The first song on our debut album. Music and lyrics by your truly.
Hmm, a year has passed since my last post. A good indicator of my productivity of late, I suppose. I did start a Covid-19 post a few months back. I was among the first to go into quarantine since I worked alongside the first person to bring Corona to the islands. He had attended this fateful megachurch meeting and brought Covid-19 back to the Faroe Islands. A story for another time, perhaps.
So, what’s been happening? I don’t know, a gazillion things have changed and nothing at all has changed. I’ve gone full Springsteen and begun working construction while taking care of my family as best as I can. This is fine for now, although my brain is screaming at me that this is not what I’m supposed to be doing. Ah, brain brain brain… we should do this more often. Not that I don’t agree. I just have a truckload of fatigue, stress, anxiety and depression to sift through before I can reclaim my rightful place in the universe or whatever. Just kidding, there’s no fixed point in the universe. Life is a journey and so forth. Meanwhile, I’m getting loads of fresh air, exercise and great colleagues, which isn’t bad.
Well, I have a smidgeon of time right now, so I’m checking in on my oft neglected blog. If you can even call it blog. I’m not sure what this is, but I’m keeping it anyway.
Annvør and I have been exceptionally busy this past year. Lots of work, early morning and late evening shifts for both of us. As I may or may not have mentioned, we work in the same field, trying to help people with autism and learning disabilities lead meaningful lives, manage their own finances, go to work on a daily basis, etc. With all the evening work there hasn’t been much time for creativity and experimentation, but we’re working on changing that.
And, for no reason at all, here’s a picture of a 3-day old lamb in a diaper.
As an experiment, I’ve made an online store selling advanced board games, role-playing games and living card games, especially to the Faroese market. There are a few physical stores here that sell family oriented board games, but usually not the kind that my friends and I like to play. Interest in these games is growing (we’re always about 10-15 years late here on the Islands) so we’ll see how things go. If it turns out to be too time consuming or not worth the effort, I’ll shut it down.
It seems certain bakers on the Islands are becoming a tad myopic.
Aaaand… I’ve just switched back to my smartphone this morning.
As promised, here’s an update on my minimalist phone experiment.
After missing two important meetings because I couldn’t get used to my basic Nokia’s calendar and after losing some fun Kodak moments with my kids, I began toting both my basic Nokia and my SIMless smartphone to work meetings and outdoors. And today I decided enough is enough and switched back to my smartphone… and it’s fine. The reason I tried the minimalist route was that I wanted more quality time with my kids. Instead of a basic phone I’ll experiment with Offtime and set my phone to automatically go into minimalist mode at peak kid and creative work hours. Will report back.
Google photos has been dredging up my past like there’s no tomorrow. Here’s an old video that came up the other day. Four Faroese friends wondering at the emptiness and tinyness of a town we passed through on a roadtrip in 2007.
Just a few tidbits from February 2018:
- Captain Trips light is making his appearance known across the Faroe Islands. I’ve been unusually ill for about 10 days (but it’s finally getting better). An amazing amount of people have been ill, particularly men.
- Sickness perk: I’ve been catching up on some reading. Just finished Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner which was great. I have now moved on to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, equally great so far.
- I’ve begun working on a few songs to release under my own name. Fun times.
- The Reverends are working on three new songs so things are progressing nicely.
- I’m frying five eggs right now.
The Nokia 216
Saying goodbye to my smartphone.
And now for a bit of phone minimalism. My trusty readers (and that means positively no one) know that I have a penchant for lifehacking from time to time. This time I decided to ditch my Samsung S7 smartphone for a dirt cheap Nokia.
As a family man with three kids (one teenager with autism, a toddler and a 3-month old) it’s all about gaining a bit of time, something which has rapidly become a priceless commodity in my life. Also, I’m fed up with getting lost reading pointless facebook arguments, forgotten in a week, and why is it that about half of my facebook “friends” feel compelled to photograph and post every sunrise or sunset they see?
Enter the Nokia 216. I’ve tried it out for a few days and it seems well suited for me. Obviously, it does phone calls better than any smartphone (dedicated buttons, baby) and I’m not much of a text guy so that’s fine. The phone does have facebook and twitter apps, but they’re very limited, courtesy of the slow internet connection. Also, there are no notifications and the (non-touch) screen is tiny, so I’m only tempted to use those functions if I truly need to communicate on those particular platforms… and that need has not occurred yet.
Other good stuff. Battery life. The thing has been running for days and I haven’t charged it yet. Also, it has the option to add a micro sd card so I did and loaded it up with some Jethro Tull and audiobooks. Hello comfortable long walks (which I still don’t have time for, but let me dream, will you?). Also, I tried streaming some audio to my bluetooth speaker (yes, this dirt cheap thing has bluetooth) and was amazed to hear that the connection is even better and more steady than from my Samsung S7.
The only feature I might miss is a good camera, but I do have a nice DSLR at the ready for those Kodak moments. Also, with everyone documenting everything these days, there isn’t that much point in me doing the same. Ever get lost in the 10.000+ digital photos you’ve managed to amass throughout your lifetime? Yeah, me too. Perhaps some automatization software would be in order? Yep, there’s another idea which I won’t pursue and which someone probably is working on as we speak. Anyway, it seems I’ve managed to convince my minimalist self that a basic phone is the way to go for me. I’ll try to remember to report back in two months or so.