One fact about life is that no one sees in the future. We can try to predict it but we still don’t know.

Im thinking how to communicate to people what is going on in my life but after reading another book about Meta (Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams) and seeing how Instagram has turned into something else it used to be, I don’t feel that comfortable sharing my deeper thoughts on that platform anymore. I feel very conflicted about this (obviously) because I like to express myself and my art through pictures, text, music, videos etc. but I think that there should be another way to connect with important topics than this monster company that makes business out of our lives and makes us scroll kilometres of curated ads aggressively by invading our space by listening us etc.

As an independent small artist it’s not rewarding to operate on a platform where uncontrollable private company owned algorithms do not favor what you do and decide what is relevant to show to people and what is not. Many artists put a lot of effort and time on their craft; to present it for free on a cloud platform to compete with robot accounts? This just seems to me unsustainable.

The human need of being seen, validated and accepted is a need that causes major trouble in modern smartphone time. If our efforts aren’t seen it causes us stress: I worked so hard and all I receive is criticism or barely recognition. Then you watch someone else doing the same job with less work and gets noticed, it doesn’t feel fair.

The other day it can be that your Instagram account no longer exist and all your work is gone. And again, yes, I’m there as well, my art is presented there and people have jobs and relationships because of that app. I have discovered very very cool things through Instagram and I also enjoy using it but that doesn’t take away the problems that the platform has and it’s more than healthy to observe it critically.

lt’s normal to not to want to communicate or create all the time but creators are forced to “feed the algorithm”. For me it sounds like you are feeding some sort of monster that will never be full. Humans are not created to be in some sort of alternate reality all the time feeding a monster, we are not build for that. I don’t understand how we still don’t categorize phone/social media addiction to the same category with alcohol, sugar, drugs and cigarrettes.

I’m waiting for a surgery. Many of us with a back issue gets familiar with their local swimming club (if you actually do the required exercises). One day I really couldn’t believe my eyes but I saw someone scrolling a phone in the corner of the pool. This gym is not like a luxury spa, where influencers spend hours taking pictures and just chilling. This is more like the type of pool that you go there, exercise and get out.

Another thing that I thought would be common knowledge is that you don’t take your phone to sauna. But common sense is not that common anymore and they had to put ‘no phones’ sign in front of a sauna and yet still the other day I saw someone tapping a screen in the heat. I don’t understand what they should write on the wall so that people get it, maybe something like ‘please don’t bring your electric device to a hot wet place which is perfect for it to explode and blow your and everyone elses eyes and you’ll never scroll again’. I’m from Finland where sauna was originally created and the whole point of sauna is to go there, be in silence, focus on your body, breathing and be present. Whatever benefits you are searching for in the sauna, will have zero impact on anything if you have a phone with you.

Ok enough of the phone rant. I actually had something to tell you about my projects: my very first EP is out! It’s called ‘Sugar Dreamer’ and it is about unhealthy dreaming. You can listen to it here. I’m guilty of being a sugar dreamer because I love dreaming and I have a creative mind. I also have to admit that sometimes too much dreaming feels like a bad sugar crash. Reality starts to feel wrong if I realise that my mind is too much in the future. On the other hand, I can’t imagine a human life without dreams, because dreams about a better future are vital for human beings. So yeah, let’s keep dreaming.

In the dreamer user guide, I would add: be careful, and don’t fall into the trap that life only begins once you’ve achieved everything you dreamed about. The crash will come, and we’ll just want more. Nothing is ever enough. I reach anyway, but I know the dreaming isn’t all there is.

Releasing my first EP comes with mixed emotions. I’m excited, horrified, happy and sad at the same time. I think it is a normal emotional combo to deal with and part of the artistic process. I can’t play the guitar at the moment because of my injury, so I had to arrange my studio differently and adapt to a synth. First I was in a denial and upset to admit that my body is not collaborating with me but eventually I realised that this is only a fun change. I will have time to play guitar in the future when I have recovered fully.

Today is my birthday so congratulations to me, I’m a 36 year old single queer woman in Barcelona. Working on music has helped me a lot to think about something else than the changes that I’m going through. The anxiety comes in waves and I’m trying to actively remind me that insecurities and not knowing what will happen is a part of being alive as a human being and completely normal. Falling into the vicious thought-chains is quite easy while going through several challenges at the same time. If you just keep going, the challenges start to slowly reveal another layer: the life lessons. I have learned so much about myself in such a short time that I’m curious to get to know the new me and what it will bring to my life.

I try to rewire my old vicious thought patterns by asking myself a few questions and of course physical exercise. Then what if something that you are or do is not someone’s cup of tea? How does it impact your life? Have you ever thought: what a weird way to approach any activity that you like, thinking more what others think of it than how it makes you feel? If you really like something and it is not harming anyone, what is the problem? Why do we try to impress someone that doesn’t have any interest in understanding what you are doing or going through?

One day I was laying on the floor and doing my fisio exercises I looked up and felt calm in my body, I understood something: I have truly realised that the only person on this Planet I should try to make happy and proud, is me. The best thing you can do to people around you is to take care of yourself and love yourself. I have people in my life that I deeply care about but the only one that I should make proud, is still me.

I have spent enormous part of my life hating myself and I’m starting to get tired of it because it’s not helping me. I have actively tried to change the negative loop whenever I notice that my thoughts start to wander on the toxic side. I’m very exhausting company to myself and others when I’m constantly nagging at myself. Some people say harsh things about people who are stuck in ‘victim mentality’ but I think that this kind of mentality comes out from an insecure mind that most likely has been bullied and traumatized somehow. If you had to shrink and apologize for who you are to survive because your excistency was too much for other people, the trauma that you carry is that you’re burden to everyone just by being alive. That is a heavy to load to carry for an individual.

We might get trapped thinking that if I don’t exist the troubles don’t exist but that is not the way things go. Every single person who is born on this Planet will suffer in some level and that collective suffering should make us get closer to each other but as long as we are afraid of our own and each other’s suffering, we all are suffering more than we should.

Sometimes the present is so painful that the dream of future is a relief: things will get better because they can’t get worse. There’s no right or wrong answer if things actually will get better but all I know is that I will always be a dreamer and keep dreaming.