This blue marble

– and yet it spins

Monthly Archives: March 2021


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Goodbye 2020

On the last day of December, over a home-cooked borscht soup, we said goodbye to the unforgettable 2020. In retrospect, it was not too far from the sci-fi books written throughout the twentieth century, projecting some futuristic craziness like a viral pandemic. In December 2019 I knew I would need to find a new job some time during 2020, but I thought I would first spend January studying more Spanish in San Sebastián; February in the US Midwest, visiting dear friends; April in Kyoto finally experiencing Japan and the cherry blossom season; and the summer in the cottage in Finland followed by a panchakarma somewhere warm like Sri Lanka. It was going to be the year I turned forty, and I wanted it to be free and fabulous. I wanted to redirect my career, but not until after the summer.

Well, nothing is as constant in life as change. Turns out the themes of my 2020 were COVID-19, Copenhagen, and Alzheimer’s disease. The first requires no introduction; the second I covered here; and the third is nothing new (my mother was diagnosed in 2017), but combined with the pandemic our family has been balancing on a tightrope all year long. For my part, the last monthly weekend visit turned out to be just days before lockdown in March, after which I had to lose days in post-travel quarantine and lots of money in expensive private tests in Finland, in order to spend time with my family.

Instead of feeling free and fabulous at forty, I felt homeless, nearly jobless, and family-less in a foreign city I just moved to. The few local friends I had I could only see outdoors, for brief whiles. And so I turned into a productivity machine: I studied languages online, I completed a big creative project, I did a course in global public health, and I revised my career plans together with a kick-ass career coach.

I did not end up in Sri Lanka having cleansing tonics and massages twice a day. Instead, I signed a new job contract, decided to stay in Copenhagen, moved to another apartment, and spent six weeks in Finland over the summer. In the fall, I chose to put my head down and become productive in my new job by christmas. 2020 began to feel like a split reality: on the one hand, wasting away time stuck at home; and on the other hand, stock-full with five years’ worth of life experience in just twelve months.

Lots of looseness in life means lots of opportunity to rebuild. The coming year will continue to be a balancing act for my family, but we have grown closer, more communicative, and more functional. And so, as I enjoyed the last meal of 2020 and lifted a glass to toast the coming year with my family, I felt grateful for the shake-up of 2020 – and for the premonition that 2021 was going to bring a few strong aftershocks.

(Loviisa, Finland; December 2020)


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Three favorite podcasts

For at least a year I have thought about writing, or rather not writing, this post. I am so far behind many of you when it comes to podcasts. Because, not only do I stick to my habits, but I have an obsession for completion and lists. I go through much pain and boredom before I give up on a book or a movie mid-way. I love finishing off to-do lists. And to me, podcasts episodes look like… well, to-do lists. And they are a significant time investment. When I choose to get deeper into a podcast series, listening a couple episodes per week, it takes me months to decide whether I should keep listening or delete it from my list.

It hurts my head to think of the universe of amazing podcasts all around the world, available with just a few taps. Smart shows like Dear Sugar, Serial, and Stuff You Should Know are famous – and I shyly confess that they are not in my podcast list at all. Why? Because I can only keep track of about three podcasts at once, and once I get into them I need to go through the list, often several years and hundreds of episodes worth, to complete the series. Only when I get up to date with a podcast I like, do I have bandwidth to tackle another…. neurotic? Perhaps. Focused? For sure.

Here are the three ones that keep me busy (in no particular order of priority):

  1. The Ground Up Show, by Matt D’Avella
    These days, Matt D’Avella is equally well known for directing the documentary Minimalism, as well as his Youtube channel amassing millions of subscribers. The podcast is inactive since quite a while, but he managed to record 100+ interviews about starting from the ground up as a creative entrepreneur. In later episodes he moved towards topics like minimalism and health, and his experience as a stand-up comedian and conversational skills makes the episodes seem shorter than they are. This is my go-to for cleaning and other random household chores.
  2. The Goop Podcast
    Yes, I am a scientist by training and I love the Goop Podcast. I listen to it every night as I get ready for bed, and most nights even in bed, if I cannot sleep right away. The breadth of topics, from psychology and longevity to social issues and business, means I always learn and am never bored.
  3. Pörssipäivä
    The long-standing Finnish radio show on investing and money markets. I have several investing and personal finance podcasts on my list, but I am still stuck on this one, also because I still have some stock market investments in Finland. I usually pull up an episode in the evenings while making dinner or ironing clothes.

Soon I will be up-to-date with both Goop and Pörssipäivä. Can you recommed me a new favorite?

(Copenhagen, Denmark; March 2021)


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Lost

“It says we can see this island at sixty degrees starboard, so have to be here, just off that rock.”
“No way, sixty degrees starboard means we’re already way past that island, so we must be right here… wait, that looks like dry land?!”

And on and on, for another two hours it went, before we solved our position and direction, using some very unorthodox methods of projecting off the map. Reading a map is relatively easy when you know where you are. But how about when you are out at sea, need to broadcast your position to ask for help, and you think you recognize a landmark off the map but have no idea exactly where you are? For very obvious reasons, this type of problem was the main one, repeated throughout my sister’s navigation course book.

In the end, navigation with a map is all very simple logic and trigonometry, but boy did it take me hours and a quite some googling to swipe away the dust and cobwebs over the section in my brain that stored the crumbled remains of a navigation course I attended some fifteen years ago. My sister pushed on with admirable resilience, after realizing that the classes she invested in all fall would not guarantee a passed exam. Two days later and with the help of Youtube tutorials (in Danish!) we were finally able to find ourselves, on demand.

(My sister’s exam was canceled due to COVID, of course. But hopefully this time around the skill is not lost).

(Loviisa, Finland; December 2020)


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A mindfulness exercise

Pomegranates sustain my life force throughout the winter. I crave that juicy goodness, impossibly red even when it stains my fingertips, and the satisfyingly crunchy mouth feel. The juice is packed with vitamins, and the seeds with healthy oils. And no, I do not buy juice nor even the cleaned, pre-packed seeds – I take an entire pomegranate and clean it out by hand.

Neither do I violently whack it like Jamie Oliver seems to prefer (not only is it brutal, it is messy and still leaves lodged-in seeds to be dug out afterwards). Instead I cut off the top and bottom, slice the fruit in two along the vertical ridges (where it naturally splits with light prying), and then split both halves again. The seeds come out by turning the clusters inside out. Soaking the quarters in water before starting helps if the fruit seems dry.

Coaxing pomegranate seeds out of their shell is gentle, methodical work. The more one rushes or exerts pressure, the worse the outcome (and the mess!). Perfect mindfulness practice for winter days – and the reward is a bowlful of summer energy.

(Copenhagen, Denmark; December 2020)


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Two dusty suitcases

In mid-December, I dug out my suitcases. A dusty one from the walk-in closet, stuffed behind the clothes rack, and the other from the attic, where rust-water from the leaking roof had dripped all over it, leaving a red puddle mark on its side.

I had intended to replace my trusty old Rimowa with its twice-repaired zipper and torn interior lining before my first business trip in my new job, but such an occasion has not yet arisen. I guess luggage companies are struggling through these COVID-times as well.

As I dragged both bags behind me on my way to the metro which would take me to Copenhagen airport, I felt the long looks of passers-by. They were certainly no looks of envy, longing, and a shared passion of exploring new places. Most likely they were intentionally cast, so I would feel ashamed for intending to contribute to the spread of the virus. 2020, please be gone soon.

(Copenhagen, Denmark; December 2020)


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Interlude: about high-independence relationships

Lovely ones, even if I spent much time writing about creativity, introspection, and a quiet but robust sense of inspiration, just like most (all?) of you my 2020 was difficult, too. It seems that we all have gone through seismic shifts in our lives, even if many do not seem to relate to the coronavirus pandemic at all (perhaps they still do?). And so, while warming myself with a golden latte and new woolen socks, I want to share my journey.

I have spent much time this year thinking about high-independence relationships. I used to live with someone who needed much independence in order to feel free in a relationship. And if he was not feeling free, anxiety and unhappiness would slowly eat him from the inside.

The preference for high independence seems to be a millennial generation problem. Instead of getting hitched young and building up our selves in teamwork with a partner (a “cornerstone relationship” according to couples therapist Esther Perel), we first form ourselves as individuals and then, maybe in our thirties, we need to find a partner who checks all the boxes on our long list of demands. We look for someone who will maintain our individuality and help it grow (a “capstone relationship”). In our search for a life partner for whom we do not need to compromise anything, we run the risk of looking for a copy of ourselves. Yet, would a copy of ourselves keep us charmed and interested?

High-independence relationships take it a notch further. I did not even know this was a “thing” until I met someone who had all the arguments for why it was the best model: allowing each other the space to do what we liked and to grow as we liked sounded like just the right balance of teamwork and personal growth. “I do my thing and you do your thing, together” was his unspoken mantra. But when this philosophy ran into the minutiae of daily decisions, we ran into trouble. It would take us an hour to choose a movie because the only way for him was to choose a movie we both were in the mood for. Taking turns in allowing the other to indulge was not a worthwhile use of his time. Sometimes we got tired of searching and did not end up watching a movie at all. Choosing a restaurant was exhausting and 9 times out of 10 we gave up and went for sushi because it was optimal for his taste and health, and I did not mind compromising.

When we choose to live with a partner, we choose by our own free will to subject ourselves to a level of dependence. There is no way we can live with someone without depending on them. At the lowest level of functionality this means agreeing on how to share the contents of the fridge and how to stock it; and at the highest level, how to walk through life together in synergy as a loving, well-functioning team. “I do my thing and you do your thing” only works if both put the relationship first, not themselves. This is what clinical psychologist Stan Tatkin calls a “couple bubble”: a safe, loving, supportive space a couple creates and maintains around them, and which protects them from the rest of the world. It is also “an intimate environment that the partners create and sustain together and that implicitly guarantees specific promises.”

My partner and I never managed to create a couple bubble. I never truly felt I was included in his life plan. Often, I felt scared that his high independence would lead to a situation where he chose move to another city or country, and I would be given the choice to follow – or be left behind. Because it was against his values to ask me to forgo my freedom and come along, for his sake – and to say he needed me and he would support me in return, if I ever had a big ask for him. I felt afraid that he would not put our relationship first, and he felt shackled by my needs. There was much anxiety and anger. Living under the same roof was not sustainable, even with constant open communication and all the intimacy and love.

And so, just before the pandemic hit us, I moved across the country, to Copenhagen. On my own. And when the world locked down I realized that if I were to catch the virus, my partner would not have my back. I would have to create that bubble of safety, love, and support all by myself. And you know what? I found it quite easy to do because I, too, have enough independence to find my footing when the world is a windy place.

We millennials are a very individualistic generation, and along with our parents’ generation, we have in many developed countries pushed the divorce rate to fifty percent (and an increasing number of couples choose to not marry at all). And so, one year later, with better language to put my 2020 journey into words, I wonder whether it is possible to have a deep need for sovereignty and still share a household and a life with someone, in partnership? Is the need for high independence just a fear of unhealthy dependency? And what is the definition of healthy interdependence?

(Copenhagen, Denmark; December 2020)


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The champagne’s desire to escape

It was a windy, gray, chilling evening in early December. I had spent all day reviewing 2020 and playing strategy games with my new colleagues. My head was beginning to feel soft, but the time to relax had not yet come. First, I had to endure the test every new team mate goes through: opening a bottle of champagne with a saber. And I can tell you, while it looks fancy and impossible, it is way easier than tinkering with removing the wire net while pressing a thumb over the cork so it does not fly into the ceiling. All it requires is confidence, and a good determined swing from the shoulder, as the saber runs down along the neck of the bottle and sends the entire glass tip flying across the room.

And really, it was not I who broke the bottle; I merely supported the champagne in its desire to escape.

(Copenhagen, Denmark; December 2020)