Limited Light

This year has been one of the best years measured in the number of books I have read. I started using Goodreads only around a year ago but I have been keeping track of the books that I've read during the years since I went to university. This year is definitely going to be a record year. Last week I finished my 24th book of the year, and the next additions to that list are lining up. I am especially excited about Barack Obama's new book that was just released. 29 hours of him telling his side of the story. You bet I'm listening it. Anyways. We have this tradition with my mom (also a reader) that I give her a list of the top books that I wish to read. She goes through the list and picks her favorites for me as a Christmas present. And before you judge, she might also decide to buy totally different ones. However, usually she gets at least one book from the list. Since growing up the best gifts have always been the book-shaped ones. Then once the presents have been shared ...

This month the #mwm is something that does not at all fit the weather situation that we have in Finland at the moment but I've decided I don't care. At least it's not icy. This time the Monthly Worth Mentioning -thing goes to: Couch to 5K (aka C5K) running app Bear with me on this. I can promise you it really is from the couch, and shin splints is not an excuse to not love running. Trust me, I've been struggling with this for a long time. My love-hate relationship with running was once again turned this spring as one of my friends suggested downloading this app. The idea is that you develop your ability to run with changing intervals starting from running only 90 seconds. I decided to try this app to fix my shin splints problem, and to my extremely happy surprise, IT WORKED! In three months of more or less following the app's instructions, I managed to increase my running time from a hard maximum of 3 minutes to 30 minutes.  It was like magic. I've been str...

As my writing this blog has been so consistent and active (not) I decided it's a good time to start with a monthly post concept: Monthly Worth Mentioning. The idea in short is to just recommend any random thing that comes to mind that month and post it always on the 15th day of the month. This was actually one of the first ideas I wanted to do when I finally decided to start blogging again. For some reason, I am already looking forward to scrolling the posts on this tag and finding random recommendations that I have forgotten. Let's hope I get that far. The honor of first ever Monthly Worth Mentioning -thing goes to: Higher Ground -podcast by Michelle Obama. This podcast is one of the only podcasts I have actively listened to, ever. With the podcast, Michelle Obama has managed to perfectly capture the atmosphere of the talks we have with my best friends. My favourite thing about it is that I always felt super empowered after listening to one of the episodes. They discuss h...

One of the things with me is that I have this need to self reflect. I'm sure if you ask any of my past flatmates this they would all tell stories of us just going on and on and on analyzing our feelings and relationships with other people, work, and self-image. The only way I can explain it is the meme about English teachers overanalyzing every little detail in every sentence when the author probably never thought that the color of the drapes would mean so many things. I couldn't find the specific one that I mean but this is close enough: The latest big topic of my thoughts has been the thought of being young and naive . One of my relatives described some politician along the lines of her being good as she wasn't as young and naive as the other options. It got me thinking...am I young and naive? I must be. I'm young so it would make all the sense that I am. But before that moment I had never thought about it. Hearing the sentence never felt like it applied to me. No...

Last week we did a mini road trip all the way to Koli with two of my friends. It was nothing special in the sense that I feel like every other Finnish person on my Instagram feed has done the same trip this year as the Covid-19 pandemic is forcing us to plan our holidays within the Finnish borders. Nevertheless, I will be reminiscing that road trip for one reason: the calmness of it all. After over three years of super hectic lifestyle and never-ending todo-lists until the beginning of this year, I have found myself in many occasions refinding to things that I have forgotten during those years. One of those things has been the ability to enjoy the calm and empty moments. I used to feel so uneasy if there wasn't something I was doing or someway I was contributing. A real realization of this was when I realized that even reading a book started to be a contribution to my goals of reading N amount of books in a year rather than an experience itself. Last week during the road trip ...

During the last couple of weeks I have 1) spent a wonderful weekend with my university friends, 2) spent time alone at our cottage in the middle of a forest next to a lake, 3) been interviewed for a job, 4) celebrated my birthday with my family, 5) visited my sister's housewarming party, 6) finished 2 books and 7) got to meet my brother's cat (not for the first time, but just met her and it makes me happy). So I think it is fair to say that a lot has happened. Me and Anette on our excursion to Tampere and my sister's housewarming party. Tampere is one of my favorite cities in Finland. I just love how welcoming it feels every time I visit. After all this, when I finally got back home yesterday, I felt like it has been at least a month since I left. While I love having things happen and getting to catching up with so many friends it is also so nice to be back home with not too much going on. I can almost certainly already tell that being able to honestly and full-hea...

Yesterday evening I did what I used to do all the time back in high school. I took my camera, put on an audiobook, went out and just took pictures of whatever came my way. The pictures you see in this post are the outcome of those 1.5 hours of wandering.