What are all these clothes?

I have too much stuff. My inner nomadic soul is suffering from owning this much stuff. But I just love all of my stuff. I haven't figured out how to get rid of it all, but I just dream of owning little enough so that it wouldn't tie my down so much to where I'm living at the moment.

I'm doing my second load of washing today, but I don't understand where I am going to put it after it's clean. My laundry basket is so full I can't fit any more clothes in it. My wardrobe is full. My chest of drawers won't even close. I have a clothes horse up, covered in pyjamas I washed yesterday. And guess what? The cliché: "I have nothing to wear", quite often describes the thoughts that are going through my mind when I'm trying to get dressed.

This is where I lived and how I dried my laundry in first year.

Why is that? Do I really have nothing to wear or is everything I'd like to wear in that overflowing laundry basket? What is all that stuff that is making my wardrobe full? Do I ever wear them? How do I find out? Should I literally just wash everything and start taking notes of what I am actually wearing? How many clothes does a person like me actually need anyway? Do I want to become a person who wears the same clothes everyday? Am I already that person without realising and am just trying to hide that truth from myself by owning all of those other clothes? When was the last time I bought new clothes anyway? When was the last time I donated some clothes to charity?

Home sweet home and all of my lovely clothes. In 2008.

Okay, the last time I bought new clothes was last week. I bought two new vests from Primark because the ones I wear all the time are so worn I'm worried they will fall apart soon. And the other week I took a couple of jackets I never wear to a swap shop at uni. So I am trying. 

But maybe I should do more. Should I really start taking notes of what I like to wear? And create statistics? And renew my wardrobe so that it looks like a wardrobe that belongs to a 25 year-old (me). I'm worried there's a big "backlog" of my teenage years; clothes I am now keeping there just in case I decide not to do laundry for 6 months. Completely good clothes that I could definitely wear so that I wouldn't have to walk around naked.

Definitely not naked.

According to Jenna Marbles it's just embarrassing to keep wearing the same clothes all the time. I don't entirely follow that ideology but as a girl living in this society I am still probably affected by that. And also alarmingly I can recognise some similarities in my behaviour and this video:

My wardrobe is a lot smaller than hers though, you can see it in her "How Guys Get Dressed" -video. And I am planning to move house at some point in the not so distant future and I really need to get rid of a lot of it before that. I need to go through my sock drawer so that I could at least occasionally find matching socks. But I am sad to throw out all of those odd socks. But I honestly don't know what I could ever do with them. I am not a crafty person. And I don't like wearing matching socks anymore. I've done it. It was great, but sadly I have now moved on. I also need to get rid of my old clothes that I am saving as a backup. Perhaps, I should organise my clothes into categories when I take them down. Primary clothes and secondary clothes? And then I can donate all of those secondary clothes when it's time to move on with my life. That could potentially work.

Do you ever experience these problems? And how do you manage to throw out your old clothes?

My favourite cosmetic brands

Hi.

I was going to write this post before I got completely stressed out by consumerism and plastic and all that unnecessary waste that just ends up in landfills. But because it's almost Christmas and cosmetics have been my favourite thing for 2 years now, I thought I'd write this post anyway.

When I was really lonely and depressed I cheered up my life by going shopping for some cosmetics. I bought so many cream, lotions and make-up products. Trying them out really made me a lot happier and boosted my self-confidence!

Earlier this year, Brand Spark International listed the most trusted cosmetic brands in Canada, USA, China, Turkey and Mexico that were ranked by consumers. You can check all of them by following the link. I originally got the idea for this post from a Finnish cosmetics blog Ostolakossa where the blog's author Virve Vee compared the popularity of different brands in different countries and also told her own favourites. 

So today I'm going to tell me what my favourite cosmetic brands have been past these 2 years! With some thoughts on how I'm feeling about the future with them. If this isn't something you're interested in, feel free to skip this post.

For example, these are the winning brands in China:

Face cream:  Olay

Eye cream: Estée Lauder

Make-up foundation: Maybelline

Facial wash: L'oreal and Nivea

Shaving products: Gillette

Nail varnish: OPI

Body wash: Dove

Shampoo & Conditioner: Pantene

Hair styling: Vidal Sassoon

Toothpaste: Darlie

And these are the winners in Turkey:

Facial skincare: L'oreal and Nivea

Make-up foundation: L'oreal and Max Factor (Covergirl)

Facial wash: Neutrogena and Nivea

Lipstick: Avon

Mascara: L'oreal and Max Factor (Covergirl)

Deodorant/Antiperspirant: Nivea

Shaving products: Gillette

Body lotion: Nivea

Body wash: Palmoline

Shampoo & Conditioner: Elidor and Head&Shoulders

Hair styling: Hobby

Toothpaste: Ipana ja Colgate

Feel free to check out the other ones too, I'm sure they are all well known and popular brands.

I actually recently realised that many of the popular brands are owned by gigantic companies.

Have you ever heard of Unilever?

Maybe I'm just naïve but I was really shocked when I realised that so many brands are owned by this massive company. Unilever owns more than 400 brands!

Out of the brands listed earlier more are owned by them by not.

They own Lynx (Axe), Dove, Flora (Becel), Knorr, Lipton, Omo, Sure (Rexona), Surf and Sunsilk (Elidor), Ben & Jerry's, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, Pot Noodle, Turun Sinappi, Simple, Pepsodent (Signal), TIGI, TRESemmé and many others!

And of course such a big company has a lot of money to put on marketing and buying self-space in order to make sure that the naïve consumers can easily see these products when they go shopping.

But anyway, back to the point of this post and my own list! Because of course you all really want to know what cosmetics I use (almost) daily.

Face cream:  Boots Botanics. Especially the 81% organic hydrating cream.

Eye cream: Lumene.

Make-up foundation: Skin79. I have now discovered Asian BB creams and don't want to mess with Western foundations anymore.

Facial wash: Lush.

Lipstick: Lush.

Mascara: Physician's Formula Organic Wear.

Deodorant/Antiperspirant: Lumene. But then I experienced an aluminium crisis and started making my own.

Shaving products: Gillette. Although I'm not sure how to feel about this ecologically or socially.

Body lotion: Soap & Glory.

Nail varnish: Lumene Natural Code.

Body wash: Lumene Angry Birds. I got obsessed with this one after I tried it at my friend's house.

Shampoo & Conditioner: Lush. I'm increasingly more and more obsessed with Lush, have you noticed?

Hair styling: Batiste. Dry shampoo is all I use at the moment. I've considered replacing it with just talcum powder though.

Toothpaste: Sarakan. I've had enough of fluoride.

I actually used to use a different toothpaste, but then I read about the dangers of fluoride and felt that I have been poisoning myself enough with it, and decided to switch to a more natural alternative and hope for the best. Then last week I bought a bamboo toothbrush and it works really well! I actually feel that my teeth are cleaner than they were when I used a plastic toothbrush.

I am a bit sad that many of these products contain so much unrecyclable plastic. I always use a Gilette razor where you only have to change the blade bit instead of needing to get a whole new razor! I wish everyone would do the same. Yes, they are a little bit more expensive, but they are also so much better than those awful ones you can buy in bulk. So much plastic ends up in landfill from them and you only use them a couple of times! If you need to shave, please buy a proper razor.

Lush is a fantastic company that makes bath and beauty products with environmental values in their mind. Their products are amazing and I am considering trying more of their products in the future. For instance, they have a mascara that comes in a glass bottle and it probably would be better for the environment if I used that one instead of ordering the one I currently use from America.

Also, in the field of soap and body lotion, I'm considering challenging myself and trying to make some of my own next year. It can't be that difficult, can it?

So, what are your favourite cosmetics? What sort of aspects do you think about when choosing these products?

You don't have to have a favourite to all categories but you can just copy-paste this template to comments and let me know! I'm a bit weird, but I'd love to hear what products you guys use! Oh, and this is a completely unisex questionnaire. Everyone is allowed to answer.

Face cream: 
Eye cream: 
Make-up foundation:
Facial wash: 
Lipstick:
Mascara: 
Deodorant/Antiperspirant:
Shaving products: 
Body lotion: 
Nail varnish:
Body wash: 
Shampoo & Conditioner: 
Hair styling: 
Toothpaste: 

Maybe I'm making it too difficult

Hello world,

It's been difficult to write. Mostly because I feel that I have too many thoughts and opinions and I'm not confident enough about them to post them here for the world to criticise about. But maybe I could take it as a learning exercise and we could learn from each other? This is not an educational platform where I am supposed to say how something should be done. This is supposed to be a place where I learn to share my opinions and thoughts.

So, what sort of thoughts have I had recently then?

At the moment I'm feeling a bit distressed about the consumer society we live in. The fact that I currently work in an industry which is highly dependant on people buying stuff isn't helping. It got worse after I read this article about how a 23-year New Yorker, Lauren Singer, has been living a "trash-free" life for 2 years.

Lauren Singer. Picture takes you to her blog.

Blogging about this is very scary because I'm not supposed to say anything about my work and because it seems to be a cool trend in blogs to show of new items that people have bought. I was going to write some shopping related posts about my favourite brands, but now I'm so stressed out of all the stuff and trash. I still have a month before I need to make any New Years resolutions, so maybe I really need to think about this.

In the meantime, let me tell you a story.

I went swimming again. This appears to be a reoccuring theme in my blog, but I'm okay with it. I went there straight from work and I had to buy some wash stuff because I had only taken a towel and a swimming costume with me in the morning.

I bought this:

It's colour-free and perfume-free. I wish it was also paraben-free, but apparently you can't get everything. I spent half an hour choosing this, so in the end I decided to go for this one instead of this Sanex one. It had so few ingredients that I decided to choose the Simple one because it had cucumber extract and citric acid. Do you people ever read the ingredients lists of the products you buy?

This turned out to be a decent buy for the £2 I spent on it. I didn't only wash my body with it, I also washed my make-up off with it — including my mascara! I don't understand people who go swimming without washing their make-up off first. It will end up in the pool? Some people also apparently put conditioner on their hair before they get into the pool. Why do they think it's okay? But anyway, this shower gel was okay on my face and it got my make-up of so I used it for washing my hair also. My hair got clean and I no longer understand why someone would need to buy normal shampoos. I actually compared the INCI of this shower gel to some basic shampoos and it looked the same. It seems to be just advertising so that people would buy more products.

My scalp is dry though and can't really even tolerate normal shampoos so I sprayed it with my scalp moisturising mixture that I used after my last traumatising trip to a hairdressers when they washed my hair 3-times with some awful hair dresser shampoos that made my scalp very itchy. I'm not sure what I put in the mixture anymore but judging it by it's scent: apparently a lot of cider vinegar. It helped.

Normally I wash my hair with either a shampoo bar or a budget solution: olive soap!

It's good for my hair and there's no need for conditioner. It's also cheap and "trash-free".

Now please excuse me, while I go and buy myself a bamboo toothbrush.

Even the fish keep swimming.

Hi!

Did you notice how silent it has been on my blog recently? There has of course been a good reason for it. 

I've started a new job. It has been very exciting. I'm so happy that I have a job now! But it has also been hard, and I've cried and I've been tired. During my work days, it's pretty much the only thing I do. I wake up, get ready, go to work, come home, eat and sleep.

I know, that for most of the living population it's normal to go to work and live a demanding life and never to have any freetime. But for a lot of people it's harder. I really hope that I will be successful in my new job, and don't end up quitting it because of stress or unhappiness or fatigue. So far in life I've learned that some things are just not worth it. Life is short, and if something is constantly making me unhappy, I'm not going to stick with it for any longer than necessary. I could always move to Thailand and start a beach cafe for tourists instead. Or to try something else.

No really, I am being serious! Once upon a time, I was going through a break-down thanks to uni stress and went travelling for a week. I then posted pictures of my trip on Facebook and got comments from an almost-stranger saying that I need to stop being so lazy and going travelling using my parents money, and instead I just need to get a job like everyone else. That person had no idea what I was going through. He didn't know that I didn't spend a penny of my parents money on my breathing break. He didn't know that I had sent hundreds of applications and not landed a job. And he didn't know how to be happy.

I want to learn how to be happy. I want to work somewhere where I enjoy working. I want to earn money and spend it on things that make me happy. I want to travel and see the world.  And I really hope that the job I have now will be one that I will enjoy.

We're also looking for a new flat closer to my work, and hopefully also closer to university, where Laura studies. At the moment it takes me 1½ hours to get to work, and I have to take two buses, which don't have a great on-time record. They've also occasionally just broken down, when I'm trying to go somewhere. So if we would find a good flat somewhere where I can just take one bus to work, I think I could live a lot more stress-free life.

I'm also dreaming of having a bath. That's probably the only thing I miss in our current flat. I love all the bunnies, central heating, living room, kitchen big enough to cook in, backyard, patio and shed... Maybe I'll do a post showing our current flat before we move out. And if we don't find a good flat at a good location, we will probably have to get a car.

How has your life been recently? Feeling the spring yet?

I started yoga

Hey, guess what?!

I did what I promised in the last blog post and I have started yoga!

Before my first class last Tuesday, I had literally no idea what to expect. 

I bought an exercise mat just 15 minutes before the class. I thought it might help. Apart from that I was wearing my regular clothes: a tiny dress with some coloured tights.

The first class which was titled hatha vinyasa. It was led my a nice Norwegian(?) girl. There were lots of people in the class, and I tried to speak to a few people, but everyone else already seemed to have a friend group. It was okay, I didn't go there to look for friends. So I lay my mat next to some guys mat. I didn't even know which way was the right way up or if it mattered. I asked the guy and he said that he had no idea, because it was his first time too. 

Then the class started. I was very happy that the guy next to me was a newbie too, because the girl next to me seemed to be a pro. She did all sorts of difficult looking things while I kept falling over on my mat and lying on my face.

I somehow had had an idea that yoga would be calming, which misled me to thinking that it isn't really a sport. But oh man, it was hard work! I discovered that I don't have any muscle strength, flexibility or balance skills. I can barely breath.

And today I went to my second yoga class. I was more prepared and was actually wearing gym clothes this time. Today's class was titled ashtanga yoga. This time the teacher was an Indian(?) guy. I looked forward to seeing what this class had to offer since it was supposed to be something different. I had come in a bit late thanks to the local bus service, and the front row was already full. But it was okay, there was still space in the backrow and the class hadn't started yet. Soon I was very glad that I was in the back corner. This yoga type wasn't to my taste. It was a lot faster than hatha vinyasa yoga had been. I still didn't have a clue how to do those positions and trying to copy others didn't really work, because they kept jumping to the next one when I was still trying to figure out how to do the previous one.

The worst thing, however, was that the teacher was super-scary. Although it was a beginners class and some people (including me) were there for the first time, he put out really strict on rules how well the positions need to be done. And then he walked around touching people who he thought could do them "better". For some reason though all these people were pretty girls. Almost 50% of the people there were guys but for some reason he didn't touch them. But every time he picked a girl and folded or pushed them deeper into the position. Even if the girls said they were fine or that they didn't want to. "Oh, yes you can do it", he said and pushed them while the girls screamed and said that it hurts. "I will help you face your fear", he said. And afterwards if a girl glared at him he said: "Don't worry, nothing got dislocated."

This really made it impossible for me to try and concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing. The guy next to me looked really concerned too. I think it was his first time as well. I was really glad that I wasn't wearing any make-up and that I was wearing an old t-shirt and baggy trousers like all the guys instead of tight leggings like all the other girls were wearing.

All the screaming, the fast tempo and really stressful times make me wish I hadn't gone to that class in the first place. Is ashthanga always that awful?

At least I don't have to think twice to which class I want to carry on going to. I guess I'll just stick with the class the nice Norwegian girl was teaching.

Because yoga makes me think of tropical beaches.

I, however, feel that learning how to do yoga will be really good for me. And my back. And it will help be develop the skills mentioned earlier.

Have you ever tried yoga?

Contact Lenses

Hello you!

I've had pretty awful time poking my eye over the past week, so I thought I'd come here and tell you about it.

As I told you in November, I've had glasses since I was 2, but only recently started wearing them more often. I had an enjoyable glass-free decade, but it's gone now. 

To be honest, I find glasses fairly annoying now. They slide down my nose when I read, and they get dirty all the time, and it makes me feel like the world looks blurrier than it does without my glasses. If I was rich, I would buy those amazing disposable glass-cleaning wipes, but they are really expensive and I also hate cumulating rubbish. One day soon, when I'm less annoyed with my eyes and more annoyed with rubbish, I will tell you ways how you could cumulate less rubbish too.

Occasionally I leave the house looking like this.

But anyway, the time for me to try out contact lenses is here.

Emphasis on the word try.

It hasn't been easy.

Goodbye, 2013.

Hello!

I've read several blog posts were people have been looking back to last year. I'm a couple of weeks late with this, but I finally decided that I could do it as well. At first, I really didn't want to. But maybe it might be good for me? It could be therapeutic, and maybe I'd see that last year wasn't completely pointless. You can't get forward if you live in the past, but you also can't get forward if you ignore what's happened.

Would you like to hear what my last year was like?

January

I welcomed the year 2013 in London. Satu and I had gone to see the fireworks at Thames. I felt hopeful. We spent a few days eating cheap chicken burgers and buying expensive underwear. Then we went to Glasgow where obviously everything was closed because it takes so long for all the Scots to sober up after their Hogmanay celebrations. When the shops opened again we spent a day shopping cosmetics. Later that month I went on a little runaway holiday in Germany. By myself. I visited a friend in Cologne and went to see my host family in Rheinland-Pfalz area and spent a couple of days exploring Bremen by myself. I met interesting people, and visited Finland as well, because the flights were only 12 euros from Germany.

February

University term started again. I was trying to keep everything together with a part-time job that was taking way too much out of me, managing seminars and all the uniwork that I was already a bit behind with, a crumbling relationship, loneliness, and recurrent migraines. I realised that Skype is actually a very useful tool when you want to socialise with your friends when you can't be in the same place. I also ate lots of Lucky Charm cereals, although it was really expensive to buy them in UK. But they seemed to be the only happy thing in my life at the time. What else would you expect from the gayest cereal there is?

March

I had serious social anxiety problems, migraines and was running out of energy and managing everything was becoming more difficult. I watched a lot of Youtube videos, practised wearing make-up, and spent a lot of money on cosmetics. I was mentally very close to reaching a breaking point, but still managed to make it to a few social events, like the Gaylidh - my university's LGBT society's annual ball. I also signed the petition for equal marriage in Finland.

April

The month started with a break up. Then there was a field tip I had been dreading for a half a year. I really wasn't looking forward to it, but it didn't end up being as scary and awful as I had feared. The month went on and I started enjoying my life as a single. My friend Tom came to visit and we did a lot of touristy things that I hadn't had the energy to do alone. We visited Glasgow, went to a football game, ceilidhed, ate pub food and drank beer.

May

I flew to Finland to throw some rice in a family wedding, celebrate Vappu with my friend Tiia and met Laura again after several years. I flew back to Scotland, wrote some essays, gave a speech in a conference and went camping. I started to find reasons to be happy again, and began to build up my confidence. Laura came to visit me in Scotland and I drove 15 people to a dance with a minibus.

June

I quit my job and phoned my mum to tell her that I had a girlfriend. Laura and I went to Pride Scotia in Edinburgh. I listened to a lot of Mindy Gledhill. I participated a Gothic themed pub crawl. I was also working on my dissertation, rolling in soil and practising augering.

July

I went to North Rona, which is definitely one of the most incredible places I've ever visited. I also realised how burned out I was and started a sick leave which finally gave me the chance to start stitching my mental health together and finding out what's up with those migraines. It's a long journey, but that's when it began. I showed Laura more of Scotland, enjoyed summer and when Tiia came to Aberdeen, we celebrated our friendship by drinking champagne and buying pretty dresses.

August

I spent to whole month - more or less actively, looking for a new place to live. I also went for a holiday in Finland, where I got to spend some quality time with my best friends. I also visited Tallinn and Copenhagen for the first time. Satu and her brother visited Scotland and we did some sightseeing with them. 

September

I returned to university to carry on my research.  Laura and I moved in together. The move allowed me to start feeling mentally better and to change GPs. I tried to get an appointment so that I could finally get referred to a specialist, but there were long queues. Kata returned to Scotland and became our flatmate. The three of us had a civil war against the bugs living in our house. Laura started university.

October

I got new glasses, started learning Japanese, and bought myself a swimming pool membership. Lots of swimming, sushi and Japanese television. Even my laptop turned Japanese. That's all I did this month besides sleeping. I had the worst medication ever which meant that during two weeks I was only awake for maybe 28 hours. Then I stopped taking it.

November

Our flatmate Kata went to Africa and Laura and I sat at home in the dark. I burned lots of candles. I finally got blood tests done, and the results were abnormal enough to get a referral to a specialist. It was great, but I was feeling so ill and was worried that my brain might leak out. I turned to some natural remedies while I was in the 3-month long queue to see the specialist. It snowed and we decorated our house Christmassy.

December

I had a birthday, danced a little bit and burned candles. It was cold, so Laura and I bought pink onesies and hanged around the house looking cool. Then it was time to fly to Finland to spend Christmas there. The person in charge of the weather hadn't got my memo about snow, so there was no snow the whole time I was in Finland, but there were friends, family, warmth, food and a cat.

It's been quite a year. I'm not sure if I've now told a bit too much, but perhaps it's something I have to do in order to say bye bye to 2013. Were you surprised to hear something? Have you said bye bye to your 2013 yet? 

Now lets carry on with 2014. This year we have 340 days left to change our lives.

Non-disastrous family holidays?

Happy new year, bunnies!

I hope all of you had enjoyable holidays! My holidays this year were different. For me. For most people it's probably normal to spend Christmas at their childhood home and see lots of family members, but I hadn't done that for 3 years. And this time I brought someone with me! There was some great potential for holiday conflicts.

Is it too late to tell you about my Christmas? I mean it's so last year... But nevermind! Last Christmas was such a positive surprise for me that I'm going to tell you about it anyway. I didn't get the snow I was hoping to see but everything else went very well.

I've never spent a Christmas with a partner before. As much as I've enjoyed spending my Christmas Eves wrapping presents in a Harry Potter -like cupboard at the bottom of the stairs in my friend's house in Edinburgh, it felt more meaningful to light up candles to family graves and warm up afterwards in the sauna with Laura. She met all of my family members and I met hers. And to my great surprise, everyone was nice to each other. I still can't believe how well my family behaved and how nice and welcoming Laura's family was! Did I mention that her sister made me TARDIS earrings?

Laura and I stayed at my mum's place over the Christmas. On Christmas Eve we had dinner at my grandparents, and then visited graveyards. In the evening, we went and had dessert at my grandparents' friends' house. My brother wasn't pleased about all these activities, because he was very keen on opening the presents. But we did get home before midnight to open them! On Christmas morning, my best Loimaa-friend, Anna, and I went to church. I tried to take Laura with me but, she told me that if I wanted her not to be grumpy for the rest of the day, I'd better let her sleep. But later that day, Laura and I went to Anna's and and a little Christmas celebration with her. 

On Boxing Day it was time to dine with my Dad's family at my grandad's. After that Laura and I drove to Hyvinkää to her sister's place, so that we all would be ready to go and visit her grandparents on 27th. With all of these scary family meetings, and introducing Laura to my grandparents, I had completely forgotten to be nervous about meeting her grandparents. But I was welcomed in with lots of hugs! And I found my godfather's meat boutique's products in their fridge. It wasn't really what I expected to find there, considering that we were 200 kilometres from the boutique. But again, we ate more good Finnish Christmas food, and got an opportunity to use their wood-heated sauna.

But Christmas is not the only thing to celebrate in December. My mum turned 50 on New Year's Eve and we had the biggest Birthday-Hogmanay party that we've ever had. And my friend Tiia graduated as a occupational therapist which of course was a great reason for a party. First she came and celebrated with just Laura and me in Loimaa's vibrant nightlife, and between Christmas and Hogmanay she had a party at her place in Turku.

I am so happy that I got a chance to spend so time with my best Finnish friends. And there were many opportunities to enjoy saunas! And to drink coffee. Sauna, Finnish coffee and my cat are the three things I miss the most when I'm in Scotland.

It was such a relaxing holiday. I thought that meeting so many family members would be stressful, but somehow hardly any of it was. The things were about to get a bit steamy when my mum got stressed out about our packing. I can understand that it maybe looked disastrous with two hardly closing suitcases, and a couple of over-filled backpacks and handbags. Especially when my only shoes broke and I had to buy new ones on our departure day. But instead of a huge fight, we managed to escape and went to drink some coffee with my friend Jonna and my goddaughter. We came up with great plans to go and see Moomins next summer!

This holiday was exactly what I needed. Especially when we had some mini-holidays on the way back. When it's cheaper to travel via Stockholm and Oxford, it's always a great idea to stop and enjoy those places as well. Stockholm was cute and Oxford was the best as always. I hadn't been to Oxford for 5½ years, but it was still just as wonderful as I remembered it! But I'll tell you more about our return journey and the adventures we faced in another post.

Is there something you would like me to write more about? 

Does photo quality matter?

I've been getting really stressed out about cameras recently. 

I've always enjoyed taking photos. When I was in primary school, I had a film camera. I was able to take 24 photos － sometimes 25 or even 26 if I was lucky! － before I had to take them to the photo shop to get them developed. In 2004, I got my first Nokia camera phone as confirmation gift. I used it to take some cat photos and random selfies that I could put on IRC-galleria, the online site the Finns used to use before Facebook. But I still took all holiday photos with my lovely film camera. After I got back from a language course in Oxford I took 8 film rolls to the photo shop. The lady who worked thought it was a lot. The times have changed. Imagine if almost 200 photos from an adventure-filled holiday was still a lot!

We visited Paris on the way home from Oxford.

In 2007 I got my first digital camera as a present. I still used my film camera a lot though, and normally took both of them with me when I went somewhere. I have several albums filled with photographs from all of my adventures. But nowadays all of my photos (well not all but some of the best ones) just get uploaded on Facebook. That's the only place where I have some of them, thanks to Microsoft Support that deleted them from my hard drive.

Fitting room mirrors have been handy whether I've been using a film camera or a camera phone.

But I really love taking photographs. They help me remember all the fun things I've done and amazing people I've met. I feel like photographs keep me together. My memory has been very bad recently and it has really helped that I'm able to look back in time in form of photographs, and that way being able to remember things that I would have otherwise forgotten. I might be a completely different person if I hadn't had a camera all of those times, because I wouldn't be able to remember them!

I've used a digital camera i.a. at Avebury, Aberdeen University and Stirling Castle.

  

What's the point of going on a holiday if you can't take photos to remind you of the sunny days when you sit at home and it's raining outside?

Who even am I?

I find it very stressful to introduce myself. Especially when I have to tell people more than just my name. Should I tell them things that I don't even identify with? Not lies, but just things about me that I don't feel that really describe me very well. It would help to keep the distance and stop them from knowing the real me. I am afraid to tell people anything that would let them close to knowing the “real me”. What if they don't like me?

Am I cool enough to pull off these shoes?

Lately, I've started thinking about this problem more. I'm not sure why I feel that way. But then again, I'm not even sure how I would describe myself. What could I tell people? I'm not even sure if I am enough anything to present myself as something.

Then, I stumbled across a tumblr page called "...and that's who I am". There were many pictures with little sentences all ending with “and that's who I am”. I scrolled down the page and saved all the pictures I felt I identified with on my computer. It actually felt really therapeutic. I feel that seeing things that I identify with written on the computer screen made me feel that it was more justified to see those things as something that I am. It kind of felt like I was given a permission to be me. I looked at those pictures again today and I think I might be ready to be brave enough to share those pictures that represent me with the blogger world. It's scary, to show people who I really am, but I think I might be ready to do it. The blogger world is probably tired of “and that's who I am” related blog posts, but this is my first attempt, so I'm going to do it anyway.

I am going to use these pictures as a tool to show my readers who I am. I have saved so many pictures that I will have to do this over several posts. To make it even more personal, I'm going to say something about each picture. Although I will be using pictures I saved directly from the tumblr page, showing these things makes me feel very naked.

This first post will be the deepest and the darkest one.

Are you ready?

Maybe I'll grow a moustache this November

November is here!

It's been exactly a year since I first realised I suffer from migraines. Last November, I had the worst migraine of my life. It lasted for 2 weeks. I occasionally felt slightly better and occasionally just wanted to lie in a pitch black room and die. I had had headaches before but never for that long and I used to just take ibuprofen for them.

A year ago also stopped taking the contraceptive pill. 10 months earlier a doctor had given it to me, because I told her about periods that I had gotten every two weeks. To me, it didn't make sense to start the pill because of it. But I also hoped it would improve my acne so I tried it.

Photo from Mirror.

I wouldn't recommend the Pill to anyone who doesn't need it for something hormonal. I think it's too easy to start. Many young girls start taking it because they think it makes them feel more "mature". It's good to use contraception, but it's definitely not the only method of contraception there is. Bayer has been advertising the Pill as a "miracle drug" for all women's problems: it would provide contraception, lets you decide when you want to have your period (you can even stop having them completely!), it will cure your acne, help you control your weight, relieve PMS, etc. I think medicines should not be advertised like that, especially since it's misleading and has so many side effects. They are selling something as a product that makes women believe that their bodies' natural cycles are bad and that they should control them with chemicals that will mess up their whole natural cycle and hormones. 

I might write a blog post about my thoughts on contraception at some point. But really, my headaches and migraines got a lot worse while I was on the Pill. Those were not the only side effects I experienced. In the end I stopped taking it mid-sheet because even the thought of swallowing one made me feel ill.

But even after I stopped taking the Pill, I've been getting migraines every week. I've tried a lot of medication for migraines, but everything seems to give me side-effects I'm not ready to live with. Triptans for instance did not keep the migraine away for more than a few days, and they made me really thirsty. When I say really thirsty, I mean really very thirsty! I went out to eat in a restaurant, and I had to drink three jugs of water during the meal. And I obviously had to leave the table several times to go to the toilet too. It wasn't normal, or safe either because being so thirsty probably meant that there was something even more wrong in my body. Recently I've been taking beta-blockers for the second time. They keep the migraine away, but they also keep me asleep. I haven't been able to stay awake for more than a few hours recently, which has made it pretty much impossible to function as a normal person who lives a normal life full of everyday things. 

I went to Holland & Barrett's to get some proper multivitamins because I really had serious problems with lack of energy (which may have been just due to all the medication I was on). They advised me to get some multivitamins and B vitamin that could boost my energy levels.

It didn't help me stay awake though and I ended up talking to Kata about it.  We were wondering what I could do, because I really had to stop my preventive migraine medication. Then, Kata made me realise that my migraines might be hormone-related. Maybe there still is some bad oestrogen in my body from taking the Pill? I think I need to get my blood checked out for all the hormone levels to find out why I cannot stay awake and why my head hurts all the time anyway.

Studenty challenges and tips!

Some people think that students are just lazy nocturnal creatures who don't need to do much apart from lying around all the time. Especially arts students who rarely have classes to go to. Because I have years of experience of what student life actually is like, I decided to write this blog post to show some of the challenges I've had to face during this past week. It's shocking how hard life can sometimes be for students. And because some of you are students and already understand what your life is like I have an added bonus at the end of this post where I will provide you with fun decoration tips that will make your flat look more student-like.

This week

There are a few essential things in life. The most important one is food. Students love food - especially free food. There's this wonderful pub called Korova in town. Before, I've only ever ended up there when I've been fairly drunk - occasionally too drunk for them to let me in. But last Wednesday we had a little flat outing and went there when they were serving free food. It obviously was mostly just a trick to get students in so that they would buy drinks. This assumption was confirmed when we walked to the bar to ask about the food and the rude lady behind the bar told us that "it's not free", and that we "have to buy drinks first". Well, we did that, and got a plate full of pub food. Not bad for less than £2.

You can't get free food everyday though, and sometimes you have to cook. Cooking is not easy though.

Kata experienced a pea attack.

Frozen peas especially are not easy to deal with. Sometimes they jump on you when you open the freezer. And then there's peas all over the floor - and that's a safety hazard.

Peas where they should be.

If you survive to cooking procedure, you get to eat homecooked food which unsurprisingly tastes a lot better than free pub food. But student life challenges don't end there. Sometimes after a meal you want something sweet. But student fridges are funny places.

Hygiene+ has kidnapped my Swiss chocolate!

My chocolate has frozen to the back wall of my fridge. Is it trying to ensure that I really want to eat the chocolate? Anyhow, it's very inconvenient.

The next thing is not really an inconvenience but it's a thing that students don't tend to do. 

Ironing.

Poor Pikachu.

I had to iron this week. Turned out that the Pikachu costume I ordered online was vacuum packaged and if I had worn it without ironing I would have looked like a very wrinkled Pikachu.

See, hard life isn't it?

Okay, now for the  awesome home decorating tips!