all the things - all at once

It's been a while since I've last posted here. Maybe I should pick it up again, just as a form of venting - just like when I did many years ago. When the internet was another place ... Sorry. Long post ahead.

Anyway - after a hiatus of two months - I'm back at work. The doctor labeled it "BURNOUT" and said something along the lines of "that's the term they* understand" *they as in; health insurance people.
It's not so much that I was burned out on my job, though I work at my current place for almost 10 years now. It was everything. All the things. A gazillion triggers all at once. So time to rest and take some me-time, doing no things - or max 1 thing a day. And finish that 1 thing. And be happy with that 1 thing. All of this is not easy, in a world where everything needs to happen now, instantly, preferably yesterday.

I told my doctor I was going to focus on reading more books, but got advised against that - since that also tires the brain too much. So I finished one book. The Dark We Know by Wen-yi Lee - a book I picked up at the young-adults section at our local library, great read. I love going to the library by the way, and for some reason, I keep buying more books. The last books I bought was a huge bundle of Bernard Cornwell books from the Last Kingdom series. I've been listening to the audiobooks about Uthred while riding on my bike to work and I was so massively disappointed that somewhere along the way, Jonathan Keeble was no longer narrating and they changed to Matt Bates. And I'm not alone in my disappointment. Keeble is all. So I bought me some (8!) books, just so Keeble can further narrate the books in my head 😄Loving the Last Kingdom books so far, haven't watched the tv series yet.

Currently, I'm trying to get invested in Red Sister by Mark Lawrence. I can't put my finger on it, but somehow it always takes me some time to get into Lawrence's writing. Once I get there, it's good - but oh it takes time.

During my me-time, I re-discovered "Sea of Stars" in my Steam library. I purchased it quite some time ago but somehow uninstalled it after half an hour. It didn't click, and I know that I got put off by the fact that there's no journal of sorts. So not helpful if you're a casual gamer. But suddenly I had time on my hands. Reinstalled it. And BAM I'm hooked and now 20 hours into the story. It's great - I love it - the leveldesign is stellar, there are puzzles, there's turn-based combat, it reminds me of FF VIII somehow and I did enjoy that a lot back in the day. Talked about it on mas.to and then suddenly I got a recommendation from Sean to check out Chrono Trigger, which is apparently what Sea of Stars is a tribute to. Awesome, on the wishlist it goes because for now Sea of Stars is all the rage here.

Somewhere during that me-time period, we (me and a couple of friends) had a long-planned trip to Sweden coming up. A trip to Färnebofjärden - fishing on a canoe - late night talks around a campfire - booze - friends - fun. Everything I needed right now. Instead I got. Nearly drowning - survival - useless 112 emergency - return home early because snow.

It all happened pretty quickly really, one time we were in the water with our canoe, ready to take on this trip we had planned for months in advance. There was a little wind, nothing spectacular. We started with prepping our fishing rods, drank some wine. Paddled for 5km.
And suddenly the somewhat peaceful lake turned into a sea with waves crashing into our little canoe. Later I found out that the wind speed was around 70km/h.
Waves were gushing into our canoe and around 4 waves later, our boat was sinking. Panic strikes and you try to swim to the shore. Only that shore is around 600m away. Your walking boots are full of water, you're wearing a thick wool sweater for the cold weather and suddenly all of that is dragging you down. I somehow was dragging my backpack along in the water, must have snatched it when the boat was going down. I noticed one of my friends trying to swim/hold on to his drybags. He was yelling about his fishing rod's bait being stuck in his ankle. He basically tore over his fishing line with his feet. Yikes. Then my younger brother yelled that the boat was still afloat. It was half afloat because we strapped our other drybags onto it. So we swam back to the boat and steadily, by the force of the waves, we reached the shoreline. Sadly the shoreline was not the shoreline you would normally go to. It was a protected piece of forest, a dedicated breeding ground for the Osprey. So totally not habitable for us stranded folks, but we managed to make a fire - fix us some dry clothes - and tried calling 112. 112 is the emergency number over here in Europe. It was an arduous call, and after half an hour of them getting us to pinpoint our location they simply replied "what can we do?".......
We later found out that they had been calling the neighboring locals with boats. So around an hour after the facts, one of those locals showed up with his boat. The boat was too small to carry us all, and the guy nearly sank himself on the rocks around the peninsula we were stranded on. I vividly remember him shouting through the wind "It's really dangerous here!". No shit Sherlock. The guy parked his boat on the "safe side" of the peninsula, out of the wind. And came through the forest towards us. He told us the nearest cottage here was at least 5km away from us and we would have to travel through a marsh. So not really an option. The wind would die down in 2 days. So our safest bet would be to wait it out. We had a tent. Our sleeping bags were still dry. Half of our clothes were wet. Our drinking water luckily washed ashore our shoreline. We found most of the wine also on the shoreline. We found our plastic bottles of whiskey. Hooray for plastic bottles. So while the wind was howling through the trees and our clothes were drying. We drank and told tales around the campfire. We managed. Fun was had. On day 3 we went back into the boat and traversed the lake to the east side. We stayed there for 3 more days because of the nice weather and headed back home because of the rain & snow. Yeah, Sweden can be like that. 🎉

In hindsight. Mistakes were made, but lessons were learned.
Woulda-coulda-shoulda.