The longer I wait to type this out the harder it gets. It’s been almost a full month since my last real post, despite my initial goal to blog three times a week.
I don’t really need to explain myself to anyone, because it is my personal blog and it is my random thoughts and it’s not like anyone was commenting on posts “where did you go???” And I didn’t drop this blog forever, this is my home where I can say things that I can’t really say in my videos.
Suppose I will explain myself a bit though, because what else am I going to write this return post about? I got depressed, simply put. Not majorly, not clinically or anything serious like that. Just some environmental depression because guess what? No matter how much you hear about how not having the sun around in winter can affect your mood negatively, you can’t prepare for it. I love my sunshine, I’m from California, but I’ve also lived in a city that rains more than Seattle and I’m fine with it. I have no problems in Canada with rain for weeks and clouds. The thing I realized, though, is that you always kind of know the sun is there somewhere behind the clouds. You don’t get that feeling in Norway.
I’m in Oslo, too, which is considerably south and sunnier than most cities in this lovely country, but still we got a lot of darkness and also quite a bit of snow, which in the daytime because we are so far south would melt and then refreeze at night to become ice, which no one would clean up from sidewalks and in turn gave me bouts of anxiety every time I left my house for anything, including class.
On top of that, due to the lack of sunlight and a couple of long nights with friends, my sleep schedule was very easily screwed up to the point that for a couple of weeks I could not fall asleep until after 6am, even if I laid in bed without any distractions for hours. That meant I woke up at 1pm, maybe 2pm usually, never earlier than 12pm, so I missed a couple of classes.
Add all of that up with the really negative feelings that started to consume me after posting about not being incapable of self-love, and it felt kind of awkward to come back to this. But I couldn’t just let it stand, my book has more pages than that.
As I said I would in one of my last posts, I have been writing down one thing I love about myself every single day in a journal, to complete 365 days of self love by the end of the year. Starting this Saturday the 14th, I’ll be posting the things I loved about myself in the last month to this blog. I’m not sure how that entertains or helps you (sounds pretty narcissistic really) but it’s kind of what pressures me to make sure I keep up with it, so I will be doing that.
If you read this far, thank you, five stars for you. I’m not sure why you did read this far, I hope it was somewhat enjoyable or maybe gave you insight into the life of an expat in Norway. Either way, thank you so much if you’ve stuck with this train-wreck of a blog. I’ll talk to you soon!
dream.think.work. 