It's the first blog of September this year. By now it has been about a month since I started working at Coffee Stain. Or well, working as an actual employee and not as an intern. It's been great, honestly. I feel like taking the summer break has really refreshed me and made me feel more confident in my craft.

Already when I look at work that I did 6 months ago there's a good chance I go 'oh god. ugh. WHY? CAN I PLEASE REMAKE THIS RIGHT NOW?'. Looking back at yourself, at your work, or at anything you did in your past and feeling a little uncomfortable or disgusted with yourself, is, in my opinion, a good sign. It means you've grown! It means you do things differently now. It hopefully/probably also means that by now you're more capable and ready of doing the things you're doing now than you would've been during that other time period. (Does that sentence even make any sense? Sorry. I tried.)

It's taking some time to transition into this new stage of life. I get overwhelmed every now and then, not by work anymore but by the seeming lack of energy I have after work lately.  I'm trying to find good routines to do and to keep doing. These include yoga, drawing, writing, and, *drumroll*, I'm going to try poledancing in October! As always, I need to be careful not to plan too many activities which then in turn make me feel bad for not being able to keep up with all of them. I've already been feeling bad about not keeping in touch with people I love as much as I would like to. To be blunt about it, it just really sucks when you feel like you've barely got the energy to take care of yourself.

Now comes a little annoying part of the move so far. I call it: The Saga of the Loopholes of Migration Agencies and the (Financial) Stress It's Causing Me.

When you move to Sweden, there's a thing called a 'personnummer' (comparable to sofinummer/burgerservicenummer in the Netherlands.) This personnummer allows you to do many many things here in Sweden. Like open a bank account, get a subscription at the gym, get an apartment, etc (I've been going on and off with this for around 4 months of visiting the migration agency. I hoped to have gotten it before the summer so I could plan ahead with gettng a bank account and such..) In August I finally received a personnumer, unfortunately there are a couple of loopholes that require me to go to Stockholm and Jönköping, which changes my financial state by quite a bit since I've been attempting to make do with what I have at the moment. Things are changing soon, it's just a matter of patience now.

Onwards to good news: I live in an apartment with my two cats and Birk! It's a lovely place. We've already done a lot of things to make it feel more like home. I'm trying very hard to keep the interior a combination of minimalistic with a touch of organised chaos. How does that work? Well, when you build a photo wall, make sure to only fill it with photos that mean a lot to you. When you buy furniture, make sure it works in multiple ways, make sure that it's 'smart'. I bought a drawing table which can be folded out to fit 4-6 people. Great for dinner parties or board game evenings. Also great for drawing during your lonesome introvert nights or for Skyping with family and friends in different countries.

Things to look forward to: In two weeks we're going on a company trip for three days to an unknown destination. In October I'm going to have my first poledancing class. If I get my bank account on time I'll be going to see The National in Stockholm in November. I'm visiting the Netherlands in December. New years is still a mystery, but I'm sure it will be great regardless of what happens.

Liefs, x.