Hindsight is 20/20...(?)

   We hear it all the time; that "Hindsight is 20/20" and it might be. It is only once we've stepped out of the past that we can look back and clearly see what we've left behind.
   So what are we leaving behind this year?

   First of all; we lost Christopher Tolkien, so the year started off quite poorly. Then there was Mike Resnick. And then Terry Jones. And Max von Sydow. Albert Uderzo. Then came the news of Sir Ian Holm's passing and every Ringer on the planet must have shed a tear or two. The musical genius Ennio Morricone passed on. Chadwick Boseman was ripped away from us way too young. Diana Rigg. Terry Goodkind. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. David Prowse. Jeremy Bulloch. Thank you for everything.

   As for me, I've had a... year. I know I called 2019 an "extra bitch" but holy hell... 2020 didn't have to go so hard. Was it revenge for having had a too good a time? Did I do too well in late 2019? Was I too happy? Was that the issue? Did I jinx it? All I know is that some stuff and things happened:

Some raised fists for Raised Fist at Pustervik


• I went to some really fancy parties in January and February - oodles of glamour, debauchery and rose-tinted glasses.

• Watching Dropkick Murphy's was a wild experience after which I had happy bruises.
• Imminence and Raised Fist was insanely good, I shit you not I think I had a religious experience.

• Enter: Covid-fucking-19. What a shitshow.

What's there to say? 

   Everything was cancelled or postponed. Life was put on hold. Feelings were held back only to explode uselessly into empty air.

    I would have gone to see Russell Howard, but that was pushed to 2021. I would have gone to experience Amaranthe, but that's now been pushed to the spring of 2022. The plan was to party all night long all through The Medieval Week, but as the crisis worsened in April I gave up on that... and then came the physical festival's cancellation announcement just shortly after; instead launching "the Medieval Week: Plague Edition" - an entirely digital festival I didn't spend more than perhaps ten conscious minutes on.

I was isolated. I was heart-broken. I sunbathed.

   The Faun concert I was going to use as a mental band-aid after not going to The Medieval Week was pushed forward a year. My second Imminence concert for the year was cancelled. 

• My skinny ginger flat mate turned 8 years old. He is officially middle-aged, and seem to be getting more and more snuggly with age.
• I turned 32, and as good as it feels to survive another year, them years are fucking getting to me.
• I started going to parties again in September. Meeting people, having fun...

   ...as it turns out so did everyone else, but on a much larger and intimate scale than I, so covid-19 really started to pick up speed and numbers again. Back into social isolation we went. Or at least some of us did. On top of all of this, the rotten cherry on the poop sundae that was 2020; smashing through the door came the X-Mas madness like the unwanted bastard it is. Instead of thinking too hard on what I couldn't do I finally started making good use of my time and so December was the start of a string of monthly tattoo sessions starting with a sperm whale and petunias.

Best of 2020:
   Movies: Jojo Rabbit, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, aaaaaand then there was covid-19 that shut down any and all cinema-going from March and onwards.

   Shows: FEMINIST FREQUENCY RADIO - GO LISTEN WITH YOUR PREFERRED PODCATCHER. The Witcher. I mean, COME ON ❤. I Am Not OK With This was kinda awesome. Killing Eve's third season left me quite disappointed to be honest, but the second season of What We Do In the Shadows made up for that. The Great was fuckin' hilarious. The Umbrella Academy season 2 was mindblowing. Every other episode of Lovecraft Country sent my mind spiralling. His Dark Materials.
   Books: I read 90 books during 2020, and this time around 40 of them were not written by cis men - a vast improvement from last year (but I can do better). Dmitry Glukhovsky's 'Metro 2034' was almost as good as the first book of the series (which is very). 'Chrysalids' by John Wyndham is a "Best of Scifi classics" I can get behind. Stina Wollter's 'Kring Denna Kropp' was frikkin fantastic. 'The Truth' and 'Night Watch' by Terry Pratchett were both hilarious and thought-worthy. 'Way Station' by Clifford D. Simak was good. 2020 marked my third reread of 'Lighthousekeeping' by Jeanette Winterson (still awesome). Continuing the 'Newsflesh' series by Mira Grant with 'Blackout' and it's still going strong. 'Moon Over Soho' and 'Whispers Underground' by Ben Aaronovitch, 'Creatures of Will & Temper' by Molly Tanzer, 'Horns' by Joe Hill were all great reads. Brent Week's 'The Black Prism' was a solid 5-star all the way through. If you, like me, loooove Aliens you should read 'Bug Hunt'  - an anthology edited by Jonathan Maberry. A worthy finish to a good book year was 'Women's War' by Jenna Glass.

   Comics: Spells on Wheels by Kate Leth, Saga vol 4, Skottie Young's Deadpool series, Matt Fraction's Hawkeye, SF SX (Safe Sex) by Tina Horn.
   Events: RAISED FIST. Yes. I'm adding that. When the rest of the year was misery, my early spring was fantastic enough, and that Raised Fist concert will for ever be my best thing about 2020. It's also pretty awesome how archaeological digs through Sweden in the last couple of years will force us to rewrite our history books concerning basically everything we're taught in school about those pesky little years between round about 700 to 1300 AD (hint: the east coast and Birka wasn't nearly as important as the historians of Stockholm would have us believe...). As for the rest of the world's good news; efforts to regrow parts of the Great Barrier Reef has seen great successes. The bees living on the roof of Notre-Dame de Paris survived the fire of last year and has thrived through the pandemic, just like a lot of other species of animal around the globe enjoyed the greatly decreased tourism flow. New European legislation will make it easier to have household appliance products repaired in an effort to make appliances longer-lasting and thereby saving on energy costs. With the dismantling of more coal-based power production, carbon emissions continue to decline in Europe. Human ingenuity created a bunch of different vaccines to combat this latest pandemic in record time.

So that's good I guess.

Is hindsight 20/20? Nope. We've learned fuck all as a species in 2020, which is about as much as we've learned every other time a pandemic has threatened to wipe out great masses of people. The sick, the poor and the marginalised will always take the brunt of the blow.
   People are truly stupid.

   2020 was a shit year.

   For next year I just want no more of 2020, and fewer things to bite me in the ass, please and thank you. But this newfound willingness to reach out to strangers can stay. Even if it started in pure desperation it might prove to be useful in 2021.

   So lets bring it. Lets survive. Lets get fuckin' vaccinated and rid of this thing.

Please, care for your introverts

 

We're not OK.

Holy shit y'all

   I didn't actually think I could do the thing, but I did the thing. 5k in 30min. That's the goal I set, but didn't think I could reach, this spring when I started running. Without Zombies, run! it would have been unthinkable and without a kick in the butt at the gym entirely impossible. This feeling is exhilarating. Revivifying. I met my goal for 2020 y'all. Holy shit.

C-c-c-changes...!

...or no changes at all?

   Things seem to be returning to normal, but not really, and things are weird, and the world is shit, innit? I'm trying my best to stay positive and keeping up my energies for the entirety of this last week of work before I'm going on vacation. No Medieval Week this year since they've gone digital (I might listen in on a few lectures, haven't decided yet). I'm planning on meeting up with friends, we might enjoy some table top gaming and I might enjoy a laugh and a beer or three. I might also enjoy a whole lot of sleep. And books. And crisps. And comics. And stuff.

   In short; I intend to try and meet up with people during my vacation. It might prove to be a somewhat shortsighted and selfish decision in hindsight, but since I'm not planning on having any organised orgies with total strangers I'm pretty much convinced that it'll be fine. I need to be with my people. My nerds.

Welcome to Hell

I work retail. Food-ish part of the spectrum.
And since the latest of the corona viruses' been around business has been a-booming.
So we have sales rocketing through the roof but only the one extra staff so far. Which means that everyone has had to do extra hours and extra shifts and work with somewhere roundabouts twice as much wares as we normally work with this time a year. It's like having Christmas sale rates for months on end.
It's fucking exhausting.
I was supposed to be out of the country this week and get myself a bigger tattoo. I cancelled the trip but kept the vacation time and I reeeeeeeally needed it. Some good food, lots of naps, some podcasts, some good drink, some books and comics, some of that glorious rest. Yeah. Yum.

...and then 2020 was like; "Here, hold my corona...!"

   So who else hasn't had to change much of their everyday life?

   I've had to change worryingly little.
   What I have changed though was substantially important to my somewhat frail but recovering mental health. I am absolutely fuming inside about how all the activities and parties I had planned on going to have been cancelled one after the other. I'm not saying they shouldn't have been cancelled; they absolutely should have been cancelled for everyone's health's sake. What I'm saying is that it's fucked up my schedule and I'm shit with changed plans once I've set my mind on something - so much so that everything else also falls to pieces. I'm deeply disappointed is what I'm saying. And it scares me to be reminded of the fact that I'll have to start again as soon as this shitstorm has passed.
That's what I'm saying.

   H-O-L-Y S-H-I-T, people, this is absurd.
   I'm expecting the zombies any moment now.

Femme Freak

   What up nerds?
   How's everyone doing? How have you been? I've been... tired.
  I've had a low period creativity-wise and it's showed its ugly face through me not being able to make myself heard through text like I have in the past.

   I still have opinions, and plenty of them obviously, but I don't feel like I gain anything from writing them down anymore. In the past, I've written things down here for mostly myself - the fact that a few (very few) people actually read them is a significant bonus. I'll admit that Goodreads has become a bit of a substitute for this blog and rightfully so seeing as I've been reading so much more in the last two years, but it also pains me to see this platform being left desolate after having meant so much to me for such a long time.
   Writing's always been my number one coping mechanism.
   Nerd as I am, I still keep a journal though: it's a great way of sorting through difficult thoughts and as I'm also a nervous wreck at the best of times that's been super useful throughout. Writing is also a great way of sorting through ideas and impressions which is why I've been using this platform and also why it's lost its appeal steadily the more I use Goodreads.

   Life is tough. Things changes.
   Change is good though.
   It has to be.
   I hope it is.

   As an endnote I'd like to mention why I thought of this at all, and I need all of you to tune in to Feminist Frequency Radio for me. They're everything I ever wanted to be in life: feminist killjoys coming for your beloved media - especially if you're a white cis dude with leanings toward misogyny and racism. It feels good to the core of my nerdy heart to listen to these women talk about media that I too have a close relationship to. To hear them echo the same thoughts I have about certain nerd media is revitalising and encouraging as fuck.
   It's good.
   Nice to know that I'm not the only one.