it's my birthday!

i'm now the age that my parents were when they had me. which also means i'm exactly half their age. i think. this morning when i first realized this, i spent a good thirty seconds making various befuddled facial expressions, to my fiancé's delight, as i tried to work it through in my head: would being the age your parent was when they had you always mean you're exactly half their age in that moment? but wait, my fiancé was half his mom's age last year...why are we having this experience so close together if we're more than one year apart? working through mental math problems is not my strong suit. 

it's my last year being in my twenties. it's been a good run. next year, my fiancé and i will both be thirty-somethings. something about that makes me emotional—as if we're joining closer together, rather than reaching our arms out to each other across decades. 

my late twenties have been great so far: my first serious relationship, moving in together, getting engaged. having a resurgence in religiosity after feeling the unconditional love we have for each other. moving to a new continent and starting two new languages. 

twenty-eight in particular was a very good year. true love and sheer determination brought me into being a functional person: no longer wracked by immovable procrastination, persistent lethargy, and general household chaos. 

may twenty-nine bring even more blessings!

birthday flowers from my fiancé's parents <3

crazy how inspired i get by interacting with other people

i tend to feel like i have to invent everything from first principles. but when i talk to other people, i'm like, "wow! that's a lot of surface area for new ideas!"*

with my writing, my impulse is to isolate, and only write things that come from my own mind and aren't colored by anyone else's thoughts. well, maybe that's not exactly true, i do like being inspired, but i often feel like my mind is too spongy, and if i don't take care to do otherwise, i'll absorb others thoughts and then not be able to articulate my own without mentioning theirs. which isn't a bad thing, but feels...less than ideal. 

it's not that i believe anyone has to or can be entirely original without ever being inspired by others. in fact, i think the opposite. but it's like when i self-produced a little album on bandcamp back in high school: i did every single part of the process myself, because figuring out how to give credit or payment—i didn't have any money and wanted to sell the album to raise money to study abroad, and it felt bad to profit on someone else's work without paying them, even if they would agree to it—was more trouble than it was worth. 

i think another reason i try to keep everything "in-house" so to speak is that naming others feels...personal? vulnerable? i'm not exactly sure why. this blog, for example, is under the same pseudonym as my twitter account (and so is my youtube and tiktok). but for some reason, naming twitter people in this new context feels quite strange. i thought maybe writing that out would illuminate some more reasons why, but that's all i got for now. it just feels weird. i guess one other point is that despite being so active and open on the internet, i'm actually quite a private person, and lots of things feel oddly uncomfortable to bare to an unfamiliar context. 

because of this approach, i can get super in my head and lost in my own ideas, in a way that disconnects me from lots of other things i might have new thoughts on. or in other words, i may stray from articulating things we all experience, which is an area i definitely would like to articulate. i do love describing my own stuff of course, but there's something particularly delicious about connecting it to a more universal experience. 

when i hear others' thoughts, and especially when i get a chance to riff with them, it's like entire new domains open up in my minds, with entirely new thoughts and connections and feelings. and all of a sudden i have this entire idea for a blogpost that just spills out of me, rather than trying to pull it out with effort. 

the impetus for this post, by the way, was a comment left on my previous post, in which i asked for comments if anyone is actually reading my posts. ege replied and shared some of his own blogposts where he had mentioned my writing. he has been experiencing similar things in his blog-writing endeavor, noticing as i have that less than daily frequency results in ever more friction, aptly stating, "Pausing harmed the process and only cure was doing more." it was great to read another blogger's thoughts about the process, and i was also inspired by him naming his inspirations, rather than vaguely gesturing at them as i tend to do. 

it is quite interesting that i have more of an aversion to linking other things when blogging; i don't seem to have that problem at all on twitter. in fact i quite enjoy quote tweeting and interweaving. 

anyway, i very much enjoy interacting with others and seeing how it leads me down paths i wouldn't have pondered otherwise. 

*while writing this post, my fiancé came and asked me what i was writing about. this paragraph is verbatim how i described it to him, which feels like a great example of how my writing changes when i interact with other people. in this case, i more succinctly summed up the idea, which i perhaps wouldn't have remembered to do if i hadn't articulated it to him out loud. 

if you're seeing this, leave a comment!

comments mean a lot to me, especially if it's about something specific i've written, whether you have something to say about it or it made you think something else or whatever else. 

morale can get pretty low some days, even though i keep on publishing regardless. it's helpful to know that people are reading and care about what i'm writing. 

so if you see this, or any of my other blogposts, and it makes you think or feel something, i'd love to hear about it! 

:)

creating with my beloved

did you know that dreams really do come true? one of my grandest and most precious dreams was that my beloved would also be my creative partner—now that is my reality. 

so far, we haven't worked together on any huge projects, but daily life with us is such that at any moment, either of us could spring into creative action, and be either supported or collaborated with. 

from cooking to music to drawing—and today, fashion! 

i've been thinking more about style lately, and modeling, and fashion in general. while doing laundry the other day, one of our bed sheets ripped, and instead of throwing it away, i had the idea that i could use it to experiment with a sewing machine i had gotten from a friend who moved away. 

i had acquired the sewing machine right before one of our many trips, trusting i'd remember it and pull it out to play with at a later date. today was that day. 

i'm not really sure what my plan was. well, my plan was to literally pull it out and play with it, but in my imagination, it somehow got itself into a "ready to use" state and all i had to do was stick some fabric in it and go to town. 

but when i got it out of the box, i realized i actually have no clue how any of it works, and no clue how to even think about getting started. i figured maybe my sister could teach me when she visits, and i'd have to wait until then. 

to my surprise, however, my fiancé revealed he does know how to use a sewing machine, though it's been a while since he has. so he began reading the german manual and setting up the thread and settings so the machine was ready for me to use. 

so i guess it did, after all, get itself into a "ready to use" state for me to play with, just with some help from my fiancé. it wasn't shocking that he has yet another skill up his sleeve, but it does fill me with awe every time he reveals a new one. 

ah yes, i actually skipped ahead a bit. before we got out the sewing machine, we had to locate the torn bed sheet, which had been washed and placed somewhere unknown to either of us. once we found it, we started jokingly draping it on me as if it were already a garment. 

but to both of our surprise, we genuinely enjoyed doing so, and we worked to shape an interesting silhouette out of the crinkled fabric. we took a step back and surveyed our handiwork. 

"that's actually not half bad," i said, admiring myself in the mirror. the sheet harmonized with the mixed-texture outfit i was already wearing, and the overall effect was messy-on-purpose avant-garde. it was absolutely something a designer would send me out on the runway with. 

i giddily took a video of it, then ran off to another room after grabbing my phone-stand to take some cool photos. i had been wanting to practice modeling recently, and now i had a cool outfit to practice in—one that my beloved and i collaborated on!

as i snapped photos and adjusted angles, from the other room i heard my fiancé turn on the piano and start tinkering away at a whimsical jingle he improvised the other day—one he thinks is a bit silly but i earnestly adore. 

i took a moment to marvel at how insanely, unbelievably, heart-stoppingly lucky i am. to have a partner i feel comfortable being creatively vulnerable with, who puts his hand in mine and chases after creative visions with me, who reveres the golden spark in every silly little creative act of courage. to feel supported in being creatively ambitious, and to give the same support back. 

i'm excited to keep exploring clothes and fashion, and now sewing. i squealed with delight when i successfully made some trial stitches. 

life is good!

bed sheet + matching outfit x two creative explorers = avant garde deliciousness

yum, love to eat my words (on asymmetric language skills)

when my swedish fiancé and i first started dating, we watched some episodes of young royals, a swedish drama series about a teenage prince. he attends a boarding school, and the whole show is in swedish and everybody speaks swedish—except one girl, who understands everyone's swedish but responds exclusively in english. at the time, i chuckled a bit at how ridiculous it seemed. it confused me, how she could understand so much but speak so little. my fiancé suggested maybe she was shy or embarrassed to speak swedish. i'm familiar with language-learning processes and know it's a common experience that, for example, children of immigrants end up understanding their parents but not really speaking the language. but still, knowing about it in theory and seeing it play out were two completely different things. 

fast forward a year, and now i find myself in basically the same position as that character. i've learned languages before, and haven't had any significantly asymmetric skills. but this time around, i've been particularly shy and hesitant about speaking—i care about my fiancé's opinion, and as it's his native language, i'm incredibly nervous to speak in front of him, even despite his patience and support and nonjudgmental acceptance when i do. i've faced my fear as much as i can, but i still have ended up much better at listening and reading than speaking and writing. the most recent time we were in sweden, someone stopped me as we left a restaurant, and said in swedish that she loved my jacket and had been waiting all night to see who's it was. "thank you, it was me!" i replied, in english, simultaneously proud that i had understood her and a bit ashamed that i had become what i had laughed at before. 

despite barely speaking at all, i spend my free time reading novels in swedish. how much i struggle to comprehend them depends on the day and how tired i am, but in general i can read and understand a lot, and i've gone from very young adult to just young adult books in just a couple months. 

i'm crushingly aware of the asymmetry in my swedish language skills, but today i had it confirmed with searing clarity, as i took an extensive online placement test. half the test was simply questions to assess my own level, since it couldn't very well assess my speaking or writing, but the rest of the test was much more effective than other placement tests i've taken—i couldn't just process-of-elimination my way into the correct answer unless i actually knew enough about what the question was testing. i selected a2 level to begin the test with, and as i did well or poorly, a message would pop up about recommending i move up or down a level, until it found the level appropriate for me. when i got to the reading section, the screen recommending to move up a level kept appearing. i was shocked. it felt like the test would go on forever if i kept getting questions right. 

but finally it ended, and my results appeared, along with a disclaimer that asymmetry across domains was normal, such as reaching b2 in reading comprehension, but b1 in production skills like writing or speaking. "that sounds like a much more reasonable difference..." i thought as i stared at my c1 in reading comprehension starkly contrasted to my a1 in speaking. though my fiancé pointed out that the lowest of my scores were all self-assessed; he insists i'm at least a2 in speaking, and that i rated myself too low. 

regardless of just how stark the difference is across domains for me, the fact that there is a large difference is undeniable. and of course, i knew this going in. but somehow, seeing it spelled out for me hits me like a truck. moving forward feels impossible. i feel like i've tied my own hands behind my back; now when i pick a level for a language class, i'll be stuck choosing between insanely boring but matched to my speaking level, or matched to my reading level but impossibly hard to keep up speaking. how do people even learn how to speak? how can i bridge this impossible gap? why did i have to read so much???

i genuinely regretted, even if just for a moment, that i learned so much passive swedish. logically, i don't see how knowing more words, even if only in one dimension, could be a disadvantage. but for a moment it felt like one. i wallowed in despair, and flip-flopped tearfully between choosing an a2 intensive course or a b1 regular-paced course. 

then my genius, level-headed, problem-solving (and did i mention handsome?) fiancé thought to search for "conversation" courses instead. and boom, there they were. speaking-focused, bite-sized sessions, specifically for the level i'm at. it still feels scary, but it definitely is exactly what i need. 

so i'll start that in about a month. until then, i'll try not to get too weird about continuing to further the gap between my reading comprehension and my speaking skills—because i'm definitely not going to stop reading den förlorade liljan. 

my placement test results

i have muscles!!!!!

within the past few days, i've started to notice barely perceptible visual changes in my body as a result of lifting weights. the level of asking my fiancé, "am i crazy or do i look a bit different here?" 

well last night, i felt the first physical changes i can feel when i touch and squeeze my body—i have actual muscles in my arms now!!!! right below my shoulder joint, my arm feels so much more solid than it ever has before. it's a bit shocking, there's literally more of me there than there was before. my fiancé half-joked that that's where all the milk we drank has gone! 

which makes me breathe a bit of a sigh of relief that i've been able to build any muscle at the rate i'm consuming calories—which is to say, a lower rate than is optimal according to the program we're following (called starting strength). it's genuinely a skill to eat more, and i am building it along with my muscles. 

seeing and feeling changes in my body, even just a month in, gives me so much more motivation to keep going. i'm excited to see what other changes are ahead! 

what's stopping me from writing more?

i can just publish whatever i want. i really do much better when i go for volume, so why don't i? 

this will be my third post today. feels enlivening. is that a word? idk. 

one nice thing about multiple posts in one day is it really lowers the stakes for each individual post. who cares if one is super short, i wrote three in total! 

there are so many things i want to talk about. i realized the other day if i don't try to capture them, then maybe i never will. which in some moments can feel heartening and motivating, because all i have to do is capture them, even imperfectly! but in other moments it can feel demoralizing and frustrating, because if i don't capture them now, then maybe they'll be gone forever—that's a lot of pressure. 

on the other hand, i've often had the thought (heh) that a thought is worth capturing if it comes to you more than once. or rather, any thought worth capturing will come to you more than once. or rather, don't worry your pretty little mind about any one certain instance of a thought, because if it's worth its salt, it will come back to you and you will have another opportunity to capture it. 

as i wrote my previous post about the gym, i found myself thinking, "why am i even writing this? who cares? it's probably not even helping me!" 

but also, any reps i get of describing things and working through my thoughts are valid reps. describing things that happen in the gym is actually not that easy, and now i gave myself a chance to work on it, and that is beneficial even if i don't specialize in describing things at the gym. 

ok, i'm hungry! my lovely fiancé made dinner, and i smell it wafting in from the kitchen. bye for now!