Hygge

A quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being (regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture). (Oxford Dictionary). [[Hygge.->Hygge - Wikipedia]]

Hygge is a Danish and Norwegian word with a unique definition (although very similar to the Dutch word Gezelligheid). "Hygge" as a noun includes a feeling, a social atmosphere, and an action. The word is also used in compositions as "Julehygge" (Christmas-hygge). "Hygge" is also a verb e.g. "Let's hygge" and as an adjective e.g. "A small, hyggeligt house with grass on the roof". The noun "Hygge" includes something nice, cozy, safe and known, referring to a psychological state. "Hygge" is a state where all psychological needs are in balance. The antonym of hygge is uhyggelig, which translates as "scary". (Wikipedia.org) [[Hygge.->Hygge - visitdenmark.com]]

Hygge is as Danish as pork roast and it goes far in illuminating the Danish soul. In essence, hygge means creating a warm atmosphere and enjoying the good things in life with good people. The warm glow of candlelight is hygge. Friends and family – that’s hygge too. There's nothing more hygge than sitting round a table, discussing the big and small things in life. Perhaps hygge explains why the Danes are the happiest people in the world? (Visitdenmark.com). [[That summer, everything changed.->Summer]]

<header><h1>Hygge.</h1></header> [[Hygge.->Hygge - Oxford Dictionary]]

"How do you feel about moving to Denmark?" "Denmark?" "Yeah." "Like..." "I just found this job, it's a long shot." "... I don't actually know where Denmark is." "It's in Europe!" *laughing* "Well yeah, I just couldn't point it out on a map, you know." "It's a really good job." "Well, let's see how the election goes, right?" (set: $moving to 1) [[Back.->Summer]]

It's cold out, but not as cold as you expected. It's dark, even though it's only 16:30. You're waiting, but none of the cabs are big enough to fit all your luggage. The kids are stretched to their breaking point: anxious, excited, frustrated, tired, hungry. One of them says something annoying and you snap at them by accident. You tell them that you don't need this right now. She starts sobbing a little, and you apologize. You hug her tight. You tell her that moving is hard, and it's going to be hard for a while. She nods her head, her tears slowly coming to a halt. When the cab driver arrives, he's a big man. Heavy, but more importantly *tall*. When he sees the amount of luggage you have, he lectures you about it. "Yeah listen," you tell him, "we're moving here." "Don't do this again," he scolds us, as if we were children. "We weren't planning on it," you tell him. A part of you wants to add "*Obviously*," but you hold yourself back. (set: $airport to 1) [[Back.->Fall]]

Sex has become difficult. They put you in a small, three bedroom apartment, temporarily, while you wait for your residency permits to clear so that you can rent a bigger one. This one is prepaid for three months. The kids needed their own bedrooms so that they don't tear each other's hair out. One of the rooms is far too small for two people, and the other two are directly adjacent. There's a door connecting them, and it doesn't quite shut all the way. Everyone's bedroom is within a 5 foot radius of everyone else's. You wait until late in the night, when the kids are already asleep. Even then, you have to be so careful, so quiet, so nervous. You don't really feel in the mood as often. This upsets her; she needs to be loved and cared for, and you're not providing. "It's going to get better when we move." "I know, but that's not for months." (set: $sex to 1) [[Back.->Fall]]

The thirteen year old daughter is on spectrum. She's a nerd through and through, a hundred and twenty percent fangirl. She spends all her time talking to herself in her room, inventing elaborate crossover fantasy mashups of Harry Potter with Hamilton with Pokemon with Final Fantasy with My Little Pony with whatever other franchise she's interested in right now. She writes long fanfics scribbled on pieces of paper. She doesn't follow lines or write in orderly chunks, everything is written in tiny blocks scattered across five or ten pages. Her stories are accompanied with lots of drawings. This week, Harry Potter gets amnesia and forgets who he is. Everyone insists he's Harry Potter, but he claims there's no evidence of this fact. He sets out instead to become the world's greatest Pokemon trainer, so he does. Now that he's the world's best Pokemon trainer, he's famous, and more and more people insist that he's actually Harry Potter. He still says there's no evidence of this. The story ends here. Her stories are abidingly weird. They don't have any kind of plot or conventional narrative structure. There's no conflict. Stuff happens, and then they end. Sometimes she writes them in Spanish. She's weird, but she's basically not much weirder than any thirteen year old girl. She's going through the same changes. She just gets excited about things in different ways than everyone else. (set: $fanfic to 1) [[Back.->Summer]]

<header><h1>Fall.</h1></header>You arrive at the airport in October. (if: $airport is 0)[ [[Airport]] ](if: $airport is 1 and $jetlag is 0)[ [[Jet Lag]] ](if: $jetlag is 1 and $coffee is 0)[ [[Coffee]] ](if: $coffee is 1)[ ] (if: $herjob is 0)[ [[Her Job]] ](if: $herjob is 1 and $yourjob is 0)[ [[Your Job]] ](if: $herjob is 1 and $yourjob is 1)[ ] (if: $sex is 0)[ [[Sex]] ](if: $sex is 1)[ ] (if: $election is 0)[ [[Election]] ](if: $election is 1)[ ] (if: $7yearold is 0)[ [[7 Year Old]] ](if: $7yearold is 1 and $modeling is 0)[ [[7 Year Old - Modeling]] ](if: $modeling is 1 and $13school is 0)[ [[13 Year Old - School]] ](if: $13school is 1)[ ] (if: $daylight is 0)[ [[Daylight]] ](if: $daylight is 1 and $sleep is 0)[ [[Sleep]] ](if: $sleep is 1 and $depression is 0)[ [[Depression]] ](if: $depression is 1)[ ] (if: $herjob is 1 and $yourjob is 1 and $coffee is 1 and $jetlag is 1 and $airport is 1 and $sex is 1 and $7yearold is 1 and $13school is 1 and $election is 1 and $daylight is 1 and $sleep is 1 and $modeling is 1 and $depression is 1)[ [[In January, you move into your new apartment.->Winter]] ]

<header><h1>Winter.</h1></header>In January, you move into your new apartment. (if: $newapartment is 0)[ [[The New Apartment]] ](if: $newapartment is 1)[ ] (if: $7candy is 0)[ [[7 Year Old - Candy]] ](if: $7candy is 1 and $13scuba is 0)[ [[13 Year Old - Scuba Diver]] ](if: $13scuba is 1 and $13eavesdropping is 0)[ [[13 Year Old - Eavesdropping]] ](if: $13eavesdropping is 1)[ ] (if: $politics is 0)[ [[Politics]] ](if: $politics is 1 and $fascism is 0)[ [[Fascism]] ](if: $fascism is 1)[ ] (if: $warmth is 0)[ [[Warmth]] ](if: $warmth is 1 and $timezones is 0)[ [[Time Zones]] ](if: $timezones is 1 and $wintersun is 0)[ [[Winter Sun]] ](if: $wintersun is 1 and $candles is 0)[ [[Candles]] ](if: $candles is 1)[ ] (if: $peanutbutter is 0)[ [[Peanut Butter]] ](if: $peanutbutter is 1 and $pie is 0)[ [[Pie]] ](if: $pie is 1 and $licorice is 0)[ [[Black Licorice]] ](if: $licorice is 1 and $finedining is 0)[ [[Fine Dining]] ](if: $finedining is 1)[ ] (if: $newyears is 0)[ [[New Years]] ](if: $newyears is 1)[ ] (if: $danish is 0)[ [[Danish]] ](if: $danish is 1)[ ] (if: $squatting is 0)[ [[Squatting]] ](if: $squatting is 1 and $personalrecord is 0)[ [[Personal Record]] ](if: $personalrecord is 1)[ ] (if: $7candy is 1 and $fascism is 1 and $warmth is 1 and $peanutbutter is 1 and $pie is 1 and $timezones is 1 and $licorice is 1 and $squatting is 1 and $candles is 1 and $politics is 1 and $13scuba is 1 and $13eavesdropping is 1 and $wintersun is 1 and $newapartment is 1 and $finedining is 1 and $danish is 1 and $newyears is 1 and $personalrecord is 1)[ [[At some point, you notice that the days start getting longer and longer.->Spring]] ]

Because she's on spectrum, the school district is having a hard time finding a place for the thirteen year old. This is made worse by the fact that when you move in January, you'll probably have to go through the whole process again. Your girlfriend wants to handle it all, doesn't want you to worry. But she gets frustrated, dealing with bureacracy like this. They don't know where to put her. They keep offering options that won't work out. We're talking around in circles. "I think, I'm never going to go to school ever again," the thirteen year old tells you sadly. "Why would you think that?" "Because, well, it's *Denmark*. Maybe they have something against Americans." "Your sister is in school." "Yeah but, well, they just don't want *me*." "You're going to go to school, trust me." She doesn't say anything in response. As time passes and she still hasn't been sorted into a school yet, she gets progressively more upset. (set: $13school to 1) [[Back.->Fall]]

A bunch of Snickers bars have gone missing. When questioned, both girls point at each other. The thirteen year old suggests that maybe one of the *adults* ate them, but forgot about it. Both children are grounded until you figure out which one did it. That night, you find a mess of Snickers wrappers under the seven year old's pillow. When you confront her about it, she admits what she did. "I was just hungry, and I missed my friends." "Don't use loneliness as an excuse." "Yeah but I really wanted the chocolate, because I was lonely." (set: $7candy to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

Due to the time zone difference, the election results are going to be revealed in the middle of the night. It takes a long time to fall asleep. You keep refreshing the current results on your phone, checking to see who's in the lead. You're not enthusiastic. Eventually you fall asleep, fitfully. Your girlfriend wakes up in the middle of the night, checks her phone. Next to her, you stir too. "He won," she whispers softly. You can't fall back asleep. You get up and play Destiny multiplayer matches into the early morning because you're so upset. You drink the leftover beers in the fridge. (set: $election to 1) [[Back.->Fall]]

Daylight in the winter is minimal. The sun is up from maybe 8:00 or 9:00 to 15:00 or 16:00. At first you aren't upset about it. You make jokes about it. You change your Twitter profile to read "old man yells about daylight." As you repeat the jokes, they stop being strictly jokes at some point. The complaining starts being real. You wake up at 10:00 or 11:00, so you miss some of your precious daylight hours. You get your work done in the middle of the day, when your girlfriend is at work. Because of this, you never have a chance to go outside. Luckily you put your computer monitor on your windowsill, so you can look out at the daylight while you're working. It's not depressing, strictly: it just removes your sense of time. Days blur into each other. (set: $daylight to 1) [[Back.->Fall]]

"What's fascism?" the thirteen year old asks. You realize that she was supposed to learn about the Holocaust *this year* in school. Or at least she would have, if you had stayed in the United States. Now you have to explain it to her. You do the best you can, and she starts crying. Days later, she tells you that she's "still afraid of fascists". "What if I run into a fascist on the street?" she asks you. You try to explain why that won't likely be an issue, but she's still upset. "Anyone could be a fascist," she insists. "Even you, right? You could be a fascist!" "I'm not a fascist," you tell her. "Well, just to be careful, I won't trust anyone. I have to be cautious." "Alright, yeah, that's a fair takeaway I guess." One day, you're contacted by her teachers who tell you that she claims she's "seeing invisible Nazis" out on the playground and has been using this as an excuse not to go out. When you confront her about it, she admits that she wasn't actually seeing invisible Nazis, she just didn't want to go out on the playground. "You understand why you can't do that, right? If you tell people you're seeing invisible Nazis, that means that you're hallucinating and we'd need to take you to a doctor." "Oh. Huh. I didn't think about that. Ok." (set: $fascism to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

It's a dream job for her. She's in a company that's big enough to have money and small enough to give her a real say in decision making. They trust in her talents and give her work suited to her abilities. There's the usual ups and downs, but she loves it so much more than any job she's had so far. They *respect* her. After just three months, they promote her to the head of her department. It means a lot to her, she's so excited. There's no pay raise, but she negotiates for extra vacation. They actually *like* it when she speaks at conferences. They keep paying to fly her out to new ones. Sometimes you go too. You're so proud of her, and you love her so much. She's such an amazing person. (set: $herjob to 1) [[Back.->Fall]]

They don't really have peanut butter in Denmark. They do, but it's so much more expensive that it's not worth it, or at least you can't find it any cheaper. This is a problem because it was the glue that held yours, and the children's, diets together. You have to eat a lot of calories because of your lifting, preferably ones that are portable and easy to eat and don't go bad. You used to carry a jar of peanut butter around in your gym bag or your car with a spoon stuck inside it. You can't munch on peanut butter anymore. The kids get hungry all the time, at random times. They never eat enough during meals and then get hungry throughout the rest of the day, or the middle of the night. A peanut butter sandwich used to be their go to. Without peanut butter, they just eat whatever else they can get their hands on - usually, stuff they know they're not supposed to be eating. During a flight back to California, you fill up a suitcase with six jars of peanut butter. You try to explain to the kids that this has to last six months, but they go through half of it in a couple weeks all the same. You don't even get to have that much of it. (set: $peanutbutter to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

You've had a lot of jobs as a trainer in various capacities, but you've been shifting your focus to online coaching more recently. You started off with just a couple clients a couple years ago, but now you have more like fifteen - enough to pay the bills, but not enough to live comfortably. You had a day job where you were paid minimum wage for forty hours a week because you basically had to sit behind a desk and do little else - perfect for working on your online business. This was a chunk of your income, but you were fine giving it up to make the move. Now you can focus on your business full time. Business grows, but not as quickly as you'd like. Sometimes you're frustrated by the amount of time you put into it versus the amount of money you get out of it. Sometimes it feels like you're just spinning your wheels. Some months you get a lot of prepays, other months are much leaner. Since you work from your computer, you don't get out much anymore. You don't really make new friends, or see people. Just your girlfriend, and the kids. You've considered getting another job but you're not sure if it's worth it - it might be hard to find a job without speaking Danish, and you don't the kinds of skills that might make it easy to find a job in another country. You're working with the relocation agency to put together a resume, but you keep forgetting to reply to their emails. Your current work always seems more important. (set: $yourjob to 1) [[Back.->Fall]]

You're six hours ahead of the east coast, and nine hours ahead of the west coast, where you lived. You go to sleep before peak social media hours. If you stay up really late, you can interact with your friends a bit more, but then you have to wake up later too. Since you don't have as many friends in your time zone, social media sometimes feels like a dead zone. You get mad when you don't get as many interactions on a tweet or status because they're all you have now, so you feel isolated. Your regular interactions change, you find yourself interacting more with certain people and less with others. Since you have to make phone and skype calls with clients, you have to juggle time zones constantly. You discover that daylight savings time changes at different times in different areas of the world - this causes you endless headaches. You mis-schedule a couple clients by accident. You ruin a sale because of one of them. (set: $timezones to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

You always feel amazingly warm. You wear your shorts around all the time and rarely wear any other pants unless you're going out. You have a fur on the couch that you love, and lots of blankets. One day the heater goes out for a little while and the apartment gets really cold, but other than that you're quite comfortable. When you go out, you never wear more than a hoodie. Several people you interact with comment on how you're not wearing a jacket, but you shrug your shoulders. You don't feel cold. You've always had a high tolerance for temperatures. The cold doesn't bother you, just the darkness. The seven year old always wants to snuggle if she sees you on the couch. Sometimes this annoys you if you're doing work, but mostly you appreciate it. Usually she doesn't even ask, she just snuggles up on you and waits for you to say "no" if you're not into it. You hug her tight. Sometimes she crawls up on your shoulders without asking. Sometimes she's snuggling you on one side while your girlfriend snuggles you on the other. You're happy. (set: $warmth to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

You've never had black licorice before coming to Denmark. Your girlfriend laughingly tells you that you have to get the saltiest kind you can. You go along with it, because you enjoy trying new things for the sake of trying new things. You make a face, but joke about enjoying it anyway. Your taste buds are equal parts offended and entertained. You try it again, and the second one isn't so bad. Little by little, you finish off that package. One piece a day, maybe two. After a while you get used to the taste. Next time you buy a package of the less salty kind. You really like this. You eat it for fun. Sometimes you buy more. Your girlfriend sees a "black licorice crème brûlée" advertised in a restaurant. As a foodie, she's deeply offended. You laugh, and offer to buy one. After a while the novelty wears off, and you don't eat it as frequently. (set: $licorice to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

There's an American-style pie restaurant in Copenhagen. You keep going back there to buy the lemon meringue. There's a cute girl at the counter, and there's a giant red-neon sign that reads "PIE" in big block letters over the coffee maker. You keep going back to get more pie. You weren't even terribly *enthusiastic* about pie before, but now you really enjoy it. Sometimes your girlfriend texts you from work asking for you to meet her for pie after she gets out, and you do. It's a nice, short little date. (set: $pie to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

The thirteen year old does eventually get into school. They put her in a welcome class. She immediately learns how to get to and walk home from school, as is expected of her. You would not have imagined she would be able to handle it that well - normally, that's the sort of thing that would be anxiety-inducing for her - but she keeps finding her way to school in the morning and home in the evening without issue. One day you ask her how school went. "It went good," she replies. Later on you get an email from her teacher. It explains that today, the kids were being taken for a walk from the school to the teacher's house, during which they passed along the water. There they found a scuba diver who was being pulled back into the water and drowned. The scuba diver was somehow rescued, and the kids helped him carry his gear while he recovered. The teacher was emailing to tell the parents and reassure them that the kids had handled the event well, emotionally. "Did you rescue a scuba diver today?" you ask the thirteen year old. She's still in her room, so she peeks her head out slowly, not looking at you. "Yeah, I guess we did," she replies, enthusiasm muted, but growing. "It was kind of like... well, it was kind of like a miracle, wasn't it! Our class is called M2... we're miracle 2!" "Okay," you tell her with a chuckle. "Why didn't you tell us earlier?" "Hmm," she says. "Like when we asked you how your day was? That seems like something you should mention." "I guess I just didn't think about it," she says, already closing her door. (Set: $13scuba to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

The thirteen year old spends all her time in her room, but her new room is located next to the living room. Usually she spends most of her time talking to herself, or playing with her ukulele. She has a new habit though: eavesdropping. Frequently you'll be having a conversation and she'll suddenly charge out of her room to join in, or to ask you a question about something you're saying that has nothing to do with her. "Listen, you can't do that. That's called eavesdropping. If you want to be a part of the conversation, you should be hanging out with us, out here." "Okay," she says. She continues to do it all the same. (set: $13eavesdropping to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

You get a new exercise step for your girlfriend to do some exercises at home with. The seven year old is basically a tiny jock, and immediately starts using it herself. Since the steps are large and heavy enough, they're practically like weights to her. She picks them up and carries them around to prove how strong she is. She tries squatting to the boxes like she sees her mother doing. Her form is terrible. Her knees wobble every which way. She does the squat way too fast, makes a huge noise when her butt forcibly hits the steps, and then bounces off it and pops back up with barely any effort. "Why did no one consult me on form," you say, grumpily but good-naturedly. "I'm literally in the other room." You spend ten minutes trying to teach her good form, but her knees are still going everywhere. You give up. (set: $squatting to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

After the winter solstice, the days start getting longer. You don't notice it at first, but it actually happens surprisingly rapidly. There's a lot more ground to cover - in the Summer, daylight in Denmark lasts from about 4:30 to about 23:00. By March, the days are already looking reasonable again. The sun is up from about 6:00 to 18:30. You don't realize how relaxing this is until it's happening. You fly out to California for two weeks in late February/early March, and it isn't until you come back that you notice the difference. It seems shocking. (set: $wintersun to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

You didn't start drinking coffee until last year - you just didn't feel the need for it. But then you developed a caffeine habit, and now you need it. You've gotten into instant coffee. You're not big on taste, and you're not a foodie or coffee snob. You just need a warm, brown liquid with some cream and some sugar and some caffeine in it. Instant coffee is easier, since you just have to heat up some water whenever you want it. Your girlfriend mocks you for this, but you don't really care. You don't taste real coffee until you go back to the states and your mom makes you some of her coffee. Your mom purposefully makes really weak coffee - "half strength" she calls it, so that she can drink a lot of it without feeling guilty. You down huge double-sized mugs of the stuff but it doesn't feel the same. (set: $coffee to 1) [[Back.->Fall]]

You've experienced jet lag before, of course. You've just never made transatlantic flights this frequently before. Usually it doesn't mess you up too much on the way to America, but it really messes you up on the way back to Europe. Flying back once, you get a sinus infection while in California for a conference. Flying back is absolute misery. When you doze off in the plane, you always wake up pretty shortly afterwards with a massive headache. This awfulness lasts for a week. The first time you work out afterwards, you become so faint that you have to stumble home. Every time you get jet lag, you find yourself waking up uncharacteristically early in the morning for a week or two before sinking back into your old habits. (set: $jetlag to 1) [[Back.->Fall]]

Your girlfriend has a 9-5, but you don't. She goes to sleep at midnight every night like clockwork. You start staying up later, till 2 or 3 in the morning each night. It feels good to be up when no one else is. The girls are asleep, so you can get some time all to yourself. Usually you watch television, or play Destiny, or Final Fantasy XV when it comes out. Sometimes you get some work done, or do some writing. One night, you get absolutely hammered on Picon and Tuborg. You end up staying up the whole night, and your girlfriend is mad at you in the morning. Another night, you watch all of Koyaanisqatsi in silence, practically in a meditative state. You feel like watching it again but it's already 2:30. Sometimes the kids wake up and try to sneak food, but you manage to catch them. Every night, you snuggle your girlfriend in bed at midnight before you get up to do other stuff. You love her so much, but it's nice to have time away from even her, the kids, and work, all at once - you've always been an introvert that way. She understands, and you love that about her. You sometimes get so warm and comfortable while spooning that you just decide to stay instead, falling asleep just like that. One day you find out about a funny political event late at night, but you don't want to wake your girlfriend up to tell her. The next morning, she wakes up early to go into work and she finds out about it, but doesn't want to wake you up to tell you. In the middle of the day, the two of you exchange what you wanted to tell each other, laughing when you realize it was the same thing. (set: $sleep to 1) [[Back.->Fall]]

You've lived abroad twice before. When you were twenty one, you lived in Strasbourg, France, as part of a study abroad program offered by your college. You were with a class of about ten other students from your school and plenty of students from a Canadian exchange program, amongst others, so you didn't have any trouble finding people to hang out with. Still, you struggled with the language. When you were twenty four, you were offered a lot of money to be a strength coach in Saudi Arabia. Against your better judgment, you took it. It wasn't a good experience, and they couldn't pay you nearly as much as they promised. You enjoyed parts of it but you left after three months. In the summer they fly you out to Copenhagen to see if you like it. Your first impression isn't very good - you keep trying to compare it to Paris in your mind. Everything is the exact same height, and there's not nearly as much art to the place, but it's still European. (set: $abroad to 1) [[Back.->Summer]]

<header><h1>Summer.</h1></header>That Summer, everything changed. (if: $moving is 0)[ [[Moving?]] ](if: $moving is 1 and $abroad is 0)[ [[Abroad]] ](if: $moving is 1 and $abroad is 1)[ ] (if: $kids is 0)[ [[Kids]] ](if: $kids is 1 and $fanfic is 0)[ [[13 Year Old - Fanfic]] ](if:$kids is 1 and $fanfic is 1)[ ] (if: $powerlifting is 0)[ [[Powerlifting]] ](if: $powerlifting is 1)[ ] (if: $moving is 1 and $kids is 1 and $fanfic is 1 and $abroad is 1 and $powerlifting is 1)[ [[You arrive at the airport in October.->Fall]] ]

For Christmas, you fly back to the states to see your family. For New Years, you fly back to Denmark before flying to Paris and then Strasbourg with your girlfriend. You wanted to see the places you remember. You buy a copy of *The Girl With All The Gifts* at Shakespeare and Company, which you get about halfway through before losing it a few months later. Seemed solid enough. Paris is exactly the way you remember it. You love it, but you feel even more like a tourist than last time. Your French is much worse, but it's not a problem. Now that you're learning Danish, French comes much more slowly. You dip in and out of French when speaking Danish, and vice versa. You know you'll have to do something to sharpen your French again later but that you should be focusing on Danish first. In Strasbourg you visit all your favorite old haunts. They all feel empty now, your old friends aren't here anymore. You eat at your favorite brewery, and the food and beer are even more amazing than you remember, but you stumble through ordering food in French. The wi-fi at the hotel doesn't work on your computer, so there's little for the two of you to do when you've already walked the city. You go to a restaurant that serves nothing but cheese: fondue, and raclette. You walk past your old university building, and your host parents' apartment - you don't leave them a message, because you don't know what to say, or if they'd even remember you. You go to your old grocery store - it's been heavily renovated - and buy a bottle of Picon, which you can't get in the states. (set: $newyears to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

Danish is a hard language to learn. The grammar seems similar to English, but the pronunciation is all strange. Besides, everyone here speaks English anyway. But you get tired of that awkward moment: you're on the street, someone says something in Danish, you have to say, "Oh, I'm sorry, I only speak English," before they start speaking English to you. It's not so bad, but it gets to you after a while. You start practicing on Duolingo, but you quickly realize you're never going to learn enough speaking through this, just written. The government pays for free language lessons for expats - you sign up, but the process takes a month and then you have to wait another month for the class to start. In the meantime you do everything you can in Duolingo, but it can only take you so far. You're warned that the particular school that you're signing up for is a bit choosy with their applicants. When you show up for a simple admissions test, you're unceremoniously hurled into a quick grammar test. Then, without warning, the admissions councillor asks you to try and translate a Danish phrase. You realize it's a good thing you were practicing - she was trying to get you to figure things out via context clues and cognates alone, which would have been a nightmare, but since you practiced it was a breeze. (set: $danish to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

You get tired of talking about politics. You get tired of thinking about politics. When you speak to Danes, it always comes up: "How could this happen??" etc. etc. etc. It's the only thing on anyone's mind. At one point, the thirteen year old suggests that she still doesn't understand why this whole situation is bad. You point out that the vice president is in favor of electrocuting gay people, which likely includes her seven year old sister, who gets crushes on girls more frequently than boys. You explain to the girls what health care is, and what's happening to it. You explain how your friend from Lebanon is terrified of flying anywhere. The act of explaining is painful. You didn't come here just to escape it, and you certainly feel a great deal of discomfort about the situation. You speak out about it however you can, but sometimes you feel useless. Some days your girlfriend is distraught too. Once, your mother mentions how it's a record high temperature for February, and you remember how terrifying of an idea climate change is. You haven't said a word about politics to your family, because you know that it wouldn't lead anywhere good. You feel insulated from everything, but not much. You're about 4,000 miles away but that doesn't feel like much of a comfort. (set: $politics to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

You've always loved candles. You can't remember when, but at one point you got into a habit of burning tea light candles while working at your computer and then keeping the metal bases as a way of tracking time. You've always been a bit of a hoarder like that - not with most stuff, but just certain small collectibles: coins, Pokemon cards, at one point even water bottles in the trunk of your car. You don't know why, but you've just had this habit. The amount of work you've done at the computer has varied over time, so it's never been a steady habit for candles. When you moved, you had to toss your old box of used up candle bases. You bought a new set when you moved here, and since all your work is at the computer now they mean more to you, you always remember to light them. The Danes are apparently really big on candles, and are one of the biggest candle consumers in the world. You feel at home with that fact. You keep another candle lit for whenever you're sitting at your desk playing video games, so now you have both work and play candles. Now that you think about it, you want to put candles everywhere else too. (Set: $candles to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

Your girlfriend has two kids from previous marriages: seven and thirteen. They're polar opposites. The thirteen year old is very introverted and nerdy, and just wants to spend time alone. The seven year old is outgoing and precocious, and always wants to be the center of attention. The two constantly get into fights because neither can understand the other's mindset in the slightest. You weren't really prepared to be a step-parent, but you've taken to it well enough. They both like you a lot, because you're a very neutral presence, and you often have to mediate between the kids. You're more intellectually-minded like the thirteen year old, but also willing to give the seven year old cuddles, or pick her up over your head. In pictures, the seven year old is always smiling warmly, facing directly at the camera. The thirteen year old is always smiling with a grin that seems a little too wide and too fake, and her eyes are always aimed just slightly off of the camera. (set: $kids to 1) [[Back.->Summer]]

<header><h1>Spring.</h1></header>At some point, you notice that the days start getting longer and longer. (if: $blogging is 0)[ [[Blogging]] ](if: $blogging is 1 and $coding is 0)[ [[Coding]] ](if: $coding is 1 and $danishjob is 0)[ [[A Danish Job]] ](if: $danishjob is 1 and $conferences is 0)[ [[The Conferences]] ](if: $conferences is 1)[ ] (if: $friends is 0)[ [[Friends]] ](if: $friends is 1)[ ] (if: $8birthday is 0)[ [[8 Year Old - Birthday]] ](if: $8birthday is 1 and $thriving is 0)[ [[13 Year Old - Thriving]] ](if: $thriving is 1)[ ] (if: $languageschool is 0)[ [[Language School]] ](if: $languageschool is 1 and $fieldtrip is 0)[ [[Field Trip]] ](if: $fieldtrip is 1)[ ] (if: $leisure is 0)[ [[Leisure]] ](if: $leisure is 1 and $strength is 0)[ [[Strength]] ](if: $strength is 1)[ ] (if: $languageschool is 1 and $danishjob is 1 and $friends is 1 and $8birthday is 1 and $coding is 1 and $fieldtrip is 1 and $thriving is 1 and $blogging is 1 and $leisure is 1 and $conferences is 1 and $strength is 1)[ [[It's almost been a year now, hasn't it.->Summer Again]] ]

Your language classes are 4 hours a day, 4 days a week. The added time requirement is - a lot, but not impossible to handle. Your classmates are mostly Europeans from various countries - Germany, Belgium, Italy, Ukraine, Bosnia, Russia, Turkey, and more. They all speak perfect English. There's an Italian man who works for a ski resort. When the weather gets warmer, his company pays for him to live in other countries so that he can pick up other languages and communicate with their visitors better. This is his second year in Denmark. This is incomprehensible to you. There's an Italian woman who's eight months pregnant. At some point, the topic of maternity leave comes up. Everyone is shocked to hear that there's none in the US. She ends up giving birth partway through the class and has to leave early. One day your teacher mentions that smoking is becoming cool again with the youth in Denmark. You reply that everyone in the US is just vaping now. Half your class stares at you as if this is the grossest thing they've ever heard. They're shocked to realize how popular it is in the states. (set: $languageschool to 1) [[Back.->Spring]]

You're finally starting to have friends, mostly among your girlfriend's coworkers. They get together a group of coworkers who all go workout together at the same gym - the same gym you work out at. You're added to the group and sometimes you get to work out together. When there are work events, you know who to hang out with now. Sometimes you go out for drinks after work - this always turns into a 6+ hour long affair. One company party goes from 4pm to 2am, with free drinks throughout. You get really drunk and interact with the owner of the company. You can't remember much, but you hope you haven't embarrassed yourself. "I'm learning Danish," you tell one of your girlfriend's Danish coworkers at another party. "I'm so sorry to hear that," she replies with a laugh. You're friends with half the company on Facebook now. Many of them recognize you by sight, including the receptionist every time you stop by to pick your girlfriend up from the office. "You're her boyfriend, right?" "Yeah, that's me." People start visiting too, friends flying in from the states. Sometimes they're on their way to other places, they've got business in Europe. You spend time playing video games with friends in the states over Skype, even though it's sometimes hard to coordinate timing. You've got social media to keep you company, at least. There's a couple friends in London. Plane tickets to London are about $50 and it costs a lot more just to get around London once you're there. You visit London a couple times. One time you drive a rental car, even though you're terribly anxious about driving on the other side of the road. You like the feel of London. You do tarot readings with one of the friends. Writing this now, you don't remember what your reading said, but you seem to remember it confirming your subconscious biases about what was going on in your life at the time - great struggle followed by great success, or something along those lines. (set: $friends to 1) [[Back.->Spring]]

<header><h1>Summer again.</h1></header>It's almost been a year now, hasn't it. (if: $danascully is 0)[ [[Dana Scully]] ](if: $danascully is 1 and $scullyroom is 0)[ [[Dana Scully - Room]] ](if: $scullyroom is 1)[ ] (if: $8hair is 0)[ [[8 Year Old - Hair]] ](if: $8hair is 1 and $14birthday is 0)[ [[14 Year Old - Birthday]] ](if: $14birthday is 1 and $8catnip is 0)[ [[8 Year Old - Catnip]] ](if: $8catnip is 1 and $14running is 0)[ [[14 Year Old - Running Away]] ](if: $14running is 1)[ ] (if: $preservedlimes is 0)[ [[Preserved Limes]] ](if: $preservedlimes is 1)[ ] (if: $summervacation is 0)[ [[Summer Vacation]] ](if: $summervacation is 1 and $mønsklint is 0)[ [[Møns Klint]] ](if: $mønsklint is 1)[ ] (if: $gamedev is 0)[ [[Game Dev]] ](if: $gamedev is 1)[ ] (if: $television is 0)[ [[Television]] ](if: $television is 1)[ ] (if: $weather is 0)[ [[Weather]] ](if: $weather is 1 and $longestday is 0)[ [[The Longest Day Of The Year]] ](if: $longestday is 1 and $climatechange is 0)[ [[Climate Change]] ](if: $climatechange is 1)[ ] (if: $danascully is 1 and $14birthday is 1 and $preservedlimes is 1 and $summervacation is 1 and $longestday is 1 and $gamedev is 1 and $weather is 1 and $climatechange is 1 and $mønsklint is 1 and $scullyroom is 1 and $8hair is 1 and $14running is 1 and $television is 1 and $8catnip is 1)[ [[There's No End]] ]

Your birthday is in July. Twenty seven. You feel both old and young at the same time. You felt like you'd have accomplished more in your life by now, like you'd have more money, more fame, and more respect. You know you're doing well for yourself, but you're still jealous of some of your friends, who've done much better than you. You and your girlfriend discuss and decide that your birthday present will be a new cat. You'd always wanted one when you were a kid, but everyone else in your family was allergic. She'll pay for the adoption fees. You pick out an adoption center that's about a half hour away by public transit. You pick out a beautiful grey cat named Dana Scully by her former owner. You like the name and you keep it. Dana is kind of shy and anxious about loud noises but very friendly when she wants to be. Dana spends the first week hiding under your bed and stealing your hair ties. She doesn't leave your room much. You buy her a cat bed and she starts sleeping there instead. The eight year old loves cats to death. She's really having a hard time avoiding bothering the cat. Everyone loves having the cat in the house, and everyone feels a bit happier now that she's here. You have to take her back to the shelter a week later to get a shot. This time you're taking the transit alone. Dana is much more manageable and less anxious this time travelling. (set: $danascully to 1) [[Back.->Summer Again]]

You're starting to wonder if you should find a Danish job. Your freelancing makes you enough money by American standards, but with higher taxes here it would be a bit of a squeeze. You feel like you need another stream of income. You start looking for Danish jobs, but there's not much that isn't service industry or tech work that you're not qualified for. You apply for an entry level position at your girlfriend's company when there's an opening - you don't have direct experience, but there's enough related experience that you feel like it should be a fit. The interview process takes months. You go through two rounds, and everything seems to go well enough. In the final round, they go with someone else who has more related experience. Ironically enough, the other person has the same name as you. During one of your interviews, you happen to run into the owner of the company on the way in. "Good to see you again!" he tells you, shaking your hand. You smile and secretly wonder if he's forgotten your name. It turns out later that he hasn't, because he refers to you by name the next time the two of you run into each other. (set: $danishjob to 1) [[Back.->Spring]]

The 7 year old spends a lot of her time watching Youtube streamers, or playing games that they've streamed. She wants to be just like them. Her personality is just right for it, and she can spitball out loud about anything, no matter how boring it actually is. She decides that she wants her own streaming channel for her birthday. You go through a lot of work setting things up to make it easier, researching how you can stream from the Playstation, from the tablet, from the computer. You buy her a nice gaming headset in pink and white that you know that she'll love. You give that to her for her birthday. She's overflowing with excitement. You tell her to pick out a streaming name. You have to convince her that "CatanaMermaid" (cat + katana + mermaid) is "too many things". "Pick two things! Three is too many! People may not get the pun." "No, I can have as many things as I want! My favorite streamer has four things in her name!" Eventually she relents and picks KatanaMermaid. You plan to start doing graphic design for a header. You figure out a script for an introduction video. The introduction script is only a paragraph long, but she takes an hour trying to memorize and repeat it. Eventually she gives up without letting your girlfriend film her. "This is like work!" she exclaims indignantly. She never ends up setting up her introduction video or her channel, despite numerous attempts to prod her. (set: $8birthday to 1) [[Back.->Spring]]

The thirteen year old is turning fourteen now. Your girlfriend takes her to the Sephora and buys her her first set of makeup. She excitedly practices different applications and different lipsticks. She goes through a lot of her makeup remover. The 8 year old tries stealing makeup from her at various points. You buy her copies of Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 8. She's excited, but ends up never really playing either. This is probably for the best, considering how emotionally invested she would have been in Aeris. It's strange to realize how old she's getting. At her age, you were obsessing over Facebook and being more liked by your classmates. All she cares about is Pokemon and her ukulele. She has a Facebook account and a Twitter account, but she never uses them. (set: $14birthday to 1) [[Back.->Summer Again]]

You've discovered that giving the 8 year old "no cat for a day" is a remarkably effective punishment. She still ends up with no cat day on a day that you're going to be mostly out. You remind her that she's not allowed to interact with the cat while you're gone. You come home to find that she's moved the cat bed, put Dana's blanket back in her carrier, and used most of the catnip in an effort to get the cat to go into the carrier, for some reason. The bathroom is a mess. There's catnip everywhere. Dana, confused by the whole situation, has stopped using her cat bed again and is laying on her scratching pad because she doesn't know what else to do. You give the 8 year old a stern talking to and she cries the whole time. You're not mad at what she did so much as mad at how bad she is at covering her tracks. When you take away even more cat days, she volunteers to clean the litter box in exchange for reduced time. (set: $8catnip to 1) [[Back.->Summer Again]]

The longest day of the year is June 21st. According to the internet, the sun goes down at 9:57pm and comes up at 4:25am, but with twilight and sunrise it's really more like 11:15pm and 3:15am. You've always been a bit of a night owl, and aside from your language classes, you don't really need to wake up at any time. Sometimes you stay up until you can see the sun starting to rise, but your girlfriend doesn't like it if you stay up that late because it disturbs her sleeping patterns. In contrast to the winter, these long days feel... good. You really do enjoy them. You've never had a problem sleeping with a bit of light in the room, and your curtains are good enough to block out most of it anyway. On the 21st, you walk to the gym for a workout around 9:30p. When you leave around 11, there's still light over the rooftops. You take a picture to share. (set: $longestday to 1) [[Back.->Summer Again]]

Your girlfriend wants you to get into cooking. You try making a few recipes but nothing really interests you. You end up getting really into the idea of pickled lemons and pickled limes. You make your own pickled limes. You like the idea of salty limeade, but it's still a bit stronger than you'd like. You settle on a recipe for a chicken soup with garlic and pickled limes. It's astoundingly delicious, and simple to make. You feel proud. You want to make it for everyone who visits so that they can try it out. The jar sits in your fridge gathering perspiration, slowly losing limes. "I really like this!" - the 8 year old, after a small sip of salty limeade. "Oh, never mind this is really gross." - the 8 year old, after a larger sip of salty limeade. "I think it's good." - the 14 year old. You take a picture of the jar of preserved limes to send to your mom. "Hi mom, I started experimenting with canning." "Oh that's awesome but are you canning limes and why?" (set: $preservedlimes to 1) [[Back.->Summer Again]]

The 14 year old is very sensitive to noise, and often snaps at her little sister for being loud or obnoxious. She's also very averse to conflict. Sometimes when the 8 year old refuses to confess to something she's done, the 14 year old confesses and accepts punishment just to avoid the conflict. She gets very upset whenever she's punished, and often gives long monologues about how punishments are unjust. She expresses the desire to move to paradises where punishments don't exist. You try to explain, over and over, how no such thing exists, but she continues to think that all she has to do is go out onto the street and look around until she finds it. You try to explain to her how she's punished much less than you or your girlfriend were as children. How she's a really good kid and really doesn't mess up that much. How you hate taking away Pokemon, or screen time, but it's the only thing you can do to convince her not to break rules. Sometimes she still talks about running away. It hurts everyone so much to hear this. You assure her, over and over, that you love her and that you don't want her to go anywhere. You explain rules and how they exist to help people get along in social settings, for what must be the tenth time. She cries on your shoulder, but she relents, at least for now. (set: $14running to 1) [[Back.->Summer Again]]

Your girlfriend has a meeting with the 13 year old's teachers. She comes home crying. They tell her that the 13 year old hasn't been thriving. She has a good technical grasp of Danish but refuses to speak it much. This is holding her back from moving into the standard classes, and it's destroying her self esteem because she thinks so highly of her intelligence. You talk with the 13 year old and explain to her how she absolutely NEEDS to start interacting with her classmates more. The problem is, she doesn't think of this as schoolwork. "It's unimportant. It's superfluous. Why won't they just teach me things?" You tell her over and over that she needs to interact with her classmates more, but she doesn't. You try having her practice Danish with her sister, but this gives her panic attacks, and she hates it. The only thing you can get them to agree on is watching cartoons together in Danish. You sign her up for online classes in English because this will allow her to keep learning at her own pace. Even then, it sometimes feels like pulling teeth, trying to get her to actually take the classes. She keeps saying that she'll do classes and then spending half the time googling random stuff, or looking up Pokemon facts. One time, you check the history to see that she was using the laptop early in the morning without permission. You implement a rule where you have to put a password on the laptop and then check her browser history whenever she's done with classes. This helps a bit, but the teachers still want her to move to a special needs school. "The Danish school system is different from the American school system - everything is filtered through the principles of sharing, communicating, and collaborating. She can do well in the American system, but it's like the Danish system filters everything through the lens of her worst skill." (set: $thriving to 1) [[Back.->Spring]]

You've always wanted to learn how to code. You've always been jealous of your friends who seemed to have real jobs, real careers, real skillsets. Your skillset is - well, it's enough to support you, but sometimes you wish you could make more money. Have a reason to wear nice clothes to work. Have a desk. Have health insurance. Not that health insurance is an issue here in Denmark, but you still worry about finding a Danish job. You remember when you used to mess around in RPG Maker 2000 when you were a kid, and how you put together a short and messy game based on a concept you had that ended up turning into a novel idea that you wrote half of, and then how you ended up putting that novel aside and writing a different novel in the same setting. You remember how it's supposed to be pretty easy to put games together in Twine. You start learning Java via a free online course. You don't get very far because between learning Danish and your freelance work, you don't have a lot of leftover time. You still plan to finish, but it will have to wait a bit. You buy a copy of the latest RPG Maker, but you don't do anything with it yet. (set: $coding to 1) [[Back.->Spring]]

You start taking a game dev course via Coursera. It teaches you the basics of using Unity. You think that at the very least, this is a good first step. Your girlfriend points out that if you become a designer, you're going to end up competing with her for jobs in five or ten years. You decide it's probably better to aim for being an engineer. She's relieved. You fire up Twine and start making games. You decide to finish writing this game. You make a dumb tweet that's just a picture of Dana Scully with a caption that reads "You have been visited by the gains cat. Like and RT for gains. Do nothing for NO GAINS." You expect this to do well, but it does surprisingly well. You start making more tweets like this one with simple fitness advice written in a character voice and captioned over pictures of the cat. Your girlfriend has a really good idea: what if you make a Twine game centered on her? You could write a longer branching tutorial for getting in shape, all in her character and featuring many more professional photos of her. You could pose her with various home fitness workout objects. You consider writing this. (set: $gamedev to 1) [[Back.->Summer Again]]

Your blog continues to get more and more views, and you're in a place where, for the first time, you're starting to see consistent growth from week to week and month to month. In the first half of 2017, you get more pageviews than in all of 2016. You've got more online clients than ever, and you're making more money than ever. At the same time, the summer slump is coming up. Some types of clients seem to be hard to hold onto no matter how good the results you get them. You're in an odd place - you're big enough that you're supporting yourself and making real money, but not nearly as big as the big fish out there, and there's a lot of growth left to be had. You start prepping a site redesign, new products, and more. This takes a lot of time, and sometimes your dedication wavers, but you keep at it. You refuse to get discouraged. Sometimes you feel like you should be further along, but you can only keep at it. (set: $blogging to 1) [[Back.->Spring]]

The Danish are wild about vacation. With 5 weeks of paid vacation per year (and sometimes more), there's a huge cultural focus on taking a bunch of time off in the summer and travelling or getting a summer home. With so many weeks of vacation flying around, some companies enforce mandatory vacations to make them more manageable. Your girlfriend's company shuts down for 2 weeks in July so that they can force everyone to take 2 of their weeks of vacation during that period. This makes it easier to coordinate the remaining three weeks so that there isn't a constant cycle of people being gone through the rest of the year. The kids get 6 weeks off of school. Your Danish language school also has a 6 week break. You use this time to focus on prepping your new product releases and to take more online courses. But now that the kids have off of school, that means constant work disruptions. The 8 year old opens your door 5-10 times a day asking for hugs or wanting to talk about something. She does this whenever she's not feeling like she's getting enough attention, which is all the time since she's the only extrovert in a household of introverts. Sometimes it happens every 15-20 minutes. "Okay you can have a hug, but this is your only hug for the next hour." (She looks back at you with a mixture of shock and horror on her face.) If she's not bothering you, there's a good chance she's bothering her sister, which means that you have to get up and break up a fight whenever you hear the sound of panicked yelling from the 14 year old. At the same time, summer really is relaxing. You go out for food a bit more often. Friends visit. You go out drinking. (set: $summervacation to 1) [[Back.->Summer Again]]

There's a famous set of Danish cliffs called Møns Klint. The country is generally quite flat, so any amount of elevation is exciting. The cliffs are made of a bright white chalk, and are really spectacular to look at. When a friend comes in town to visit, you decide to take a day trip. You rent a car at the local Hertz, and are surprised to find that they're way more casual about car rentals out here. It's only an hour and a half drive. The drive feels suddenly more natural than expected. It reminds you of driving through Michigan or Ohio, but with fewer farm fields and more small, ancient towns. You discover that there's a museum at the top of the cliffs, for geology and dinosaurs mostly. You probably should have done more research. You eat Danish smørrebrød (a kind of open faced sandwich on rye bread) in the museum cafeteria before you go out to the cliffs. There's a huge set of stairs from the cliffs down to the beach below, but you decide not to take them because you were a bit late getting there and your girlfriend doesn't feel like taking the trip. Instead you walk along the paths at the top to the various viewing spots. Even this is a lot of walking and a lot of changes in elevation. You wake up the next day with terribly sore calves. You feel more Danish, somehow. (set: $mønsklint to 1) [[Back.->Summer Again]]

One of your Danish teachers takes your class out on a field trip. Everyone gets assigned a different landmark, has to write a short presentation in Danish, and then the class goes around to the landmarks and listens to everyone's short presentations. It's the first time you've really seen everything, even though you live downtown now. You just didn't get out enough to explore, and didn't have the right perspective on everything. Now that you see it, you laugh at how you used to think everything was flat and boring. (Well, it's still pretty flat - the entire country is - but it's not boring.) You feel more Danish now, like you've passed some imaginary test. You give a visiting friend a tour of the city and your girlfriend is surprised to see how much of the city you know. (set: $fieldtrip to 1) [[Back.->Spring]]

You start running out of television to watch. In the past year, you've had your second monitor running television shows nonstop while you work. You're generally able to work without the shows impacting your work speed much, and it also helps you stay on track because you're able to work for much longer when you have something to amuse yourself in the process. It's not a perfect approach. Some types of work really are impacted, so you just listen to music during that work instead. Some television shows or movies are action packed in ways that's distracting, so you avoid watching them while working. A godsend has been Star Trek. Episodes are interesting enough to be enjoyable but not so action packed or cerebral as to be distracting. You've already watched through all of the original series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space 9, and you're most of the way through Voyager. All that's left is Enterprise, and it's one of the worst Star Treks. Aside from that, you've basically cleared everything else in your Netflix and your to-do list. You're literally running out of stuff to watch. You consider how you'll soon need to start rewatching things, which feels like a refreshing blessing after feeling the need to catch up on everything all the time forever. You remember the last time you were close to finishing everything up. It was once in 2013, when you were working at your first gym job. You used to have a lot of filing to do, and you would watch Netflix on your tablet while you did so. At the time, you had been between serious relationships and in a pretty dark mood. You had thought of "finishing" everything you wanted to watch as a sign that you were a boring person with a boring life, running out of ways to amuse yourself. You had felt an impending sense of doom, as if running out of television to watch would mean that you died. Now when you look forward to it, you //look forward// to it. The idea of running out of shows and movies to watch seems like a great weight lifted off your mind. You can focus more on learning to code, or on reading more, or on putting more time into your writing You realize that it's a bit further off than you first thought. There's a handful of foreign language movies and television shows that you can't watch while working. There's Danish television shows that you want to watch now that you can understand them well enough. There's a whole list of anime you want to catch up on. Still, you feel oddly like there's a weight being lifted. You feel good, freed somehow. (set: $television to 1) [[Back.->Summer Again]]

In spring you head back to the states twice for conferences. One is the Game Developers Conference, which you go to with your girlfriend. This year you don't get sick like you did last year, and you get to have fun and see friends. You see a friend from college and get to ask him how he feels about moving to the Bay Area. He moved for a job but now he's between jobs, and a bit frustrated. The other is the Fitness Summit conference, which you go to every year. You plan to stop in Michigan for the week before so that you can see your family. Your mother makes fun of you for growing your hair out. "Are you just going to keep growing it?" "Yeah, as far as I know." You hang out at a couple get togethers with your old Detroit friends. It feels weird being away from them, but it also feels both weird and comforting to look back and see how little some people have changed. At the conference you hang out with your friends from past years. You're a real fitness professional now, you really make money in this industry. People know you. People you don't know introduce themselves to you and tell you that they follow you on instagram. You get hammered and laugh with a friend about various bits of drama over the past year. Having these bits of in-drama make me feel like you belong. You still feel jealous, seeing how well some of your other friends have done for themselves, but this just motivates you to get back to work when the conference is over. (set: $conferences to 1) [[Back.->Spring]]

A friend managed to get reservations at Noma, so you and your girlfriend and a couple other friends ended up going. Noma was ranked the best restaurant in the world for 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2014. The name comes from a portmanteau of the danish words "nordisk mad", meaning "Nordic food", and is known for its reinventing of Nordic food as well as its hyper-focus on local ingredients and foraging for ingredients in the environment around Copenhagen. The restaurant closed in December to focus on a temporary stay in Mexico followed by a reopening in 2017. Your reservations ended up being in the last week before the close. The food was amazing. Even the smallest things tasted astoundingly delicious. At one point, they managed to make a plate covered in greens taste like tiny, delicious steaks. The experience was more casual than you expected, and it felt quite - hygge. After dinner they gave you a tour of the kitchens and the food lab. The kitchen staff poses with you for a photo. You then hang out in a drinking lounge late into the night, leaving just around midnight. You later contact a friend from twitter who used to work there and she tells you with pride that she had designed parts of the food lab and their food storage. This is one of the first times you've really experienced fine dining. When you were a kid, your parents made standard midwestern food. When you lived on your own, you ate for practical purposes: to fuel your exercise. You ate lots of cheap, bland food that you could prepare quickly at home. You never really had a good sense of smell, so you never really had a strong sense of taste either. Your girlfriend made fun of you for it. After this, you tried other Michelin star restaurants. Le Grand Vefour, opened in 1784 and a classic of French dining. Kiin Kiin, the only Thai restaurant outside Thailand with a michelin star. Your taste buds start to improve. You start to appreciate good food a bit more. Your girlfriend is so proud. (set: $finedining to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

<header><h1>There's No End.</h1></header> You never really feel like you belong no matter where you live or what you do. Life is always in a state of transition, and everything is always moving on. But if you keep at it, you can make a place for yourself. You have a place for yourself. [[Thanks For Playing]]

One day you realize that the 8 year old has some really - //weird// - looking bangs. They're oddly short, uneven, disjointed. She hadn't had a haircut in a while. She cut them herself. When you ask why she's defensive. She won't admit to anything. You explain to her how now that she's cut her own hair, she's made it harder for herself to get a good haircut because there's no longer some of that hair to cut. There's nothing to work with. She's devastated. Later on, you make another realization: her eyebrows look strange. Surprise, she cut them. You're dumbfounded. It takes time to pry a confession out of her. She's embarrassed. She thought her eyebrows were too thick, but didn't know what to do about it. "You know that there are plenty of supermodels with thick eyebrows, right?" your girlfriend tells her. "Really?" she asks, starting to sob. Your girlfriend shows her a quick Google search. She sobs even more when she realizes what she's done. "If you had come to me I would have taught you how," your girlfriend explains. She sobs harder. "This would be a good one for the game," you tell her. "Game?" she asks, perking up a little. "Yeah, I'm writing a game, all about our experience of moving to Copenhagen." She gets mad when she thinks you might make fun of her or include pictures, but then she's excited when she realizes she'll be in a video game. (set: $8hair to 1) [[Back.->Summer Again]]

The 7 year old wants more than anything to be a model, or a fashion designer. She could probably pull it off, too. On a whim, your girlfriend does a search of modelling agencies and finds one that might take her. Your girlfriend takes headshots for her and takes her to an audition. The photographer at the audition is shocked by her energy and confidence. The photographer is delighted by her presence. She's listed on the website as a model. The 7 year old loves being taken to H&M since it's fashionable and cheap, and she can dress herself up. Sometimes she'll lay out outfits she's planned days in advance. Sometimes the outfits are goofy as hell, but she loves just the act of putting them together. She's also a bizarre nudist, walking around without clothes in inappropriate situations all the time, or sleeping in her underwear and then not bothering to get dressed right away. She never gets an offer for any kind of child modelling gig, but she loves just being able to tell her friends that she's "a model". (set: $modeling to 1) [[Back.->Fall]]

The summer is mostly bearable, but it can't really make up its mind. It reminds you of Michigan in the early spring, where it can snow one day, melt the next, and then repeat itself a few more times over. The sun only really comes out a few days in the summer, but it never really goes down because of the long days. Most of the time it's a bit overcast. If the sun comes out, it can get really hot, but this isn't that often. On hot days, it feels like a Michigan summer, but these aren't that frequent. More often it rains without warning. With the sky being overcast all the time, it's hard to tell if there's rain coming. More than once, you leave the house without a jacket only to find it hard to get home without getting drenched. It rains a lot. One time you're unable to get a cab and you're in an inconvenient place for public transit, so you end up walking home fifteen minutes in the pouring rain. You get drenched. Of course, if you //do// bring a jacket, there's almost a 90% chance you're going to be too hot. You've never been one for carrying around umbrellas but you start to see the appeal. You buy a fan for the bedroom, which keeps the room a bit cooler at night. (set: $weather to 1) [[Back.->Summer Again]]

In high school, you almost attempted suicide. You flipped a coin to decide whether to do it or not, and then when you got the side that said "no", you went to your mom and asked to start seeing a therapist. You were dealing with a lot at the time. You felt rejected by the girl you liked, you felt suffocated intellectually. You were too introverted to have much practice interacting with people, but you were too extroverted to be //okay// with not interacting with people. You were awkward, you always felt like you said and did the wrong things. You never had a lot of friends, and when you did, you didn't ever feel like you were the one that people //liked// or //respected// the most. You've been dealing with anxiety your whole life. At the time that you started seeing the therapist, you hadn't really understood it or seen it in those terms. There were certain things, nonsensical ones, really, that really rattled you: heated arguments, talking to people on the phone, talking to anyone who sat behind any kind of desk, worrying about dying and about the future. You've learned how to manage those anxieties since, but only because you took that step of going to a therapist and asking for help. At the time, your sleep schedule had been absolutely fucked. You could barely sleep at night due to your anxieties, your brain looped in endless circles of thinking about social mistakes, about things you should have said instead or should say in the future if the right time came. You often couldn't fall asleep until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, when you had to wake up at a bit after 6:00. You slept through most of your classes. You had a very careful schedule of what classes you could sleep during and which ones the teachers would catch you during. If you were ever bored at all during the day, grogginess immediately set upon you, and you often fell asleep. You could never stay awake during car rides without something to do. You bordered on narcolepsy. Your grades suffered. The only teacher you respected was the one who had told you that she knew that you were clearly intelligent, but told you that you weren't applying yourself. It was one of the few times someone seemed to understand you. The reason you got into fitness was because of your depression. The therapist recommended it. You had been a runner before that, had dabbled in track and cross country, but had hated it. When the therapist recommended you exercise to help manage your anxiety, you tried lifting weights for the first time and were hooked. Because of this, you ended up getting a personal training certification and becoming a trainer. You've never experienced seasonal affective disorder, where people find that their moods are worsened in the winter. But this year, you really //do// experience it - after all, the days are about eight hours long, and when you sleep in, you miss some of those. It's not depression. You have your ups and downs, you manage yourself with all the coping skills you've developed in the ten years since that near-suicide-attempt. But you're in a bit of a funk. Some days you end up playing video games all day when you meant to do work. Others you feel suffocated by how small the apartment is. You know that you'll get over it. (set: $depression to 1) [[Back.->Fall]]

The new apartment is beautiful. It's perfect. You have the choice between a few places, but it boils down to two: a larger house with a yard outside of town (with a longer commute for your girlfriend) or an apartment that's a bit smaller, but right near her office. You elect for the apartment. The apartment is beautiful. It's all old wooden floors, with a surprisingly large bathroom. It's very downtown, so you can hear drunks at night and construction during the day, but you kind of like the ambient sound. Apparently in the old days, apartments were built in Copenhagen with just an outhouse in a central courtyard for people to use. Then, with the ongoing process of modernization, they ended up realizing that people wanted their own bathrooms. Later on, many closets were hastily converted into tiny bathrooms, so tiny, closet-sized bathrooms are the norm in older buildings. We're lucky to have an older building with a decent-sized master bathroom. What you didn't account for was the move-in price. Danish landlords typically require a greater down payment than American ones - it's quite a chunk of money. You and your girlfriend weren't planning on this. You have to empty out your savings and dip into the money you've set aside for paying your taxes. This is a bit stressful, but you manage to recover. Having the new apartment really makes things easier. Everyone has more room. You're not stepping on each other's toes all the time. Your vague claustrophobia disappears. Your sex life improves. (set: $newapartment to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

Climate change always hovers in your mind. You hear about the news of the Larsen-C ice shelf breaking off. You wonder if this is bad news for the future. You wonder what the world will look like in fifty years, or a hundred, if you live that long. You wonder if change will happen sooner. You wonder what kind of world the girls will inherit. You wonder if earth will really be inhabitable, even. You think about the continued disintegration of politics in America. Your mother makes some disparaging remarks about the president over a phone call, the first time you've ever heard her say anything bad about a republican. You're glad that you don't own a car anymore but think about the emissions you participate in every year with your multiple cross-ocean flights. Since Denmark is so flat, you hear it would be one of the first places to go under water if the ocean levels start rising. You try not to think about that fact as you plan your future. (set: $climatechange to 1) [[Back.->Summer Again]]

You don't play as many video games as you used to. You find it harder to really just sit down and enjoy a large stretch of time alone. Between the girls and your girlfriend and working as a freelancer when you can always get emails asking for help, you just fall into this natural state of always working. When you're watching television you have a tendency to multitask with work tasks. When you're playing games you tend to have television up in the background. You realize you play a lot more mobile games than you used to, because you can get into the core gameplay loop, play as long as you want, and then quit whenever you want. You don't need time momentum the way you do with console or PC games. You'd never have thought you'd end up like this, but here you are. At the same time, this doesn't feel like a bad thing. For the first time in your life you don't really feel stressed out, and you feel like you're doing work that you're happy to do. You really don't mind. Working feels almost relaxing. All the same, it's nice to be alone without any work from time to time. (set: $leisure to 1) [[Back.->Spring]]

Dana Scully spends the first week not wanting to leave your room. When she does start leaving the room, it's only late at night, when the kids are asleep. She doesn't seem to mind the kids, but she seems to dislike seeing a lot of people at once. You start leaving the door open at night for her to venture out on her own. One night, you're watching television out in the living room and she wanders out. You're watching Supernatural, and you don't realize that she's coming out until a monster makes a loud noise. Hearing it, she immediately turns and runs back to the bedroom. You hear the sudden movement just in time to see her go, and you laugh. Over the next few weeks, she starts coming out more and more often, but mostly at night. She'll come out and hang out on the windowsill or rub up against your feet while you're watching tv, but she won't hop up on the couch. She simply doesn't care too much about leaving your room. You have to respect that. It's interesting to see a creature so happy, so satisfied with so little. All it wants to do is be fed, lie on its bed, and occasionally stretch out a little. (set: $scullyroom to 1) [[Back.->Summer Again]]

<header><h1>Thanks For Playing!</h1></header> Let me know what you thought. Here's a few ways we can keep in touch: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/thethegn">Facebook</a> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/gains_tweets">Twitter</a> <a href="http://www.gains.af">Website</a>

You got into powerlifting when you were 22. Powerlifting is a sport where you try to lift as much weight as you possibly can for a single repetition (known as your single repetition max, or 1RM) in three lifts: the bench press, the squat, and the deadlift. Together, these three lifts cover most major muscle groups and are an effective approximation of full body strength. You got into powerlifting because bodybuilding got boring. Bodybuilding is a competition where your physique is judged according to the subjective whims of the judges, so there's a lot of potential for abuse or other weirdness. Some bodybuilders are clearly bigger and better than others, but when it comes down to the elite of the elite, it's shocking to imagine that any of those lifters, all of which are absolute beasts, should have to fight over who gets to be considered the best. In powerlifting, you add together the weight you can lift in all three lifts to get your total. Then, your total is compared up against others in your weight class. Highest total wins. Simple, mathematical, less conducive to drama. (Of course, drama still exists.) You saw amazing results in the first year or two of training, when you could train consistently and weren't moving much. Then, you ended up moving around a lot, and you struggled to have a consistent training schedule, so your results plateaued a little. Your numbers stopped going up. A year ago, you had a physical labor job that involved carrying heavy equipment up and down people's stairs. As a result, you tweaked something in your left leg and you haven't been able to squat as heavy since. Anytime you start getting seriously heavy on the weights, your leg starts acting up again. It's been getting better, but it takes time. (set: $powerlifting to 1) [[Back.->Summer]]

In the winter, you finish your first serious strength cycle in years. It's been literally two years since you've been able to finish a full cycle without interruption. When the going gets heavy, your leg starts acting up on squats again. You skip the squats entirely. That's fine. At the end of the cycle, you end up setting personal bests on your bench press, push press, and deadlift. You're not too upset about the squat anymore. Your favorite lift has always been the deadlift, which you've progressed on most consistently. At the end of this cycle, you add 15 pounds to your personal record, for a total of 550. You've been aiming for a near 600 pound deadlift, since this would be 3 times your bodyweight - a common milestone. You think it should be manageable in 2018, provided that your training continues to go well. You're excited. When you hit 550, you whoop for joy when you finish the lift. (set: $personalrecord to 1) [[Back.->Winter]]

You got into powerlifting because it suited you, psychologically. It was simple, mathematical, and focused more on function over form. You don't need to focus as much on diet or worry about judging. You just train your hardest, do your best, and see how good you are. At the same time, you haven't competed in years, even though you're a coach and you train many clients who do compete. This is mostly due to your travelling. With so many moves, it's been hard to get settled in one place and find a competition. Then there was the leg injury, which has made it hard for you to squat much up until recently - you can compete in push/pull divisions (where the squat isn't included) but you don't really want to compete unless you can compete in the full total, open divisions. This means that you probably won't be able to compete for another year or two while your leg strength catches back up. Then there's the fact that you're living in a foreign country now. There's a powerlifting gym in Copenhagen, but it's a bit too far out for you to regularly go. You don't really know how to find Danish powerlifting competitions yet. But that's fine, because it's not really about the competition for you. You don't really care how much you can show off your strength - all you really care about is getting stronger, pushing your limits, being your best self. So long as your numbers keep going up, you can just wait until you're ready to compete again. You've got another 5-10 years left before aging makes you less competitive. You've got time. You can keep getting stronger. (set: $strength to 1) [[Back.->Spring]]

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The 7 year old is the most outgoing person you've ever met. It's absolutely bizarre that she came out of a family of introverts. She constantly feels the need to be touched or held. If you're in the same room as her, she'll snuggle up next to you or start climbing on your back without asking. Sometimes you remind her that she's supposed to ask permission before doing stuff like that, but she never does. She bugs you throughout the day to pay attention to her, no matter how busy you are. When she starts up school, it's a blessing because it keeps her out of your hair for the time being. You remember the time that she told you that the time it took to fall asleep in her bed was "too much time to be alone", so she refused to try sleeping on her own. Every time you explain to her that most people want more alone time than her, she replies with shocked confusion. "I've //never// wanted more time to be alone!" she tells you indignantly. "Yes, but I'm trying to explain why //other// people want to be left alone," you tell her. She sniffs and turns away. She's not listening anymore. She misses her old friends in Seattle a lot. Sometimes she asks if it's possible to see her old friends or contact them. You don't have any way of contacting most of them. She's too young for social media. Sometimes you can hear her crying in her room, when she tries to keep it quiet so that you can't hear her. She's embarrassed to feel lonely. When she snuggles up with you on the couch, you hug her tight. (set: $7yearold to 1) [[Back.->Fall]]