Feeling blue (but mostly tired)

I don't know if it is the impeding winter season (lasts way too long in Sweden), me feeling left behind, the old Malmö depression, being broke, or what, but my emotions throw me between highs and lows.

Rachael is having a great time over in Seattle, and sometimes I feel jealous that I am stuck here, but man does she deserve it! She didn't exactly have the time of her life living in Malmö (except for the part about living with me :), and I hope she is savouring every second of her newfound independence and friendships. I know she is.

Me feeling this way is not about her, even though I miss her like hell. It is about me being unable to live in the present moment. I'm like forever stuck between the nostalgic shimmer of was-time, and my unrealistic ideas of what it will be like in then-time. This goes straight against my new life philosophy, and I will stop it right here. Right now.

Manifesto:
In whatever situation you find yourself, and whatever events, good or bad, led you there, remember that the past is solid as rock, but the present is moldable like body-temperature clay. The future history is part of you, but remember: your only instrument of change is the present!

You can affect the outcome of any situation, not only by your actions, but also by your thoughts, your mood, and most certainly by the way you act towards other people.

Thankfulness does not go by unnoticed.

Everything is connected.

And I mean it!

Home Again

I used my last money to get back home to Sweden, after an eventful trip up through the meditteranean beaches of France, ending in Lyon.

It was time to go home. It feels great to be here, staying with my brother, awaiting my suplet apartment to fall back into my hands.

Here I am, in Barcelona!

I live in a smallish apartment in El Raval, Barcelona, Spain. It's smack in the middle of all the action, second floor balcony perfect for people-spotting. I was invited by my cousin-in-lwaw, Linus, to stay with him and a couple, Maria and Christoffer. In the mornings (in Spain, morning occurs at 10 a.m.) Linus and Christoffer go to work at a web bureau downtown, and sometimes i get there later in the day to scan pictures, and surf the web. Otherwise I'm mostly hanging out at the MACBA square, around the corner from our building, where a huge amount of skaters hang out on a daily basis, always ushered back from the museum entrance by the security guards.

Barcelona is Big Brother. Everyone seems to be suspicious. Every store larger than your local butcher has its' own rental cop, and there's cameras Everywhere. It's a place heavily infested with paranoia, and going out in Barcelona wasn't at all the "once-in-a-lifetime" experience I thought it would be. It was merely like going out anywhere, the drinks were as pricey as in Sweden, and the people were acting very uptight. I don't know, maybe I hit the wrong places, but I prefer the beach where all the Irish, French, Belgian, Canadian and open-minded Spanish people are at night.

If you want to ses pictures from my trip here from Amsterdam, go check out my photoset at flickr!

From here, I'm headed north-east towards Poland and Finland, see you there!