Image from Pixabay because pretty.
Answer’s to Jo’s weekly questions over at Dreamwidth.
1. What would a perfect city be like?
Size about my city (Turku), but which feels like you’re living in the deepest countryside with neighbors in your line of sight and have woods/natural-state-fields/river/sea just a minute away. All the houses are single family homes (no apartment buildings) but the maintenance is a provided service like in an apartment building, and all the houses are surrounded by a garden or other woods. But all the grocery shops and drugstore are 10 minutes walk away, and the city center is 20 minutes by bus with a hospital, restaurants and other services. Basically like Turku is now as far as distances and services go, but add woods into everywhere and around everything, and get rid of tall buildings and replace them with one story ones.
I’m not sure how that would work with the populaton numbers but I don’t care! It’s my dream. Country side in middle of and surrounding a city. LOL
2. What are some small things that make your day better?
When I have little more energy than my normal because that’s when I accomplish things! The day I wrote this (which is not the day I posted this) was a good day: I’ve been both to shopping *and* I’ve done some cleaning! And I’m not still out of energy, and actually I think today is one of those days I have a ghost of an appetite making an appearance so eating doesn’t feel as much of a chore as it normally does! Kind small things but also big!
3. Do you have a go-to band or artist when you can’t decide on something to listen to?
Not a band or artist, but a few soundtracks: Star Trek “Amok Time” soundtrack, and the soundtracks of The Piano, The Last Of The Mohicans and The Leftovers.
4. Is there a TV show or movie that you just refuse to watch?
Reality TV, any and all sports, and anything with Jack Black in it.
5. What are you interested in that most people haven’t heard of?
Star Trek tv series. Star Trek’s not a thing here. Most people vaguely have heard of the reboot movies and maybe about some tv show called “Star Trek”, but unless they’re a scifi tv fan they don’t usually know what I’m talking about. Fountain pens – they’ve heard of them, but mostly don’t know that people still actually use them and love them a lot abroad.
6. What could you do a 40-minute presentation on with no (or very little) preparation?
Star Trek!
7. If you were dictator of your country, what would you do?
Force all the rich and well off people to pay their taxes just like the poor people have to. Tax planning (read: evasion) wouldn’t be allowed anymore). Introduce basic universal income that would be enough to live by and that wouldn’t be below poverty line. Stop the insane difference between a regular person salary and the business owners/CEO etc. salaries and golden handshakes etc. No one person could own salary/property/dividends etc. over 100 million put together, and also corporations would have limit too but higher. The excess would be taxed off and used to fund UBI and things such as public healthcare that benefits the entire society and not just the obscenely rich few.
8. Is there a product or service you love so much that you’d happily be that company’s spokesperson?
No! I’d hate being a spokesperson for anything because I hate doing presentations and public speaking and being a center of attention for anything, so it’d have to be a truly fabulousty amazing thing! Which I don’t believe exists in enough amount to overcome my loathing.
9. Why did you decide to do the work you are doing now (or if you’re retired, the work you were doing prior to retirement)?
I’m not working currently and haven’t since 2008 due to health problems. I think I should be on disablity retirement (because honestly, no employer will ever hire someone with as many absences and challenges with functionality as I have), but that’s has been denied everytime. So I switch between long-term sick leave (months to a year), and unemployement benefits. But I’m a librarian by profession, and that’s what I did before getting ill and I loved it.
I chose library work right from the start, it’s the only thing I ever really wanted to do. I’ve also done general office work and like it fine too, so I’d be okay with having an office job too! Library because I love books and I love reading, libraries are great places, the library people just feel like my kind of people, there’s interaction with customers so I get my social interaction needs filled that way. Libraries are also usually quite peaceful and quiet places to work and not as hectic as elsewhere, so before my migraine went chronic, myhead liked that. I also liked getting to teach our customers to use computers, which we did a lot and libraries still do but now with older generations. Also we put up all sorts of little exhibitions – art, books on a theme etc. Not to mention getting so see all the new books coming out among the first! I really like library work!
10. We have no control over where we’re from, but do you wish you could have been from somewhere else?
Not really, no. When I was a kid I wanted to be from some place exciting like New York or Miami, or London or Cairo, or having a little more exciting parents – ie. ones that were so into going biking, hiking and all kinds of outdoor activities and excersices. To my mind that was boring and weird because none of my friends and their parents excersiced like that. But as an adult, I’m happy to be a Finn and come from where I come from and be who I am.
11. What are some things you’ve had to unlearn?
A big thing I had to learn, and had a huge impart in my life was that I can’t do everything like a “normal”, healthy person anymore. I had to learn to pace myself out, because if I didn’t I’d pay for it in the evening or for the next week.
Also, all kinds of biases such as what society at large tends to think of a person who goes unemployed for more than a few months, or can’t work because of illnesses or injury, because historically the view was that people who don’t work are lazy trash, and some parts (read: right wing) of society still think that. And all the traditional thinking about sex and gender. All that is still very much a work in progress but I try to be forward thinking and inclusive.
12. New internet rules restrict everyone’s free access to email, a search engine, and five sites of their choosing. To access any other site, you have to pay $1 per visit. What sites would you include in your five free sites, and what sites would you be willing to pay to access? (Sites you need to access for work-related purposes would be provided/paid for by your employer.)
Wow, what a bullshit plan!! As a poor person who’s struggling to cover all of my monthly bills, that would stop me visiting pretty much all sites except the free ones and maybe one or two pay-sites in addition, and the pay-sites only maybe twice a month. It’d also severely, severely cripple my ability to follow news :/ I can’t imagine that majority of sites would survive because I don’t believe people are willing to pay for like 99% of the sites they visit. Internet would die. And/Or darkweb would burst with new people.
Also for Finland: all the government sites such as KELA, unemployment services, police, municipal services, banking sites etc. would need to be free to access as well because those services are very hard to get face-to-face or on phone and people’s livelyhoods and things like paying bills and reporting taxes, getting IDs and passports and various lisences that are mandatory and required by police and various government/country/city instances etc. depend on online access to to those sites. All iof these services are expected/strongly recommended to be used online now! This stupid limit would cripple people-at-large ability use the public services as well.
So five free *purely* entertainment sites then: AO3, tumblr, my own domain course, my webhost’s site, yle.fi… if any of these still exists then. I’m pretty sure yle.fi would be the only one of these to stay alive and maybe AO3!
13. Who inspires you to be better?
I’m not the kind of person who finds other persons to be inspiring because they’re good or noble or something. Certain persons and artists can and do inspire me to try things, or encourage me to stick with it. That’s the kind of inspiration and motivation I experience.
14. Is there something dumb or ridiculous that you did that actually turned out pretty well?
I’m sure I did some dumb-and-low-effort-not-my-best-even-though-I-knew-I-should-put-proper-effort-into-it things in school because I hated school but that actually turned out okay or even well because the other kids didn’t have base skill in them like I did because it was a hobby of mine, or we did it as a family while the others didn’t. Looking back the only reason I didn’t get taken to task about them is that the teachers didn’t know I could’ve done it better. But apparently it wasn’t anything huge because I don’t remember any specific instance.
15. What are the best and worst things about aging?
The best thing definitely is not caring about other people’s opinions anymore! I’m so much more comfortable in my own skin now that am approaching the big five-o than I ever was in my childhood/teenage years or in my 20s.
The worst thing is that I can’t trust my body anymore – it seems to be falling apart, revealing one chronic illness or pain after another. I can’t trust it to do what I need it to do.