I totally forgot again to answer to Jo’s daily October questions So here’s the whole month in one go!

1. What was the last item you returned or exchanged at a store?

It’s been such a long time since the last time that I don’t remember exactly what it was! But it would’ve been some kind of clothing.

2. What’s an unlikely movie sequel you’d like to see?

I don’t know that there’s any… I tend to feel that good movies don’t need a sequel because they’re complete as they are. And often when there is a sequel, it’s a lot worse than the previous movie.

3. Do you tend to read reviews of films or TV shows that you’re considering watching? What about reviews of books or albums? How much influence might a good or bad review have on you?

Not usually, no! I want to watch the first one or two episodes on my own to form my own opinion and only then seek out reviews to see what others thought about those eps. But if one of my fave actors is starring in a movie/tv show, then I like to read a general write up about it and see what they think of my fave’s performance, or an interview with her/him about the work before watching it. I try to avoid spoilers!

4. How are you about deleting emails?

I delete everything I think I won’t need anymore but I keep, say, discussion threads with people. Gmail is nice because I don’t usually run out of space.

5. Who or what are two people or things you keep mixing up with one another?

A lot of these Hollywood boyish and girlish looking young(ish) actors – their facial features are so similar that I confuse them, and their acting abilities don’t set them apart either. I also can’t remember their names so can’t name them when asked.

6. Are actual paper road maps obsolete? When was the last time you actually used one?

I haven’t had a car for about 5 years now I think. When I did have a car, I had a paper map in the clove compartment and I did use it when I needed it. The last time I remember needing a map was about 8 years ago, when I went to pick up my laptop from the shop and the while the general area was familiar to me, where the specific road was wasn’t so I checked it on the map before setting out.

7. Has a phone or car GPS’s instructions ever resulted in you being completely lost?

No.

8. What TV show has a theme song or opening credits sequence that you really love? Feel free to name more than one if you want!

Star Trek TOS. Miami Vice. Silk Stalkings. The Leftovers S1. Bloodlands. So many others.

9. Of websites you look at daily (or almost daily), which have you been paying attention to longest?

Oh dear, there’s so many I’ve been visiting daily for more than a decade! Some of them I own and because of that visit daily or almost. Of those, I guess the Oded Fehr fanfic archives which I first visited as a quest starting 2001 and then adopted in mid-2000s are maybe the longest living ones? The archives have changed URLs a couple of times and have now been imported to AO3, but they are probably the oldest that weren’t mine to begin with. Not mine and younger ones… https://www.yle.fi (news site) which I started following back in 2010. AO3 from 2008, Dreamwidth from 2009. Those are probably the sites I’ve been using daily the longest.

10. Some animal groups have collective nouns, e.g. a swarm of bees, a murder of crows, a school of fish, etc. What would be a good collective noun for people in your profession or hobby?

Don’t know, I’m really bad thinking up things like these… it uses too much of my energy. For librarians… I really like a murder of… and a flock of… but really a murder of!

11. What is the difference between living and existing?

I think existing is going through the motions of surviving day to day, doing or being able to do only the bare minimum required for whatever reason, maybe not feeling many feelings/emotions. Basically eating, sleeping and working if you got a job/can work and then repeating it the next day.

Living is doing something with your life, experiencing beyond simply surviving – whether that’s seeing friends, baking, crafting, traveling, gynastics, rock climbin, singing or whatever. It’s beyond just eating and sleeping and rinse-and-repeat. I also associate feeling positive to living.

12. Would you break the law to save a loved one?

I don’t know! I’d need to know what law, and what I’d have to do and what they need saving from and who the loved one is. There’s too many variables to give a definitive answer!

13. Are there any songs that always bring a tear to your eye?

Many, but the one that never fails is Barber’s Adagio for Strings. I LOVE that piece but it makes my cry like a baby so I can’t listen to it often because crying also leads to a migraine attack!

14. If happiness was the national currency, what kind of work would make you rich?

Library work! Helping people find what they are looking to read, shelving books etc.

15. What was your excuse the last time you arrived late to something?

I can’t remember the last time I was late to something. Whatever it was, it wasn’t intentional and probably because the bus ran a little late. I’m mostly early so I can compose myself before the meeting.

16. In what way is your life lately imbalanced?

Just health stuff and exhaustion. I’d like to be able to do more (creative) things and to feel less tired. It’s been a little worse the last month or so, and somehow it managed to surprise me – I’d been a little less tired since the iron infusion for several months, and I’d managed to get used to feeling a little better!

17. Do you put your socks on before or after putting on trousers?

During winter always before, during summer it’s 50/50.

18. Now that self/indie publishing has become easier, have books gotten better or worse?

I don’t know! I don’t buy books (money and space reasons) anymore these days. I borrow them from the library and the library doesn’t have self-published books, not sure about indie published ones. I know there’s more genres to choose from now, but whether the quality of self/indie published writing is tolerable/good, I can’t say.

19. October 19 is “Evaluate Your Life Day”. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you evaluate your life to date?

I don’t wanna…

If I evaluate my life by what’s considered the typical adult mile stones in the Finnish society: job (preferably full-time steady employment, for one employer), own home, spouse, children, education… I’d give my life the number 3. I’ve got (now old) education and I own my home but have “failed” all the other mile stones.

If I evaluate my by what I value: I give the number 8. I’ve endured much, take care of things, do my best with what I have, and try to keep my hope up, try to do something creative and that pleases me every day, I ignore the naysayers and rightwingers who only see value in a human if they can make money off it. And when I feel particularly bad about being poor, I’ve started to remind myself that my ecological footprint is tiny compared to most of the Finnish society and that makes me feel better.

20. How have TV shows changed over the years?

I think at least five big changes:

– visual: many of them now look and feel like movies.
– serialization, few are episodic anymore
– character and world development and exploration is now often better in tv shows than in movies
– a lot of the shows are shot/edited to terribly dark now. Like you can hardly see what’s going on. It isn’t great when I spend full episodes wanting to turn their lights on.
– also a lot of shows utilize a grey/blue filter so that everything looks blueish and boring (and dark). I miss natural colors!

21. As a child, were you afraid that someone or something was hiding under your bed? As an adult, do you still sometimes have that fear, even though you know it’s ridiculous?

I don’t remember having that fear, no; if I did I was too small to make a memory of it. And no.

22. What’s one of your language-related pet peeves?

My first language is Finnish, which along with Swedish are the official languages in Finland. It annoys me that so many (majority?) of things are now in English even though a perfectly good Finnish term exists. Such as job titles or store names as an example.

And bigger than pet peeve – there’s been news that companies like stories and private health firms are recruiting and training store workers and nurses from abroad. And that they aren’t requiring learning Finnish or Swedish from them anymore, only English. Okay, in stores maybe. But I’m pretty good with English and I don’t want to have to try to explain my health problems to someone who doesn’t speak Finnish well, because I’ve had a nurse or two who didn’t speak English well and even worse Finnish. I was left with feeling I wasn’t sure if the nurse understood what I was saying. And it wasn’t even a difficult thing, just needed to get some labs scheduled. I checked Kanta later, and the nurse had understood, but it wasn’t a good experience. So how’s that supposed to work if the patient and nurse don’t have a common language? When I was hospitalized for a week back in 2014 I can’t imagine having to try and make sense of what the nurses and doctors told had they been speaking English!

The big bosses do this so that they don’t have to raise the pay enough to get Finnish nurses stay in the nursing profession or come back to it. So their real interest in recruiting nurses from abroad is reducing workers’ rights and compensation because they come from countries where the situation is poorer on both counts and the recruited workers don’t know their rights here in Finland so don’t know to pursue them.

23. When you get home super tired and super hungry, do you usually eat first or sleep first?

I don’t feel hunger anymore, so I tend to just sleep and not eat. Which… is not great.

Back when I was healthy and felt hunger, I ate first. I couldn’t get to sleep if I was that hungry.

24. You’re taking an exam. You aren’t sure about the answer to question 5, but you know it’s either “lions” or “tigers.” You get to question 11 and realize whatever the answer to 5 is, 11 is the other answer. Do you write “lions” as your answer to 5 and 11, thereby ensuring you’ll get one of them right? Or do you write “lions” for 5 and “tigers” for 11, risking two wrong answers but giving you a chance at two right ones?

This happened to me in school a few times! I put in lions and lions to make sure I got one right!

25. Would you rather earn more money or have more time off?

I have all the time off I can deal with, so more money! I’ve never been in a situation where more money wouldn’t solve half my problems, so always more money.

26. In a general election, do you mostly just vote based on party? What if the party you prefer put forward a terrible candidate, while a party you like less put forward a much better candidate?

We always have dozen or more candidates from a party and I always first select the party, and then a suitable candidate from their candidates.

27. Are both bad and good things needed in order to truly live life? Can you have the bad without the good? The good without the bad?

Being chronically ill and only ever having had temp jobs and being poor as a result, I having a really hard time seeing how bad is needed to truly live life? If I could choose, I’d dump all the bads in my life this hot second.

28. Is there one dream that stays clear in your mind despite the fact it was more than a few years ago?

Yeah, in my early twenties (so, 20+ years ago) I had this recurring dream that also had a prequel and sequel dreams. It took place in my Years 4-6 school but except for the wide staircase to the second floor, it had a a lot smaller spiral staircase in its place. There were mutants (vaquely the monster kind was the impression) outside although we never saw them and something and there was thick mist and the air was poisonous outside or something because we in the school couldn’t go outside. I read a lot of the X-Men at the time and some of this was inspired by that.

29. When were you packed in tighter than a can of sardines?

Sometimes the bus rides during the rush hour, mostly during my school years when I couldn’t choose when I was coming and going. As an adult, I can’t remember the last time because I can choose to avoid the rush hours and because I ride different bus routes now than during school after having moved and the bus route now has more busses going on it and more often.

30. Is there anything useful to be made of empty prescription pill bottles?

I have one nice plastic, easy-to-uncork empty prescription pill bottle for Azamun which I now use whenever I have to bring my day meds with me because I won’t be home when I need to take them while I’m running errands or go visit someone. It’s very handy and perfect for that purpose!

I also used one smaller pill bottle to store some of my extra fountain pen nibs before I found a nice tin can for that purpose.

31. What are you likely to find behind your sofa?

Dust.