Outlandish

I am the kind of person who doesn’t do well when there’s nothing to do. The state of boredom is more likely to cause me symptoms of a burn-out than a month of explosions on the work front and overlong workdays. That is one of the main reasons why I do not see Finland as a place for me to live in. People there are like a negatively toned gray mass, even more so during the past year than ever before in my lifetime. Excitement and new experiences are not interesting to my fellow Finns. Whereas I count myself among experience addicts; I need action, I need speed, I need experiences! All of them are not good, of course, but they are still experiences, excitement, diverging from the routine, something to talk about. As a child I thought that I would never want to live the kind of life that my parents’ everyday life was: going to work, coming home, watching TV, sleep, going to work, coming home, watching TV, sleep, and this continues endlessly. And I succeeded to avoid such a life...

We are hiring more Finnish people to the office and I’ve been responsible for doing the interviews. My favourite question is “describe yourself with three adjectives” because it totally throws Finns, every time. They go all quiet and their brain is working like crazy to come up with something and usually people say that if I had asked for negatives, it would have been easier for them. At first it made me laugh because it’s such a stereotype but so true as well. But after the third person struggled with this questions  I grew more worried than cheery. It can’t be right that people don’t appreciate themselves enough for three little words. It made me think about self-esteem and what it requires. Especially in today’s media-centric world girls and women are given the impression that they aren’t good enough until they are starving 24/7 or muscly enough to resemble a man, but also in that case they are almost required to have an eating disorder. But not just media, also cult...