Aslaug's Axe Shed

There’s a hit single out these days with a Danish band called the Raveonettes. Gods know where they came up with that particular monicker, but … to each their own.

My last dance is taking place today. When I go home this afternoon, I’m unemployed again. No longer a happy museum-worker … just another person hoping to find something to do in this disgusting crisis-climate.

But I’m not going to fret. It won’t help me find a job faster, nor will it make me feel any better. I plan on taking a long walk by the water when I get home. Contemplate my life a little, maybe …

And then perhaps, I’ll have a cognac and try to write a few lines tonight.

Or things may go in a different direction. I don’t know. We’ll just have to see. Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life, and these last fifteen – sixteen months at the museum have been an eyeopener the likes of which I have rarely experienced before in my life. I’ve been happy with what I did. Remarkably, truly happy with it. I’ve gotten up at five, sometimes half past four in the morning every day and I’ve never once in all that time said “Oh to hell with it, I’ll call in sick instead and sleep in”. Not once. I’ve WANTED to go to work every day, and according to my boss who did the official goodbye this morning at the coffee-table, I’ve done a good job here.

That, more than anything, feels good. This is the first time I’ve tried something like this, so while I’m sure most of you know what I mean, please understand that it is a tremendously important thing for me to leave, feeling that when I do, I leave a positive impression. That I leave behind a job well done.

I’ve always been my own worst critic.

At least one of you know exactly what I mean when I say that. Yes … you! I hope the move is going smoothly, by the way and that you settle into your new job quickly

But yes, I’m my own worst critic. I always have been and I probably always will be. From my tossing away stories after chapter five or six with a “who’d read this crap?” to my abject lack of self-esteem to my life-long and only recently ditched tendency to apologize for breathing the same air as the rest of humanity, I’ll probably never really come to grips with the concept that something I do may actually be good enough.

I struggle with it, but a few days ago I had to make a very solemn promise to someone very special that I would stop berating myself. That I would stop being so damned hard on myself at all times.

I keep my promises … but sometimes, it does take a little time and a lot of work to get there. So I’m working on it … and today helped.

Being told that I had done a good job … helped. It felt good.

So now it’s back to having nothing to do except hunting for jobs. It’s back to endless hours of scouring the internet for any kind of job I’m qualified for, just so I can send off enough applications that week. And once in a rare while, finding a job I’m actually interested in and possibly qualified for.

I’m back to the disappointment of letters saying “Thank you for your application, but we must regretfully inform you that someone else got the job”.

If you’re so damned regretful, then HIRE ME instead next time …

But I’m sanguine. And I’ll find something to do. At least I was very happy to feel that if I were to send an application to this museum in the future, it would not simply be ditched with the “useless”-pile.

That at least is something.

But I feel strange nonetheless. I’ve loved getting up to go to work.

I wonder where I’ll end up next.

In Oslo?

In Yorkshire?

Or just here in Denmark?

One of the most frustrating things about human life is our inability to perceive time as a circular concept. If we could … I could see what happens down the line.

Instead, I’ll just have to wait for it to come to pass.