Day 1 of a two-day hike along Sörmlandsleden.

Section 9 goes through central Södertälje and is unlikely to go down in history as anyone’s favourite, least of all mine. I understand why it exists, and it was my own choice to walk it, and if I had to make the decision again then I’d probably make the same choice. But it was rather dull.

Section 10 was pretty typical Sörmland. Some open fields in the beginning, and then rocky pine forests with bilberry bushes. I notice here that all my photos are of the open areas – the whole section definitely didn’t look like this. The fields with their ripening heads of grain just felt so much like late summer.

This was my first solo overnight hike. I had a heavier pack than I normally walk with (sleeping bag and stove and all that, and more food of course) so I was slower than usual. I didn’t know exactly how much the pack would slow me down, so I was a bit worried that I would arrive very late at my planned camping spot. I needed to find the spring which was supposed to be there, so I’d have water for cooking dinner, and I didn’t want to have to look for it in the dark. So my walking was at times less relaxed than usual, and my breaks shorter. (I am a worrier, though I make an effort to avoid it.) In the end I got to the campsite shortly after seven in the evening, which still left me enough time before dark.

I cooked myself an excellent dinner – a hearty stew with carrot and tomato and lentils and wheat grain. Then spent some time reading while there was still enough light from my campfire and the setting sun. Then applied one last layer of mosquito repellent, and went to bed. The mosquitoes were repelled enough to not bite me, but they kept buzzing so close to my face that I had to use earplugs in order to be able to sleep.

I’m forty years old.

Much of me feels just like I did when I was 25. Other parts feel better.

I sometimes think about ageing. I see my mother age and realize that my own old age is no longer distant enough to be invisible and unreal. I’ve noticed wrinkles appearing around my eyes, and my hair is gray. But I’m comfortable in my body. It’s healthy and strong, still. I am probably stronger than I’ve been for years.

I am frustrated with my job, which is now all stress and no joy. But that reached such a peak in June that clarity struck like lightning and dissolved all doubts. It’s time for me to leave that job and move on.

I am somewhat tired of being a mom. Perhaps I’ve let mothering dominate my life too much for too long. Or maybe not – maybe now is just the right time to pull back a bit. There is room for me to be more selfish again, to think about what’s good for me and what makes me happy.

We flew to Newquay for a week of walking and touristing. It’s been a tiring day. An early morning flight, delays, transfer at Gatwick, lugging all the baggage around, a hurried lunch… This awkward combination of deadline after deadline and dead waiting time in between, and crowds and queues and cramped seats and one loud announcement after another (and you’re not even allowed to wear headphones during takeoff which is of course the noisiest part). Exhausting.

It feels good to be back home.

I have missed cooking proper meals, that I can spend more than 20 minutes on, and that involve spices and condiments other than just salt, pepper and sour cream.

I have missed my own bed; I have missed falling asleep next to Eric.

I ask myself for the N:th time why I am still staying at my current job. I guess I’m still hoping for a turnaround. I give it until September, and if the situation is no better then, I will give up.

The team is trying to complete three priority 1 projects at the same time, all of which require constant attention, all of which must be done before midsummer. I’m like a juggler with too many balls, and more are being hefted at me. Other projects that we should prepare are getting no attention, so the next couple of months will be singularly unproductive because we’ll be picking up all the dropped balls.

I am accumulating overtime daily, frequently catching up with work late at night at home. I sleep badly. I’ve missed breakfast twice in a week, and I haven’t gone to the gym in two weeks.

I’m walking precariously close to the line where I will break, but I’ve been doing it for so long now that I know the signs that mean I’m getting too close. When I cannot fall asleep at night, or when I wake up from weird dreams again and again, or when I wake up and yesterday’s stomach ache is still there.

I am so used to feeling constantly stressed – faster, faster! – that I don’t remember how to relax and slow down any more. Yesterday I had to tell myself to pretend I was not in a hurry, so that I could try and figure out how I might behave in that scenario.

By Sunday evening, after two days of focused effort on slowing down, I feel somewhat like a normal human being again. And tomorrow it’s back into the fray again.

After another stressful day in the office, I went out into the garden to look for peace. And photos. Those two go well together.

The first lilac flower I looked at was a five-petal one. Those are lucky in Estonia; I don’t know about the rest of the world. I remember hunting for them as a child. I spent my summers with my grandma at her summer cottage. That is what Estonian children do for summer – get sent to their grandparents. (Did thirty years ago, at least.) Swedish children – today at least – don’t do that. They get sent to camp instead.

I have many fond memories of my grandma’s garden. The cottage was there for us to sleep and eat in, and I remember it well, but it’s the garden I miss. And the forests nearby. Years after I moved to Sweden, she sold the place because she got back a part of her family’s lands, which had been expropriated when Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union. Of course I understand that that place was home to her on a deeper level than the summer cottage could ever be, but I still wish I could go back.

I can’t recreate that garden here, and any attempts to do so would be sure to fail. But it is there at the back of my head when I plant the garden I have. This garden also has birches that sigh in the wind, and swallows that fly past in the evening. There are berry bushes and rhubarbs and strawberries – and lilacs and poppies and hostas and bleeding hearts.

Occasionally I suffer from restless legs in the evening when I’m trying to fall asleep. I’ve noticed that this is most likely to happen if I follow vigorous exercise by around three days of unusually idle life. Case in point: today.

Thursday was a public holiday so I missed my gym workout; Friday was a so-called “squeeze day” so I didn’t cycle to work; today we drove to Sala to visit the silver mine so I’ve mostly been sitting or walking today. Already on the way back from Sala, when I was about to nod off in the car, I was woken from my nodding by a creeping, itching, restless feeling in my legs. The evening was bound to be worse.

So while the family was at home having dinner, I went out and cycled. From home to Drottningholm, then a little circuit on Lovö, back to Drottningholm where I walked around and photographed for a while, and then home. Those 30 km got all the twitches out of my legs.

As a bonus I got to see a very cute swan family in one of the ponds at Drottningholm. The cygnets can’t have been more than a few days old – all downy and wobbly and weak. Soon after I got close to the pond, the family were about to get out of water. The parents got out onto the bank easily; the babies were almost falling over trying to get up the little slope, flapping their almost non-existent wing stubs. When they got, mum and dad were preening and cleaning their feathers, while some of the babies seemed to fall asleep from the effort of climbing those few steps.

Ingrid borrowed my camera. This is apparently what I look like.

Whenever I see a photo of myself, I am always a bit surprised to see how gray my hair is. I don’t notice it when I look in the mirror.

I now cycle to work two or three days every week. I still take the train on my workout days, because otherwise I’m too tired in the evening to do the whole groceries-school-dinner-bedtime thing. Cycling takes about 15 minutes extra each way compared to the train, so sometimes I’m tempted to save that half-hour… but then I remind myself of how good it feels to cycle, and do it anyway.

There’s a good cycle track for me to follow almost all the way, with few pedestrians and few traffic lights. For the most part, few other cyclists as well, but around Alvik it sometimes gets a bit crowded. In the afternoon I leave earlier than most people since I work part time, so the cycle path is nearly empty, which I like even better.

Not only is my path clear – so is the space around me. Whenever I switch from cycle to car for some reason, I feel closed in. I am pushed down and strapped into a seat, with a roof almost touching my head and most of my view restricted and criss-crossed by objects. On a bike, I am high up and in the open.

That is why I like cycling. The exercise is a positive side effect, but it’s not why I cycle. I do it for this feeling of openness – the sensation of wind against my face, of space, of movement, strong and fast and free, with nothing and no one in my way. Freedom. Until I get to the office.

Normally Eric drops Adrian off at school in the morning and I pick up both kids in the afternoon. Once a week we swap, so I get a free afternoon/evening. Today was such a day.

I use these afternoons in various ways. Sometimes I go to a movie. I may go book shopping. Or I may simply work late, digging into some fun project.

Right now I feel no inclination whatsoever to invest more in work than I absolutely have to. I also don’t think I could focus on a movie. So I simply cycled home via a slow, scenic, circuitous route, through parts of town that I rarely visit.

The area around Bällstaviken is an interesting mixture of modern housing (including cool all-wooden modern apartment buildings), greenery that is still mostly dead at this time of the year, scruffy boat yards, and views of industrial buildings across the water.