The New Year has come and gone and so has the holiday season before that. It left me unfulfilled and unhappy. I had been sick too much of the time, too lazy some of the time and moody and unrested, and… Well, you get the idea. I took consolation in that a really entartaining blogger had it worse, because at least I spent all the time with my Love and my parents without involving grandmothers who can be difficult at times. Well, actually apart from the having a bad cold part, my holidays weren’t that bad. Still, they weren’t great either and it took me a walk in a park to lift my mood.

The winter here and now is cold (unplesantly so, but bearably) and beautiful. I’d like to say how beautiful, except I’m not sure how mesure it. Perhaps I can say it’s so beautiful, that it makes me smile despite the cold air getting in my mouth and hurting my teeth and making me cough as a result. In the morning the air is strange, kind of pensive, lingering. Everything is covered in perfect whiteness that sparkles. Still the sun didn’t hurt my eyes like the summer one does when it’s all bright and reflects of everywhere. Maybe it was because it was low and didn’t shine down on the whiteness. The most beautiful thing of all in this are the trees. Every branch covered in snow they look like giant depictios of snowflakes. Not so geometrical and equal angled, with black lines to stress the white shine they stretched up in the blue of the sky. If my English was better, I could go on and on describing the magical beauty of it all.

So I am feeling quite better, still, I don’t manage to do as much as I’d like to having to blow my nose all the time and getting a headache from that and everything. When I find that the lovely woman from Wide Lawns and Narrow Minds feels just like me, and I guess we love what we can identify with.  Not just with the lousy holiday and the needing a kick part, but mostly with not being able to gether herself to do something she wants to do, about not wanting to be imperfect at doing it. Her thing is yoga, I don’t care for yoga, but the idea is the same. I don’t want to do some things that  I want to do, because I will make mistakes at them and I will have to learn them the hard way – by making mistakes and then practising in order not to make mistakes. I’ve put so many things I want to do down because of this, that I’m not sure which one I could call upon now, to illustrate. (Hah, turns out I mentioned all of them in my firtst post on this blog, which is all about this.) I kind of blame my education system for this, because we were not pushed enough, we were not required to do much for ourselves, except listen to the wise teacher, take notes and repeat the stuff. But seeing how others in other education systems feel the same, it might just be me (and her).

I love flying. I know some people hate it, but I don’t. I flew for the very first time just recently (about a year ago) and I fell in love with flying from the first time. A month ago I had my first 10+10 hour flight and I thought that perhaps that might spoil my love for flying, but it didn’t. Even flying back again the 10+10 hours and having the second plane changed to be 6 hours later than originally planned didn’t spoil my love for flying.

When I flew for the first time, I imagined that the feeling is similar to what the first train passengers might have felt. I’m in a huge machine that makes this horrible noise and is a bit scary but from it I see my world in a way I have never seen it before. For them it was a view of the world quickly running by. For me it was a view from above.

Before I flew for the first time I was warned about the pressure change. I was a bit afraid about that because my ears are fragile compared to other parts of me. I hate the feeling in the ears when there is a quick pressure change. (Is there an expression in English for that feeling?) But I didn’t feel too bad in the plane. What I noticed more than the unpleasant feeling in the ears was the pleasant feeling in my tummy. It’s like riding a carousel! Only stronger and cooler.

What I hate is the airports with their “security checks”. Because of them I thought I would try to fly as little as possible, but when I got into the plane, or more precisely, when the plane started going fast on the runway, all that nonsense with metal detectors was forgiven. But seriously, people working there have to put up with it every time they go from one side of it to the other.

The windows of planes are small but the views are hugely impressive. I love the way all the cities turn into models of cities and then in small patterns or somethings. And even when it’s cloudy like it often is, the clouds are impressive. I think they look way more solid from above than from the ground. On the ground I could never understand why people could believe they could walk on clouds. Thew clouds look so two-dimensional and if they look three-dimensional, they look evaporating. But from above they look like below the mist engulfing ones feet there would be soft but solid surface to walk on.

And when I first flew over a city at night! All the illumination made me think of gingerbread men for some reason that I don’t remember anymore. I also thought about hot gleaming lava trickling between patches of dark cooled lava like I’ve seen it on TV. And of the structure of the city and the large illuminated road connecting the two patches of light, what might those patches be – two cities or two parts of the same city, what makes that road more important and illuminated than other roads. It was beautiful.

The two long flights in a row didn’t kill my love for flying even after delaying my longed for return home. That leads me to believe that flying will never lose it’s magic in my eyes (or stomach). It might lessen over time, but not disappear. Even if all the magic is just the return home that I’ve longed for or the arrival to a new and exciting place. Flying is magic.

I was sixteen at the time. We had split up (I think) and he had been flirting with other girls. I missed the attention. Our school had lockers in the basement for wardrobe. I guess the lessons had ended on the same time for me and for him, but not for everyone else, because there were not many other people there at the time, at least not our friends.

I wanted to be noticed. I wanted to be missed not dismissed and this guy had been ignoring me too much. I think I finished what I needed to do and went over to him. He was still dressing and his keys were in the locker door. I struggled with myself for a while. I dislike taking the other person’s things as a method of flirting. I considered it classless, too simple and not elegant enough. But Hormones are all powerful (at least at that age). I took his keys.

Unsurprisingly, he asked them back and I refused. He tried to take them and I tried to hide them from him. He grabbed me and holding me with one hand tried to reach the keys. I tried my hardest not to hand them over. It was a mix of fighting and feeling the touch of each other. I felt needy for feeling so good being touched by him again.

Finally he got me cornered and both my hands in his. But since he’s hands were busy too he couldn’t take the keys even though I couldn’t move to avoid him doing so. We were so very close, I felt his body against mine and I felt tears coming. I bet I thought that I missed him. I don’t think I thought I missed cuddling and a boy’s attention. He hugged me sensually.

At that moment our friends came passing by. I tried to hide behind him and immediately regretted it. I couldn’t hide, but I could be seen hiding, which made everyone feel more uncomfortable. We weren’t doing anything inappropriate at all, but my hiding made it look as if we were. My friend made some innocent comment that I don’t remember, but I remember him being ruder to her than was polite. All right, being rude is never polite, but he was sharper, more snappish than usual. So snappish in fact that it verged on being rude.

But I had got my bit of attention, had gotten a bit more of self confidence and I had something to write in my diary or on slips of paper during more boring parts of lessons as was often the case.

I want to write about a recent favourite author of mine. Hes name is Neil Gaiman.

A few years ago I took a bunch of audio-books from an acquaintance. He talked a lot about self development and he was quite a leader and read books on those things (self development and leadership). Among his books was one called The American Gods. I figured it’d be a book about the large corporations in America and power struggle between them. The beginning of the book, though a bit surprising, didn’t contradict this assumption too much. Later on I was astonished and surprised all the time, because the book was not at all what I thought it would be. I loved it.

I wasn’t sure why I loved it so much, was it because how it surprised me (for the best) or because it was genuinely so well written. It had details that I love so much – in the beginning of the book something happens that doesn’t quite make sense at the time, but does near the end when so much more has been resolved. It has culture in it and lots of fantasy.

I blabbered the authors name all over my relatives and got Stardust for my birthday. I also got a glittery stone tied up in string at the same time, though it was a souvenir from some trip that my father had been on and not intentionally related. But it was such a great combination of presents for a dreaming girl like me. I loved the book too. Even though I now didn’t expect anything boring of it.

I’ve also read Anansi Boys now and I want to get my hands on the Sandman comics. I’m also looking forward to the Graveyard Book. But it’s not near all he’s done.

I admire him even more for interacting with readers so much. I read his blog and he answers such a great amount of letters, I think. Even though I don’t agree with everything he does, I think it’s great that he doesn’t do just books. And I am happy that he isn’t conservative about how people get to his work. I have gotten a few of his works for free, but I have also purchased some because of it. And he understands and encourages it.

If I ever become a writer, I want to be just like him, except female, and obviously I want to be original and everything. What I meant was that he’s great with so many words. English is not my native language, but I think I’d learn a few words from his books even if it was. And he does great research for his books.

Now I’ll be one of the over 2500 websites that link to his page every day and I’m proud of it.

Life is all about balance. Eat enough tasty things to make yourself happy, but little enough not to make yourself fat. Save enough money to become more wealthy and ensured, but don’t become obsessed with it and let yourself buy an occasional treat. Work hard enough, but don’t become overworked. Have belief, but also be reasonable. And so on. Today I want to talk about freedom of speech and abusing it.

The trigger for me to talk about this was a few articles in a local newspaper site about abusive advertisements. I didn’t find those advertisements abusive. One was an advertisement for a cell phone that stated three things why a phone is better than a secretary. It was a bit lame instead of being actually funny, but it wasn’t abusive. Not even to female secretaries (as it was claimed it was, because of a picture of a woman in a suit and with a pensive expression). I think if we go around saying that’s abusive, we’ll end up not being able to say a lot of things. From this I concluded that I’m all for freedom of speech.

I’m not the firs to talk about this. Violent Acres talks about overly applied political correctness and illustrates it with a story that very deeply touched me. And yes, I’m a great fan of hers and would love to get noticed by her, but I’ll link to her posts often because they stick with me (not to get noticed). I remember what I’ve read at VA’s and more often like and agree with it than not.

In my country and my life political correctness is not such an issue yet, because we’re still a pretty monotone community. Probably in time we’ll get there, though.

I could use the above mentioned story to illustrate the point that people can feel offended by anything if they want to. And if they’re confident enough and don’t want to achieve anything by being offended and needing an apology they can shrug and laugh at almost anything.

I have a suspicion that for any given text there is a person somewhere who is offended by said text. I was offended by Terry Pratchett when he did a word play on the game “Poohsticks”, which is a game I love since “Winnie-the-Pooh” by Alan Alexander Milne is my childhood favourite book. But it was a good joke and I would not let anyone forbid it, because it offends me.

It’s like with most things in life. We can be very careful and strive for not being offensive to anyone and end up not being able to talk much, or we can be open and talkative and not be offended by so much stuff. I vote for the second option.

I am not yet an immensely successful, but I intend to be. I’m not rich, but I intend to be. I’m not famous and I don’t really care if I am, but I suppose it comes with success. I’m young enough to manage those things. What I need to do in order to become all that is work. A lot of hard work. For now the work would mostly be in the area of learning things, but it still needs to be done. By me. I think I’m not doing enough now.

There are tons of advice out there about how to become successful, happy and other things. And there is enough of advice about getting work done too. The tricky part is to pick the one that helps you. I mean for me the tricky part is to find the one that helps me. I have problems getting work done. Especially if I get my hands on an interesting fantasy or science fiction book. There are a few categories of work I have problems getting done, that I’ll try to describe.

It took me quite a long time to begin a proper blog, because I wanted to write one only when I was ready for posting regular meaningful entries. Like I was ever going to be if I didn’t actually start writing them. Of course “to learn to write blog entries” is not motivating enough to write something. I think this could be called “perfection syndrome”.

When I try learning something new, I sometimes don’t do more practising after the first few attempts. I hate the thought of doing the thing so clumsily again. This happens when I’m trying to learn musical instruments or programming. It is the silliest reason ever. Of course I suck at doing something I’m learning to do, but I can’t learn to do it better if I don’t practise. But I just want to be good all the time. “Perfection syndrome” again, only in a more bizarre form?

And last but not least are the things I’m not bad at, but I am afraid of getting stuck at. There might appear some kind of problem, like some calculations wouldn’t match or I wouldn’t know how to describe some results, so I don’t want to even begin. Mostly these are school exercises. Today I spent all day not doing my physics homework. And since it was what I was supposed to be doing, I wasn’t doing anything else useful either. The ridiculous part is that those problems can be overcome, but they take a while and more work.

It is said that realising the problem is already a step towards the solution, so I hope I have pinned the right problem. I am too frightened to fail or even to not be perfect, to do as well as I’m capable of doing. I must overcome my fear of failure and fail more often, work harder to learn more and therefore succeed more in the future.