Slightly Snowy

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." Mark Twain

The past week in Estonia has been marvellous, I am on full vacation-mode. The best feeling must have been the morning of the 24th when I tried to open my door, but I simply could not. It was blocked by 30 centimetres of snow. When exerting more force it did open gradually with the crunchy sound of fresh snow being pushed away. After putting on my boots and jumping around in the snow like a young cat who sees the white stuff for the first time, I took a shovel and started making a passage to the gate and next cleaning up the sidewalk.

Saunas are the greatest invention. I love the thing, but it is not nearly as popular in the southern countries as it is in my cosy homeland. In Tallinn we have our own sauna in the house and I use it as often as I am physically capable.

When using a sauna, one goes outside to cool down every once in a while. The best part about winter & saunas is that this cooling down part can be jumping into the snow and making snow angels. This is of course followed by screams and erratic movements back towards the sauna. This year when doing the usual snow angels I got caught off guard a little – that day it had just snowed and it was about minus seven degrees, thus the snow was nice and powdery. We know that powder sticks to wet surfaces. Let’s just say this time there were not only casual cold screams but also confused and scared screams.

In Estonia we receive the gifts on Christmas Eve. In my family for every single gift one is supposed to either read a poem or sing a song. It is a fun tradition that has been present my whole life. In my earlier years I knew more varied poems but now I have settled for three poems by Juhan Viiding. To my surprise there were four gifts and I ended up improvising by proposing to sing a group song.

This so-called holiday structure that I have created is not very functional since it does not really exist. I have indeed worked out every other day but otherwise I have not dealt with any of my upcoming schoolwork. I know that I am being very critical of myself, it is Christmas after-all. At the same time I believe that if I organised my leisure and work time, it would weigh a lot less on my subconscious. So basically I am not criticising my lack of work but my lack of organisation. Either way it is a never ending loop of self-criticism that I never seem to fully escape.

Furthermore to improve this focus of mine and achieve more I made the great choice to download a mobile MMO game. This was a bold choice since my Instagram feed and Netflix already control most of my attention. I spent a solid 6 hours on the game on the first day of downloading it.

Most of my friends from last year do not have the absurd 2 exams a week structure but they have exams that are on a lot more material and can be quite stressful. Here's a little something for those students who are not interested in long term productivity per se but mostly passing those upcoming January exams : How to Cram for Your Exam and the Feynman Technique.

That is it for the last post of the year! Till 2022!