So what's with the silence huh

 This blog has been hella quiet for a good year or so, other than my yearly summary that I posted as I always have. That is definitely not a result of a lack of material, rather the opposite. 2019 was extremely busy, I took loads and loads of photos - and all was going fine and dandy until my blog post about the Tall Ships Races 2019 in Fredrikstad and my experience as a volunteer there lost several hours of progress I had made to it twice. That admittedly killed all of my motivation to work on it, already being enough material for two tightly information-packed posts. As all that went down, I had more exciting things happen, among them two wonderful domestic trips within August, and a short notice trip to Miami in mid-September. As experience shows, if you don't get the exciting thing that happens posted while it's still hot, other exciting things will steal that spotlight and the time and motivation won't be the same again. Add the fact that I'm enough of a neat freak to want all my posts in chronological order, and the fact I usually feel the need to direct my productive blogging energy bursts towards other seemingly more important things, you get quite the deadly cocktail. I must confess that I've had the Miami-post all done and ready for publication for most of that quiet year, but I've been putting it off in hopes that I'll one day get to blogging about what happened prior. But I'll publish it on the anniversary of the trip which is very soon now, that's a promise. 

And then 2020 hit; it's been a rather interesting year to me so far; nothing has gone as expected, which, I guess, is a universal experience. I can't recall much from the pre-covid months, and I guess I'll leave that for a future 2020-summary post, but I had planned myself a rather badly timed visit to my parents in Estonia, and due to having several important errands to run, decided to go ahead with it. Predictably, I got stuck and what was intended to be three weeks ultimately turned into four and a half months. To anyone who knows of my general aversion to Estonia and how much I've grown to love Norway despite having some difficulties getting settled here (NEVER move to another country unless you really have to, I've done it twice, it's not fun) would guess it was a minor personal disaster. However, it went far better than I would've ever expected if anyone had told me I'd spend that kind of time stuck in Estonia in advance. I sat quarantined for two weeks after my arrival doing unapologetically absolutely nothing. And yet exactly one month and one day after my arrival I had my first workday in the Ericsson factory. While living on mum's couch with all my stuff in a suitcase by my side and working full time in a factory may sound a bit sad, I'm actually very grateful for those three and a half months of my life, because I got to take care of and treat myself to some things I'd been dreaming of for years, I gained an invaluable experience and I returned to Norway so much stronger than before. It was an interesting time in many ways, no doubt. 

Nonetheless, I'm very glad to be back, especially after at times feeling like I'd never be able to return. I've promised myself not to worry or stress myself needlessly about dumb stuff that needs not be stressed about (by which I refer to almost everything); while I do have a fairly good idea of what I want from the nearest year or two, only time can tell what the future brings. 

A side effect to living with mum was having daily access to this helluva character of a cat. She's 15 years old now, being the result of 8 year old me REALLY wanting a kitty, so any time with her is much appreciated. She is also the main cause of the severe kitty fever I've developed since my return.