summer swedish class success

i'm taking a short, intensive summer course in swedish, and it's actually going pretty well! 

i've had mixed success with swedish classes thus far. i had one very intro, very short course that i liked, then stopped going to an online one that i didn't like, then had mixed results from tutors on italki (they weren't bad, but i was looking for something great). 

this current course surprised me by being pretty much exactly what i need: a calm and supportive teacher, several but not too many motivated classmates, and most importantly, lots of speaking practice. 

i'd pretty much been bashing myself over the head a few months ago when it hit me just how vast the difference was between my speaking level and understanding level, cursing the hours i'd spent reading swedish books without putting in the same hours for speaking. i could function in increasingly difficult conversations in swedish, as long as i basically only answered in english. 

finally, finally, i can at least dare to utter any words at all. and since i've had so much exposure to the language, it's just been lying in wait for the day i can actually access it and use it myself (the vocabulary words that i recognize and understand when someone else says it vastly outpaces the words that are able to come out of my actual mouth). 

at first i was incredibly scared and felt like i'd made a mistake—this course is a b2 course, which felt a bit insane. but i had taken a placement test a few weeks before and got a b1 result, so it wasn't that insane...right?? 

it turned out okay. i'm not the best in the class (i usually take classes a bit below my level, which naturally results in being one of the top students) and that is also exactly what i need. i need to get over myself and whatever weird ego issues i'm having that are blocking my speaking progress (i'm typically overcome with shyness and embarrassment when i try to speak, which i did not experience when learning previous languages). 

my classmates and i also have a variety of different skills and weaknesses, so interfacing with each other is chaotic but also collaborative. one thing that's been especially helpful for me is seeing my classmates be brave and try things, even when they don't know exactly what they're saying before it comes out of their mouth. i have so much trouble even trying unless i already know what i'm saying is right, and that hinders my progress a lot. 

i do keep half-expecting that each next lesson will be the day that the discussion questions are totally out of my depth, but i seem to be doing okay so far. some days i have more courage than others. sometimes i let more talkative classmates have more airtime, until i remember that i actually do need to spend some time speaking myself, even if i don't think i'll sound as comfortable as them yet—in fact, they only got as comfortable as they are by speaking as much as they do!

great writing is all over the internet

i started this blog in part because i dared to strive toward greatness. if i wanted to ever be a great writer, i'd have to put reps in. i'd have to really work for it. 

what inspired this was reading my dad's old blog. it's nearly lost to the seas of time now. he only ever wrote a dozen posts, and he himself forgot about it entirely. but i went back and read it and was blown away by the quality of the writing itself. it moved me to tears! 

i think in previous times, i've assumed that all great writing is well-known. as in, the world is fundamentally a sort of meritocracy, where the writing that becomes well-known is the writing that is, by all definitions, the very best writing. 

the more i exposed myself to more "unpolished" writing via blogposts and tweets from internet friends, the more i realized that the world is teeming with great writing, and some of it is only read by a handful of people. 

maybe this seems demoralizing. what do you mean, the quality of the writing isn't the only thing that determines whether people read it? 

but for me, it's actually an amazing thing to realize! because it means i can achieve my goal of great writing, even if it's just on my silly little blog, even if i'm the only person that ever reads it. 

i kinda want to delete all my tiktoks

i used to post like a madman on tiktok. that's the secret to not caring about any tiktok in particular: just post 80 million and no one's gonna see any of them. 

but i never really post on there anymore. so now instead of being constantly replaced by videos that are potentially embarrassing and cringeworthy in entirely NEW ways, my old tiktoks are left to waste away in plain sight, to anyone new who visits my page. 

the part of me that doesn't want to delete all my tiktoks is the part that's a fiercely loyal archivist, who loves every silly little tiktok with the force of a thousand suns. deleting is for cowards who can't stand the blaze of the rays of cringe. 

there's also a part of me that deeply believes that anything i post immediately becomes almost none of my business. it's the same part of me that can't manage to care too much what i look like at any given moment; i'm the not the one who has to look at me! none of my business! it's out of my hands! 

same with the stuff i post. unless i really want to (and sometimes i do), i never have to look at any of it again. and yet it can breathe and live and exist out in the world, and might even help someone love the cringe in themselves a bit more. 

so for now, i will not delete all of my tiktoks. 

oh i forgot to mention,

who cares if my skin gets worse? who cares who cares who cares. 

truly the only thing that it would really impact in a negative way (other than me feeling bad about it) is modeling. and like, it's not like a legit modeling career was ever in the cards? i'm a hobbyist model, i do it for fun and i've had forehead wrinkles since i was like 15. 

who cares

my swedish is improving, but my speaking still lags behind

for a while i thought my problem with speaking is just that i didn't have the courage to speak. i mean, that definitely is part of my problem. it's just not the whole story. 

more specifically, i don't have the courage to speak unless i know what i'm saying is right. this holds me back from improving, but i've decided to stop beating myself up for it. 

i know myself. i know my strengths, and i know my weaknesses. and i know that even when a weakness wields its wild head, i forge a way forward and it all works out in the end. 

it's okay if i wait until i'm confident that what i'm saying is right. i'm okay with the consequences of my (in)actions! 

the stark asymmetry between my different languages skills (listening vs. speaking, for example), used to frustrate and torment me. but now that i've pushed through that even a little bit more, i can see how much i improve just by continually immersing myself, and that speaking will come in its own time, too. 

i haven't even taken a full course! i did one "intensive" beginner course that was a few hours each weekend for three weekends. and i missed one of the weekends! the rest has been learning on my own and simply exposing myself to the language. 

people keep telling me that i'll improve much quicker than those without swedish partners, because with a swedish partner, you can speak swedish at home! but the actual advantage to having a swedish partner feels more like the constant exposure to hearing them speak to other people, even if i'm not even involved! 

family group chats, of course, are also great exposure to natural speech—and a lower-stakes arena for producing swedish myself than in-person conversation. recently both my mother-in-law and sister-in-law expressed surprise at how natural my messages sounded, and thought my fiancé must be helping me write them. 

frankly, i'm just as shocked! i type the messages out myself, then have my fiancé check them. he has yet to correct any. it feels like magic that i've somehow just picked it up and can finagle my way into natural sentences, even if they are brief and infrequent. 

so i am confident that my speaking will follow a similar trajectory. eventually. and for now, i'm fine with having surprisingly-not-that-strange bilingual conversations, as i understand the swedish part and answer back in english.  

i don't want to wear sunscreen anymore

so aging just means my skin is going to get worse for the rest of my life? 

i ask because for a while there, i've been on an upwards trajectory in the skin department. my skin was pretty bad in college, then cleared up and has been improving since. and while that's the case, i've had decent motivation to keep up with my skincare and wear sunscreen. 

despite wearing sunscreen ~daily, i recently noticed a few sun spots pop up on my face. and my right eyelid is now half a millimeter droopier than my left eyelid. and i realized that maybe no amount of daily sunscreen will be enough to stop the aging process of my skin. 

so how am i supposed to want to wear sunscreen anymore? when even when i wear it, the sun still has her way with me? 

my skin tingles a bit as i write this. and my lips, they feel a bit tight. it's been a few days now of giving up on sunscreen, and today i happened to be outside (though it was overcast at first) when they sun came out and fixed itself upon me. 

so yeah, i guess i want to wear sunscreen so that i don't get sunburnt. but negative reinforcement never really works for me as well as positive reinforcement does. 

rambly wambly

i'm not sure what One Single Topic i'd like to write about tonight so instead i'll just write a little about each. let's see how it goes. 

today i had a video call with a twitter mutual. it's been ages since i've done that, and it was way more enjoyable and nourishing than i expected. part of me wants to announce on twitter HEY I'M OPEN FOR VIDEO CALLS!!!!! but the truth is that i'm open to video calls as they call to me and only with people i'd like to have a video call with. which feels bad for some reason. idk. 

anyway, about an hour and half before the call was scheduled to happen, my fiancé suggested we go to the gym—if we wanted to go today, it'd basically have to be RIGHT THIS MOMENT or not at all. so i changed into gym clothes faster than i usually do, and without first doing a "final check for twitter notifications" from the vibecamp twitter (oh yeah, btw, i'm running that now!). 

almost out the door, i realized, "THE VIDEO CALL!" 

would i have enough time? should i just skip it*? i ended up—bravely—deciding to go for both. i'd go to the gym AND i'd make it on time to the video call. as we walked over to the gym, i decided i'd just skip benchpress, shortening my routine enough that i'd make it home in time. 

the gym was crowded when we arrived—much more crowded than the off-times we're usually there. normally this would throw me for a loop, but today i was on a mission. 

what happened next was a level of Locking In i had yet to experience at the gym. it felt like a milestone. not only was i not fazed by the crowds, i also just went faster than i usually do and ignored little discomforts and ouchies i wouldn't have otherwise. i pinched my—uhhh, what's the name for the webbed bit of flesh between your thumb and your pointer finger? *googles* purlicue? oh ok...—purlicue adjusting the J-hooks (another term i didn't know, but this time i just asked my fiancé) and took three seconds to watch it turn bright red, then shrugged and moved on. 

after i finished my workout, i walked briskly home and even hopped in the shower before the video call. when i reported this to my fiancé later, he was appropriately shocked (in a proud way). usually i dilly and dally and dawdle my way to the shower, sometimes needing to be convinced to actually get in. 

another point of celebration today was i stopped and realized, while tidying thing after thing after thing in our apartment tonight, that i actually really enjoy tidying up. and tidying up is an entirely different activity than organizing or cleaning or deciding where things go. the latter (does it count as latter if there's more than two items? idk. the last one) is the hardest for me, and the one that takes the most convincing to get started. but now that we've done that already, for so many of our things, tidying is simply a breeze! a warm, gentle, spring breeze! 

the other day i was so proud of how our living room looked that a posted a photo of it on twitter. as i was admiring it, i reflected to my fiancé that i'm not used to photos of my living space actually looking as good as i thought would. i'm used to being proud of how it looks for once, taking a photo of it, then looking at the photo and being like, "wow that actually looks way messier and more cluttered than i thought." 

he looked at me. "you know why this one doesn't look messy? because it's not messy." 

ohhhhhhh.gif. 

ugh gosh, speaking of, the gif function on twitter has been downright awful recently. it's a whole thing, something about google sunsetting tenor, and giphy being a subpar replacement. i never got clear on the particulars, but the result is absolutely atrocious and an affront to me in particular. i love gifs dearly and use them unbelievably frequently. might have to start saving the gif files to a folder on my computer and using them that way....

*edit: i meant skip the gym, not the video call. for some reason that feels important to clarify (perhaps bc i'm trying to be more reliable/mean what i say/show up to things when i promise to)

we made friends at church!

moving countries means also moving churches. though we've been going to this new church every sunday (except of course the sundays when we're away....which has been three already—sidenote, mass in japan was amazing!) since we moved, we hadn't really meaningfully interacted with anyone and definitely hadn't felt like we made any connection with people who might become friends. 

until this past sunday! we went to english mass (which we sometimes do, but not english), and this week they were having fika afterwards. it was like coffee and donuts after american mass, but this was coffee and little sandwiches. 

when you start attending a new church, it's usually not obvious how to integrate yourself into the community. even if you're ready and willing! so many places just assume everyone already knows all the ways one could get involved, and don't think to intentionally create an obvious pipeline for newcomers to enter the fray. 

for example, a lot of places distribute information in whatasapp groups with current members. which is great! but that means newcomers aren't privy to that information, especially if the website isn't kept up to date. my fiancé tells the story of when he reached out to a judo club he was interested in trying out. they took almost two months to get back to him, and when they did, shared that they had been meeting every tuesday in the meantime and he would have been free to join at any time! and he certainly would have, if he had had access to that information! via, for example, the website. 

turns out this time it was a similar deal. once we started chatting with people at the fika, we were able to discover the existence of and join in the relevant whatsapp groups. 

in this case, the fika did work as a successful funnel to catch us newcomers! but it would have been nice to have something catch us earlier than two months in. my family's church back home, for example, has collection envelopes in the pews, which also function as a touchpoint with newcomers: there are checkboxes on the back of the envelope to mark whether you're a newcomer and provide your contact information. then you can drop the envelope in the collection basket, even without or separate from any collection offering you give. 

anyway, all in all it's not a huge deal, but i've been thinking a lot of this sort of thing: the distribution of information, coherent communication ecosystems, and intentionally creating funnels for newcomers to join in. 

back to the title: it was so exciting to make some friends! or, hang out with people who could potentially become friends! it was especially relieving for me, to meet people we liked who felt very comfortable speaking english. not that it's rare in sweden for people to speak english, but there's a difference between being able to manage, and being able to feel completely totally comfortable and even making lots of jokes and whatnot. 

and i continue to be shocked that everyone suited to being my friend isn't my friend already. how many more out there could there be????

writing what i "should write" almost never works

somehow i've been able to remove enough friction to increase my writing output to a relatively satisfying degree. i blogged ~daily and reached 100 blog posts, and have over 40,000 tweets, and wrote an e-book out of my tweets. 

but i still have not been able to sit down and write what i feel like i "should" write. there's still a major block there. maybe that's okay? maybe i'm fine just writing what feels alive/what i feel like writing in any given moment. 

it might be nice to one day have less friction there, though. i think it's possible that the more i write and write and write, the more i'll be able to tap into Writing Mode on demand more easily, and perhaps write more things that are more suited to consumption by others. 

but also, who knows?

as an aside, i feel like my most-used paragraph opener when blogging is "but." i'm constantly trying to escape starting a paragraph with "but." i almost started all three paragraphs above this one with "but." 

but maybe that's evidence of my continual effort to explore all sides of something. yes, this one thing, but also, this other contradictory thing, too! 

but, but, but. hmm. 

learning german vs learning swedish

at some point, my swedish outpaced my german, and i've been thinking about why, while also deciding to put actual effort into my german as well. i technically lived there for a bit over a year, but with traveling factored in, spent a total of about 8 actual months there. regardless, i didn't get as good at german as i would have liked too. i took a month-long intensive course when i first arrived, then didn't really put in active effort after that. i still improved, and by the end i could keep up enough to not need translation while backstage learning choreography for a fashion show. but i never formally learned anything beyond present tense and trennbare verbs. we briefly started past tense but then the class ended before i learned to produce it myself. i absorbed lots and lots of disparate vocabulary, especially church-related jargon, since we went to mass in german every sunday. so it's not like i accomplished nothing. but i'm a language-learning fiend and that wasn't enough for me. 

anyhow, where was i? oh. i find swedish way easier than german. hmm. i forget what i initially wanted to say on that front. oh! 

one reason i find swedish easier than german is that it seems like in many cases, swedish uses the same words in multiple contexts, whereas german (like english, i think), has entirely different words for different situations. let me give an example. in german, words you hear in church are completely different words than you'd hear in everyday life. but in swedish, it felt like i could understand so much more in church much more quickly, because rather than use church-specific jargon, the words were just everyday words. same with like, safety demonstrations on an aircraft. see? aircraft. that's a totally different word. idk, maybe swedish is like that too, i'm still a relative beginner. but it certainly feels like swedish is a lot simpler in terms of words used. 

also compared to german, i feel like you can get much farther in swedish with just a dictionary, whereas german has more grammatical structures that need to be formally learned before you understand them. trennbare verbs are actually a good example. i don't remember exactly, but my impression of them is they're verbs with prefixes, and the prefix gets split from the root of the word and placed at the end of the sentence. so before knowing what they were, i'd be like, "uhhhh why is there a random an or zu at the end of a word?" if you looked that prefix up in the dictionary, it wouldn't tell you the crucial information that it actually belongs to the verb in the other part of the sentence and needs to be connected to it in your mind in order to make any sense. 

and again, maybe swedish has stuff like this too, but this is just my impression. it's nice to be able to discuss my impression of things without first researching every part of it to make sure i'm right. who cares? i write what i think now and then later when i get more information i can write what i think again. maybe that'll be closer to some sort of truth. or maybe it won't, or maybe i'll never write again. who cares? i want to write what i think, so i'm going to write what i think. 

"ugh, i should get back into blogging"

instead of just THINKING that i opened this page and am now writing these words. 

that'll do for my re-entry post

begone, inertia!

we moved countries this month, which has disrupted many of our normal routines. including, but not limited to: going to the gym 3x a week, me booking swedish tutoring sessions, and of course, writing this blog. 

that wouldn't be so bad, except that we're also heading to japan for two weeks. which means, if we let it, this could become a weeks-long break from many of those routine tasks. 

my sage and practical fiancé managed to get us in the gym yesterday, so we've been marked safe from a month-long absence there. his reasoning was that even one within those weeks would be better for maintenance than a complete break—though he did say it wouldn't be the end of the world to have an extended break. 

but i felt it prudent to follow his advice. i could already feel the inertia building, and the emotional friction creeping up each passing day. 

so here i am, doing the same for my blog. i can feel the hesitation lingering ever so slightly longer each day. when i'm in the swing of things, my internal "what if i skip today" voice only has the mic for a few seconds, then my fingers take over and i just start typing. 

the longer i don't write any post at all, the longer that voice holds the mic each day, and the less likely i am to break through the inertia and get up any post at all. 

so here's my post! 

oh no i've been neglecting my blog

i've published very few blogposts this month. i'd like to blame it on moving to a new country. or would i? i mean, it's definitely coinciding with me moving to a new country. but it was definitely a conscious choice to let myself ease off of daily blogposting while moving—not exactly directly a result of moving (though some days i genuinely did forget because i'd been doing moving stuff all day). 

that's fine and all, but with any break comes the necessity of breaking the spell of the break. that's what i set out to do with this post here. 

though i haven't been writing very much, i've been reading a whole lot. so much that i have really surprised myself. i got a library card a few days ago and came home ten books heavier. i brought a big chunk of them with us for a long weekend, and i've already blazed through all but two, one of which is an oscar wilde anthology, so i would be truly gobsmacked if i managed to blaze through that one as well. 

it's been years since i've consumed books with such fervor. something must have clicked finally back in place recently—after years of a shoddy, threadbare attention span that was lucky to manage two pages a night, i'm reading entire books in single sittings, like i did before my attention span needed fixing. 

it hasn't yet, i guess, since i haven't written anything yet, but i am sure this will improve my writing as well—or at least influence it. one of my recently read books is famesick, a memoir by lena dunham; i haven't read many memoirs, or maybe i just don't have any in recent memory, and this made an impact on me. it made me wonder how i would memoir-ize my own story: what angle would i take? what overarching themes would help me make sense of where and who i've been? 

moving to a new country inevitably involves tears

i erroneously thought that being in a better place now for my move to sweden meant that it would involve basically zero tears, in contrast to last year when i moved to germany and cried what felt like daily. but alas, moving to a new country inevitably involves tears. being better prepared for something doesn't mean i won't have any feelings about it, it just means i'll be more resourced to deal with those feelings. 

i moved to germany completely unprepared. what i mean by that is i didn't learn the language in advance, didn't do preemptive research about what living there would be like. i simply got on a plane to be with my boyfriend, and didn't look back. 

for a long time, i thought of myself—quite self-righteously, i might add—as someone who would never move to a country without first learning the language. i studied abroad often during my college years, to two different countries where i learned the language of both. 

what you don't realize when you're young is that you're not always operating under ideal circumstances. for example, you may meet the love of your life and end up unexpectedly moving to a new country to be with him, before you've had a chance to learn any of the language. well, that's ideal circumstances in some sense, but unideal from a preparation perspective. 

as happens often, i became what i had previously judged—this time, a foreigner ignorant of the local language. 

perhaps the most interesting part is that in some ways i almost refused to acknowledge this, and continued operating on the assumption that i am someone who speaks the language of the places that i travel to. this meant i forced myself to operate in german as much as i could, despite, again, literally not knowing the language. there is no moral high-ground in attempting a language you literally do not speak yet. 

now i have moved to sweden. my swedish is in much better shape now than my german was at the time of moving to germany. but it's still not where i want it to be. and even if it was, moving to an entirely new place is inherently stressful, no matter how well-prepared you are. 

so i found myself today in an inexplicable bad mood, pushing through it until i finally broke down in tears. specifically, i was crying about wanting to give up on swedish, feeling like every family event we attend constitutes a failure on my end, for not daring to speak any swedish. 

but generally, i was crying out the entire stress of the move. we have to rebuild every single routine. some things we don't have to think as much about, like scrambling to find weights at the gym (our new gym is overflowingly well-stocked). some things we have to think about much more, like buying alcohol (even cooking wine) only at the state-run alcohol store. 

on the whole, almost everything is better here. we're closer to family, we have less of a language barrier, and our neighborhood is exponentially quieter than our place in berlin. since we've moved, i've been getting straight 100s on my sleep score from my apple watch. 

and it's still stressful. even good things. it'll take a while to find our groove, but i'm proud of us for making the move and doing what needs to be done. 

i'm feeling better than ever! and also more annoyed

over the past year, my wellbeing has measurably increased as i implement healthier habits and spend time being happy with my fiancé. i'm no longer plagued by constant lethargy and migraines. curiously, i also get annoyed more often than i did before. the big difference is that while before, i repressed the irritation before even consciously recognizing it, manifesting various psychosomatic complaints as a result; now, by contrast, i acknowledge and express the annoyance as soon as i can, letting it pass through me rather than settle somewhere in my body. 

this is all coming into clearer view as i begin re-reading healing back pain by john sarno. i've never had any significant back pain specifically, but the book tackles a wide range of psychosomatic issues, despite a focus on back pain. i've read it once before, at a time when i had been losing hope that i'd ever get a handle on a persistent shoulder pain that i initially assumed was some sort of injury and later began to consider as a manifestation of some sort of emotional pain instead.

my first reading of the book was particularly frustrating. throughout, the author repeats over and over that he has cured patients with mere education about the issue: specifically that the pain is nothing structural and is purely psychological in nature. after learning this, his patients felt their pain vanish, either immediately or over the course of a few weeks. reading this while in the throes of my own pain, i wanted to scream and thrash about, begging the author to explain how exactly that could be the case, and especially, how that would ever be helpful for me since i already knew my pain was almost certainly psychosomatic and hadn't yet been able to make a dent in it.  

thankfully, albeit ever as inexplicably, my pain also vanished as the weeks passed. at first, i had started to make an effort to name and face any emotion that crossed my path, treating any surge of pain as an indicator that i should search for a feeling that my body was trying to actively repress. this was tough work, but seemed to help. after a while, i stopped being as conscious about it, but seemed to be improving all the while anyway. 

the shoulder pain specifically has resolved almost completely. it was especially helpful to resume physical activity without fear of aggravating or worsening an injury, because i was confident there was no injury to be worsened (sarno talks about this in the book, but i wouldn't have believed it applied to me if i hadn't previously just seen a physical therapist whose examination concluded the same: no injury or structural problem, just "weak postural muscles," the very same muscles sarno posits are involved in the pain disorder he describes). i began lifting at the gym, and now have some muscle in my arms (and elsewhere on my body) where before i had none at all. 

i do still have small acute issues here and there, but i can usually pinpoint the emotional stressor and move through it in a reasonable time frame, compared to a low-level baseline pain i experienced previously. i also noticed flare-ups when i don't get enough to eat. 

as i start reading healing back pain a second time, i already feel much more receptive than i felt before. i've made significant progress moving through pain that felt intractable, and i feel hopeful that a reread can help me even more deeply, especially as i work through my emotions (like anxiety, irritation, and anger) more consciously this time around. 

we moved!

we moved to sweden, so the last few days have been quite hectic. our wifi turned off on the last day of april, and for some reason my cell service was downright atrocious, so for the remaining days before we moved, i was all but off-the-grid, save for the times i mooched off of my fiancé's hotspot. 

so now it's been several days since i've written a blogpost, and i feel some friction getting back into it. what do i even write about? is it even worth doing? why not keep the break going? 

but i want to do it. even when i'm fuzzy on the reasons why. so i'm making this post to break the spell and get myself back in the groove. 

it's funny, i didn't realize until writing this post that it's potentially been a long time since i've written any meta-post—a post about blogposting. which i assume means i've been in an adequately-oiled groove of writing about things other than writing. that's great news! 

i don't tend to notice when something that used to be hard has become easier. my fiancé is great at pointing it out for me. it's nice to recognize when i've made progress, rather than just continuing to be hard on myself regardless of where i'm actually at in the process. 

i'm excited to live in sweden. i think i will adjust much faster than i did when first moving to germany a little over a year ago, but i expect i will still have a clear adjustment period. i'm glad we've spent so much time here before moving here permanently; it doesn't feel like an entirely new and alien place. 

our (nearly) empty old place in berlin. we got to leave some stuff since our friends (hopefully) will be replacing us as tenants!

last fashion show in berlin

today i'll be modeling in a fashion show for the last time before we move away from berlin. my model bag is packed and ready to go and my stomach is slowly twisting itself into gentle anticipatory knots. my fiancé will be coming, and gets to sit in the reserved section since we each got to have one guest attend for free. 

this is somewhat of a full circle moment, tying things up in neat little bow: the cast of models (as well as the hair/makeup artists and the organizer/model coordinator) is a repeat from some previous shows i've done—the first i'd ever done in berlin. and now they'll be with me in my last. 

last night, i was reminiscing with awe about the casting process for those first shows. i had found a casting call on instagram and showed up the next day, hoping to be cast. usually casting calls occur in some room inside some building, but this was out in the open—anyone could join, and anyone could watch. 

before this, i had heard that fashion contexts in berlin would likely be mostly in english, but i quickly realized that was not the case. armed with perhaps a handful of days of my a1 german class, i ascended the stage, strode right up to the microphone, and introduced myself in simple german, switching to english only for the second half of the sentence explaining "why i'm here." then i catwalked confidently down the stage, in the blazing sun, in front of a small panel of judges and a large, mulling crowd. 

i don't know what possessed me to speak so confidently in german instead of just introducing myself in english. it felt a bit like when i was around 5 years old, at a pool with my large family, and wandered off to try the high dive on my own since no one was watching me. when i enter a context with no one expecting anything of me, i can accomplish things i haven't ever done before. when no one is around who knows me, i can be free to be someone new entirely. 

at today's show, that won't be the case—so many people around will have seen me model on the runway before. that's a good thing. i want to become more comfortable expanding my capacities around those familiar with what i have achieved before. i want to free myself from the limits that close around me when i'm afraid how i'll be compared to my past self. i want to explore the vast expanse of possibility, even when i'm nervous to be different than i was before. 

home alone for a weekend

being home alone (for more than a few hours) without my fiancé for the first time was genuinely psychoactive. i enjoyed my time and was more productive and functional than i expected, but i also felt strange emotional echoes of the me i was before i met him, and found it nearly impossible to sleep.

we've lived together for over a year now, spending almost every second of that time together. this weekend was the first time we'd be apart for several days at a time. my fiancé was traveling away to france for a friend's bachelor party—a friend whose wedding we're attending in japan in a few weeks. i'd be home alone with our dog, bianca. 

my biggest fear was that i'd revert to being basically nonfunctional. before we got together, i had difficulty motivating myself to complete tasks, from household maintenance to leisure activities. i worried that without my fiancé around as a regulating presence, i'd regress to my old ways. 

i was pleased to discover that for the most part, that didn't happen. the only exception was that i had incredible difficulty making myself go to sleep. without anyone else around, it was somehow a hundred times harder to put my phone away for the night and close my eyes to sleep. i also found that lying there in bed, i felt a loneliness i hadn't felt since moving to be with my fiancé. 

i did eventually fall asleep, after moving to another room and cuddling with bianca. and all in all i still managed to get 6 hours of sleep the first two nights, and 7.5 hours the last night. normally i get around 9. 

despite my relative lack of sleep, i did manage to be productive in a satisfying way. i've written before about how my creative process has evolved since no longer living alone, and i took this opportunity to indulge in creative endeavors i wouldn't be as comfortable doing when someone else is home, like modeling practice, trying out new tiktok styles, and making a youtube video. 

i also went shopping a few times! normally i forget shopping is even a thing, but i really should go out every once and a while. getting a cute new dress is just an absolute thrill (and i still have room to rebuild my wardrobe after moving continents). 

throughout the weekend there was a strange sense of "who am i now, in this context?" i felt a slightly disorienting return to a shade of some previous self, almost like i had teleported my past self into this new context, but without my fiancé physically there to make it sink in. 

when my fiancé returned home, it felt almost surreal. the sun shone differently, sculpting him with gorgeous shadows and illuminating him with a brilliant outline. he looked so unbelievably handsome i actually couldn't believe my eyes, tearing every time i caught sight of him. with him finally home, i slept like a rock. nine solid hours with zero wake-ups until my alarm went off. 

maybe it sounds silly, but this weekend felt like integrating my lonely previous self with the happy healthy self i am with my fiancé. i felt anew how much joy and brightness my fiancé brings into my life, and how heart-wrenchingly, earth-shatteringly i love and adore him. he's the hottest man in the world and just lives in the same home as me! i get to see him every day! i'm eternally grateful, and i can't wait to marry him.

STOP THE COUNT!!!!

last month, i wrote a post about my fascinatingly linear blog growth so far, joking that everyone should coordinate to view my blog approximately 1727 times in april—so the trend would continue—that'd be great. 

imagine my surprise when i log in today and see that the count for april so far is exactly 1727. like, am i being punked? (but no for real, is this just genuinely a coincidence? does blogger have some sort of algorithm? are they showing my posts to people? i'm baffled.)

so yeah, if everyone could do me a solid and not view my blog at all again until may...that'd rock. 

one pose at a time

so i've decided i will actively improve my modeling skills. at this point, i've been modeling for almost four years. but that's only counting calendar years in which i've had a modeling gig—it doesn't give an accurate picture of how many hours i've put into the craft. the first couple years, i only had one or two gigs the whole year, and wasn't sure if i'd even ever pursue another gig again. 

then in the last two years, things have kind of taken off. but although i've had several stretches of being completely booked and busy, there are two domains where i feel like i haven't been able to break through yet: making money and honing my skills. 

sure, i've had a paid gig here and there. never more than two-digits at a time, though, and never with any regularity, either. i've known from the start how unlikely it is to make a living being a fashion model, and for the most part i've accepted that. but recently i've started wanting it more, and started to see what it might take to get there. 

until this point, it has felt like the bottleneck to the next level of modeling (getting signed by an agency and booking paid work, especially commercial work instead of runway shows) is whether i have the right look—in other words, if someone else deems me worthy of being a model. 

strangely enough, i hadn't thought much about how much actual modeling skill matters. for me, thus far it hasn't mattered. and thus i haven't really made much improvement, because i hit a minimum viable threshold for my skills and don't spend time trying to better them. 

what that looks like in practice is me being nervous, shy, and uncertain when the time comes for me to actually strike a pose or switch up my runway walk. this then affirmed to me that at the end of the day, i don't have what it takes to be a "real" model. 

but what is confidence anyway? it's just the result of doing something so many times you don't have to question whether it will work. i realized i do have one or two go-to poses that i can reproduce on command, because i've done them so many times in the mirror it's second nature now (though i talked about the failure modes of that in my previous post). and if i can do those, i can certainly add some more! 

a side note: i'm not exactly sure why my figure modeling pose practice hasn't transferred into fashion modeling. perhaps they are mentally segregated in my mind. i'd like to try and intentionally channel it next time, because i never had a mirror when modeling for figure drawing classes, and could rely on myself to come up with creative and well-shaped poses, so i'm not sure why i struggle more with fashion modeling poses. 

anyway, i've decided i can conquer one pose at a time. or even more specifically, one part of a pose at a time. for example, first up is better neck/chin placement. when i'm nervous i tend to pull my head inwards, which forces my chin down and back, creating an unflattering double chin. so when i'm anxiously hoping a photo will turn out like a cute caught-off-guard candid, it actually just looks like i have weirdly excess skin under my chin. and also that i'm not confident, which is accurate. 

i'm taking all the posing help i can get—the most recent helpful tidbit was a tiktok suggesting imagining holding an orange under your chin: first pushing your neck forward, then your chin slightly down, then holding an orange-sized space between your neck, chin, and chest. and that's exactly the motion i'd like to practice so much that i start to do it without even thinking. 

(i made this decision after i attempting doing some "modeling practice" today and realizing it's quite hard to do on my own—and also frustrating to pose so well in the mirror but then totally flop in photos. but the other part of this is that doing it on my own means i also have to do the photography, and that's a lot to learn at once! that's when i decided to focus on one thing at a time.)

a snippet from posing practice