First snow

Which atleast means it looks lighted outside. And much earlier than last year, when it was hardly any. Will probably be away again in the end of the week, though. It the meantime i throw snowballs, and get wet on my feets .

I`m writing a novel

Mostly because i am very bad at resisting things like this. And partly because it looks like the Nobel commitee, the swedish academy, still won`t give me the Nobel prize for litterature based on this blog alone. The reason why i`m posting this is so that it wil put extra pressure on me.

Well, atleast that is what the people at www.nanowrimo.org is saying. The point is to write a 175 page-novel or 50 000 words between november 1st and november 30rd. Something i have never done. Not that i havn`t wanted to, but i never really get as far as deciding what to write about. So i put my chances for success at around 20%. But part of the thing here is to lower expectation, because of the time limit this is kamikaze-writing, which is ment to force me just to write without thinking about the consequences. 100 000 participated last year, 15 000 finished. Regardless a great number, and if this get`s more people to use their creativity i guess it`s a good thing. The site works as a social network also by encouraging people to meet eachother locally if possible. Everything is just very well thought out, and i`m looking forward to see how this will work. Now i only have to figure about some sort of storyline. So if anyone has an idea, i`m happy to hear it. I`m blank as usual.

And i challenge everyone also to login on NaNoWriMo, and start writing their novel.

90 minutes of…

I could describe it with facts. Lillestrøm – Rosenborg 4-2 (1-2). Rosenborg leading two times. The stakes – with a draw or a loss for us a very real chance for relegating to 2nd division, after 34 years in the top division. 22 players on the field, 2 teams, 11 000 spectators.

But facts can never describe a football match, especially not this one. This was anxiety, lot`s of it before and under. It was pain, real pain sitting on needles furthest out on the chair. Lot`s of nerves. And then despair. Anziety. HOPE!!! And waiting. Waiting for news and waiting for half-time. More despair just before half-time. Hope because of what`s happening other places. Sadness for what`s happening here.

And then comes second half – joy, happiness, celebrations! Incredibileousness. That`s not a word, but it should be. Because it`s really not possible to describe this with the words that exist. You have to use a lot of them, but you will still not get close. We are saved.

And in the end it`s relief. Just relief. I walk home on trembling legs. Everything within 90 minutes.

Sunday

Good meetings this weekend. Since i have, well, posted things about bad meetings, i guess i should post it also when things go good. In spite of that feeling a bit tired and out of myself today. Not sure about what i`ll do. And it`s a pile of clothes laying at the end of the sofa. Hm… Guess i need to do something about those first. And i have a couple of mails to answer, and a project to write or edit. And this evening it`s a nerve-breaking football match. Oh, my. My mood might go the way off the stock market in some hours…

So…

I guess the best thing i can say about this day is that i don`t have a headache anymore. So i`m functioning again. If watching 90s Boyzone-videos on YouTube can be called that. Yesterday it was Christmas-songs (too see if 2009 would come faster if i played them) and season finales of West Wing. I still think the “Brothers in arms”-ending is one of the highlights of TV-serie history.

The last days i have reached the conclusion that 2008 really is a waste of time. It`s not that it has been particulary tragic. But it`s just stands there. It doesn`t work. I don´t understand it. If it was something more concrete than a year, i would have put it away long ago. I can`t use it, i´ve lost the user manual, i could just as well been stuck in 2007. I want to give it back, but i don´t have anyone to give it too.

*Money Python mode on* ‘E’s not pinin’! ‘E’s passed on! This year is no more! He has ceased to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be pushing up the daisies! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!! THIS IS A NON-EXISTENT YEAR!! *Monty Python mode off*

One thing is this missing brain-thing, which really slows down my mental capacities. The other is this I don´t care-thing. I really don´t. Which explains the Boyzone-videos. And the Christmas-songs. And the unproductivity. I wonder how many unproductive things i can do at once. It would be interesting to see the result. Or the non-result.

This year is just a bore. A big waiting-room where you don´t know if anyone will come out and call you in. A race to be at the right time at the right place, but where you are too late everytime. Actually too late from the start. A complete misunderstanding. A joke. A meeting. A long and uneventful sigh. A waste of time. Sometimes i begin something, but this year it just ends. A lot of new beginnings, more endings. New start again, new end. Too little fuel in the engine to get anywhere.

There`s starting to be a bit too many metaphors here, doesn´t it? OK. Let me be clearer –

I think i in all honesty can say – Fuck 2008! Give me a new year. One that works, this time. Where is that 2009?

Nightmarish

This football season just keeps on giving us new punches. A couple of matches ago i thought we were secure. But now we are back in swamp. Two matches left, third from bottom. Last team is relegated directly to 2nd division. Second from bottom has to qualify. Now we are three points in front of no 2 from bottom (which we meet in the last match), and four in front of the bottom team. OK. we can still control this ourselves. But there is just too many scenarios for how this can go wrong.

Today we met the arch-enemy, and one would think that this should make the players give some extra. But, no. Almost the contrary. I really don`t know how this will end, and i don`t know how it is to cheer for a team that doesn`t play in the upper division. There will be a lot of strange places they will go to next year in that case… It might be time to start praying. They won`t fix this on their own…

182 882 445

Is the amount being collected in this years big TV-campaign. And the money goes to Blue Cross helping children who are suffering because of alcohol and drugabuse at home. Before this is over it will be over 200 000 000 nowegian crowns, and close to the record from last year. It shows that this was a theme that hit peoples heart, probably because it`s so close to them. Almost everyone knows someone who has some sort of problem with alcohol or other drugs.
There has also been much coverage in TV and newspapers about this theme in front of the big day today. And hopefully the long-term effect of this will be that it will no longer be a taboo to talk about misuse in families, and that we will be a little bit less afraid to interfere if we see that something is not as it should be. And perhabs also more people are going to question the role that alcohol plays in their life and in society. Not that they neceserrily becomes tee-totaller, but that they will be more conscious about the effect that their drinking has, both on themselves and eachother. It has been a good day for the children, for Blue Cross, and for everyone who works with these problems in Norway.

Just a bit

I`m just a bit tired. Please don`t misunderstand this, but sometimes i wonder if it would have been better to have gotten a name on it. Some kind of disorder, or some sort of anxiety. Not just a bit tired, or a bit afraid, or just sad. But then i would have to be sick, and i don`t want to be sick. And neither do those who has a name on it. That`s why i don´t want you to misunderstand this.

But they have something to point at. And they don`t say to themselves to stop feeling sorry for themselves. Or maybe they do. Maybe those with a name on it still feels sorry for themselves. Or perhabs that becomes a symptom then. When you have a name on it.

Some say they have “hit the wall”. That`s a light word. I have not hit any walls. A couple of times looked at it more closely. But i´m just a bit tired, a bit unhappy, a bit at another place than i want. And tomorrow i will be a bit tired, but it will not be dark and i will have slept. And on Monday i will be a bit tired, but there will be other things to do, and there is not time to think about things that doesn`t have a name anyway. And on Tuesday i don´t know.

Private – Public

I was on a very interesting conference today about social networking sites (like Facebook, YouTube, blogs, MySpace etc.) and learning. Too many things to fill in only one blog entry, but one word that came up a couple of times was control. Also in how youth define the difference between public and private. What was private is very much connected to what one feel one have control over. Therefore making a profile on MySpace, where potentially some millions can see it, felt private because you have control over what is being put on the your page. While home might not feel private because there the parents decides most of what`s happening. Makes sense, even though a bit paradoxical.

Languages

Languages is a fun thing. But some words is a challenge when it`s not your mother tongue. Dirty words for instance. It doesn´t really sound so dirty. And i`m not just thinking about that my first sort of bosnian expression ended up being a suggestion of where you can stick a sausage. Just a coincidence brought out of which two words i first learnt. But also in general. Some people swear more in foreign languages then in their own, i think.

The nuances that i know in my mother tongue is also not so clear when i write english. It`s not just the word in itself, it´s the associations that it gives. In norwegian the word “avhold” (temperance) has associations that i don`t necceserily like. Everything abstainers in Norway has done wrong the last 150 years is kind of filled in that word. So i tend to avoid it. The swedish word “nykter” is much better, even though that traditionally in Norway has been used about a now-sober drug addict. So we can`t really use it that frequently. We can see in the youth language that it is now also been used as sober in general, though. So maybe it´s on its way into the language. But of course – i don´t know if swedes think of “nykter” in the same way. (Even though it looks like the temperance movement likes to use the word) The reason why it sounds good in norwegian is really because it feels neutral and you can fill it with new meaning. And meaning and associations are the important words here.

Sober has been used in many circumstances for someone not drinking in english. But we also find it in expressions like a “sober occasion”, that is more a funural. And since we want being drugfree and sober to be a positive thing, it`s with some hesitation i use it. But on the other hand i havn`t really found any better alternatives either. It`s short and simple, that`s an advantage. And it does sounds like most english-speaking are OK with it. Maybe it`s more neutral than it sounds like afterall.