5 things I am thankful for

1. The beautiful people I have around. The ones who tolerate my messes and dance to stupid songs with me. And pour oregano into my pint and share a pizza before continuing the night. And live in other cities and make me miss them and then come back again and make me thankful for all the luck I've been given.

2. London in September. I haven't kissed anyone near Leicester Square and I haven't been the drunkest I've ever been at a house party near Soho and it pains me to think that I'll have no connection whatsoever to the pavements I'll be walking on. But I'm going to be fine.

3. Copenhagen in under 30 days. Eating cheap food and drinking cheap wine on the balcony. And mornings that are so bright it hurts to be alive.

4. Being alive and breathing. I had a dream where a man committed suicide by jumping from the third floor and almost fell on me. The man died, I didn't.

5. I couldn't think of anything else but secrets and clichés.

Back to Vesterbro

Future home street in Copenhagen

It's insane. We got an incredible flat from Vesterbro. It's everything you'd imagine a Copenhagen flat to be like. Light wooden floors, high white ceilings. So much light it almost hurts your eyes. A balcony and 55 square meters to live in.

I still haven't secured a job. I basically have nothing waiting for me, except for the 2 best Summer months in Copenhagen and the freedom to do whatever I want.

If only I could earn an extra 1000€ so I could head down to Southern France for August to do a bit of surfing and enjoying the sun. I almost feel ashamed that two months in the city I like so much, in an apartment that looks like it was ripped out of any arty folk's dreams, isn't enough and I want even more. Isn't that the curse of wanting it all?

But hell, it's insane.

I'm listening to that Feet in the Water-song on repeat, because I need someone to slap me and tell me it's all better than I even realize yet.

"Dynamic employee for the Summer" "Freelancer" "Hej! I am a 20-year-old girl from Helsinki" and other things from my sent e-mails folder

London ages ago

Everything's going fast, fast, fast but so painfully slow - job applications, job rejections, rental applications, unanswered e-mails, the last day of day job tomorrow, new job applications flying around, cold cover letters, freelance work, temporary work, a month, a month and a half, obscure time patterns.

Copenhagen is constantly interrupting my thoughts. I have weird dreams at night and keep seeing catalogue models who look like someone who I wish I won't run into in Osterbro.

I want to send a message to Copenhagen that I'm coming soon; sing it like that swedish Veronica, jag kommer and such but my voice wasn't meant to be recorded and I don't know if I want anyone to wait for me or not.

I keep having second thoughts about everything; about quitting my job and about having these napoleon complex-like wishes, but then again, it's so useless to worry about how life goes. If you do good, it will come back to you. I'm beginning to sound like a self-help book - alarming.

And whenever I've been feeling let down and apathetic lately, I've resorted to this song. I wish some of its quiet power and beauty and rawness will transfer through my headphones.

From Vesterbro to Hyde Park Corner to Hietaniemenkatu

I might be meeting a Canadian boy on Thursday evening. He goes by the name of Alexandre from Navy Jerry's in my phone's address book and all I can remember about him is his dark curly hair and funny accent when he spoke french. And the part where he told me that he's going to have to come up with something to brag about for the next time we meet. And the part where I knew I wanted to get to know him.

I sincerely hope that he was lovely and that my memory's not playing tricks on me.

I finally posted a job application for Copenhagen. The first of many.

I recently realized that my comfort zone really sucks. I'm glad I'm getting out of it and fast.

20 år

Good old photobooth to celebrate my birthday; topshop petite cut-out dress (that makes me look like a real housewife of beverly hills) and che guevara's old vest

I turned twenty today. I had a high fever yesterday night, but today the sun is shining as coyly but beautifully as it does in Helsinki in Spring.

A bracelet and a ski-trip to the Alps. I'm quietly happy.

I've already achieved two marks off my bucket list (Feel accomplished, buy a white blazer) and I've still got three months left. I'm well on my way. Better than ever.

I feel like going out tonight, because when you get those rare moments when you beam, you need to share them with others. People who shine, even for a brief moment, subconsciously give it forward to others. It reflects so easily.

Now, some champagne and entertaining a few guests with stories (ranging from exciting to awkward to horrible) from London.

That's alright, that's okay, I'm alive

You know when there's that certain kind of wind or that certain kind of sky that makes you remember things? Tonight it was the deep blue sky and the traffic lights that made me think of Copenhagen and airports and wide streets and things to come.

I received my first subscription issue of the International Herald Tribune and some books for LSE and Houghton Street. It's almost spot-on six months until my home city is London. I feel like smiling like an idiot. Nothing dramatically positive has happened, it all just somehow feels right. Everything's going to be alright.

For a few hours everything has been in its right place. Time has been frozen for a while, right now I refuse to worry about London or fret about the job situation in Copenhagen.

I'm going to see Helsinki-Vantaa again sooner than I thought. I'm leaving early Sunday morning to make a flash visit to London, see where I'll be spending the next three years, try to fall in love with the place, try to see myself on a morning run in Hyde Park or staggering home tipsy with someone wonderful. I feel like it's going to go well.

Tomorrow things might be different but right now I feel sweet and strong and capable and lovely. I have achieved something already. And it feels overwhelming. Now it's time to take it further.

I started to write a real paper diary again, because it finally feels like this life is something worth writing about.

For the last six months I've been waiting for the day to come when I run

Hjemme i Koebenhavn, Louisiana

Today I woke up next to lovely friends in an apartment filled with blinding morning light, the kind you only get in Spring. In my wallet I had a card with a name and a phone number, in my head a blizzard of hours of fun and confusion; St. Patrick's day, work party with champagne drinks, afterparties and lousy encounters, finally ending with people I genuinely like so much.

I've tried to write my feelings down and just keep on erasing everything. The way I felt this morning, walking in the shoes that gave me insane blisters and squinting my eyes to avoid the sun's full effect is something that I just cannot describe easily or poetically.

Suddenly, the burning I've had for a while turned into this positive rush that hasn't ceased. I no longer feel the need to pack my bags and head to Copenhagen because I want to leave things behind, I want to leave because things feel so easy here right now. It's a relief not to be desperately seeking for something better, but to merely search for new horizons. I wouldn't call this a chance of a lifetime but I cannot help but gush at how extremely right this feels, more right than any relationship or major decision or any thought I've had in such a long time. This is quickly turning into a lousy conversation subject, but I cannot help it.

I feel like I can finally, honestly, breathe.

I hold my breath, there's a smile on my face, and my face wasn't made to wait

Kastellet and morning sun on

Nørrebrogade

I told you 'bout all those fears,
And away they did run.
You sure must be strong,
And you feel like an ocean being warmed by the sun.

I'm stepping on nothing.

I quit my job yesterday morning and I'm leaving Helsinki behind on the 1st of May. I have no job or apartment waiting for me when I land, but I know quite a few friendly faces, how to use the S-tog and the metro, and how to get a certain bartender's number. I know the place makes me lose kilos as accidentally as one loses keys (happiness makes you thin, that's what they say).

I'm hoping my fears will vanish even though I know they won't. They're all tumbled together, the fear of Rue des Archives and Nørrebrogade and the huge unknown and I can't make sense of it all.

Since cynisism isn't making me free, I'm turning to extreme naïveté. I'm scared. So I'm leaving. The only medicine for fear is to face it and just go go go go go. You can't second-guess these things. No-one lives an interesting life by sticking to their day jobs and apartments and lousy, grey weekdays.

A thousand conundrums at once, I love my life and I hate it to bits.

What is a gap year in french?

I'm trying to psych myself up with Rue des Archives 53.

The corner of le Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature.

A city break in Copenhagen that will hopefully happen in a few weeks.

And Paris IV.

Cambridge postcard 1

I love it here. I love it so much it makes me want to cry. I love it so much I can't find any pompous and embarrassingly poetic words to describe it. Boys in tweed and bicycles everywhere, it's beautiful and it's small and it's wonderful. The rugby varsity games are being played in a couple of days, I saw the rugby boys getting photographed in their light blue suits near King's.

I want this really, really bad, I want it so bad it's almost a physical feeling.

And when I should be revising, cheers to history in a white bathrobe, drinking good hotel hot chocolate and watching news on the BBC. On the to-do list: a cab ride into town and making lasting impressions. Let's hope this song rings true tomorrow.

Snart kommer vågorna, snart kommer Atlanten

I fought my way home at 5am, after eating mud cake, drinking a sangria-ish white wine mix and visiting the tiki bar. This city showed its friendly face, again.

I learned that P&K is a finnish-swedish abbreviation of puss och kram (from my tuesday night-acquaintance who I never thought I'd hear from again). Tuesday's nightly acquaintance almost convinced us to switch to a newly-opened horrible club with his charming but clumsy messages, but we stayed put, dancing and having conversations that ended with Have a good time in Indonesia and sometimes a bit of excessively friendly behavior.

Everything that's temporary feels fine. I can easily exchange a few smiles and laughs and talks when I know that the take-off is soon.

Things seem easy. Time to breathe, time to be. It seems like I'm learning something new every weekend, it seems like every change, even as little as cutting off hair is linked to something better. I think the cushioned playground- mentality is working fine.

Julie Nixon, daughter of Richard Nixon married David Eisenhower, grandson of Dwight Eisenhower

I'm falling into the same old patterns again and again. And I bought peroxide spray but I'm too afraid to use it.

I'm tired tired tired which is perfectly depicted in the first picture. My body's giving up. I can't sleep but then sleep for 10 hours straight. I can't keep awake but then I lie awake for hours.

I can't wait to get on a plane and get away. My traveling savings will reach €2500 next month and I'm ecstatic. It's getting closer.

Written while being extremely stressed out but exhaustingly inspired

The city looks like someone practiced their watercolor painting skills on it every time it rains. The season's approaching that dreadful bit when every morning's cold and every evening is coloured in by the awfully yellow streetlights that shine on the wet streets and actually make you a bit nauseous.

I chopped my long hair off on Friday evening. No more summer-in-the-Hamptons-ponytails for me, but I'll be fine, alright.

I don't know if it's my new platinum blonde hair's fault, but I feel inspired by everything and anything, no traces of feeling blue here anymore. Why think about that when all the golden land's ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see? Kerouac puts it like it is, again.

And while I struggle to find the feeling you get when you're traveling - that anything could happen soon, the simple things make me happier than I ever thought.

Sunny Sundays, running, phone calls, grocery shopping in the market hall in Hakaniemi, pink lipstick, an obnoxious and ruthless and fun conversation across the kilometers to Berlin in the middle of the night, birthdays and parties and a roadtrip to Turku in a couple of weeks' time. Oh, and awful evenings in the worst aussie bar in the world.

I know the next dark rainy evening will get me down and blue again, but I won't let it bruise me bad this time.

"Remember that book I told you about; the first sip is joy the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy"

I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.

I wanted to tell you all about these humdrum things like making couscous and laughing in the kitchen or feeling Autumn really hitting on or being silly and buying nice white shirts that I definitely won't need in the heat of the Indian Ocean or this striking documentary I saw about child brides but I couldn't find words that would fit together as perfectly as those of Kerouac or Camus or Hemingway.

I still have a long way to go.

Body parts

Sometimes I find myself overwhelmed with fear. And not the small kind that tickles your stomach a bit and feels fine, but the kind that takes you in a stranglehold and doesn't let go no matter how hard you kick and bite back.

The most beautiful word for this kind of feeling is a Swedish word. It's almost beautiful enough to make it all seem small and pointless and a bit sweet, too. But even livrädd isn't enough to make tonight's worries small and sweet, it doesn't sweep these feelings away when you say it out loud or write it down.

I try not to worry about anything. The days go by in a gentle fashion. I work from nine to five and sometimes get to meet amazing people with true stories. Sometimes I suffer from older gentlemen in trench coats, who are unwillingly scary when they come closer only to wink and quickly walk away. Sometimes I get headaches, sometimes I'm genuinely very very happy. Sometimes I find myself thinking about nights in Nice. Most of the time I shake the thoughts away as quick as they come.

What I truly am livsrädd for is the time to come. In a couple of months' time I am supposed to really board that plane - and currently my plans only involve myself and the backpack that has seen beaches and cities and everything of importance. I'm not afraid to say it out loud: I'm very afraid of leaving alone, but I'll have to do it.

Du behöver någonting större. I don't know if this is it, but it probably won't kill to try.