An Unfunny Hiatus Message

Sorry guys, but I might as well put my blog on indefinite hiatus.

I have reached what I normally refer to in my diaries as the "Spring Panic".
Where other people get overly depressed and anxious during winter and then blossom into beautiful flowers when the sun comes, I freak the fuck out during spring; I spend my time productively by flopping around on the floor crying maniacally and becoming increasingly paranoid about social interactions and interpersonal relationships.
Don't worry, this is completely normal for me, and will hopefully pass around June, where it will be replaced by "Summer Apathy" (which will make way for "Autumn Hopefulness" and then "Winter Ennui").

The sudden realization that "final exhibition" actually does mean "final exhibition" and that there will be people, living breathing judging people, looking at shit I've created and I have to be there to take in their real-time reactions, is giving me the creeps.
Also the fact that where I before didn't care too much about my grades because fuck it I wasn't going to make it as an artist anyway, I now actually want to get a decent grade in case I ever want to do an MA in comics. Which I guess I do, but it depends if I get the funds for it? And if I'm even cut out for it? I am very confused. Existential crisis ahoy! And this time I don't have excessive amounts of caffeine to help me overcome it.

So while I have two blog posts written out (they are named "Changing Habits" and "Why Exercise Sucks (In The Beginning)", just so you know), I can't with good consciene type it in and work on the pictures for them when I have a PDP portfolio and a visual diary and an artist statement and a final project and an exibition to prepare for.
I will get back to it, maybe slowly work on it during breaks for my other stuff.

But for now, I'm really sorry. But there's too many balls in the air for me to handle.
Make your own (a)sexual innuendo for that.

Cooking Is My Dump Stat

Let’s get this out of the way: I am no cook.



I knew I would eventually have to brave the desolate wasteland that is my culinary expertise, making something more complicated than bread and more bread.

Breakfast of champions.

I do like the IDEA of cooking. Every so often I get a rush of gastronomic inspiration, where I become completely convinced of my own genius.
I rush out in desperate glee, buying turmeric and anchovies and rice noodles under the false assumption that somehow, SOMEHOW, my ability to transform raw ingredients into dinner will have magically improved since last time.
Spoiler alert: it never has.

So instead I end up with what I can only assume regurgitated rarebit looks like, and I vow to never again venture into the kitchen for anything other than milk and spying on the neighbours.



But this week was DIFFERENT. Now I had a goal. A purpose. I would make dinner, and I would make dinner for greater good. There would be epics sung in the honour of this dinner. Women would swoon. Yes, there would be a lot of swooning.

The Dream

But first I would need supplies.
I got some good recipes from my veggie friend as well as my newly acquired cookbooks.
Of course, reading these were a challenge in and of itself, since the preferred language of cooks seem to be mystical runes written down as dictated by a three year old with a limited, but inventive, vocabulary.



I chose two formulas for the week (a simple vegetable soup and a slightly harder Moroccan fish dish) and ventured fourth into civilized society to steal their edibles.

I quickly acquired a deep, passionate love for the local organic food store. It had everything that I needed that could not be found in other stores.



After buying spices and ninety different kinds of beans, I was ready to tackle the fiery pits of our kitchenette.



Yeah, okay, I still couldn’t cook.
But the purpose behind my actions were still evident. There were fewer “oh well I’m sure teaspoon and spoonful is the same thing there’s no way this is going to come back and bite me in the ass later”. Not as many “I’m sure it’s supposed to look like that”. And surely a lot less of “oh well I’m only here for the dead animal anyway”.



But in the end I managed to feed myself without dying, so I count this week a success.


Victory!

Tune in on Saturday when I go up against my greatest nemesis: exercise.

A Last Chance To Binge

My brain didn’t take the knowledge of the upcoming health-challenge well. In a last desperate attempt of killing me with clogged arteries, I came down with a heavy case of what pregnant women often refer to as “holy fucking shit if I don’t get this food RIGHT NOW I am going to murder everyone”, with my chosen food being chicken (and also ice cream).



Oh, chicken.

I’m pretty sure chicken is the best meat. I don’t have the hard science on this but it’s one of those things that you don’t need science to know. You can make everything with chicken and it’ll be instantly better. Except ice cream. Or maybe chicken ice cream? Japan probably has chicken ice cream. It’s the kind of thing Japan would have.

Oh Japan. You never disappoint.

Japanese candy traditions aside, I have finally entered the first of my (hopefully) many weeks of not having health that sucks on toast. I have collected an impressive array of fancy meat-free recipes,

And now two weeks have passed, and I’m quickly running out of things to put into porridge.



See, unlike my previous assumption, finding recipes for lunch, dinner and gallant 40-course restaurant dishes is no big deal. With my trusted internet at hand there is no food that can’t be found. Anything. Hell, I found a recipe for elephant soup. For those pesky big family reunions, I guess.

But finding quick, everyday “heat up and push into mouth” nourishment was surprisingly difficult.
I am used to a slightly different mindset.



I could, I suppose, start using porridge and cup noodles as a substitute, but that kind of obliterates the purpose of being healthy to begin with.
Luckily for me, though, I actually have people on the Internets who love small woolly creatures enough to support me in my venture of not devouring them.

The first thing I learned was that I would have to put away my suspicions of canned and frozen food. Apparently it’s completely ok to use them and still stay healthy. Indeed, having canned beans, lentils and vegetables means easier preparation, and you won’t have to go shopping every three minutes because lettuce is a dumb peen that rots faster than fuck.



Also there are frozen hash browns. Hash browns are boss.

So I survived! Now I have many a thing to put on porridge. And toast. But also some things I can eat that aren’t porridge and toast.

Join me in my next blog entry where I tackle the next challenge: making proper food.

An Uneasy Preparation

Valentine’s day! What day would be better to prepare for my forthcoming doom than the day of forced romantic approval?



I honestly enjoy Valentine’s, and I can’t shake the feeling that the hesitance to kick-start my new, improved, healthy lifestyle is because of it. Hell, any day that presents to me an excuse to jam handfuls of chocolate into my face is welcome as part of my calendar.
Married? Celebrate your union with handfuls of chocolate! Have a partner? Get together and shovel candy into each other’s throats! Single? Pity yourself while digging through a pile of sugary goodness! You even have the excuse of trying to forget your suffering! Everyone wins!

And so I will do what I have dreamt of doing but always failed to: eat chocolate, listen to Mozart and read Victorian love poetry in a pinstripe suit. Candy is still on the table because my loan has yet to arrive, and a package from home with all its delicious gooey extravaganza arrived just in time.
Crisis averted.



But first I need to prepare. Yes, believe it or not, starting a healthier life needs preparation. Who would’ve thunk it.

It does for me, anyway. I’m used to eating whatever is biggest, deadest and in closest proximity to my hungry belly. Now I suddenly have to THINK about what I press into my faceholes. What gives.
Luckily I have my own personal scientist and token vegetarian to help me.

A pescetarian lifestyle will, of course, bring certain problems to the table. Most notably having to join the vegetarians in their eternal struggle against their mortal enemy, gelatine.



Besides the obvious avoidance of meat and meat products in shopping items and cafés, I will also have to learn how to cook food that is slightly more complicated than “have bacon, fry bacon, digest bacon” (with the occasional egg when I’m feeling adventurous).
The cooking aspect, which I am sure we will return to at a later date, is not really what is going to be the death of me though.

Oh no. See, while most people will have a problem leaving meat because they love it so much (and I do. So, so much), I have the bigger issue of not really liking anything EXCEPT meat.


This is a bit of a problem, since I can’t really live off of a diet of pasta and cucumbers, no matter what my Norwegian friend might tell you.



So not only do I have to learn how to do that cooking which I can’t do but I also have to not starve myself to death.
Then again I suppose I haven’t really tried THAT many kinds of vegetables and legumes and… nuts and… root vegetables and seeds and… Oh god what am I doing with my life.



Trying to deal with my surprisingly hard decision of not dying of blood clotting and meat-cancer, I do what I always do instead of doing things: make lists of what I should do. Or buy. Shopping-lists are addictive.

What food I WILL allow:
- fish
- eggs
- milk
- honey (for now. Honey is gross but it will help me slow over from my sugar addiction)

So I’ll be a… not very hardcore vegetarian. Ovo-lacto-pescetarian?



I am going to need:
- a wok-pan (maybe probably. If I get a deep one I can use a steamer as well. Sweeeet.)
- a smaller pan for rice or vegetables (I only have one that doesn’t look like it has syphilis.)
- ovenproof dish
- lidded containers to store leftovers in
- god’s mercy

But now I have poetry and classical music to attend to. And possibly some work. Maybe.

A project that might fail super-hard

Hello, my name is T and I’m a douchebag.



No way around it. Sure, I’ve reached that special height of douchebaggery where even my friends deny that I am a true and utter asshole, but that doesn’t really take away from the fact that I am not a very nice person. Or even a decent human being.
I am lazy, rude, uninspired, sarcastic, lying, unintelligent, unhealthy and a horde of other things that will ensure my dying alone in a shed somewhere.

To accompany this charming collection of unwanted personality traits I am also kind of messed up. Insomnia being my biggest nemesis at the moment, which my addiction to caffeine and sugar isn’t helping in the slightest.
So I visited a doctor and he told me that living healthy might actually help me in the long run.



HAH! Healthy! I am nothing if not for unhealthy living, this glorious, socially accepted way of committing suicide. Nay I say! Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, then put them on my grill and cover them in bacon grease.

Well, my computer died for a few days, and I suddenly realized how much insomnia truly sucks without internet. Sleeplessness is bad enough, but sleeplessness without entertainment or human contact is insufferable.



I finished three books in two days and restarted my computer thirty-seven times. Finally I got her on her feet again, internet and all, and I made a decision.

I am going to make myself into a better person.

You’re damn right I will. I usually get these urges to improve myself about once a year and they never lasts longer than, say, two-three weeks at the most, and then they fade away like whoa.
Being a crap person is easier after all, right? And having failed at becoming a better person approximately fifteen billion times I’d kind of given up on it. But no.

Fuck that shit.

I am going to improve myself SO HARD.
And what better way to chronicle this event than post it online? Hell, no one even needs to read it. It will just stand as a monument to my victories and my enormous amount of failures.

So first and foremost, I need short-time goals that I can overcome so I don’t jump on the Dumbass-express to Failuretown like I normally do. Marvel at this shit.

Until the end of March, I will be a pescetarian.

That’s right. No meat. I will allow myself fish because I need to stay true to my Norwegian roots and Norway is nothing but mountains, fish and oil, and only one of those are edible.
I will also have no energy drinks or candy, and no sugar outside what small amounts is needed in cooking.
Yeah this is gonna go to hell.

Other things I will do:
- Finally start posting my art online (and not just on facebook because that’s lazy)
- Get my visual diary and PDP portfolio and crap in order
- Begin exercising again. At least enough that I can get off my chair without feeling tired.
- Woooooooooooooork hardeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer
- Not die (optional)

So that’s it, folks. I will keep it off until I get my loan and can actually buy things, but when I do…

I will become the BEST person.
The very best.



Yeah! Let’s DO this!

… After my loan arrives.