The Tale of the Three Cities aka how I found out that homesickness is actually a thing

Ever grow up in a country and yet feel that it's just... not your country?

My 2018

Somehow, I feel like 2018 has been less eventful than the years before; on the other hand, if I think about it a little more, that's not fully true. It has been somewhat fluctuating, in some months I did a ton of things and in others less, and what did I do in November? Beats me. So, this year's summary will be free-form. Maybe I will return to the summary by months as I've always done it before, that remains to be seen.

Whadappened?

It's now nearly a year since my last extremely puny attempt to revive my previous blog and I've finally come to fully admit to myself that it's dead. I suppose I can say it was ultimately killed by the very same thing that made it pretty solid in the first place - the strong maritime/ship association. There were indeed days when I could fill many posts with pure ship talk, and what fun days they were, but even though I've tried to steer the blog into a more personal and less shippy direction, I still felt very much constrained by the initial concept and kind of like I was letting down the ship-enthusiast following I amassed during the first years. That in turn brought about a general motivation crisis where I struggled to find any energy or will to write, even if there has always been plenty to write about. Ultimately I realised that I need to move forward, so, it is time to lay the Fleet to rest and start anew. The 99+1 posts that I wrote there over the years will of course remain where they are for anyone to read.

While my interest in ships and the maritime industry did not quite stand up to the test of being made into a full time profession, it's not all gone. I still very much appreciate a good ferry trip, I enjoy being at sea and I really hope to do some sailing as crew in the future. I made some truly amazing memories both while doing research for the Fleet and my high school thesis in the initial years, and later both in maritime school and on the various ships I got to serve on, and I hope to eventually write some of those "sailor-stories" that didn't make it to the Fleet down here.

In an attempt to learn from my past blogging mistakes, I'm hoping to make this blog as unrestrained as possible. I already have some content, notes and ideas for quite a few posts ahead and therefore I aim for it to become similar in concept and post frequency to my very first blog (which, just like the Fleet, is still public), and add the quite a few years of personal development. Ironically, that first blog was killed off by the Fleet very quickly, as my life became rather ship-centered over 2013 and I felt there was not enough content for a separate life blog. So, here I am now, in 2019, having and solving the exact opposite problem. That is not to say that I regret any of it; I certainly don't, I've had a wonderful time writing and whatever your reason for reading this may be, I hope you'll have a wonderful time too!

As before, this blog does have a Facebook page where all updates will be posted. As of now, I'm still tinkering with both that page and this blog, so I expect they will both look a lot nicer and more complete in the future.

Welcome on board!