I didn’t miss things in that way when I lived in Hultsfred because it was a completely different place where my teenage years in Västerås felt very distans. Now I’m all of a sudden back at the crime scene, so to speak, and being here I remember all the good times so much more vividly. It’s one thing to think of what you did in high school when you’re sitting in a town 400 Kilometres away and another thing completely when you walk by your old school.

Perhaps I wouldn’t be as melancholic as I am about the past if I had never left Västerås. Now the end of everything that was my life back then came abruptly. I didn’t lose my friends one by one, I lost them all at the same time when I moved. Life as I knew it didn’t slowly change into something else, suddenly I just lived in a small town in Småland where I had never even set foot before.

Now I make it sound like my life is 2011 is shit and my teenage life was the shit. That’s not the case. My life in 2011 is good and I certainly don’t want to be a teenager again. Except for maybe that feeling of having my whole life ahead of me that I had back then, I do miss that. Still, what I do wish is that I could merge my old life with this life. Take the best from both. At least I have reconnected with a few people from before and that’s wonderful. A small piece of my old life in Västerås is part of my new life here too.

November 2001.
It doesn’t feel like ten years ago.

Still open for Christmas card exchange btw.

I love Västerås. I can go on and on about the advantages of city life. Moving back here is truly the best thing I’ve done in a very long time. I’m so much happier here than I was in Hultsfred. It’s not just the city in itself but also the new life I’m living, the people I’ve met, the things I’ve done and do.

I remember a time when I blogged almost every day. Damn that was a long time ago. I will try to get back to blogging though. I miss it and I miss all my blog buddies.

So what have I been up to? I’ve enjoyed summer, turned twenty-eight (OMG I survived the forever 27 club! Now I’m old for real!), got myself a boyfriend and decided to take a break from school to re-think my life. Most of my family moved to Västerås, the city I live in, just the other weekend. Dad and I have lived in Västerås since February but now mum, one of my sisters and my brother (weekends only, the rest of the time he lives in the town where he goes to school) live here as well. Except for the confusion of not knowing what the hell to do with my life things are good.

Oh well, it’s late and I need to go to bed. Going shopping with mum and my sister tomorrow. So, laters!

I’m on a study break at the moment. Not sure for how long. I need to figure out what exactly to study. Decide on a program which will give me an actual degree rather than taking a course here and there. So all courses I’ve taken but one have been related to web design but it’s time to decide on a actual web design program. Before I can do that I need a break though. For at least six months but more likely for at least a year.

Right now I’m not studying and not working which is leaving me dirt poor but at least free to do whatever I want this summer. Since I’ve recently returned to the big (107 000 inhabitants big) city of Västerås after a nearly 7 year long exile in the small (5000 inhabitants small) town of Hultsfred not having money isn’t a problem. Hey, I live in a city again! I’m quite all right with not being able to afford taking a trip somewhere this summer because I’m not in a desperate need to escape the place I live in any more! There’s quite a lot to do here which doesn’t cost anything. The city festival just ended, didn’t cost anything. This week the world’s largest classical car show with something like 50 000 visitors takes place here. Doesn’t cost anything either! It’s like a huge rock festival but with cruising instead of concerts. One big party for three days. There’s a second city festival taking place in August as well. These are the three big events I’m attending this summer. Besides those there are lots of other things to do as well. Just going to the pub on a Saturday night is an adventure since there are more than one pub to go to. What a luxury! Hultsfred had two pubs, of which one was rarely open. Västerås has lots of pubs and night clubs to choose from. So far I’ve been to six of them. Then there’s of course the beautiful parks, the walk along the small river, lake Mälaren and a whole city to re-explore. I’ve lived here for five months now but there’s still many place left to re-discover. So, no money, not that big a problem this year. Of course I hate being poor. Of course I want more money. But I manage better without it than I would have done in Hultsfred. There’s so much more to do and see here and I don’t long to be somewhere else every single day.

Wow, this actually turned into a real blog entry! And I who thought I’d just write a quick update telling you all I’m well and still busy. Well, I am well and still busy. Laters!

The apartment itself has also been undergoing renovations. When I moved in the place looked kind of shitty. The kitchen was absolutely horrible with sloppily painted purple walls, a ugly beige floor, a tiny stove, a malfunctioning fridge and a dirty ceiling. The rest of the apartment was also very dirty since the last tenant didn’t clean it as well as he should have before he moved out. I know my rights as a tenant so I complained about the walls, the fridge and the cleaning to the landlord who had the fridge replaced, the kitchen walls and ceiling painted and the apartment cleaned. I also got a new stove. And I got all of this for free. With the new floor I paid for myself the kitchen is now almost fully renovated.

Kitchen before renovations.

Kitchen after renovations.

The living room walls are white and the floor beige. I would have preferred blue walls but at least white is a neutral colour I can live with it. The colour theme for the living room will be black and white so I’ve bought a new white book case, a black armchair, painted a old chest white and will be painting the old showcase black. I’ve also bought a wooden floor at IKEA for the living room. The current floor looks god awful. It completely ruins any chance the living room has to look nice. No matter what I do it looks shitty because of that floor.

The hallway is grey and looks OK I guess. I wouldn’t have picked that wallpaper myself but I can live with it. The bathroom is white and pink. It was very white and very boring when I moved in but with the help of pink tile decor, a dresser I painted the same colour of pink and a lot of small details like pink towels, pink perfume bottles etc it now looks much better.

See more photos of my new apartment.

My apartment now feels like a home and Västerås is starting to feel like home too. Living here again isn’t just great though. I lived in Hultsfred for six and a half years so during the time I was gone things has changed. Most of my old friends have either moved away or I’ve lost touch with them. The city itself looks the same though so at times I feel like I’ve travelled back in time. When I walk the road I walked to school I feel like I’m eighteen again. But I’m not eighteen and most of my friends I had back then don’t live here any more. I’m not the same person, life is not the same as it was. At times I get a bit melancholic over this. I want life in Västerås 2011 to be like life in Västerås was back in 2002 but of course that’s impossible. I’ll have to build up something new.

My family is also moving back to Västerås. My father already have a job here so he lives with me four days a week and then go home to Hultsfred for the weekend. It’s kind of weird living with someone after having lived alone for nearly five years but I’m getting used to it. I’m glad I have someone from my family with me here in Västerås but I would of course have preferred dad having a place of his own. I think he would have too. It can’t be fun living in someone else’s home, sleeping in the hallway.

Enough with the talk about Västerås and my apartment now. Besides things connected to my move I’ve also been occupied with digital art. I bought a Wacom tablet back in February 2010 and was so excited about learning to draw digitally. I thought that drawing with a tablet would be like drawing with a pencil but I quickly realized it was not. You don’t have the same control over a digital pen as over a regular one and I could barely draw a straight line. This led me to the conclusion that it would take forever and ever to learn how to use the tablet so I put it away and didn’t touch it for nine months. Then one day I decided to give it another go and realized that I could draw with it, as long as I used the pen as I would use a paintbrush. You don’t have the same control over a paintbrush as you have over a pen and that’s how it is with a tablet pen as well. I’ve been painting with oil colours for years though so I know how to use a paintbrush and when I started using that technique with the tablet pen I started seeing results. My first two paintings were cheat works. To get accustomed to digital drawing I painted on top of photos. My next two paintings I only used reference photos for. I’m surprised at how fast I got the hang of digital painting and I’m really proud of my latest work, my fourth ever digital painting. Here is the fabulous Party Poison aka Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance. Click on the image for the original size version.

Speaking of My Chemical Romance. Their official web shop is selling replica jackets looking like the ones they’re wearing in their music videos for their latest record. The album is a concept album and in the videos they portray characters belonging to that concept. I bought a replica of the jacket Gerard is wearing while in the character “Party Poison”. As you can see it’s the same jacket as in my drawing.

I’ve been working on my site for three days now. Day one I replaced a malfunctioning font plugin with CSS 3.0 font-face code, day two I edited photos and updated the galleries they’re in and now on day three I’m blogging. Be sure to check out the updates in the sidebar. There’s lots of new photos and also new digital art in the creativity gallery. Mostly My Chemical Romance fan art since I’ve been kind of obsessed with them since their latest record release last year.

And that’s all folks. But I’ll be sure to keep updating my site and keep blogging.

I used to think twenty-seven was the perfect age to die. Not that I wanted to die at that age myself but I thought that it sounded like a good age to go. Not too young and definitely not too old. Nowadays I think twenty-seven is way, way, waaaay too young a age to die. You see things differently when you’re there yourself and realize how little you have done with your life during your twenty-seven years on earth.

Saying that I’m twenty-seven years old sounds weird to me. It sound so old. I have come to see myself as an adult and I’m ok with being the age I am but it still sounds old. How did I get here? Next year I’ll be twenty-eight and from there it’s not far to thirty. Where did my twenties go? What did I do with them?

I’m thinking a lot about age, adulthood and life in general right now because I feel like I’m at a breaking point. I began university studies this year, soon I’ll be moving, I’m getting older, I have a new brighter outlook on life. I see my life in phases. Phase 1 childhood in Kalix, phase 2 high school in Västerås, phase 3 adulthood in Hultsfred and now I’ve kind of begun phase 4 with going back to school and soon when I move phase 3 will definitely be over.

And I’m thinking about life. What I’m doing with it. Where I’m going. How not to take it so much for granted. I don’t want to wonder what I did with my late twenties in five years time, like I wonder what I did with my early twenties.

I feel like things are going my way lately. First I get into three uni courses I really want to study and then I get an apartment. On top of that lately I’ve just been in a generally good mood. I don’t know what’s different this year but I’m not feeling the winter darkness like I usually do. For as long as I can remember I’ve been feeling low during the winter because of the cold and darkness but not this year. I think it’s because I’m different this year. I’ve changed. Adapted a more positive outlook on life.

I’ve also grown up I think. At least I feel like an adult for the first time in my life. Kind of ironic considering I’ve actually been an adult for nine years, had my own income for eight years and lived on my own for four years… Still it wasn’t until I turned twenty-seven that I started feeling like an actual adult. There are several reasons behind seeing myself in this new light. First of all I’m technically no longer a youth. At first that didn’t make any difference because I still felt like one but now I’m noticing that I’m having a ever harder time identifying with the youth of today. I’ve become one of those grown ups who look upon trends among the high school kids with a raised eyebrow and go “Huh… that’s odd”. Furthermore I think that I finally actually look like an adult, especially with the growing number of “fine lines” (the nice word for wrinkles). Personally I think I look like I’m at least twenty-four but others guess twenty to twenty-three. That doesn’t affect the way I look upon myself though. Last but not least the mere fact that I’m getting ever closer to my thirtieth birthday has also made me look upon myself differently. When you’re thirty you’re undeniably grown up and not just that, you’re actually on your way to becoming middle-aged. Sure you’re not there yet but you have begun the journey, just like you’re not an adult when you’re sixteen but have begun the journey towards adulthood. In the end age is about how you see yourself. I don’t think I’m old but I don’t think I’m that young either nowadays. I’m undeniably an adult though and I finally feel like one too.

I’ve lived in Hultsfred for six years and never liked it here. But on February 1 I’ll be moving! Before me and my family moved to Hultsfred we lived in Sweden’s fifth biggest town; Västerås, which is located about an hour from Stockholm. I really want to live in Stockholm but it’s impossible to find an apartment there unless you’ve been in the queue for about three years so I’ve beeen looking for one in Västerås as well since I liked living there. And today I got one!

My family are also sick of Hultsfred so they’ll also move to Västerås. My dad will move on February 1 just like me because he’ll begin his new job that date. The rest of the family will stay behind until they’ve sold the house.

All of this is so fucking great because: 1. I’m getting out of Hultsfred. 2. My family will move to Västerås too so I’ll still live close to them. 3. I lived in Västerås for five years between 99-04 so I already know people there and it won’t be like when I moved here and didn’t know anybody.

I’m, happy, happy, happy!

Act 1 takes place between 1983-1988. During these early days of my life I live in three different towns but I only vaguely remember the last one.

Act 2 takes place between 1988-1999 in a village in the northern Sweden. This time of my life is what I think back on as my childhood. Of course my childhood actually started as soon as I was born but I still see these years as my childhood years, mostly because I don’t have a lot of memories from before 1988. Perhaps a better description would be my school years – high school excluded – since I started kindergarten in 1989 and left junior high in 1999.

Act 3 takes place between 1999-2004 in Västerås which is a big city near Stockholm in the southern part of Sweden. This period of time is what I consider to be my teenage years. I was already sixteen in 1999 so some of my teenage years did take place earlier than this but it wasn’t until 1999 that I actually started living the life a teenager in many ways. During this time there were a lot of firsts and I did all those things teenagers do while they’re growing up. This is also where I went to and graduated from high school and became a legal adult in 2001.

Act 4 started in 2004 and is still going on, in the small town of Hultsfred, even further south. I see this as the time of my adult life. I might have been a legal adult in 2001 but I wasn’t living the life of a grown up until I got here. Here is where I moved out of my parents house to my own apartment, got my first job and then started my higher education. This is where I grew up for real, not just on paper.

What will act five bring? I have no idea. All I know is that it won’t start until I leave Hultsfred since I clearly build the different acts of my life around moving and where I live. That’s because moving over big distances like I have means that I’ve left everything I knew behind each time I’ve relocated. It’s been brand new beginnings and starting all over both when I moved to Västerås and then from there to Hultsfred.

Do you look upon your life in this way, in different acts?