Trying to be real for once

Somehow I've felt like I need some extra motivation this week for generally just making it, although my week is socially very active and interesting. A little fall depression, maybe? That is why I was looking through some quotes about motivation and this one struck me very strongly. I think I finally scratched the surface of the problem I'm struggling with today while I was having an excellent conversation with my friend (thanks darlin'!), which is my inability to face reality truthfully with all the expectations from the past and for the future. I find it hard to accept that I have to accept my reality and enjoy it with my eyes wide open, not in the fantasy world where everything works out juts like I imagined, even if the expectations will turn out completely different or won't come true at all. 

“Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.”

No time is ever good enough

Waking up this morning to see the white ground and snowflakes silently falling down, the atmosphere of waiting for Christmas was so tangible in the air. Add a few Christmas songs to the scene and it was exactly what these two months before the big celebration are about - waiting. But why do we get the excitement always from waiting for things to happen?

When something really fascinating happens, of course we find joy and excitement in that moment, I'm not saying I don't enjoy reality. However, it seems like in very many parts of life we are constantly waiting for something. I am a living proof of that, my older posts are very strongly about waiting for my own, independent life to start but now that it has started, do I enjoy it to the fullest or do I keep waiting for the next big step? It is the same with Christmas; we get tuned to the atmosphere for two months for what, a few days? It is indeed worth waiting for but somehow it still feels like we might lose something while we have our minds set on that certain event in the future.

In the spring kids wait for their summer vacation, in August they wait for school to start again. We wait for a reply to a text from a special person so eagerly we cannot concentrate on anything else. We wait for the next day only to wish it'd be already over. Constantly waiting for something is a much bigger part of our lives than we'd think and the question is whether we only live through something to wait for. Living in the moment is extremely hard, especially when the moment you have now does not have the certain feeling, atmosphere, event or person you want the most.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...

My friends and I started to listen to Christmas songs about two weeks ago. Nothing can compare with a dark, cold evening, a cup of tea and Michael Bublé on the background. I cannot wait to get home, dig up a book full of Christmas songs and start playing them on piano. I think I will have to bring it here with me, I've played those songs every year since October and now that I can't it feels very odd.

Besides waiting for snow and Christmas, I'm super excited about our subject's student association's Christmas party that I am organizing with a classmate. It will happen on 2nd of December and we will make it perfect; we are planning on creating the perfect Christmas atmosphere with lights and candles and elegance and ahh, simply perfection. It's going to be a black and white party, so every single guy will look handsome in suits and every single girl will be beautiful, which is a nice change after all these costume parties we've had so far.

Although I know planning a party with this precision is going to be a lot of work, especially since we are really thinking through every tiny detail but I am happy I've got something to be this excited about. Besides, if the event is a success, I will be so proud of us two. Especially since previous years these Christmas parties have not turned out so well. This year it's gonna be mind-blowingly perfect. Maybe I'm building this up a bit too much, but who cares. I can't wait!

Mentioned Christmas now seven times in this short text, which is very solid a proof of my current state of mind.

Work hard, play hard

How come all the school work comes in short periods of time when you're first drowning under a massive workload and then you hang out for a week without anything to do, starting to miss activities and routines? That is the most odd phenomenon I've encountered lately, never before has it been this visible. There are some vague bits in between when life is normal but why does the rest have to go to such excessive ends? 

Last week was exam week, aka vacation. From Monday to Wednesday I was more or less surrounded by assignments but then I went home and did nothing. And today, only two days into the second period, I am drowning in work again. Every deadline has been announced so it feels like tons of work, though I managed it last period almost without noticing. Besides, I like almost everything I am studying at the moment, it is just a lot of work. 

Funny, how this same thing is going on in social life in addition to the studies. It seems like there are times when all kinds of new, exciting or scandalous things are happening at once and then there's a long period of nothing, only focusing on studies and your own stuff and nothing special is going on. Maybe it's a good thing, I don't know. But I sure hope that this Thursday will be one of those eventful nights, since it's our Magna Carta's Halloween party! We are supposed to wear something scary and I guess my costume is a bit more sexy than scary but I thought nobody would mind. It's Halloween, after all. Nobody expects us to be decent, physically, mentally or costume-wise.

Now that I've spent the evening being a hard-working university student, I will reward myself with two hours of perfection, The Notebook is on at 9pm. Ah, can't wait!   

Quote of the day

“We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.” 

― Robert Fulghum, True Love

Roses and alcohol

That pretty much sums up the most important events recently. Today has been the first day since I moved to Jyväskylä when I have woken up in the morning and I don't have to go anywhere and I love it. I don't think I could have taken much more of being constantly going somewhere, today has been exactly what I needed. Well, I wrote a five-page paper about state funding versus tuition fees for university for my academic writing class, which took about five hours, but all in all it has been about relaxing. I noticed a funny thing with that assignment, though. I made a list of all the assignments and homework I have to do and I actually did start with the only one that I knew was going to take forever and would totally melt my brain. But this way, I only have stuff tomorrow that will be quickly done. Well done, me.

Okay, so the roses. Last Saturday I was playing piano at the wedding of my brother-in-law-to-be's brother (hahahah still so funny) and it was such a beautiful wedding and I had a blast. Everyone liked my playing and I looked totally stunning, even if I say it myself. I should probably start making a bit more effort on a daily basis as well, especially since I caught the bouquet! This obviously means that I'll find my prince charming from the campus within a year since I heard something about it having to happen within a year from catching the bouquet but that's fine by me. More than fine, actually.

On to the booze. Strongly related to the previous topic, though, even if it might not always be the best idea. On Thursday we had sitsit, which is an academic party where we sit by long tables and drink, sing and eat. In this order, literally. I had a blast, I laughed and sang so much and got to talk to some people I haven't talked with that much yet. During one evening I managed to speak Finnish, English, Swedish, Spanish, Russian, Estonian and probably a few other languages. That can speak for itself. Spanish was fun, though, never knew I can actually speak it when I've had a few drinks. So had the other part of the conversation, though, so I don't really know if it made any sense after all. 

I ended up going to sleep at 3.30 am setting the alarm to wake me up three hours later so I wouldn't miss my information and communication technology-lesson and I woke up pretty sure I hadn't really slept at all and was still a bit drunk. However, image processing and power point presentations were not too hard (neither a good enough reason to get up, to be exact, but it's a little too late for that) and after two other lessons I got to hang out with my mom who came to visit me. Funny, how when I go home it is still my home but when she comes to my place, she's a visitor. Never really thought of that before.

Anyway, sitsit was such a fantastic experience we'll do it again next Thursday. Almost my entire family will come visit the following day so I gotta try to get a little bit more sleep than the first time. But, what can you do when you are out there having fun, singing karaoke, gaining student life experiences and bonding with your new friends, go to sleep? Hell no.

Always, always, always read the manual first

The last thing I needed today was a kitchen disaster. Well, apparently I trust my technological skills way too much since I thought I will manage the use of a blender without reading the manual first. Boy, how wrong was I. 

I started happily adding my ingredients; a little yoghurt, some berries, apple jam, nettle seeds... Then I turned the blender on and everything was fine for a while. However, seconds into my attempt to make smoothie, I noticed a pink stream of my special mix flooding to the table. What made an even bigger mess, though, was trying to clean it up since it took quite a while to find the source of the smoothie bleeding. There was yummy pink stuff everywhere.

So, what happened was that I hadn't made sure that all the parts were tightly in their place, which made the smoothie start leaking through the machine. After cleaning up the mess and carefully testing a new round, I managed to finish it (20 minutes later than I thought it would take). As I thought that now it's over, finally, I found out that to my great delight, the blender cup did not fit into my fridge.

And the glass level was stuck so I couldn't put it lower. Probably due to a previous soup disaster where I discovered my fridge full of soup instead of only one can full of soup after the frozen soup had melted. 

I give up. Technology, (or whatever I could call these attempts with machines), you win.