Did the Climate Change Eat the Christmas Spirit?

Lets make it clear, I'm a Christmas person, and since very young the 'preparation' for Xmas for me has begun in the beginning of October, when the choir began to practice for Xmas concerts. Well, I haven't sung in a choir for ages, but the excitement for the becoming Xmas has still began to build up around the same time in the following years. However, this year something is different.. I don't even think of Xmas and its already mid-October. This has kind of worried me, so I have tried to reason why I'm missing the holly jolly bubbling joy of building excitement that the months leading to Xmas usually bring to me. The answer I have arrived to is the weather. It is extremely difficult to imagine Xmas, that I associate with winter, cold weather, possibly and hopefully at least a bit of snow, dark nights with skies filled with stars, and nights spent curled up in a blanket while zipping hot chocolate and watching movies, when it is literally summer outside. I can still go out wearing my summer clothes during the day and at night I just throw a light jacket on when entering outdoors, and this is crazy!

Now, I have lived in mid-Europe for a while, about six and half years, and this weather is insane! It should be raining, grey and chill outside, but instead the temperature is in twenties and its sunshine day in day out. I usually absolutely hate the time between late September and March because of the weather in here stays cold and wet pretty much the entire period of time that is considered fall and winter. At least in Finland the winter is cold and dry so you can hide the cold by wearing layers! Although, as a person who really dislikes the weather typical for fall this is of course good news, it is also extremely worrying, since its abnormal, just like the cold that lasted pretty much until late June and then turned immediately to +30°c this year.

I cannot say that I'm a person who is specifically worried of the climate change.. or maybe that's I lie.. I do worry about the climate change, and I have for a long time but I do not act upon it since I feel very powerless to do anything significant with my own actions. This is still my standpoint, unless the biggest countries, and industries contributing to the climate change do something to slow down the climate change, I believe all the individual persons in the world could do very little to stop the process, even if they all acted collectively. I also cannot blame anyone for not taking action, since I do very little myself; I fly at least twice a year, I eat 'too much' meat, don't buy bio- or local produce, don't recycle much... the list goes on.. However; some of these things I want to do, but it has been made ridiculously expensive for 'poor' people like me; for example I would recycle most of my waste, if the waste was collected in a price suitable for low-income households (actually in here there is no service that picks up the recyclable waste from your house), or the recycling center would be easy to reach, and again the price for the use of the recycling center would be affordable (and also the gas costs when you need to drive there). Because of this I only recycle cardboard and glass, since the cardboard is the only thing collected from residences and the nearest class recycling point is only a couple of steps away from our apartment. I would also buy bio and local products if they weren't so expensive. As a conclusion; to me it feels like living in 'an environmentally friendly way' has been made into a privilege of the wealthy in the Western societies.

I guess I will have to get used to the idea that I will be celebrating Xmas in summer from now on, so I will get back to looking for my lost Xmas spirit, since I got this dilemma off my chest.

Three weeks after graduation

I never imagined what kind of an emotional roller coaster the life of a newly graduated unemployed person would be.. well, actually I never thought I would end up being unemployed  to start with. Anyhow, life is truly exciting and scrolling through hundreds of job offers is amazing, since "all the door as open" and I can make decisions on where I want to go next. However, the job hunt for a foreigner turns disappointing very fast in a country with three official languages (which is confusing and ridiculous in Belgium, and I could talk about it for hours with the 'stupid' language divide and separation of the nation, but I'll leave it for another time), none of which you're fluent at. I knew that finding a job with my language selection and work experience would be challenging, if I didn't find something from my field, but I never thought that out of 800 job offers I could only find 1 that could be possible for me. And I don't have high standards, I just want something that is not too far away and that is either open for inexperienced people or for people on the field I've studied at, and that is paid (since the urgency for finding a job is financial).

Many could think that for a seemingly lazy person like me, being at home would not be a problem, but I am very bad a staying still and not doing anything. Therefore, I am already extremely bored and I hate that I have no 'function'. Although, I try to keep myself busy with different projects that involve mainly cooking, baking and knitting, I cannot wait to have something meaningful and challenging to do in my life. I guess that's the thing that really makes me bored; I don't need to use my brain or find out solutions to anything. Now, don't get me wrong, I absolutely love cooking and knitting, but they 'come naturally' to me which means that they're mainly things that I do to kill time right now, and I can do them in half-automatized way while watching TV.

In the other hand life is amazingly chill and nice at the moments, when I am able to distract myself from the boredom and stress to find a job. I can do anything that I wish to, sleep long and go to bed without a worry, since I don't need to wake up at a certain time, and I don't need to be anywhere.