#26

Heading to work and then we're leaving for a weekend camp at 6pm-ish.

I had my only day off until next Wednesday yesterday. I was supposed to get a lot of stuff done, which ended up not going completely according to plan - as it tends to happen when I try to make myself work with a schedule that is not just "finish the thing barely on time / after the deadline". But I did get some reading done for my overdue assignment, which I'll be able to start writing during camp, maybe. I have my notes with me, and I can start working on the final text on my iPad.

I was also going to plan the Sunday morning prayer I'll be doing this weekend. I didn't get many good ideas rolling yesterday, but I took a shower this morning and it worked it's magic. Now I have a beginning that I can stew over today and tomorrow, and fine tune for Sunday morning.

For no known reason, I've been waking up increasingly early. And of my own volition. In the most recent years (basically since maybe age 13-14) my sleeping patterns have been all kinds of whack but I most certainly have never been a morning person. I don't understand why I keep waking up at 7am unprompted after less than 6 hours of sleep - and last night I went to sleep at 1.30am and woke up feeling refreshed at 6? I'm so confused. I sleep very little yet I rarely feel tired. Maybe it's because my life is much more rhytmic than usual right now, and I get to do most of my work in the afternoons and evenings? I do like using the morning for my own business, but what even.

Also, basically everything in my life that could possibly need updating or renewing is pretty much expiring this spring. My wisdom teeth are emerging, so I'll need surgery to have them removed; I'm also due for a dental appointment in general, my phase I driver's license will expire unless I take the next course (which, luckily, I managed to book and organize yesterday); I'm thinking about getting my eyes checked in case the prescription lenses in my glasses need to be renewed, and both my citizen's ID/health insurance card and my passport are expiring soon. How is this even possible? All of them have varying times of validity, but my passport's 10 years, DL's 2 years, ID card's 5 years and glasses' 3 years all fell on this same spring. How did I not see this coming? I'm also stressing about finding work again, but I suppose I'll deal. I'll have to look some things up on my days off though.

Okay, anyway, it's time for me to do my weekly cleanup, then head to work and camp. Bye!

#25

I've been at my trainee position for 2 days now, and I'm really enjoying it so far.

I got to meet the other two trainees today, as well as join the Flow - night, which is basically open doors for all the young people. They were really welcoming, I got to introduce myself to a lot of them, and it was a lot of fun. I also took part in the Agricola Mass for the first time. It was in no way mind-blowing, but very nice and not too long. The priest's rhythm of speaking really threw me off for a while there, but all was well in the end, and we managed to clean out the prayer altars quickly enough.

Yesterday we had young leader training & otherwise a normal day at the office. The training session was very useful in the sense that I got to see a bunch of the teenagers who take part in the activities at once, and also got to introduce myself to all of them. They seemed really smart and interested in their position on confirmation camps and the church altogether.

I adopted a more outgoing and "outreaching", I guess you could say, approach to meeting the people who are into doing activities at the Agricola church. It's sometimes very difficult for me to go speak to new people - especially teenagers - but since the whole environment is new, and I made the attitude-changing decision ahead of time, it's been going pretty smoothly. I'm not great at it, and I didn't find good moments to introduce myself to everyone, but it's also something I feel like I want to improve in my working "role". It's still somewhat strange that the so-called "customers" in this equation are sometimes older than me, where I'm in the role of an "employee", but that's certainly a thing that will be fixed with time.

I've almost finished the first book out of five in Lord of the Rings. It's bringing back so many good memories, and complete facets of the story that I had totally forgotten about. I'm really happy I bought it, anxious to read the other 3 in my recent order, and order more - such as the lost tales, some poems, etc.

I'm leaving for camp the day after tomorrow, we'll see if I'm only going to have time to write here sometime next week. Bye!

#24

I'm just trying to while away some time before I have to get started on school assignments, right now. Totally responsible and stuff.

But anyway, I'm actually making good headway on this assignment, so it's cool. Today is probably going to be devoted mostly to research and reading up on things about the subject matter - about half of the assignment is going to be a summary of youth work in my city, although I might actually stretch that to about 2/3 of the required pages. The second part will be about describing the practical aspects of youth work, and I'm going to research this particular branch that does a lot of youth work as well as comparing it in some instances to youth work done in the church. It's looking pretty good, at the moment I'm semi-confident I can finish it if I work on it both today and tomorrow.

On Tuesday, I'll be heading to my traineeing church for the first actual work day! I'm trying not to feel very anxious beforehand and instead to work things out as they come up, because otherwise I'll just stress myself out for no reason. My mentor and the program of what I'll be doing seemed pretty cool, anyway, I'm sure it'll be fine.

Today is, apparently, Tolkien Reading Day! I'm so fired up about trying to finish Dashner's Maze Runner series prequel, The Kill Order, fast enough to actually start on Lord of the Rings today - just so I can say I've actually managed to read some Tolkien. Very important for my life.

Anyway, I think this counts as enough of a break for now. I'm really kind of feeling like I could make this blog public, at least - I'm not going to exactly advertise it anywhere, but technically some people might find it! I don't think there's anything terribly personal on here, and mostly it's a rather uninteresting bunch of brain feed from me, anyway. Such ravaging subject matter, I'm sure readers will appear in flocks soon!

#23

Ay!

Only Lovers Left Alive actually ended up being way better than I expected! I thought it was probably going to be really, r e a l l y indie with an obscure plot and misleading dialogue and "artistically" very mysterious characters, but it was a lot of fun! The plot was pretty understated, but I loved the characters, the casting, the little jokes, the general DONE-ness of Adam 24/7, how fascinated Eve was by everything, and "YOU DRANK IAN!!". No, really, I was snorting all the way through it. Also, Adam & Eve's relationship was, predictably, adorable. Eve was, as I mentioned, all "i-believe-in-magic" and Adam was the most tragic emo to ever emo. Watching them was just like looking at a couple of cuddly grandparents, I was squealing so much on the inside. Le sigh. Also, obviously Hiddles was flawless. I even kind of liked Tilda here too - her semi-dreaded hair was gorgeous and she generally seemed like a great fit for a spindly old vampire lady, and hers - as well as the others, mind - was a very natural character "on" her. I don't even know if putting it that way makes sense, but the dialogue and motives and such didn't feel "glued on" for any of the characters, which was also a factor in making it enjoyable.

cuties

Some old family friends were visiting us today. I just saw Adam & Eve in them, pretty much - the lady is a very excitable babbler and the husband is kind of a cranky bastard. They're very sympathetic as well, though, and I got some good food for sticking around. They were pointing out how "special" it was that I still live at home - I just felt very awkward, but I know lots of kids who are my age would have moved out already. I can honestly say I haven't had any realistic urges to do so, since so far I've basically managed to buy every extraneous thing I could ever need - without working a single day of my life. It's also something that makes me very insecure, but it all comes back to the whole lack of ambition thing. Oh well, I'm not getting into that now - yeah, I still haven't written about it in the other blog, either - because I'll just end up depressing myself. Ugh. No one wants that.

Q T P A 2 T ' S

There's this one group assignment that I was supposed to do back in January, but I completely missed. We had about 2 weeks of working from home, and I honestly didn't realize that at some point I'd been supposed to have found a group and completed an assignment. It's cool though, I talked to the teacher who grades those assignments and she said I could do it on my own and email it over to her when I'm done. I'll be trying to complete it before my traineeing starts... 

I'm also really excited about all the new books I bought! I got a huge discount - for being a student - that even included the Bible and a book of hymns, that are normally not discounted even for people who actually work at the church. I mean, they'd probably essentially get as much money back via taxes as I did here, but it's still a nice feeling to reduce a 210€ bill to 160€ for 7 books. Hurr durr. I love the Bible, too, since it's so fancy. It came with a "small reader's guide" thing with a program to read the whole thing in 365 days, which I started just because I felt like it. It can only be useful if I need to think up content for prayer moments and such. 

Oh well, I feel like I've been rambly enough for today. Here's one more for the road. 

(◡‿◡✿) (◡‿◡✿)

#22

Oh geez, it's been so long again! I don't even know how many weeks it's been since I posted anything here, really.

I've had a crazy month! This latest studying module took a lot out of me, haha. I think... well. I got a trainee position for this spring at the Helsinki Doomschurch congregation and my instructor seems nice. I'll be doing general work with the youth and training the volunteers / young leaders, as well as holding a few radio morning assemblies at elementary and middle schools. We got both of our group projects done okay, and got through the seminar, and I also managed to plan and do the prerequisite morning assembly "demo" in class without spontaneously combusting.

I'm really excited about tomorrow!! I'll be going to Sacrum to buy myself a new, more durable Bible, a book of hymns, some storybooks and books about teaching. After that, we're going to go see Only Lovers Left Alive - YES, IT'S GOING INTO CINEMAS IN FINLAND. I can't even handle this. But yeah, I think buying all of the books is going to be great, I can use them for planning even during my trainee period - I'm nervous about some of the prayers and such that I'll be holding. But I'm sure it'll be fine - I'll get through it.

J moved, like, a week and a half ago (which was a whole other shitshow that took 12 hours, 10 people, 3 full vans and 6 full personal cars of crap, a trip to the junkyard and approximately 250km of driving) and A cut her hair. I don't know if I mentioned, in any of my older posts, the fact that I was going to order 4 Tolkién books in English - but I did, and today the last 2 arrived. I'm unbelievably excited, and I even have a few off days so I can actually get on with starting to read LoTR this weekend.

I also discussed R's 18th birthday with her in passing at one point. (It's in January, so we're a bit early, but, oh well.) She says she wants to go to London next year as well, and that it would be cool if I went with her! Whoa. I'd really like to go to London, since I find the city fascinating, I've never been there, and my parents dislike the food and climate enough to never take me there. I thought about going with her, and my instant thought was like "I could go to the Converse store! And get custom Converse! WITH THE 'The Road' POEM BY TOLKIÉN ON THEM!" Excited so fast, haha. But no kidding, it would be a perfect poem to put on shoes:

"The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

Whither then? I cannot say."

Anyway, goodbye for now! I'll try to find time to write in here during my trainee period, as well.