Looking at things objectively (trying to, at least) we’re doing great. Ingrid is eating, sleeping, gaining weight. I am eating, sleeping, and not losing too much weight. But I find it hard to be satisfied. It’s not that I am dissatisfied… I just want things to be even better – NOW.

During the first few days I wished I wasn’t so sore and exhausted. I got that.
The rest of week 1 I wished that breastfeeding wouldn’t hurt so. I got that.
Week 2 I wished for more predictability and routine, and to have time and energy to at least eat regularly. I got that.
Week 3 I wished that Ingrid could fall asleep without an hour of fuss – shushing, rocking, holding, dummy-popping etc. We’re sort of getting there – sometimes it only takes 20 minutes, and sometimes we just give up after a while and let her fall asleep with the dummy.

If week 1 had gone as well as today, or even if I had known that everything will go so well so soon, I would have been ecstatic! But now that we’re here, instead of being satisfied, I wish for more… I wish we could find a predictable way to get her to fall asleep when she is asleep, and I wish I had time and energy for something other than making sure the two of us eat and sleep enough.

All of these things have seemed completely inachievable, which is very frustrating. (Much of that hopelessness has probably been due to my constant tiredness. Things always seem a lot worse when you’re tired!) And now is no different. At least now I know enough to recognise the pattern and know that what I want will indeed be achievable, and even quite soon (if the pattern repeats itself).

I guess its human nature to never be quite satisfied. Or my nature, at least.

Edited on November 6th at 3:30 AM

Had a very busy week at work, thus no blog posts during the week. Next week will probably be no different.

The project’s phase-1 code cutoff coincides with my last day at work (this coming Friday), which makes it a very firm deadline for me. And there’s so much still to do! If it was just code cutoff, then I’d know that I can still fix small things during the QA period – but now I won’t be there and it would be a lot harder for someone else to fix anything that I left broken. And if it was just me leaving, then of course there wouldn’t be as much pressure on the project itself.

I don’t think I’ve ever worked as intensely as I’ve done these past two weeks. I’ve worked longer hours, sure – and even longer hours for a longer period. Stretches of 55- or 60-hour weeks weren’t that unusual in Commodities. But then that was a different kind of job: I might work on a presentation in the morning, then do some pricing or modelling, talk to clients, talk to middle office to fix some problem with a trade, then go back to working on the presentation. Now I’m sitting and coding and debugging all day, and that takes a different kind of concentration.

By the time I get home in the evening, I feel completely flattened and squeezed out. Not so much physically – I get home at a reasonable hour, and get all the sleep I need – but mentally. Sit in the sofa and re-read some familiar comfortable book, or see an easy movie. If we had a TV I’d probably spend all evening zapping mindlessly between channels. (So it’s a good thing we haven’t got one.)

I’ve only got one more week left at work and still so much to do… On the other hand, since it’s only one more week, I know I can keep this pace up without having to pay for it later. Then I get 2 weeks at home, and if my brain is tired and not good for much more than watching TV, it doesn’t really matter at all.

I’m actually going to quietly sneak in to the office for half a day tomorrow, to knock some more items off my to do list – and then just pretend I had a very very productive day on Monday!

(Just returned from Stockholm.)

Yesterday and today were spent out in Ljusterö in Stockholm’s archipelago, in delayed Christmas celebrations with the extended Bergheden family. A very varied weekend. One moment we were out walking the hysterically enthusiastic dogs, then later opening all the gifts, which due to Hedvig’s help was a rather noisy affair and involved quite a bit more running around than traditional. Then a long and animated dinner, all-vegetarian because of us two and Eric’s sister Lisa; a very nice gesture. Eric and I contributed a slight English touch: party poppers (much enjoyed by Hedvig) and a Christmas pudding (much enjoyed by the adults). Today: a late brunch, trying out some of the gifts, and generally just “hanging out with the family”, and then this evening a flight back home.

After four days of doing nothing much at all, apart from some shopping, reading, dining and socialising, I am rested and restless. Long stretches of idleness make me feel twitchy and at the same time languid and limp. There’s a very good word in Swedish for this state – seg, which literally means “viscous”, like a thick liquid, implying that the body is disinclined to energetic movement, as if it was moving through thick mud, or as if it was made of rubber, and the brain feels about the same.

Now that I’m home all my energy has come flowing back, and I am wide awake even though it is almost midnight (edit: make that “past midnight”) and I didn’t sleep particularly well last night. Unfortunately I will need to get up in just over 6 hours. With a bit of luck all this energy will still be there in the morning.

I find it very easy to get into a smooth flow of daily activities and lose sight of the bigger picture. It is like I’m slowly falling asleep and living in a doze. Once every couple of months something nudges me and I wake up for a moment, and realise that I had fallen asleep again.

About half a year ago, I wrote the following (this was Before the Blog so it’s an excerpt from a long offline cogitation):

I have reviewed my life before, both long-term and short-term, but recently (last 6 months or so) I’ve done less and less of it, and cruised on auto-pilot. I need to provide myself with discipline and structure, if I want to stay moving and stay on track.
I spend a lot of time on things that are ultimately not important, and very little doing things that are really important.
If I did nothing more with my life than this, I would look back at it with regret.

Re-reading this a week ago, I was disappointed to see that I was exactly in the same place now as then.

I’m not a big believer in goals – goals can only take you to places you already know. But I do believe in moving, in having direction and momentum. There’s always time to tweak the direction later, but if there is no movement then there’s no chance of getting anywhere at all. (Unless a big flying saucer suddenly arrives to pick you up and deposit you somewhere else, but I’m not counting on that.)

This time around, the realisation that I had stood still for 6 months was shocking enough to get me moving for real.

One of the main things I have been dissatisfied with is my job. In a way it seems reckless and, well, presumptuous to complain about it, because it is, in itself, a very good job. (I work for an investment bank.) I’ve got good colleagues, good atmosphere, excellent pay, reasonably interesting tasks; I’m good at what I do and my work is appreciated. The only tangible shortcoming is that the hours are long.

But the main problem is that I just do not care about what I’m doing. I do not think that the job is important, in the grand scheme of things, or that the firm and even the financial industry really deserve much energy to be spent on them. While I can see that efficient financial markets play a role in the world, it’s not something that really makes a difference. Not a job I would proudly tell my grandchildren about, if you see what I mean.

The problem is that I am not sure where I would like to work instead. I know I want to move, but don’t really know in which direction.

So I’m making the first step a small one.

I intend to move from my current “financial / quantitative analyst” role into a software development role. I’ll stay in the investment banking industry, because it’ll be easier to get a new job here; I will start in Excel VBA development, but expect to gradually move on from there. Software development is a more broadly applicable skill than financial analysis, so whenever I decide to move on (which I know I will do), the next step could be a more interesting one.

It’s a step, which is good in itself as it gets me moving. It is also unlikely to lead me in a completely wrong direction so it’s not going to make things worse.

In the last few days I’ve sent my CV to a couple of recruitment firms and already gotten back a dozen job specs. This is looking promising.

I haven’t felt this excited about my life for a long time.

More and more, I’m coming to view having expectations as an undesirable behaviour. It is better to just take things as they come, without preconceived notions about what they might or ought to be like, or what I would like them to be like.

If I expect to get some pleasure from some aspect of what I will be doing, and things turn out differently, I’m setting myself up for disappointment. If they do turn out as expected then, well, everything is no more than expected. If I expect the experience to be unpleasant, my expectations will colour my perceptions, so it is quite likely to be unpleasant. The only positive possibility would be to always expect things to go badly, and then be positively surprised – but negative expectations are not much fun, and I’d rather not spend too much time wallowing in them.

If I have no expectations, then everything that happens is fresh. I have not pre-lived it in my expectations. If it is good, then the goodness is unexpected, and therefore a greater pleasure. If it is bad, then it’s just one of those things that happen.

Not to mention that it feels like a wasteful way to spend my time! Intentions are useful; preparations likewise. But expectations cannot really lead to anything useful. They create nothing other than more of themselves.

I live on the second floor.

The stairs to the first landing have 12 steps; from there to first floor another 12. Then 10 steps to the landing and 8 to our floor.

I know these steps well. I’ve walked them daily for the last two and a half years, after all. So I normally don’t turn on the light in the stairwell, even when it’s pitch black outside.

Everything goes fine until the last step – I walk at a normal pace. But then at the last moment, something stops my foot, and I am really, really careful with that final step, even if I’ve reminded myself just seconds earlier that there’s no need.

I know that there are exactly eight steps, and that I haven’t counted wrong. I know that there is nothing there I could stumble over. (And even if there was, there’s an equally good chance that there’s something further down – then I should be careful about every step.) And I’m never careful when going down, only up.

But none of it helps. I still hesitate.

Sometimes I just barely catch the faint last edge of a fear – of stepping over the edge…

Kati, a friend from Estonia came to London for a few days, and spent two nights at our place.

We went to school together. In Estonia, at least back when I went to school, you stayed at the same school through years 1 to 9. Some schools continue with years 10 to 12 as well. So children spend a lot of time together with the same classmates.

There was a class reunion this August. It was 10 years since they all graduated from high school together, and 13 years since I last saw them. They’d obviously all been in touch occasionally, but for me that weekend was an interesting experience. I hadn’t been in touch with any my classmates since I moved to Sweden (after 9th grade), apart from my best friend at school, and a few people who I bumped into when I visited Tartu occasionally.

Most of them were still more or less as I remembered them. It seems that even at the age of 15, you are more or less what you’re going to be, you’re close to the finished product. Extrapolate the trends and it gives you a good idea of where they’ll end up as adults. The ones who were uninteresting back in school were still uninteresting today; the people who stood out in some way at the age of 15 are the same ones who have some colour and depth today. The whiny ones are still whiny; the fat one got fatter.

That reunion reawoke old acquaintances, and I’ve already met two of them again, when they happened to come to London for one reason or another – one of them this weekend.

I haven’t lived in Estonia for 13 years, and I don’t think I’d particularly like to move back there. When people ask, I say that I’m Estonian mostly out of habit; I don’t identify myself with Estonian people. Nevertheless, I’m discovering now that at some deep level I still feel more kinship with Estonians than with other people. I’ve always felt like an outsider, no matter where I’ve been or with which crowd. But there is a faint sense of belonging when I am in the company of my Estonian friends. Even if I haven’t seen them for 10 years, I am instinctively more open in conversations with them than with colleagues whom I’ve seen daily for the last 6 months. When I go to Estonia, I feel that I have a right to be there, whereas after four and a half years I still have a lingering feeling of being a visitor in London.

Maybe I have some roots, after all.

And the roots go through the stomach. When Kati asked if there was anything I’d like her to bring from Estonia, the only thing I wanted was food: kohupiim, which is sort of a cottage cheese / cream cheese hybrid. That’s the only Estonian food for which I have found nothing even remotely similar in either Sweden or England, so I’m always happy to get some. Kati knew better than that and also brought some Estonian bread, and happened to have some apples with her as well. Estonian apples are the only real apples; Estonian bread is the only real bread.

or,
Begin with the end in mind

Why is the most fundamental question. If you don’t know why, no other question will make sense.

Before I start any non-trivial task or project, I like to be clear about why I’m doing it. And if the project takes more than a few days, it’s worth revisiting that question now and again. If I’ve become stuck, reviewing the why often offers a way forward. If I feel reluctant to work on it, reminding myself of the why gives me either incentive to continue, or if the why is no longer relevant, a good reason to drop the project.

The “why” of this specific post, incidentally, is that it has been bouncing in the back of my brain for about a week now, and I want it out of there.

So, why do I write this blog? Three reasons.

One:
Writing helps me think.

I like to think. I like to understand myself and the world around me. Someone once said to me, “Du är en sån som tänker hela tiden” – “You’re the kind of person who’s thinking all the time”. The tone wasn’t complimentary, but that comment has quite a bit of truth in it.

One of the problems with thinking is that the mind is like a little monkey, easily distracted: dangle a shiny object in front of it, and it abandons whatever it was doing, and plays with the shiny toy instead. Thinking without writing is hard, because there’s nothing to keep me on topic. Writing offers me an anchor – when the distraction disappears, I turn back to the screen and resume from where I was, instead of having to start all over.

Putting thoughts in writing also makes them clearer. The need to put things in words forces me to organise jumbled thoughts, clarify vague ones, and look up missing facts. Sometimes this exposes large gaps in my thoughts; other times it makes me think of new connections between what initially looked like separate ideas.

Finally, writing finalises thoughts. As long as thoughts exist only in my head, they remain “alive”. I am never quite “done” with them. Writing them down gives them a permanent place, which means that I no longer need to worry about forgetting them. And it’s easy to see when a thread of thought is complete, when it has been followed from a beginning to an end, and a conclusion has been reached.

Two:
This blog is a way to keep in touch with people.

Many events in life fall in that vague range where they’re interesting, but not that interesting. I wouldn’t send all my friends an e-mail to tell them about the fireworks I saw, or what I thought about the news about Sony. But I imagine that some of this might be interesting to some of you. A blog feels like a good compromise: not too much, not too little.

Three:
The blog is a letter to myself in the future.

Memories fade, and recede to the background. (Mine do, at least.) I’d like to keep some of them for longer, and to find them more easily. I’m sure that there are many good moments in my past that it would be nice to revisit occasionally, but there’s nothing to prompt me to remember them, so they stay in long-term storage.

This blog is like an album of holiday photos: some time in the future, I can browse through the posts and think “Oh yeah, we had that wonderful holiday in Africa!” and that would then bring back the rest of the memories. But instead of just remembering the big events, I’m hoping that the blog will help me keep some of the everyday things too. So that I can be reminded later about what it was like to live now, and what I was doing with my life.

The three reasons are somewhat contradictory, but I hope that I can get the balance right so that the blog does all three. I try to alternate between them so that none of the three dominates or gets neglected for a long time. We’ll see how it work out in the long run.

When I’m listening to music – especially live in concert – and close my eyes, the quality of listening changes.

Music becomes immediate and intimate.
With my eyes open, I am an observer. With my eyes closed, I am immersed in the music and filled with it. It becomes closer, intensified, more real. It is like opening a door and letting the music in, instead of viewing it through a window. When my eyes are open, I see the musicians on the stage, and there is a distance between us. I close my eyes, and space and distance disappear. Music fills the space that used to be there. Instead of being in front of me on the stage, it is around me.

But at the same time, it is like closing a door, and closing out everything that is not the music – like darkening a room to make a movie projected on the wall stand out better. Music becomes purified and distilled. The material aspect is removed; music is no longer the result of instruments manipulated by human hands, but pure sound. I no longer hear individual instruments, and even the distinction between the vocal and instrumental components becomes blurred.

It is a timeless state of consciousness and joy, very much like meditation or sex. In fact it is like meditating with music, and puts the mind in a similar state of relaxed focus. Everything external and irrelevant goes away. Rational thought is suppressed; the music bypasses reason and goes straight to the soul. Time disappears. I could not tell you afterwards how long it took or how many songs I heard. Sometimes I cannot even remember the melody.

I only learned today that there is a word for this state of mind in the Indian raga tradition. It is called rasavadhana. (*)

This doesn’t work with all music, of course. It needs to be melodious and not too sharp, and even, as anything too sudden will break the spell. Some Indian music works very well, which isn’t surprising given their focus on this. Minimalist music like Philip Glass or Steve Reich has also worked well, as has jazz such as EST.

And this state is not always desirable, either. Sometimes I want to enjoy the human element – see how the musicians enjoy what they are doing, and see their virtuosity in action. Or to remember the melody and be able to appreciate the music from an intellectual perspective as well.

(*) I heard a concert today – Kronos Quartet and Asha Bhosle.