I think this is it

Sooo... I've been wondering, for a long time now, about the future of this blog. I've been posting (irregularly lately) about things that I want to keep you updated on, and given you the idea that this is still going strong, but the truth is... that I think this blog has gone as far as it ever will. 

It's been a good run, and I've had a lot of fun with this. But I do admit, that the lack of interaction and attention caused the fun to fade. I shouldn't care that much, because I was writing this for me, but when you think you're actually going somewhere doing something you love, and then you don't, it's a bit of a mood killer. I appreciate the heck out of everyone who ever read my blog and left comments, who ever gave me such great words of encouragement to keep going with my dream of becoming a writer. I won't stop writing, but maybe blogging isn't the right alley for me. I have been considering starting a Finnish blog just for the fun of it, but I don't know if I will. 

I won't delete this blog. Not yet, anyway, not in a while. Maybe never :) Sometimes it'll be fun to read what I've been writing about. And who knows, maybe some day something really great happens and I just have to write about it in here. Of course I don't expect any of you to check in, but still. Oh, and I will continue on to read the blogs I've been reading so far. 

Thank you :) I'm off to do something else now. 

<3

iira

Plots

This year is almost ending, and I have a lot of plans for next year. They include traveling, working (but where, is the question here), possibly moving, and most importantly: writing. I am so close to being done with just planning my book. I've already started the writing process, but I know it's going to be a long and rocky road to the finish line. 

I am giving myself a year. I'm hoping to finish writing it within that time, but I don't want to push it. If needing more time means a better outcome, then I will take more time. But I do hope, that during 2014 I can offer my script to a publisher, or publish the book on my own. When it comes to writing, 2013 is going to be exciting, nerve-wrecking, inspiring, frustrating and thrilling. This project will also give me something to write about in here: I will keep you posted on how I am doing. I am not telling what my book is about, nor will I give anything else away. But I will get back to you. 

I saw a card recently, that would be perfect to give to me. Sometimes it's fun to find things like that :) 

It said:

"I can't wait for you to write a book, so I can finally know what you have been thinking about for the last few years."

Some of you will know :) 

Portland>Finland

I am back in Finland, and hopefully back to regular blogging from now on as well. I am sorry for the lack of writing recently. Let's just say, that I'm not your regular woman who can handle multitasking just like that. 

I arrived to Finland on Thursday... Well, Thursday or Friday. I landed around Midnight and I can't remember whether it was before or after. Anyways, I was 6-7 hours late, yay for that, and as I was landing, I did not feel any kind of fondness toward my homeland. The roads were white... And the snow blizzard hit the southern coast conveniently at the time of my arrival. What a welcome party for me, a person who hates winter -.-

Rocky Mountains!

The blizzard wasn't the reason I was late, though. Due to my flight schedule change from a non-stop flight from PDX to Amsterdam to PDX-Minneapolis-Amsterdam, I already had a longer return time, BUT, as it turned out, I was about to be traveling a bit longer still... To make a long story short, I got stuck in Minneapolis for 3 extra hours, because there was something wrong with our plane. They had another plane for us, and during the preparation of that one, Delta Airlines gave 50-dollar vouchers to all the passengers on that flight. I spent mine on a duty-free store, and headed for the purses (d'oh). All the handbags were a little out of my price range, but I did get myself something nice ;)

Guess -wallet, $45,00 from some duty-free store at Minneapolis/St.Paul Airport. Note the strap that comes off -this one will also work as a purse at parties :)) I love it!! Thanks, Delta! It pays off to be delayed ;)

So we finally took off from Minneapolis, and headed to Amsterdam. The flight time was an hour shorter than announced before, so I still had a slight chance of making it to my connection flight from Amsterdam to Helsinki. I landed at 1.05pm and the connection was at 1.55pm. I didn't make it :( I was at the gate at 1.30pm, but they wouldn't let me board, because my luggage was sure not to make it to the flight, and I wasn't allowed to fly without it. So they rebooked me, and I had another 6 hours to wait at Schiphol Airport... Oh happy days. Jet lagged, and all. I got a 10-euro food voucher, a phone call voucher and a 50euro discount from my next flight, that's valid for two years.. So yeah, I wasn't too pissed ;)

Minneapolis!

So... now my trip's over :( I cannot even describe how amazing these last three months have been. I truly lucked out with my job, host family and I made a lot of incredible new friends. I had a blast. Non-stop. I'm so so so very happy that I went. Thank you, Portland <3

I'm here, but not quite here yet, if you know what I mean. My head's still a mess, and I get tired at weird hours. I'm trying to convert prices into euros, even though they're already euros, and when I want to call somebody, I try to figure out the time, even though we're in the same time zone now. Leaving Portland was hard, I cried more than once. Now I'm sort of in denial about it; I refuse to let myself think about it. I'm here, but I don't wanna acknowledge that fact. I start thinking about Portland, and I feel like I could catch a bus and a MAX downtown anytime, and remembering that I can't do that right now, is too much. I'm still more in Portland than I am here.

Slowly getting on my feet... I'll get back to you :)

-i

Keeping it real, weird and weirder.

I believe I'm not the only one who thinks it's so friggin' unfair how time flies when you're having a good time.

I have only 3 more weeks left until I have to return to Finland. 

My time here in Portland has been amazing. I've got a ton of new friends, new experiences, new perspectives, new memories... I believed from the very beginning this would be an experience of a life time, but never did I think this whole thing would have such a huge effect on me. I knew I would come back to Finland so much richer than what I was when I left, but there's something I didn't expect.

I didn't expect to find myself in Portland. 

In Portland you can be whatever and whoever you want to be, and no one will say s**t about it. Be a hipster, be a hippie, be a nerd, a jerk, an artist, weirdo... You'll fit in. You have to be very, very strange to stand out here, and it's only uncool if you try too much to be something you're truly not.

To Thine Own Self Be True. 

I will be facing a big challenge in Finland. Trying to maintain my personality the way it really is, and not falling back into my old ways, when I was the quiet one in the crowd, afraid of big changes and afraid to stand out too much. That's NOT ME! If you ever see me starting to follow my old patterns, feel free to give me a good ol' slap in the face. 

"People are gonna tell you who you are your whole life. You just gotta punch back and say: 'No, this is who I am'. You want people looking at you differently, make them." 

- A quote from "Once Upon A Time".

I want to be me from now on. 

Keeping Portland Weird while I'm here,

-i

<3

yeah... whatever

If there's something I can't tolerate, it's ignorance. Sadly, I've had my share and I think it's made me tougher. I've also found a new side of myself. I don't sit around waiting for people to start caring anymore. They either care or they don't. I don't need the drama in my life. 

This is my hand writing at its best. I paid attention to it just for you. 

Fortunately, ignorance is something that I haven't had to endure for a long time now. Maybe because I stopped caring, too. I still prefer people to say things to my face. Please do that. Don't just stop being my friend, like you never cared anyway. It's so much easier to answer to others feelings of love or hate, than to answer to their ignorance, because I'm not good at ignoring the people in my life. Sometimes I don't get to see some people as often as I would like to, but I think true friendship allows that. We have to be able to pick up from where we left the last time, no matter how much time has passed. If we can't do that, then... seriously, can you even call it a friendship?

a little repair and renovation

I stuck with the pretty basic layout for quite a while, and now I've changed the appearance of this blog again. I hope you like it :) Don't be surprised if it changes for another hundred times after this one. I love customizing all the layouts. 

I hope you all had a great weekend! <3

Did I miss my youth?

I've always been a good girl. You know, the kind that never ditches school, tries her best, obeys her parents, feels guilty for like a month after snapping at someone. I never went to bars or clubs under 18, though my friends from school tried to persuade me. "Your looks are going to waste!" they would say (I've always looked older than I truly am). But I never went. I liked being at home with my family, doing something low key, like reading and drawing. 

You know how some people don't take the best of their prime years... they sail through them and later on, way later, they suddenly get the urge to do the things they never did when they were sixteen. Lately I've been having the same feeling. Or I've been fearing of having that feeling. In a very short period of time I've become more sure of myself than I've ever been before, and thus gathered up more courage to be more me. I've also come to understand others better, and their way of expressing themselves. 

I'd like to dye my hair all pink, just because I love the color and because I feel more bohemian than ever. I think I've always been somewhat of a hippie. I won't dye my hair, though, so you can save yourself from the mini heart attack :)

I've been wanting to get a tattoo for a long time. I even know which one I'm going to get, if I'll ever have the money and the guts to ink my skin permanently. It's very small and I would get it in a place that's visible enough, but very easy to hide as well. 

I like to play with my thoughts. I like to think of myself actually doing this. But right now... I'm too much of a chicken. And broke. And I'm happy as a brunette. 

I don't know, if my prime years are behind me. Maybe I'm living them right now, or maybe they're still ahead of me. Either way, I don't think I missed them. I never did anything I wasn't comfortable with. I'm glad I was a good girl. Still am. My writing's still my main way of expressing myself, but who knows... maybe someday I'll choose more obvious ways to show my true colors. 

I miss you.

I've been thinking about friendship and the meaning of it a lot lately. I guess I've been feeling a bit lost. I have a lot of great friends, but sadly I don't see some of them nearly as much as I would like to. 

The thing is, when there's a group of people who get along perfectly, who don't keep secrets from each other, who are so alike it's almost scary, you wish you could stay together forever. If that's the case with you, consider yourself lucky. Sadly, life tends to pull people apart, and staying together is going to take a lot of effort. 

What is friendship? Really? 

To me, it's when friends don't judge each other by their mistakes. When they listen to your problems and do their best to help. If they can't help, listening is enough. It's when they see each other, they can pick up from where they left off the last time. When there's no awkwardness. When they have fights, realizing it started because they care for each other. It's when one look is enough to tell them all they need to know. When their secrets become your secrets. It's group-chatting online. Laughing and crying at the same time. Hiding each other's phones so no one can do anything stupid. Making a complete fool out of yourself knowing that there's nothing that can make them not love you. 

It's the need to see each other after a long time, and the wanting to make that happen. 

Have you seen the movie Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants? I watched the sequel today for about a hundredth time. I've also read the books. Love them. Lena, Tibby, Carmen and Bridget may be fictional characters, but I like to think that their friendship lasted beyond the books. But then again... Desperate Housewives depicted the friendship of Gabby, Susan, Bree and Lynette, and even after everything they went through, they drifted apart. It was their last poker game on the last episode. I know it might seem crazy to compare real-life friendships to made up -ones shown on TV, but when you really think about it, it's not that crazy at all. 

When you have that group, you want to keep it. One day you wake up to find you're not as tight as you used to be, and that scares you. What scares you even more, is that you're not as upset about it as you always imagined you'd be. You've all moved on, and it has almost happened unnoticed. 

Almost. 

I want a lot more poker games. 

sounds like a plan

I'm the kind of person who likes to make plans. Sometimes they're irrational and I make them just for the heck of it. I get a kick out of imagining my life ten years from now. 

Plans change. Surprise, surprise. When I was sixteen I though by the time I was twenty, I would have seen it all. I'd have a job, I'd be getting married and planning a family life. I want to laugh so hard right now... Oh, that naive, sixteen-year-old me. When I turned twenty, I had a high school degree and I was attending a cooking school. I had just moved away from home, into my first apartment. That summer was the first summer I was unemployed. My love life was nonexistent. I'd say my life was nothing like I had planned four years back. Lol. 

This is something I've realized pretty recently. That you can't really plan your life. It's not like a building you design. You just have to live it and let it design itself. There's always something unexpected around the corner and you're just going to have to deal with it the best way you can. Of course I'll still make plans, but I'll just have to learn to alter them as I go. 

This is what I've been thinking about in the past weeks, and now I decided to share it with you. I have this uncontrollable need to maintain this blog by posting regularly, so if you have some ideas for upcoming posts, let me know! 

Thank you for reading!

-i

This feeling can only be described in Finnish

Tässä tämän blogin toinen suomenkielinen postaus. Etukäteen jo anteeksi, että aihe ei kyllä ole positiivinen. Joten jos sinulla on hyvä päivä, lopeta lukeminen tähän, äläkä pilaa sitä. 

Viime aikoina on vaivannut stressi. Se on vanha tuttuni. Jokin aika sitten ylpeilin sillä, että nykyään en enää stressaa niin paljon, että olen oppinut elämään päivä kerrallaan, tehden kuitenkin suunnitelmia, mutta ottamatta niistä turhia paineita. Just juu... mihinkäs sitä koira karvoistaan pääsee?

Ennen olin hyvä peittämään stressiä, mutta nykyään se nousee pintaan hyvinkin helposti ja purkautuu vihanpuuskina. Pahoina sellaisina. Anteeksi niille, jotka olette niitä joutuneet kestämään. Mistä sitten stressaan? No siitä, mistä kaikki muutkin. Rahasta, tulevaisuudesta, elämästä yleensä... omalla kohdallani päänvaivaa aiheuttaa tinnitus, ja stressaanpa vielä ihosta kaiken lisäksi. Se ei ole hyvä juttu, ihoni kun reagoi stressiin aika voimakkaasti. Jes... Onneksi minulla on äiti, joka jaksaa (melkein) aina kannustaa ja pysyä toiveikkaana kaiken suhteen. Se tasapainottaa tätä olotilaa, jolle on vain yksi sana. Se on se v:llä alkava, jota en nyt tähän kirjoita. Kaikki kuitenkin tiedätte, mistä on kyse. 

Tämä on varmaan tätä perussuomalaista yrmeyttä. Onneksi minusta löytyy edes sen verran optimismia, että tiedän asioiden järjestyvän. Jossain syvällä sisimmässäni tiedän sen. Mutta täytyy oppia päästämään pessimistisyydestä irti. 

Tänään ärsytti mennä S-Markettiin, jossa puolet hyllyistä oli tyhjät. Kauppa kun muuttaa naapuritontille. Tässäkin asiassa ajattelin, että voi kun mukavaa saada lajikoimaltaan laajempi ääsmarket kotimatkan varrelle. Koen sen edistyksenä asenteen muutoksessani. 

Kyllä tästä noustaan. Aina on noustu. Paljon on kivaa odottettavissa, joten hymyillään :)

-I

A Wind of Change

Today when I left work I felt like crying. 

I didn't want to leave. 

Can you believe that?!

I worked there for one year and two months. I liked it. My coworkers were awesome. I was happy I had a job that paid the bills, a job that was easy and occasionally challenging enough, and it was the kind of job I didn't have to take home with me. 

But... it's time for a change :) I'm starting my new job tomorrow and looking forward to it. In the fall I'm off to the US. My boss asked me what I'm doing after that, and I told her I would give her a call. 

So maybe it wasn't a goodbye today after all. 

Unique (?)

If you ever happen to find yourself sitting at a café alone, or just walking aimlessly around, take the time to look at the people around you.

Nowadays hardly any kind of style is news. The society has slowly approved all kinds of ways people wish to express themselves with, and seeing a person with their hair dyed in rainbow colors and face stuffed with piercings is just normal. But how do you know who are the ones who truly want to look extraordinary from the ones who just want to fit in?

I once knew someone who was in line to get into a Design Institute, but she was told her appearance was too plain and boring, that she had the kind of look that wasn't going to get noticed. No matter how talented she might have been, she was judged based on what she looked like. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because I feel that might be the case with me, also. I'm not applying to a Design Institute, even though my art teacher back in high school told me I had real potential for it, but I'm thinking, if I did, I would most likely be laughed out. I guess you could call my personal style conventional. I like comfy clothes, usually I wear jeans and a t-shirt. On my spare time I like to leave my hair open, because at work I have to keep it tied back. I don't wear a lot of make-up, usually just mascara. I look like nothing out of the ordinary. And that's how I've always wanted to be. Up until now.

I know people who are genuine with their style. They may have a weird colored hair and clothes that seem out of this world, but at least they're unique. They're true to themselves. If someone else decides they want to look similar, they don't care. They know it's their thing, no matter how many clones walk the streets with them. Then there are those, who want to look the same, just because it seems cool. These are the people with awkward expressions on their faces when they really want to look like they're in total sync with everything and everyone around them. You might see them tugging their clothes, trying to make them more fitting, and eventually you end up finding them on a public restroom trying on "cat eye" contacts, taking their search for uniqueness just a bit too far. Come on...

I'm not saying it's bad to want to be different, I'm saying people should do it and still try to hold on to what makes them them. You might just look "normal" and still be more different than you could ever know.

As for me... the change has been subtle. Some may have not even noticed anything. It's quietly surfacing, sometimes it pops up for a moment, making me speak up when I'm usually quiet, or helping me to make a decision in a flash when I normally wouldn't make one without careful consideration. Trying on new things, being more sure of myself.

 It'll be a long process, I figure, but one definitely worth seeing through. I realize I haven't shared that much personal stuff about myself in this blog, and I want you to know that I'm working on a post about Yours Truly. Can't tell you when it'll come up, I honestly have no idea. Someday. I know, someday isn't a day of the week, so let's say... on a Tuesday. Maybe a month from now, or maybe a year. But it'll be a Tuesday, are you happy now?

<3

fire

This is the best time of the year hands down. The trees still have leaves and they're multiple colored, the air is brisk and perfect. And when the sun is still just above the trees it looks like everything is on fire. I cherish these moments especially this year when it's been raining 6,5 days a week. Who wrecked my fall?!

A picture I took about a month ago while driving home (I know -don't use your cell and drive) So pretty! And then it rained.

Fall has always inspired me. I like it when it gets darker earlier and I can just curl up on the couch and read -and most importantly write. This fall has been a little different... I'm going around town from one store to another buying note books and pens, I'm keeping Microsoft Word open on my computer all the time and considering buying a new laptop no later than next year and I can't wait for my journalism course to start next month. In other words, I'm doing everything but writing. I'm running out of fresh ideas! I'm going over all the old ones in my head and my recent writing includes random scenes from whole stories I've been planning over the last few years. There's absolutely no harm in going through something you haven't worked on for a while, but I feel like I'm making all this room in my head for new ideas and they're just not coming... BLAAAAAAHHHHH!!!

So again: who wrecked my fall? The answer: I did. With too much expectations. My advice for myself: embrace the change and take the best of it. Yay. Easier said than done. But I'm working on it.

xoxo

An Update!

You may notice that I've done some changes with my blog: the outlook has improved (or so I like to think) and more importantly the name has changed into something that's more descriptive (and yet not at all descriptive). I'm happy with the changes and I hope you are too. I got a little carried away with all the tools I can use to make the page look better so don't be surprised if my blog's gonna look a whole lot different (again) the next time you check it out (IS anyone checking it out anymore?!)

There's another thing worth mentioning: did you notice this is my second post within a week?!! There was a major gap between posts, I know, but now I'm actually keeping my word: posts more frequently!

To make this post more interesting for you to read... I've got nothing. Seriously. At the moment I have a runny nose and I don't know if it's allergies or if I'm coming down on something, but it's not fun. And I have to go to work in a few hours. Over the weekend I celebrated the High School Graduation of three of my friends and had a blast! Schools are officially out now and even here in Northern Europe we get to enjoy a really warm and nice weather.

So... if you're sitting by your computer reading this or just doing nothing, get your a** up and go outside! Before you know it there's gonna be piles of snow 6 feet high and then you can spend all the time you want inside the house.

love always