious as hell but knew there was nothing I could do and was pretty sure the powers that be did all they could. Little did I know that meant going to the theater and not showing up for work until 11 am monday morning which is what she did. And now she’s seriously saying they didn’t know how bad it really was! If I get a call that we have a hard drive failure on our primary server in the weekend, I’m not gonna be able to relax or enjoy anything without trying to find out just how bad it is! But on TV there was Lottie Knutson being interviewed for a long time answering alot of questions and doing her best to be as responsible as she could and became like a familiar face as the “go-to” girl on this thing in sweden. Who was she? She’s in charge of public relations & information at one of our travelling agencies! But she knew how bad it was and desperately pleeded for help already on sunday evening. That’s pretty bad…
Someone who’s perfect for his job by this meassure however is LeRoy Cain, flight director at NASA when Columbia was suppose to come back. When he feared the worst he did exactly what he was supposed to do and kept the place cool.
Me? Well I proved in Copenhagen I can handle the stress and improvise myself out of a terrible situation…