"When I'm [insert age]..."

A friend of mine turned thirty. It got me thinking about age. I’ve always been one to make fun of age – usually of my “juniority” or seniority to someone else. I know some people get offended; they either interpret it as me thinking they’re too old or too childish. That’s not it, really. Age makes very little difference to me (well, at least it makes very little difference if someone’s older than me. I tend to get “racist” in relation to a lot younger people…). Essentially, I don’t think I’ve changed at all in the past 10 years :) When I think back at myself at for instance 13 (that’s 12 years ago!!), I felt like I was all grown up. It doesn’t seem like I’d changed that much. I mean, my core values are the same; I enjoy pretty much the same things I did back then etc. Sure, I have a slightly ampler perspective on the world but I’m really quite stubborn in my thoughts and likings. But now, when I think of 13-year-olds, I think they’re just babies. Or the 16-year-olds at the Idols contest – I totally think they’re too young to participate. (And then again, the day before I turned sixteen, I traveled practically by myself to the US to live with a strange family for a year…)

I know that in many things, these five years that separate me from the 30-year-old can be a lot. (She claims she has wrinkles :D Obviously they aren’t visible to the naked eye.) But really, many of the things don’t have anything to do with age, per se. They have more to do with personality. I also have some friends at the university who are in their 40s or 50s, and when I compare them to some colleagues it seems that these students are at least 20 years younger!

I can’t really imagine myself at thirty or forty. Not that I ever thought that was old, or that I had some kind of an aging crisis. It’s just that I can quite well plan what I want to do etc. but I can’t really imagine being any different. I guess I don’t have to (be or plan to be). One blogger talked about this a little while ago. Someone in the comments pointed out that it feels so weird being twenty-something and your colleagues asking for your opinion about something. “What? You think I know something?!” That’s exactly how I feel. “One day they’ll notice I’m completely clueless.” Awesome! :)

PS. Ou-mai-gaad. I got home at 5.30pm and it wasn’t dark yet!!!!!!

What am I good at?

In this sudden spurge of energy, I’ve today drafted some plans for the future (nothing like the “five-year plan” I desire but at least something), mostly related to studying. I’m getting all psyched at the prospect of graduating in May 2008 – I even got Timo to check his courses and it seems we might finish together! And then – we’ll treat ourselves to a month in America!

Now it’s mostly just the question of the thesis topic. I’ve been going back and forth. For quite some time I was sure I need to do something related to translation. I was especially excited about studying song translations. It’s still a tempting topic, and while I work with translation and know it in that way, I’m not sure I have enough competence (and capacity of learning…) to start writing on such a new topic. I mean, I don’t have much methodological skills or anything.

Besides, I’ve studied North America so much, both here in Helsinki as well as in Idaho. I feel that is a field where I already have some level of expertise. I’m especially fond of the Pacific Northwest. If I’d only known how many Finns have moved there over the years – I would’ve definitely spent some time researching the topic while I was there! Anyway, my current options on the PNW now lean towards literature – who would have ever thought me writing a thesis on a literary topic?! :) Well, the ideas I’m weighing are more inclined towards presentations of history, maybe ethnicity/otherness, so not exactly hard-core literary analysis. Obviously, I don’t have that much methodological competence in that field either but at least I know it’s not too difficult to come by good teachers for a literary topic.

But then again… Song translations would be such an entertaining topic! Not sure it would be enough to get me through a whole year of hard work? Hmm. I actually think I’m pretty excited about this literary topic.. thoughtling (you know, the diminutive of an actual, full-scale thought…) – just somebody tell me where to start!

New Beginning and Language Identity

So it’s been ”a while”. I’ve tried a few other blogs (strictly focusing on a certain project), thinking that this one’s too hard to continue as it was so focused on my months in Idaho.

I also tried writing in Finnish but it doesn’t seem too natural. It’s hard to figure out why. I feel very passionate about my mother tongue – I once said that I’d do anything to make sure that my children or grandchildren wouldn’t become English-speaking. While I love English and the globalizing world (in this context strictly in the sense that I get to speak English), at the same time I’m insanely jealous about Finnish and the fact that it’s inevitably changing.

So how is it that I’m still writing in English? Maybe it’s simply the fact that my Finnish never manages to sound “good” enough. Not witty enough, not sophisticated enough, or whatever it is that I’m looking for. English, on the other hand, is “easier”. Of course I recognize bad English when I see it but maybe it’s just that much harder to spot the nuance between “perfectly adequate” and “brilliant” language use. I know I fall under the category of “perfectly adequate” which is just fine in English, but in Finnish I seem to have the need to be “brilliant”.

I don’t think being a “brilliant” language user comes only from knowing the language. I know I have an extremely versatile vocabulary, I’ve read a lot and I definitely know my grammar. Of course it’s partly about the experience one has as a writer but also, I think, one’s identity. Others are better at expressing themselves in writing? Maybe I’m just better off thinking my thoughts without trying to express them at all? LOL :D (Seriously, sometimes I think my thoughts and my speech don’t match – it happens so often that people seem to understand what I’m saying completely differently from what I think I’m saying. See, there it is again, I’m good at expressing myself in my thoughts.)

Anyway, I thought I’d give my writing another try, both because it’s so fashionable and also because right now I feel so energetic that I’m certain great ideas and visions are awaiting around the corner for me to record them here and lose them in the realms of the World Wide Web forever…