oanja

Hi! I've noticed people making these now that people might be coming back to journal fandom (for the time being) and I thought it would be a good idea to make one too.

I'm a Finnish woman, early 30's, I got my Master's degree in December 2018. I have a full time job I'm not particularly excited about and always wondering if I'm in the right line of work.

I have a cat (Maine Coon) called Taika and a Dog (Lagotto Romagnolo) called Leia ( cut for photo )

I'm single and maybe demisexual or somewhere on the Ace spectrum, I'm bisexual (and yes that includes more than two genders)

My life situation is a bit weird in that I keep moving all the freaking time! I don't think I've lived anywhere for more than a year since 2016 and since then I've moved four times and I'm about to move again this month. I keep changing jobs and all of them have been in different cities, which makes moving a real pain. We'll see how long I'll stay in this next apartment...

I read mainly fantasy with some scifi and historical mixed in. I like the idea of reading published romance, but I find I'm very picky these days so I haven't found many romance books I've genuinely enjoyed or finished. (this is pretty funny because when I was like 11-15 I used to read a shit ton of Harlequin romances and the like).

I've been in fandom since I was 19, so 13 years now, I've written some fic, but mostly I have been a lurker. I used to roleplay quite a bit in my early 20's when I had time for such things *sigh*

When fandom moved to tumblr I kind of became an even more passive fandom participant, as I found tumblr bizarre for having conversations or for making fandom friends, I did write quite a bit of Hockey rps at the time, but I didn't really get to know any other fans, except a few people on twitter, whom I still follow there.

My forever fandoms are Stargate Atlantis and Star Trek (tos and the new movies). I'm really glad I got to see a few of the massive fandoms that used to exist before it all got super fractured.

( cut for gaming )

Hmm what else? I started an urban fantasy novel in last year's nano and won, with maybe about 25% of the story still unwritten. I should get back to writing that, because I think it would be very cool to actually write and finish an actual book manuscript, even if it never goes anywhere. I have other ideas for original (fantasy) fiction, but I haven't really managed to write anything this year (except my thesis which was 42k so I'm pretty proud of that!)

I knit (socks mostly) and sow (cosplay stuff) sometimes, but I'm not very good at it and I keep starting and getting distracted by a new project and abandoning the old one, which is bad for ever finishing anything.

This got long and brambly, which is like peak me, or whatever the kids say these days... :P Anyway, hi and welcome! feel free to subscibe to my my journal, I hardly ever post anything locked and when I do it's just personal whining. I will most likely follow back if it looks like we have similar interests.

Edit for 2019: Have a new job now, which I like a lot more than the one I wrote about originally. Have moved yet again, but I think I will stay in this town for a few years *fingers crossed*

I have become totally addicted to Youtube, even more than I've previously been. (I just binge watched like 5 hours worth of Jenna Marbles videos) I think I should just cancel all my streaming services, it's not like I watch anything on there anymore...

I got into d&d during 2019, which has been great. I've also found out that I might actually prefer to DM instead of play (might be my control issues showing a bit...)

I also got into BTS this December, so that's a super new fandom for me. I'm very excited to have a new fandom again.

Everyone who follows me on tumblr should be really glad I actually for once made a side blog, because otherwise my dash would be all BTS all the time. I have also in two days time written 6k fic, which is not something I've managed to do in years. So thanks bts for reviving my fanfic writing? (might be too early to say, who knows, I might abandon this before it's finished)

Didn't do anything for new year's eve. Stayed at home and had the tv on super loud to try drown out the fireworks sounds, as my dog is really scared of them. At first she was shaking and actually voluntarily stayed on my lap, but calmed down a lot later and just lay down next to me for the rest of the night, which was a relief.

I think I didn't write about this, but before Christmas I had a small fire in my apartment, because I'm an idiot and turned on the wrong burner in my stove and there was a pot on it with a plastic pasta strainer on top of that. I guess the heat got so bad that the strainer caught on fire somehow? I was able to put it out before anything bad happened but the apartment smelled like burned plastic for two days... Fire detectors save lives, check that yours are working (advice for 2020 right there)

Christmas went well at home, even though I felt like 6 days might be pushing it beforehand, but things turned out to be chill. We made a 1000 piece puzzle with mom, listened to carols a lot and ate. I got a new vacuum cleaner as a present as well as some other small things.

Haven't looked for any year in review memes on here, but went trhough my posts and:
January: watched tv: the travelers and disco season 2 and the magicians season 4 (poor me was so excited to have this show back D:). I also moved apartments
February: I wrote a wonder woman/Kassandra fic (still haven't edited or posted this... oops?!) booked the trip to Italy, saw the Favourite in the cinema
March: first post about wanting to play d&d :D I was already DMing at this point (but not for d&d) and now I'm kind of bummed I haven't posted anything about getting started with that, because now I can't remember exactly when I started, but I think it was in 2019. Got into my first roll20 game as my Paladin character (this is the group I still play with, even though I jumped into DMing later), saw Captain Marvel, started watching Critical role --> March was a D&D month
April: Talking about finding a new job, the magicians and disco seasons were over and I had mixed feelings
May: turned 33, applied for 3 new jobs, saw endgame (did not like it), started the Orville (did not stick), went to Italy, got into the Vorgosigan saga through fic
June: Good Omens, accepted one of the job offers, started planning the move, had my last day in the old job at the 27th, the harry potter mobile game came out (or I started playing it)
July: Moved to a new city, had my summer vacation, started prepping for Waterdeep Dragonheist, had a graduation party for me six months late at home for my extended family :D Actually read some books (vorgosigan mostly, some d&d)
August: didn't post anything, but I started my new job
September: Still didn't post much, must have been the new job jitters :D
October: Talking about starting to draw again (still working on this), talking about the short therapy course I want to take, talking about doing nano, started a new game of d&d as a player but iffy about the group (Still am, I really should drop out. Note to self, PM the DM) I made a paladin for this campaign as well. I think at this point I have to accept it's my favourite class... especially because I still haven't managed to find a game that would let me play a wizard damn it! Talk about needed to get a new PC (still haven't done it, so much money needed!) and how I'd been feeling more creative and happy in general
November: talked about starting nano, Got sims university expansion (which was stupid, I regret paying money for it), went on a date
December: talk about how I didn't finish nano, Got into BTS fandom on the first week :D, watched a lot of youtube (Jenna Marbles and bts and d&d stuff mostly), got a drawing tablet on black friday sale, more talk about the short therapy course (this is still bending)

Seeing it like this makes me feel better about my year. I saw people post about their accomplishments on twitter a lot and didn't really remember anything cool I had done, but I actually did a lot off stuff! So for me personally 2019 was pretty good. Hopefully the trend will continue into next year

So I did not finish Nano this year either. I did make it to around 25k before stalling out, so that's still pretty good. I'm not unhappy with that. Now I just need to find a wordcount that actually works for me and how often I can make myself write without it becoming a chore...

Also in November: I went on a date last weekend and had a pretty good time. We've been sending messages after that and he called me today and we spent an hour talking about politics and how the world seems to be going down the drain, which while not very optimistic or fun topic, it was still nice to see we share opinions on important issues.

Then this week I've somehow tricked myself into the kpop fandom, which is a bit odd, as I didn't make the jump back in 2008-09 when I got out of jrock fandom :D But this seems fun now, and I suppose I've always gravitated to rps fandoms for one reason or another and I miss having an active fandom, so this might be fun. (I know the actual fandom can be... a bit much, but at the same time, I was in the 1D fandom and survived that, so hopefully this won't be worse than that)

Two months since I started the new job and it's still pretty nice. Things have gotten a lot more busy, but I like it much better than my previous jobs.

I bought the humble bundle for all the art programs and spend the afternoon installing them. I hope I'll get back to drawing a bit more. I haven't really had a proper art program to use, except an ancient version of photoshop from like 2005. I'm not actually any good at it and with digital art it's all wonky because you can't just look at what your hand is doing, but you need to draw and watch your screen... very complicated. I'm kind of tempted to spend money on some other stuff as well but I managed to stop myself... :'D Good thing too, because I realized I hadn't paid rent yet this month and now my band account balance looks a lot less cushy. I did spend some money paying off more of my credit card dept. I still have too much after the Rome trip in May, which I haven't paid off + everything else I've gotten since, but the other card only has like 200€ on it anymore, which is a relief and I can pay that off later this month and get to the other card after that.

As I'm on the topic of money, I tried to do some math to see how expensive it would be to go to Worldcon 2020 in New Zealand. The flights weren't as bad as I had thought, it was like 1100€ return trip, but when you add to that accommodation and the event tickets + spending money it would be closer to 2500€ trip and no freaking way do I have that kind of money to spend on a holiday!

Especially because I'm thinking of applying for a Advanced Solution-Focused Practitioner training program next spring. The program takes almost two years and costs over 3k all together, so I need to save up for that. It's basically short term therapy/counseling thing, and I feel like I really need it for this new job. It's also useful later if I want to apply for psychotherapy training programs. I can apply for that in two years (need the right kind of job experience first), so it kind of lines up pretty well. It's another expensive program, but I guess it's not so bad considering I didn't have to pay anything for university before this... Also I'm hoping the prices might go down, there has been talk that there aren't enough therapists around and the cost of the training is definitely part of the problem.

It's kind of funny how interested I've become in psychology and counseling in the past year, when back in university I didn't do any psychology courses even though I could have until my last year. (hindsight 20/20). It's also made me wonder if I should get therapy for myself now, but then again you need to do therapy during the psychotherapy training and I don't want to spend the money twice! -_-

I'm thinking I should try to do nanowrimo again this year. I haven't been writing much of anything all year and I feel like the format actually worked well for me the one time I actually finished it. I have a few romance novels plotted out, now I just need to write some words down, which is always the hardest part.

I'm still doing a lot of d&d, I might have a problem... I'm only playing in two games (and I'm thinking I might drop the other game. Tomb of Annihilation just isn't for me, there's so much of just traveling and nothing happening + the plot seems almost non-existent somehow?) The other games starts on Monday. I'm a bit worried about the other players, they are all really young and one player seems obsessed with his drunken master monk being drunk all the time and that seems like a recipe for disaster. I ended up making a new paladin (conquest this time) because paladin was great and this campaign should do to high levels and I'm curious to see how that would be like.

I would really like to play Descend into Avernus, but haven't had luck finding a game yet. (I basically need it to be on a Sunday or Wednesday)

So two games seems like a reasonable amount right? Well the problem is that I'm also DM'ing three games right now... :D Oops? They are all premade modules, so it's less work for me, but there's still prep I need to do. I'm doing Waterdeep Dragon Heist, Dragon of Icespire Peak and then a GM Guild's Module called Call from the Deep. I just like the power too much I think, which I'm not gonna examine more right now xD I am totally a benevolent god though, I think I might be too nice sometimes, but then again I'm still learning the ropes and it feels bad to kill the players, so I've been avoiding that (mitigating damage or splitting the attacks among more than one player most of the time)

Oh and last weekend I went to see arilyn9 and her bf looked at my PC to see how I could upgrade it. As I knew already my graphics card (or driver, I'm not sure what it's called in English) and most of the other components are super old now and I should put about 600-700€ to get new things. Urgh, why does everything cost so much money? I have two graphics cards in mind, one would be cheaper, under 300 but if I put a 150 more I could get a significantly better one, which would then last longer, which would save money in the long run. I'll have to think about it some more. I get paid on the 20th so I have time to figure out how much I want to spend.

Just generally I feel pretty good, I feel like I have a lot of creative energy, which I think was rekindled by d&d, so that's been nice. Work is good, the pets are doing good. One thing I'd like to change would be to somehow get one more irl friend I could hang out with. Hanging out with people online is pretty good for my need to socialize in general, but right now I only have one irl friend, which seems precarious. I went back to find out when messy_kisses died and I totally missed the anniversary, it was on the 17th of September and now I feel guilty about that too, I thought it was in October. I can't believe it's been over a year now. :(

Well that's a cheery note to end the entry on.

Went to visit my mom last weekend and we went to the summer cabin. It was really nice (there was the heatwave going, which was a bit too hot for me) and we had some of my relatives visiting and had a small graduation celebration for me (with cake) My cousins also brought their sup board and I finally got to try it. It was super fun and I want to get one next summer (it's like made for a small lake like we have at the cabin, there's hardly ever any waves)

Work starts tomorrow! I have no idea what I'm supposed to do or what time I should get to work, but I'm sure it'll sort itself out. I think school only starts next week, so I'm hoping there's time for planning and figuring out how we're splitting up responsibilities with the other people in our team. (two psychologists and one other school counselor)

I've actually managed to read and listen to books this month, which has been a relief. I've read the first Lord John book by Diana Gabaldon, and two of the short stories about him. I really enjoyed them, but sadly there seems to be no fic really, which sucks. I've also listened to two of the Vorkosigan books about Miles and I started Cetaganda today. I had to pick up another audiobook app to get there, as I didn't want to pay for the paperbacks. I've kind of put myself on ban for buying new books, which has led me to abusing this loophole about audiobooks xD I also listened to a Forgotten Reals book called the God Catcher, which I really enjoyed and I want to read something else by this author Erin M Evans. For some reason she's only written Forgotten Realms books, but if they're as fun as this one was I don't mind.

I've also been doing a lot of game prep for my Waterdeep Dragonheist game, if by prep we mean, watched and read a lot of random lore things. :D There's so much STUFF out there about everything in Forgotten Realms, it can get a bit overwhelming tbh, but at the same time it's fun to learn about.

I think there was something else I wanted to write about but now I've forgotten... Oh the weather, It's back to being super cold again, it was about +13C on tuesday, but it got a but warmer today. I don't miss the +33C weather at all, but this is a bit too cold for July, I hope it goes back to low 20's still in August. I love warm autumns.

( photo of me under the cut )
I bumped into this gif today, while I was trying to find photos of short haired female characters (this is a nightmare, how is this so hard?!) and I had kind of forgotten how hot Cassandra is! The eternal injustice of not being able to romance her with a female Inquisitor, seriously Bioware, shame on you

Had my last day at the current job and I think I managed to tie off most of the things that were unfinished. Now I need to get to packing up my stuff quite seriously, the moving company is coming on Tuesday and mom is coming on Sunday to help me out. She's going to stay with me in the new apartment for a few days afterwards, so that should be nice (unless she insists I need to unpack everything instantly)

Then I'll have July off and start the new job in August.

Tumblr is still like 80% Good Omens content and I'm slowly getting bored of it. There really is only so many ways in which you can gif 20 or so scenes :'D I never really read fic for this pairing when it was just the book and I still don't really care to. I might if there was like an epic slow burn pining fic, but other than that, I'm happy with just these canon things we have now.

I've already packed all my books (I always start there because books are easy to pack and also important things must be packed first), otherwise I might be tempted to read the book again. (My book reading challenge for myself is going terribly, I still haven't read anything... Maybe I can finally get something read when I'm on vacation *fingers crossed*)

I started playing the new Harry Potter mobile game (from Niantic who made Pokemon Go) and I like it, there's a lot more to do than there is in Pokemon go. Only thing they need to do is fix the bug that stops me from looking at my profile. If I open that the game crashes every time :D I wish they had something you could send your friends like you can in Pokemon go, I miss that part. My code is 8488 8838 5140 if you are playing and want more friends.

I joined a third D&D game... (I might have a problem) and finally got to play wizard. The magic user is always my favourite in rpg's so I've been dying to get to play one. We just got to level too last night and so far I've enjoyed it a lot! I made a faction agent so my investigation is high and an important part of the character (we're trying to solve crime right now).

In the first game that I ever joined my Paladin is still level 4. The DM seems eager to make us wait longer and longer to level up, which I'm starting to resent. He also likes to make things "more realistic" ie carry capacity and we've yet to find any treasure, also he insists that the world exists out of our characters so basically any encounter could be deadly for us, and many have been super dangerous (someone drops to 0 hitpoints at least once a game) and I don't like that either. I think the problem I have with this type of game is that we never really get to feel like heroes, we're always scrabbling on with out fingernails, lucky to survive or to escape with our lives. Like last session he had a tomb guardian skeleton that had multi attack (4 attacks as the skeleton had 4 arms for some reason). The thing hit me 3 times (missed once) and I had 1 hitpoint left. Okay I heal myself, then things happen and we aggro it again and it one shots me in two hits (with 2 crits) and I'm the tank of my party mind with 17 AC, it almost does enough damage to kill me outright (doing almost double damage over my hitpoint max) and then I guess because the DM realised he'd made the monster too powerful he decided not to try land the two more attacks that the fucking thing had, which made me even more mad (also this happened to the rogue too, got hit to 0 and then the monster turned away, because "it felt like we were of no concern anymore") and okay I'd rather not die thanks (I really want to get to lvl5 when I get all sorts of cool stuff) but at the same time, why does the DM make the enemies so hard???? We're doing a quest he gave us, so it's not like we're not supposed to be here???

Okay rant over

I got offered the job I applied for (I had the job interview today). I'm not feeling super excited about it though, I don't know what to make of that, as I thought I was ready for a change... Hmm. I have over the weekend to think about it before I have to let them know.

It seems Simon Pegg and company are going to make a River's of London tv show. On the one hand, yay! On the other hand, it's a bunch of white guys making a Rivers of London show. They'd better not whitewash it.

Nothing much else has been going on. I'm still really enjoying all kinds of D&D content and it's nice to have something I'm really excited about again.

I've watched 3 episodes of the Orville and it seems okay. I see why some people feel like it's more trek than Discovery, as the episode topics seem pretty trekky. I think I'll keep watching.

I saw Endgame and was annoyed with a lot of it. I was even more annoyed after I had read some meta about it. I especially hated what they did with Thor. Captain Marvel was my favourite part about the whole thing. I'm so here for more of her adventures as well as the next Black Panther but beyond that? I guess I'll go see the new Spiderman this summer as Homecoming was very cute and Tom Holland is fine, but after seeing the animated film I'm just mad we couldn't get Miles Morales instead

I kind of disappeared for March, from the way I was posting this month :'D There's no real reason beyond that I've been binge watching Critical Role and finally caught up yesterday and now there's no more show to watch (and of course they have next week off so there really is no show to watch) I've been thinking about going back to watch the first campaign, but haven't gotten the urge yet. It's so old you guys (jester voice)

Also the D&D game I had to apply for has had two sessions so far. I've had tons of fun!!! I'm playing an elf paladin who worships the goddess of love (he's basically a hippy dibby male model, who just wants to keep everyone safe) haha~ I also ship two of the other characters, a halfling sorcerer and a kobold rogue, their banter is just too good. (I've not shared this with the players, because that might make it awkward for them, which is the last thing I want)

Work has been fine. I think I'll stay here for another year, if nothing super good appears. This job is really easy, I'm not going to get a better job at the same thing I do anywhere else. I am going to keep a lookout for hospital jobs though, because that would be good for my plans to eventually become a therapist.

I'm also thinking about applying to study psychology. It's a really competitive and popular subject to study so I doubt I would get in, but it's not like it hurts to try. If I were to get in I think there's a good chance I could get part time work in my current occupation, so I wouldn't be as broke as a student. IDK, I just have this feeling like I'm not in the quite right line of work and it's nagging on me pretty often.

Because I spent basically all of my free time for the past two weeks watching Critical role, I'm behind on Star Trek and the Magicians. Maybe I will watch those this weekend (I have tomorrow off work, and I'm going to go visit my mom back home. 3 days off work, so goooood!)

I really want to play it... the problem is that it seems really hard to find a group. I was looking at roll20 and each notice for games looking for players had like 20-50 applications! :O

I'm DM'ing two games right now, but I feel like I would be a better GM if I actually got to play as well :D Both my games are in Finnish and I would like to play in English for some reason... I think mostly just to not have to translate everything *sigh*

Anyway, it's Friday! Aaah the weekend finally (even though I had Monday off work, I feel like I really need these two days off work again.

Leia is back with me (mom brought her last weekend) and I think she's been doing okay here while I'm at work. At least none of the neighbors have come to complain or left notes in the mailbox. I stopped by a pet store today on my way back from work and went kind of overboard with getting her new treats and bones and activity toys, but I do feel bad for leaving her alone for such long periods of time while I'm at work so I think she needs some rewards for being such a good girl.

I don't have the energy to actually take screencaps of the episode and write a bunch about it, but I really liked the episode. This recap of the episode is pretty great: Tor review of New Eden (spoiler warning)

What I liked most was the difference compared to the first season when almost all episodes were just about Burnham, this new season has a more traditional Trek feel (not that I'm an expert) and more characters have stuff to do and get to interact with each other. Also the lighter tone of the season continues (I'm so glad the Klingon war thing is over now)

Things I'm more iffy about:
- The religious stuff introduced in this episode...
- The Spock stuff (still questioning why they had to introduce his character in this show and also the things revealed in this episode about where he's right now)


Then unrelated, I went back to Assassin's Creed Odyssey yesterday and I'm now at level 30, so I'm trucking along nicely. Somehow I have lost the ability to take screencaps of my playthrough tough, which sucks!!! Let me screencap every cut scene where Kassandra looks awesome you cowards! *shakes fist*

Oh and some real life stuff:
- It's been really cold for the past week. Thanks winter you're doing great, but could you not so much?
- We had two lecture days at work (I really don't know what to call this stuff, it's not work training, and it's not a course we are taking either, but it's education about issues we deal with at work...) last week too and we learned a lot about trauma, over generational trauma, dissociation and all sorts of things from this family therapist. (good stuff)