Lifestyle, Thoughts

Last thoughts in 2018

“For the sake of life, the development of the last hundred years has been almost incomprehensible. “Nowadays, an ordinary worker lives in many ways a more abundant life than royals a few generations earlier,” says Vahvanen.

Pekka Vahvanen wrote a book “Kone kaikkivaltias – kuinka digitalisaatio tuhoaa kaiken meille arvokkaan”, about how digitalization is going to destroy everything that is valuable for us. The world would be a better place if no one ever invented computers. With the industrial revolution, our life began to determine the trader’s logic. Everything is determined by price and everything is valued from the point of view of trading and profit making.

I would like to ask, how many people have received cultural content, that has moved you in a very deep way because of Internet? The content you are always thinking about again and again, and you think how on earth I could live without this. We have achieved what was only dreamed of in the 20th century.

It is often though that social media puts us under pressure and social media is just a bad thing. However, I have a strong belief that we may not even have understood how much our daily life has changed since technology has made our lives easier. Many jobs disappear because you no longer have to have to have a lot of people to get your own opinion or point across. In theory we should be completely free of censorship. We should be free to say how we feel at the moment and somebody will eventually reach that information.

Censored liberation also means that the individual should bear the responsibility for what he or she shares and also for what he or she receives. At the moment, we live in a world where responsibility is seen as a bad thing. Responsibility means doing what you don’t want. Tove Jansson knew it long ago. I don’t want to receive the things that I’m receiving at the moment. I don’t want to have pain in my life because of knowing that climate catastrophe is going to change our lives and I don’t want to know how many people were killed today. Who is responsible for that?

It would be nice for someone else to take responsibility for your actions. The school is raising our children, McDonalds feeding them, etc. This is a disease that develops in a welfare state. Responsibility can always be rolled somewhere else and someone takes care of it. Or is there someone? It’s easy to blame other people and things that are wrong in your life and look for guilt outside. The easiest way is to fall into bitterness and say that all evil comes from outside and I myself didn’t have the chance to choose to be born in such an era instead of taking responsibility for making the present better. After all, no one else, aside from ourselves, can solve the problems that we are facing at this precise moment.

I believe the Internet is the best invention in the history of our humanity. We want to be better and we want to change the world. We refuse to just swallow shit without chewing it and we are ready to do our best to make everything change for the better. I don’t even want to start with how many online people have made me feel better and have given me hope for the future.

I had a conversation with my friends and I told them my concern about working life and its changes. The feedback was incredibly warm: do what you want, because I know what’s good for you is good for me. We are in dire need of each other in times when we think that communality ruins the ability to advance in a career. When you are happy, you are probably making many people around you happy. Even though this may sound very cliché. Depression affects not only the individual who suffers from it but also everyone who interacts with this person.

In 2019 we will need each other even more, so take care of the people and things around you. And use the Internet in an ethical way, it’s for connecting people, not to tear them apart.

– Eeva

Thoughts

Happiness can turn us miserable

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I used to be obsessed with being happy all the time.

I thought happiness was a state of emotion that I would somehow reach and then that’s it, there I am. Being sad or going through hard times or emotions was always a bad thing in my head and if I ever felt sad or disappointed I tried to push away those thoughts. Now I think that’s ridiculous, no one can be in Cloud 9 all the time.

Accepting your emotions and realising that life needs all its colours and actually being able to go through all those emotions will make your life better. I think this kind of happiness overload that we are being fed from everywhere in social media is making us miserable in the end. There’s always those times when you suddenly throw up because of a stomach bug, or maybe you feel your head is terribly itchy because of lice, or it turns out that you unfortunately found inchworms in your ass. I would consider all of these situations to be the definition of a very bad time, but then there’s always someone who comes and tells you that you shouldn’t complain about these issues and be thankful because you don’t have cancer. I’m sorry but that won’t help me now, can’t you see I’m in the middle of going through something?

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We all need someone to tell us sometimes that it’s OK to feel bad sometimes. It’s really healthy to just say it out loud and accept failure or illness and just try to be as positive about the future as we can. I think the best thing about being a human is that we can change and other people can change. I sometimes feel that I’m the only one growing up and that I’m the only person going through whichever problem or feeling, but the older you get you realise that all the problems and emotions are universal. Someone probably has gone through all these feelings already. And this is the moment when art comes in.

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I truly believe that art keeps us going and gives us emotions that we need to develop. We all have an urge to be heard and we are desperately trying to find our ways to express ourselves. The feeling of inspiration or lack of it can damage us deeply. I’ll give you an example: you feel really inspired and really want to do something, but you don’t have the tools or circumstances to do it. The other example is when you have everything you need to do whatever you want and you just don’t feel like doing it, you start thinking how is this possible and why am I like this? You are already focusing on emotions that will be on your way if you want to create. Negative thoughts take a lot of your energy. Which are the reasons that are holding you back? Instead of focusing on the reasons, I think you just have to find a solution.

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I told my friend the other day that I don’t want to write because everything is already written. Then he answered that it’s the same if someone says that I won’t make music because there’s so much music in the world. Many times we won’t even try because we compare ourselves to other people instead of seeing other people as inspiration. Like one of my friends told me: we are each others mirrors. So the kind of world you want to see depends a lot on the way you act.

I think it’s very important to understand that happiness is only one emotion between other emotions and if you give too much importance to one feeling, you are missing out on the other ones that are also part of the whole “I’m so happy!” – experience. Humans are not just representative of one feeling or state, robots probably can do that. I think we are all somehow broken and that makes us humans. And who wants to be a robot? If you try to chase something that can never be a constant state, you are being delusional. So when you feel bad, just let yourself feel bad and then deal with it, it’s part of the process.

So when you finally have reached the point when you realise that it makes no sense to try to be happy all the time, you suddenly start to feel better. And truly better, in a deeper way. Finally you start seeing yourself as a human that isn’t trying to act in a nonhuman way.

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Something we can try to do first is to deal with all those feelings by ourselves as much as we can so that we don’t have to pour it all over other people in full volume. If you can’t deal with your emotions by yourself that’s fine as well and you should definitely reach for help. It’s OK to not be OK.

So whenever you feel something different than happy or sad, be grateful. You can actually see the world from different point of views and realise that there are many colours to be discovered. The happiest are the ones who have discovered that happiness is not the only thing they want in their lives.

– Eeva –

Lifestyle, Thoughts

Holiday thoughts

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After moving to a new flat, all I want to do is to spend time there. I know summer is the time when you should go out all the time and do things that you can’t do during the winter. But is it really like that?

I feel that everybody should spend their holidays doing the things they really want, not what they are expected to do. I think people put so much expectations on holidays that when the holiday actually arrives, it’s more stressful than stress releasing. I’ve never had expectations on my holidays and usually when I travelled I didn’t make plans and that was the key, after every holiday I truly felt rested. I slept long even though I knew that I would probably “miss out” something. Maybe, but in the end if I didn’t do it how can I know that I missed something out because in the end it never happened.

Life is all about gaining and missing opportunities. Previously it would make me anxious and especially missing opportunities would make me so anxious that I wasn’t able to enjoy the moment because I would already be thinking about the next activity. I would be planning my next trip when I was still on the way. I couldn’t just sit down and be. It’s really difficult. I still feel that I have a lot to learn but just even recognising that helps a lot.

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Whenever I start to feel restless or anxious I ask myself these questions.

What can I do to make this feeling go away?

Do I really want it to go away? Or am I secretly enjoying it because afterwards you always feel better and you know it?

What if I don’t do anything about it, how it would make me feel in long term?

And then I’m already going towards solution x because no one likes to be anxious.

And the brutal thing is that there’s no other way. Those feelings aren’t going away unless you do something about them, otherwise you just have to live with those feelings. I believe the solutions are there for everyone but sometimes it’s just hard to see them and it’s also scary to face them. This has to do with all types of situations, losing weight, breaking up, finding a new job, starting a new project, facing problems when travelling, chasing dreams and the list goes on forever. If you want to lose weight, it requires a lot of commitment, if you are not willing to do it, you just have to accept yourself as you are and stop complaining about your situation. Same if you are in a bad relationship, either you work for it together or you have to let it go. If you want to achieve something you have to ask yourself are you willing to work for it, if you are not, you have to lower your expectations and let go. Life doesn’t make sense if you just go through it eyes closed surrounded by problems that you created yourself.

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I think we should look for solutions all the time. Whenever you face a problem you have to start already picture the solution. If you spend too much time thinking about the problem and analysing it, you can get too deep into it and finding the solution can get harder. I know some problems are bigger than others and some problems can’t be solved and everybody faces problems in a different way: someone’s problem doesn’t seem like a problem to another person at all. But I think it’s important to stop creating trivial problems for ourselves because we all do that sometimes, complain about things that are not worth complaining about.

Whenever I read about how people get stressed on their holidays because they think holiday is the only time they can do things, I think they have already forgotten that having a holiday is that kind of luxury in their lives that they should be thankful for. If your stress comes out due to spending too much time on social media and seeing Instagram-stars having a better time than you, just think about it a moment: why are these pictures appearing to me? Did I choose to look at them? What can I do about it?

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I’ve been so relaxed just chilling at home cleaning and doing my little projects that I just wanted to share some thoughts. I know I could be at the beach or exploring my new neighbourhood or doing million other things. That’s also completely fine if someone is doing it. Since my Spring was really busy I decided that I really have to just stop for a moment. Spending my time at home has made me go through all those feelings that I wrote about above and I felt stupid because I really enjoyed doing my little projects at home and in the end everyone is able to spend their time as they want to and it shouldn’t be anyone else’s business. So if you really want to spend time at home even though you feel like the rest of the world is doing something else, do it. It doesn’t make sense to force yourself to do things that you don’t want to do. Trust me, you will have a chance of enjoying a sunny day, I’ve heard that the Sun won’t shut down in a while.

So, enjoy your holidays and don’t focus on unnecessary problems, holidays might not always be perfect, but usually they’re really nice.

Now I’m going to read a book, maybe outside or on the sofa, we’ll see.

Ps. I got a stomach bug while writing this post so I was forced to stay at home as well. 😀

– Eeva –

Home, Lifestyle, Thoughts

How can two months disappear?

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The answer is easy: be as busy as you can.

These past two months have been crazy. So many things have happened and sometimes I’ve felt like a robot who is just doing everything on automatic pilot. I’ve tried not to overheat and not stress too much because everybody knows what happens when you do that. All the things that have happened have been nice things, but in order for nice things to happen you need to struggle a bit (or a lot).

But we all need some busy times to appreciate our “normal life”. I guess the definition of normal varies from person to person, but for me it’s that kind of life where I actually have time to think about what I’m doing and not just do things without thinking. Having a lifestyle where you can take your time to think about things may sound luxurious to many people but I believe it’s necessary to be fine with yourself, and I’d really recommend it to everyone. It’s very important because if you only go full speed forward and never stop to think, I feel that you lose your focus easily. What happens to me when there is a lot going on is that I start to focus on little things. For example I start convincing myself that cleaning is the number one priority even though that’s a big lie. You can clean later, there’s no cleaning police behind you.

So why am I talking about cleaning?

The biggest change is that we moved to a new apartment. I had a very ambitious plan to clean all our floors in a way that we don’t have to wear shoes at home and now the project is finished and I couldn’t be happier! That’s one thing I really missed from Finland. When I lived in Finland the best moment of the day was when I was able to leave my sweaty shoes at the entrance. I believe that now that the summer is here and the temperature is rising from day to day, nothing feels better than walking barefoot. Also the cleaning part in the future will be a lot easier. 😀

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When I was packing and cleaning I realised that this kind of lifestyle where you don’t own that many things is amazing. Most of the apartments that people rent here in Barcelona are already furnished and that makes everything a lot easier and more ecological. If you compare it to Finland (of course there’s furnished apartments in Finland but it’s not that common) here you don’t have to buy everything for your new apartment and rent a van to move your furniture around. It’s madness to start selling and buying your furniture all over again many times across the years. I know some people see themselves reflected in the things that they own and that the spirit of the apartment comes from what they’ve bought but I also believe that you can get used to everything that comes with a furnished apartment. Maybe in the beginning it doesn’t feel like it’s your home and you feel like the things around you are not completely your style but after a while I’m sure you will get used to things around you. I also think that we were lucky to have a furnished apartment so we were able to move most of our things by bike. We had to use a taxi ride only once. How convenient!

Moving to a new place is always stressful and I’m really glad that now we have a bigger apartment to do things. When you live in a small room, you don’t have that many options to do and you prefer to spend your time somewhere else rather than at home. I’ve been living many years in small rooms and I can tell that this is very refreshing. You can actually move your arms around freely and do all kinds of activities, like exercising in your living room. Simple things that probably many people take for granted. Don’t take it for granted, use your space when you have it.

All that I can say is: it feels good to have a home.

– Eeva

Badalona, Barcelona, Montgat, Thoughts, Travelling

MONTGAT – and some thoughts about travelling

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During our Easter holiday we decided to go on a little trip to Montgat. Montgat is a little town about 16km away from Barcelona. The road there is simple: you just have to follow the coastline. Barcelona is a great city for bikers and they are building new bike lines all the time. The weather in Barcelona is sunny most of the year so it’s optimal for biking. If you ever travel to Barcelona I recommend you to explore it by bike.

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I’ve lived in Barcelona now for almost two years and I’m a bit ashamed that I don’t know much about towns that are close to Barcelona. My resolution for the year 2018 was that I have to explore Barcelona’s outskirts more. There are so many places to see and little villages to visit. For a long time I’d been so focused on travelling far that I’d forgotten to focus on my surroundings. When I lived in Finland I was always planning the next trip and constantly dreaming about new places to go. I was waiting for the next holiday to be able to travel and go somewhere else. Moving to Barcelona changed my travelling habits and for the first time I realised that I didn’t even want to go anywhere.

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It’s important to love the city you live in. Previously I thought that it was normal to have this feeling where you constantly wanted to be somewhere else. I’m not saying that I don’t want to travel anymore because that’s a lie but let’s say I’m a lot more relaxed about it. That has a lot to do with the fact that I love the city I live in now, it’s very relieving to realise that you don’t need to escape anymore. 😀 This time instead of planning the next trip we packed our backpacks went biking..

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.. and it really did work out!

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I enjoyed our day trip so much. The weather was beautiful and the hill we stopped at was totally worth visiting. The road to Montgat was very nice and interesting because you see the modern side of Barcelona and also go trough the beautiful boulevard in Badalona. I had this feeling like I was far away from Barcelona and even though you might love the place you are in, it’s normal to want to disconnect for a moment. In the evening I was happy to bike back home without passing any airport security checks or sweating in a metro.

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Boulevard in Badalona

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So whenever you feel like you want to be somewhere else or your next holiday feels like a distant dream, do a day trip. Pack some food and go somewhere near where you still haven’t been. After that if you still feel like you need to leave, maybe you can think about buying plane tickets, but at least give it a try. 😀

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I would definitely bike to Montgat again and I’m sure at least we will sit in the boulevard in Badalona. The reason why I even wanted to go there was that I’d heard that there were a lot of cats everywhere but this time we didn’t see any! I have to say that I was looking forward to seeing the cats but even without cats the day trip was successful. 😀

– Eeva –

holaeeva

Food, Travel & life in Barcelona

Category Archives: Thoughts

Happiness can turn us miserable

Holiday thoughts

How can two months disappear?

MONTGAT – and some thoughts about travelling