At a friend’s 60th birthday party.

I am making active efforts to meet new friends.

I’m an introvert but, it turns out, not a hermit. With no more husband and now mostly just one child every other week, I feel a need for more company. And more outside impulses: it’s not just talking to someone that I miss, but going to places I wouldn’t think of going on my own, trying new things.

My colleagues are fun but I don’t know that I’d want to spend even more time with them. My childhood friends are far away. I’ve grown apart from most of my friends from my student days and don’t feel that I have much in common with them. My hobbies are such that I only meet retired ladies, and I really don’t feel that I’m one of them. I don’t want clones of myself, but there needs to be some common ground for me to enjoy someone’s company.

Now I’ve joined an online friend network-ish site – not a dating site but just a place to meet people – and had two great “friend dates” today. Fika with one, and a long walk with another. We tried a new café, and walked along paths that I’ve never walked before, and had great conversations.

The plan for the walk was agreed a week ago, and even yesterday the forecast for today was “partly cloudy” and around 7 degrees. What we got was windy, overcast, and with intermittent sleet. We looked at the sky, looked at each other, considered cancelling, but went ahead anyway.

At one point we passed a small sauna next to a pier, and there were four brave people on their way into the water for bathing. Not running from the sauna into the water and back out again, but leisurely walking towards the water or even just standing around in their swimsuits. Meanwhile I was wearing four layers of clothing.

The photo is a view of Årsta bridge between Södermalm and Årsta. I wonder what the graffiti painters have stood on for painting those designs. Canoes? Ice?

After literal years of practice, how can I still struggle to start a workout session? None of the arguments seem to bite and the body just resists it.

I know it will be fun once I have started. I know it will feel good when I’m finished. I know it is good for me. I know I can do it.

And still I have to push myself to do it.

Looking back, there has been progress. It is actually easier than it used to be. I no longer need to tell myself that I’m allowed to not finish, and I no longer convince myself by picking the shortest videos.

What works? The usual stuff. Committing in advance. (Twice a week, on the weekdays when I work from home, at lunchtime.) Not allowing myself to think about it. (I said I was going to do it, so there’s nothing more to it.) Removing all obstacles and smoothing the way. (Paid subscription, with plenty of videos I’ve tagged as favourites. Gym clothes and equipment in easy reach.)

I am envious of the people who go to the gym with a spring in their step and who look forward to it.

Me, waiting for the bus, next to a very shiny glass building.

First bicycle commute for this season.

What I knew but had sort of forgotten:

How sore my sitting bones will be after the first few rides.

How much time with my own thoughts this gives me. It takes me roughly the same forty-five minutes to get to the office by train or by bike. By train, the trip is chopped up and full of distractions. I don’t experience it as a forty-five-minute period, but as a sequence of small stretches of time. Ten minutes to the station, wait a few minutes, find a place on the train. Read for ten minutes. Get off, get through the tangle of Stockholm central station. Repeat the above on the metro. Walk one last bit. Going by bike, in contrast, there is a lot of just… time passing while I move forward. Time to think. Or to not think.

How much energy it takes, when I haven’t been doing this for a while. I can’t really bike slowly. Not if I’ve got 13 km to go. It’s not that I go all out, but I definitely arrive with an elevated pulse. Do that twice a day, and in the evening I’m not up to much more than lounging in the sofa.

March is not winter, but also not spring. It’s not not cycling season, but it’s still cold enough for me to be tempted to take the train.

If I pack and prep everything now for tomorrow morning, then it’ll be easier to just grab the rucksack and cycle, than it would be to re-pack for a commute by train.

When there’s too much “stuff” going on around me, my executive function just shuts down and I do nothing. It happens mostly when I feel like I have no control over my time. One child wants to be woken so that we can have breakfast together. The other needs lunch to happen at a particular time, and then to be driven somewhere straight after. And then some more in the evening.

It’s not that it takes up a big part of the day. And it’s not at all that I don’t want to do these things. I am happy that they still prioritize mealtimes with me instead of being away with friends.

These fixed points spread out through the day chop it up and I feel like it all slips away from me. Then it feels like there’s no point even trying to take any control over the rest of it, and I just let time pass between those moments.

The mere knowledge that I could be interrupted at any time is almost as bad as actually being interrupted. When the day is over and everyone else has gone to bed and I know that nothing more will happen, that’s when I finally breathe out, look up, and feel like I could actually do something.

Charles Dickens reputedly felt similarly. “The mere consciousness of an engagement will sometimes worry a whole day,” he’s quoted to have written.

What can I do about this? Make a list. Commit in advance. Remove myself from the situation even for five minutes to get out of the tunnel and clear my head of this illusion.

Things I bought in Japan: wooden spoons for eating.

I have large wooden cooking spoons and forks and spatulas, and even larger wooden serving spoons. Plenty of wooden butter knives, even a wooden cake slice. For years already I’ve wished for a good wooden eating spoon, but never found one. I’ve run across crafts stalls selling spoons of roughly the right size, but they’ve all had a shape that’s more decorative than useful. A good eating spoon fits the shape of the human mouth. And is made of a suitable material! A spatula can be rough and scratchy, but an eating spoon needs to be as smooth as silk.

Why a wooden spoon? Because wood is soft and warm, where metal is hard and cold. I mostly don’t mind forks, but metal spoons sometimes truly feel like lumps in my mouth, and I wish there was something better.

One of the shops in the cookware district in Tokyo must have been run by someone like me. They had dozens of varieties of wooden spoons, in all kinds of sizes and shapes and types of wood. I bought three likely-looking variants, hoping that at least one would be good. All roughly the same size, but varying in angle, curvature and material.

What I didn’t think to do is take photos of the labels. They’re three different kinds of wood, but which ones?

Was going to sole the slippers but didn’t get very far. Made a template, cut out two pieces of leather, but couldn’t find the energy to actually sew them on.

I brought a cold with me from Japan. Runny nose, ticklish throat, tiny bit of a fever, no energy. All I want to do is laze around and do nothing. Preferably even less.

I am back after spending fifteen wonderful days in Japan with Ingrid. Now I am all jetlagged and emotionally hung over and have 1200 photos to process (and more still uploading from my phone) and the house desperately needs a deep clean and I don’t even know how to catch up with all of that. One small step at a time, I guess.

I managed to stay awake until 9 yesterday evening (which is 5 in the morning Japanese time) and mostly sleep until 4:30 this morning – long enough that it counts as morning and not night. Good first step.

Coming home from a long trip to somewhere really different always leaves me in a strange emotional state. It is absolutely nice to be home, sleep in my own bed, eat my own food, cuddle with my cat. But it’s jarring to leave behind the intense, packed days, full of new experiences and people and places and no everyday duties. I feel displaced and empty.

For the blog catch-up, there will be a new category for all the Japan photos and posts. I will be filling it up gradually so you can check back whenever you want, and let you know when I’m all done with it so you can get it all in one go if you prefer.