Work
I’m now six months without being able to find a job. In that time, I’ve gotten involved in countless creative endeavors ranging from organizing casual events to markets to an outright festival. I did my first-ever (group) gallery exhibit, and now I’m trudging along with my solo show coming up in February. This week, I joined a curation team for another tiny show space as well as the curation/organization team for a weekly event series in the city museum…
New Year, New Ideas
So much is always happening. In the latest turn of events, I’m opening a gallery in a few weeks. I came to Iceland in March of 2023 with the goal of living in the middle of nowhere and opening an art gallery. Things didn’t go as planned. I became miserable and was forced to learn what the meaning of life really is. Then, I spent two years finding myself. And now, in just a few weeks, I’m actually achieving my highest goal in life: I’m opening an art gallery…
Twenty Seven and the Right to Enjoyment
I keep trying to write something, then feel like I’m not expressing myself well and delete it. I saw a dance performance yesterday, Flóðreka, which was beautiful. Jónsi, the mastermind, had an immersive exhibit in Hafnarús last year which I visited twice. I missed it ever since, and this performance was his continuation. Seeing it was captivating and inspiring. It makes me want to create, but I can’t. I can’t write or take pictures or edit the pictures I already took or do anything creative at all, and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the stress of everything else that’s been going on in my life. I think it’s rather the lack of space I’ve had recently. I organized an amazing festival this past weekend which was immensely time-consuming and stressful (but went perfectly). I’ll write about that another time. For now, my thoughts are on the fact that I just turned twenty seven, and I want things to move in some way…
Mown Grass and Cars
The thought of writing my next book looms over me. Rather, it’s the idea of starting to write. It always feels impossible to get started. I think part of that is the topic: how I want to address the grand idea of modern society and how life is lived. I want to highlight the impact of the modern world on our human experience, but it must be done in a way that is raw yet tactful, engrossing yet realistic, grand yet ingestible. In other words, I want the story to be good. I don’t want to write something that’s bad — naturally…
The Ring That Changed My Life
A bit over one year ago, my life was going through quite a few rapid changes. As part of that change, I decided to look at rings for the sake of it. I must have looked at every ring for sale in the entire country before deciding on one ring which, to me, was pure art. It was a little expensive, but the thought of having an art piece on me all the time motivated me to get it. However, before buying it, I showed pictures to a few of my friends and coworkers…
Is the Rat Race for Rats?
I’ve taken on a few more projects. I’m now helping to organize a weekend-takeover performance series at a local market/hub. I have an official book launch event on the 10th. And with the motivation of some recent events, I’m organizing an open discussion on the job market and workplace experiences. That’s on top of setting up my office (I carried 200kg of furniture across the office building yesterday) and the printer and getting frames/paper to prepare for selling things at the Christmas market and my upcoming gallery exhibit. Not to mention the things I enjoy along the way, such as poetry readings, open mics, concerts, friend meetups, and other community events…
Post-Stoic-Depressive Humanism
Many of my favorite philosophers explore the ideas of suffering and what it means. Emil Cioran, who I write about often, claims that life is a terrible thing, and we should all want to die: the act of resisting this desire is what makes us “meaningful.” The intensity to which he expresses these ideas in his writing is rather overwhelming, often bordering comical. Yet I love his philosophy because it’s so clear that all he is trying to do is come to terms with suffering — find meaning in it…
A Generic Blog Post
Someone I had no issues with unfollowed me on Instagram and kicked me off their account as well. This is an ex-work-related person, so I assume this happened as I left in a rain of fire without me noticing until now. I find it funny because the last thing this person told me was, “Be nice to the customers.” Have I ever not been nice to a customer? This supervisor watched me for 15 months, and I never had a single issue. Not until I made it very clear I didn’t like the workplace. My inner feelings never changed, but suddenly — only because I expressed them — I may not be nice to a customer…
Overwhelmed
Life explodes and explodes again, sometimes like a firework, sometimes like a nuclear bomb. I learned someone isn’t who I thought they were — perhaps not a close friend, but apparently they were no friend at all. I was elected to the board I ran for, and it looks like I’ll have the position of my dreams to do everything I have ever wanted to. Though this is volunteer work. I was accepted to a new artist office building, I went on Monday and selected a beautiful office for myself and my partner. But that’s another expense. I’m working tirelessly on my apartment, but that’s yet more expenses and never feels like enough. I’m in the position to do literally anything and everything I have ever wanted, but I don’t have the funds. The best thing going on right now is this project workshop ending in a fundraiser. We started on Friday, and that was very nice…
Participation is Opportunity
This is my seventh attempt at writing a blog since my last. For whatever reason, I can’t properly express whatever it is that I want to. One of my unpublished posts was about how there’s so much happening right now and that being the reason I’ve been unable to write. But things keep happening, and I need to write. Among the many things taking place, my dad is visiting here in Iceland. We had dinner last night with my girlfriend — a “new” relationship that is vibrant and flourishing. She and I are working on grand projects. One of those is participating in a training program starting next month that will end in a fundraiser for our ideas. We also applied for office space at a new community hub…
Reflections on Iceland, Unemployment, & Society
I was approved for unemployment benefits yesterday, and thanks to some “wise” decisions I made in the past year, I am now receiving more money than I was making at my job (after switching to part-time). It’s ironic in many ways, especially thinking of all the emails I sent out when I first moved to Iceland, begging to be a dishwasher. Even this past month, I sent out a good 20 job applications: everything from dishwashing, laundry service, cashier, bartender, waiter, tourism nonsense, reception, shift management, etc. I was rejected from everything. Again. Before I left my job, we did a round of hiring and received 900 applications within one week. That is to say, the job market here is bad…
Another Year, Another Book
I began writing in 2023 when I discovered the Bukowski poem that inspired me to try writing poetry myself. Since then, I wrote a lot. However, I never knew what to do with the hundreds of pieces scattered around my digital world. I decided it was finally time to put together a collection: Under Starless Skies. This is something I avoided for a long time because of the nature of my work. I most often write poems when I need to express something; and such strong feelings usually do not come from light places. Thus, most of my pieces have darker tones…
The Eternal Questions
Every time something bad happens in my life, I become overwhelmed for some time by the event itself and the repercussions. However, everything always works out in the end. I’ll never forget my time in Hveragerði two years ago when I felt the worst I ever had, thinking that it was truly impossible for anything to improve. Yet by simply holding onwards with life — even without a plan or direction — life got itself back under control. My last post was about a series of unfortunate events, but the same happened: life redirected its own course…
Crumbling
I was up until 2am this morning, running between my bedroom and my kitchen to collect bowls and containers. Every 10 minutes or so in the night, a new crack decided to open up in my window frame, letting in the pouring rain until the entire window became one large faucet (right on top of my gifted book collection). Fortunately, someone was able to come look at it this afternoon. Unfortunately, he couldn’t help me. It’s about to start raining again, and it will rain all day today and on and off every day for the foreseeable future. This comes after a few other problems that are slowly revealing themselves with my apartment…
A Collection of Experiences
Over the past few months, I’ve been writing down meaningful feelings or experiences in the form of story ideas. I write down what stood out as well as the actual event that prompted the writing. My plan is to incorporate everything, somehow, into either short stories or a book. I only just wrote about how I wanted my next book to be a series of essays. As usual, I’m not sure what I’ll actually do. Recent events have made me want to focus more on these stories…
Ennui
My next book will most likely be a series of essays, though that’s always subject to whim. I’ve been writing some — as I quoted from in my last post. I’ve decided to share an essay that I wrote about ennui. More specifically, it’s about youth issues. I’ve written many stories, plays, and poems, but no speeches for over two years. I’ll be reading at the monthly poetry event in July; I think it’s time to return to my days of youth-issue speeches, hence me wanting to share this essay titled, Ennui…
Boredom Is Our Salvation
I read Youth which was recommended to me by the “wisest man” who I’ve written about before. Today, I finally compiled my collection of thoughts and quotes into a review. Writing that review gave me yet further appreciation of the book: it’s a raw picture of humanity in the modern world — even if the book depicts a time we would now call old. I call the book profound because it is raw. It embodies a person: a real person. It is the essence of someone in pain…
How to Live: You’ll Die Eventually
I wrote a blog post yesterday, but I was interrupted in the middle. I started writing another, but it didn’t quite express what I wanted to. So I deleted both of them. It’s a frustrating feeling to have this urge to say something — to express something — yet not be able to. The past few days have been interesting. The short version of what I wanted to say is that I’ve started an Icelandic learning group that meets tomorrow. Everyone is interested, my first group with too many people interested. Thus, I’ve discovered a niche that needs to be filled: engaging Icelandic lessons…
People
I finished reading Boyhood by J. M. Coetzee yesterday. I started reading this after “the wisest man in Iceland” recommended another book by the author: Youth. Upon learning this was part of a sequence of books, I started with the first one. When I finished, I decided it was finally time to update my book review page. Going through the few books I’ve read since the last update in November was interesting. Similarly, I’ve taken the past few days off work where I watched season seven of Black Mirror and season two of The Rehearsal. Normally, I wouldn’t specify these books or shows, but the timing and subject matter all stand out to me…
The End of a Chapter
I would divide my life into three distinct chapters, the third one starting just today. The first lasted until I was 23 and made the decision to move to Iceland. During that period of my life, I was destined to become a professor. I spent my days with all the same friends doing all the same things, enthusiastically pursuing anything and everything interesting in the world of computers. From high school to undergrad to grad school: I thought I knew what I wanted. But when I made it to the very end, I had a harsh realization in my PhD advisor’s voice: This will be your future. Only then did I realize this was, in fact, not what I wanted. In my panic, I proposed idea after idea of what I could do. They were shut down because they were artistic ideas, not scientific…