Stress and whats been up

Why haven't I been blogging? For almost 4 months, not a word!

Well, there's no single reason for this, but the biggest reason would be that my schedules tightened up under some formidable pressure. I've been reading for and writing my Matriculation exams, which are now over. This has taken up a lot of my time. What's interesting is how the actual reading hasn't taken that much time, about one to two hours per day, this time in preparation for the exams seem to have occupied a lot more of my life than that. I think it has affected me on a deeper level.

Shaded entirely using the words "LOSER LOSER LOSER...".

While it most definitely hasn't been as dramatic as this drawing would like you to believe, and I think I held up quite well, something strange happened to me last week. I woke up at 7 in the morning, sweating, with this weird, almost panic inducing feeling that I definitely hadn't read enough, but had to get up, quickly pack my lunchbox and go write a test. It made me think a little bit about how the exams and the stress actually affected me.

I've always seen myself as a person who handles stress quite efficiently. And I still do, for that matter. For the most part, I would attribute that to a healthy attitude, and I really think many emotional and psychological problems can be solved with a little bit of attitude adjustment. It doesn't make you immune to the effects of stress, but it's definitely a way of countering stress in the first place.

That didn't quite hold up, though. During this period, I definitely felt the stress in my body, but emotionally I was fine. I make sure to make enough to for myself, I always do. Which I'm sure is why the preparation for the exams took a lot more time than the actual reading.

In further introspection, during the last week before the exhibition I was a part of (Which I actually haven't written about on the blog... I'll have to update you guys on that in a future entry. An exhibition with my classmates.), when I basically worked all day after school for a week straight, I felt the effects of stress much more keenly on an emotional level, because then I literally had no time left over for anything else. No free time in the evenings to wind down, which turns out is pretty important. It's not like I lost my ability to function properly, the inevitable venting was just a lot more compressed and intense.

Anyway, during these last few weeks, it seems the stress also affected my needs. Rather than blogging, or going to the gym, which is another thing I stopped doing during this time, I spent my time with simpler pleasures. Socializing, time with my girlfriend, or just doing pointless shit on my PC. I didn't have the need to be creative, to blog, or to spend time at the gym, I needed a solid base of entertainment to counteract the stress and time spent reading. I couldn't do everything, and I accepted that.

Under normal circumstances, these things would have bothered me. Not keeping up with my routines, like my gym "schedule" and updating my blog, these things would have bothered me. But sorry readers, during these last months, I haven't even thought about blogging. I haven't had time. I guess that's just proof blogging is a real hurri-sport :P I mean, when you have too much time on your hands, you need to occupy yourself with SOMETHING, right.

Anyway, that's all for now. While I feel that I've written a lot more about my personal life than is traditional for this blog, I don't feel I've written quite enough yet. These are interesting times, and I figured I would also let you readers take part of my university applications.

Musings on modern feminism

I have some commentary on what feminism has become today. Or the things it has become, as it is clearly a quite split and general agenda at this point. Feminism doesn't so much strive for a single goal as it is a collection of ideals and a fight towards what is simply a better state of being. Having achieved so much already, though, I don't think some of the methods of feminism today are wise or even logical. Standing on the barricades isn't going to work anymore.

The trend of change needs to make a transition from conscious to unconscious. Instead of fighting for rights, etc., where great strides have been made, we have to focus on the way we raise the next generations. Our children will need to be more respectful, and not share the conservative ideals that serve as the biggest hindrance to e.g. equality in the workplace, home and so on. There are some basic things today that prevent equality between the genders (Speaking on a general level, of course.), and these hindrances are written in our schoolbooks, the curriculum, and the minds of most everyone who grew up... Well, ever. Even the bible is sexist.

These sexist subtleties are what cause the disparity between how we view men and women. They create the stereotypes, which effect our behavior. What I mean by that can be illustrated with an example. The world is getting more equal every day. Thus, older books contain more sexist material. Be it ideas or values, or sexist rhetoric, it affects the way we think. The sexism affects us whether we want it to, or not. And so female acceptance of what is indeed an unadvantaged position is born. We need to be more conscious of how the traces we leave affect those who come after us.

In a perfect world, every school book, every educational film, everything, would be remade to be completely gender neutral. And it's not just about literature and written word. We have to get rid of all the underhand jabs that the female gender has to take. The sexism of the everyday. Same goes in the LGBT-cause. The only thing that fights progress is the fact that the generations alive today were taught to hate certain things, taught by the books they read and the conservative ideals passed on from grandparents to parents to children. Taught by the very language we speak. It all comes from a more sexist place, a world that doesn't exist anymore. A heritage that affects us whether we like it or not.

While that is perhaps not a feasible outcome, or even desired (Not everything can be perfectly gender neutral.), some things can be done, which leads me to what was actually going to be the first paragraph in this blog entry;

So the other day I listened to a debate, and saw a couple short films. One on the radio (YLE), the other on a paid TV-channel.

As you can probably tell by me writing this in the first place, things escalated quite severely. I don't even have time to write about the short films, the particular chain of thought that I've been writing about just turned out to be way too long. Anyhow, what set of this whole entry was that one of the members of the debate pointed out that women have no good word for their reproductive organs. It's okay for a child to talk about snoppar, which is dicks in swedish, but it's not okay to talk about fittor (vaginas). In fact, there isn't really a good word for it in swedish. The debater went on to use the word Snippa, which is actually a pretty good word.

The problem is, though, when I was 5, I probably had no idea there was such a word, and I'm not sure many girls did either. In fact, when I was 5, Snippa wasn't even a word. It was accepted into Svenska Akademiens Ordlista in 2006. The debater and I wonder, did most of the young girls get slapped when they spoke of their genitals? Because besides snippa, I really can't think of another Swedish word for vaginas that isn't considered naughty. Boys talk about dicks all their lives, but women only learn the proper terminology once they have sex-education in school.

And it's the small things such as this that together constitute the biggest obstacles that feminism faces today, and cause the predisposed, everyday sexism that no one really seems to pay much attention to, but it's also is what makes all the difference.

Sadly, the drawing is completely unrelated. I wish I had something more fitting to show, but alas. It's a far since evenings sketchings, which I'd crammed in somewhere inbetween reading for my matriculation exams, which are now fortunately over. I don't think I realized how much pressure the exams put on me. While I believe I also handled that stress quite alright, it may have affected me in more ways than I felt. But as I am now planning on giving writing on a regular basis another go, I'll save that bit for a future entry, this one is long enough as it is.

No Shave-November

So I participated, again. To grow a beard, it's... It's a very strange kind of satisfaction. Sure, it's not beautiful, it's itchy, and it grosses your girlfriend out (and most other women), but among men, it's appreciated. Beards seems to be ingrained into our definitions of manliness.

Does that mean men are attracted to this manliness, and women aren't? Or, maybe women have a different idea of what manliness is. Or, women are simply pragmatic. Practical minded creatures. A beard can be a real hassle, especially when it gets in your mouth. Particularly, I can imagine, when it's not your own!

Please excuse my poor stop-motion acting and hilarious expressions. They're a comedy in their own right.