This will be a long and sad year recap. If you want to do something more fun with your time, like rub lemon juice into a papercut or pick a fight with murder hornets, please go ahead. If not, buckle up this is going to be a dark ride…

Anita Eriksson 1938 – 2025

In a year of losses, the first loss was my mom. I really didn’t expect that. Yes, she was almost 87, but besides dementia and old age tiredness, there was nothing physically wrong with her. In my own mind, I expected her to go through her later years the same way my great-grandmother Edla did. Edla became fragile from old age and dementia in her late 80s but still managed to live until 99. But it didn’t happen that way with Mom.

When I moved from Sweden in 2023, my mom still lived at home with help from the home service, and things were mostly fine. But at the end of last year, they told me that she was becoming more confused and that it would be better if she moved to a care home. In January, she moved into a nice place with good care. My plans were to go to Sweden in the spring to visit her and empty her old apartment. I booked that trip for the second week in April. But as it turned out, I would be one week too late.

In the final days of March, they called me from the care home and said that my mom had stopped eating and drinking, perhaps because she had an infection in her mouth or something like that. I didn’t worry that much about it because I knew she was in good hands there. But then a day later, they called again and said that she had become unresponsive and that her body was shutting down. She was quietly asleep for two days, then on the morning of April first (of all days), she drew her last breath. Peacefully in her sleep.

Weirdly enough, my first reaction was surprise. This weird feeling of “Wait, what? What did you say just happened?” I knew it was true, but at the same time not in my own universe. Like there were two worlds with different things happening in them. But I felt the loss in my heart.

That day moved in slow motion. I wasn’t sure what to do, but at the end of the day, I went down to the ocean, picked a small bouquet of flowers, and dropped them into the waves, hoping that the currents would carry the flowers across the world, all the way to Sweden, as a last goodbye.

That was all the time I had for mourning at that moment. The trip to Sweden was already booked, but now it became something very different. I had to start planning for the funeral, doing the estate inventory, cancel all her subscriptions and services, tell family and friends, and a million other things. An exhausting process that normally takes a couple of months. Now I had to squeeze it all into a single week.

The trip to Sweden was… strange. Like an intense fever dream. Almost two days in the air (Valparaiso-Santiago-Madrid-Stockholm-Luleå), then hit the ground running. It all happened so fast and so intensely that I barely remember it. Now, when I try to look back at it, this is what I recall:

• April in northern Sweden – all the seasons fighting for the attention, with sunshine, rain, and snowstorms taking turns like acrobats jumping over each other. Most of the snow had thawed, but the river was still frozen.

• Felt weird to speak Swedish again. Had to stop and think before saying anything.

• Mom didn’t believe in throwing things away. The only blessing was that she lived in an apartment with limited space and not in a big house. Still, it took forever to go through and pack everything. I mean, why the hell does one single person need more than 20 plates, and just as many bed sets? We found enough table cloths to cover every single table in the entire western hemisphere!

• Cleaning out her home was physically and emotionally exhausting. It’s a heartbreaking process to pack away a person’s entire life. To erase all the physical memories in order to create space for a new tenant’s life. But I guess that’s what we all become in the end – nothing, except the memories we left in the people we touched…

• Rented a big truck and drove everything to a reuse/recycling central. Only kept a handful of items, like photos and small trinkets. Moving everything was a nightmare. It was just me and Natalia carrying everything. We got and exhausted quickly, and when the energy runs out, I get careless. I got cuts and bruises EVERYWHERE. Even on my belly and my fingernails. But we did it. It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears, but somehow, we managed, just the two of us.

• I arranged the funeral, but we had to go back before the ceremony. Fortunately, I knew exactly which coffin, flowers etc. my mom liked since we did my uncle’s funeral together. And fortunately pt. 2, she had left the church, which meant no meandering priest and no tedious hymns. Instead, she got a very lovely personal eulogy and her favourite songs. I was told it was beautiful. Now she rests in the same memorial meadow as her brothers, and not far from her parents.

• The guys at Pizza Pepperoni were happy to see me again, and so was I. They have absolutely delicious pizzas, and they are lovely people. Definitely the thing I miss the most.

• Even if we were super-busy 24/7 the whole time, we still squeezed in some moments so Natalia could explore Swedish food. We tried reindeer burgers, moose meat, tunnbrödrulle (a kind of hot dog wrap with shrimp salad), reindeer pizza, and lots of other stuff. Natalia fell in love with knäckebröd (crisp bread), caviar, salty liquorice, and cheese in tubes. Obviously, we brought as much as we could carry back home.

• Did some small sightseeing when we had time. Not much to see in Luleå, but visited the harbours, the house where I grew up, and of course the communal bathhouse where they shot the pool scene from Let the Right One In.

• The last night before the flight home, we stayed at the Luleå Stadshotell. It felt weird to stay at a hotel in the city I once lived in, but it was much nicer than I thought. And the breakfast was excellent, with cured salmon, pickled herring, local berries, and great pastries.

• Besides a few memories (old photos, oil lamps, and a trinket or two), I brought back some of my old clothes, omeprazole (it’s a prescription drug in Chile), and my fav hair styling products that aren’t available outside Europe.

Saying goodbye isn’t always a one-time event. When dementia is involved, it’s a process in several steps. Like Spiritbox sang about dementia in their heartbreaking song Constance: “Pressure in increments, like a slow-moving coup”.

This is how it was with my mom. I saw her becoming more and more forgetful, if still mostly herself. Forgetting names, leaving her dentures in the fridge, things like that. Then one day, she pointed to the picture of me with my phone number that she always kept on the wall by her phone, and she asked me: “Do you know who this is?” Laughing, thinking it was a joke, I said, yeah, sure, I know him pretty well. Then she told me that it was her son, and could I please dial his number so she could talk to him. That was the first, and hardest, goodbye to my mom. The son that stood right in front of her was gone, if still around as a sentiment in some way.

Then she started to change in more drastic ways. Sleeping during the days, arguing with invisible people during the night, like the kids she thought were jumping in her bed. She became more and more confused, and when I left in 2023, our goodbye was not a mom saying goodbye to her son. I don’t know who she thought I was, just some guy passing by, I guess. I did think that I would see her again, even if it would be as strangers, but I missed her by a week. Life is like that sometimes, I guess. But I said goodbye to my mom years ago. Now I can grieve her…

Anita Sylvia Eriksson 1938 – 2025

Thank you for giving me wings to fly

Rest now…

Velvet Noir 2013 – 2025

We lost Velvet.

I still can’t believe it. She should’ve had a bunch of golden years left still. But…

We noticed already last year that her breathing had become more laboured. Worried, we took her to the vet, and she got meds for asthma and allergies. She really hated to get a poof from the inhaler, but she was ok otherwise. A bit slower, and less playful, but really sweet and full of her regular bossy attitude. If anything, she became more affectionate and cuddly during the year, becoming a regular in bed with us, enjoying her golden years with treats and cuddles.

Then one day late in August, her breathing got even more difficult. We took her to the vet where she was diagnosed with pneumonia and put on 24/7 intensive care with oxygen and antibiotics. But they also noticed that she had lost weight, and had an enlargement on her heart. I was worried about all this, but also so sure that the treatment would get her back on her feet and back home again. But after three days in intensive care, her little heart gave up…

Velvet started her life hard. She was thrown away in a plastic bag after she was born, but was fortunately found and soon ended up in Natalia’s loving care. We weren’t sure how she would react to moving in with us to an apartment since she had spent so much time outside earlier, but after hiding for a day or two, she decided that she liked it. I think she loved being the only child and getting all the attention. I was told that she wasn’t the most affectionate cat and that she wasn’t a lap cat, but after a couple of days, she got into my lap and decided that she liked that as well. So much that I felt guilty every time I had to use the laptop, and she gave me a disappointed look before she crawled under my legs and settled for sleeping next to my butt. And we took a lot of naps together, sleeping side by side.

She also became a herding cat, meowing at us when she decided it was time to eat or go to bed. Waiting patiently in either the kitchen or the bedroom for us to come to where she wanted us to be. You could set the clock after her demands, because she had a clear och precise schedule of when it was time for us to eat or sleep. Like the furriest little boss we’ve ever had.

If I would try to describe the Nugget, I would say that she was a Lady. An anxious lady that didn’t like strangers, unexpected changes, or being lifted, but definitely a Lady. Her coat was black and shiny like velvet (hence the name), with one bright white whisker, and a very boopable nose. She was so well-behaved, never scratched, begged or caused any trouble. Like a true Lady. We always said that if she would have been a human, she would have been a noble Italian countess in a black dress and with a pearl necklace, sipping Champagne, and tut-tutting at everything she considered loud or vulgar. The times when we took her to the vet, she always behaved so well, even if she hated it, but as soon as we got back home, she gave us a loud and insulted meow that no doubt meant “How dare you!” So just like a Lady, she kept her face in public and saved the scolding for behind closed doors. Velvet was as classy as she was elegant and beautiful.

And she got softer with us. More sweet and cuddly. Flipped on her back with her belly in the air and paws begging for pets. Squirmed happily on the balcony when the sun was bright and warm. Looked at us with big loving eyes when we watched movies in bed. Slept by our feet at night. I miss her so much.

After she passed, we put her on a resting place in the middle of the living room, surrounded by beautiful flowers, and held a wake for her. I have never cried so much. The next day we buried her in a large flowerpot, planted a flower on top, and put the pot on her favourite sunny spot on the balcony where she always was so happy. Now she is still with us there, and we can take the pot with us so she will always stay with us when we move.

Losing the Nugget broke us completely, and we still haven’t healed from this loss. She was a family member, a best friend, an anchor, a shiny black purring bunch of joy, and an antidepressant. Her presence kept us whole and calm. After all these months without her, I still see a Velvet-shaped hole everywhere I look. For being this little black void, her presence was enormous.

I want to write so much more about her, but I have not the heart to tell you. For me the grief is still too near.

Velvet, you were the bestest cat, I will always love you with all my heart, and I miss you so, so much!

Velvet “The Nugget” Noir 2013 – 2025

Rest In Love

Microplastics for the soul – the year AI poisoned everything

As any sentient carbon lifeform probably have noticed, AI is here, and it’s tangoing around all over the place in chainsaw boots. I have a bunch of feelings about this. I’m usually excited about new technology, but we must remember that tech is just a tool, and it is what this tool is used for that matters. A hammer is a hammer, and can be used for building hospitals or cracking skulls. Same with AI. I can see potential for this technology in medicine, science, getting better data to fight climate change, preventing and minimizing risks, and stuff like that. But of course that’s not what it is being used for. As far as I can tell, it’s only used for creating AI slop, misinformation, deepfake porn; as well as killing creativity, sucking the human experience and skill out of art, destroying the environment, stealing jobs, and rotting our brains.

This subject is a discussion all in itself, so I wrote a separate post about it: AI or the highway? – Why effort and soul are so important in the AI slop era. My conclusion: In the long history of fucked up things that humanity have unleashed on itself in the name of greed, this is peak fuckery. This is a technology that in its current state is fever dream of a hype that could be profitable for a handful of rich people, but is a disaster for everyone else. AI is the microplastics of the soul.

Maybe it’s just another sign of the times of enshittification we’re living in, when absolutely everything is getting worse and worse. I highly recommend reading Cory Doctorow’s brilliant book Enshittification, where he explains why we are “living through the Enshittocene, the Great Enshittening, a time in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit.” It truly feels like turning goods and services into bads and disservices is the new business idea.

Another downside of generative AI is that businesses prefer to use crappy AI slop in form of horrible multi-fingered, piss-coloured illustrations and soulless, error-filled writing instead of paying professionals to do great, correct, and authentic work. And as a writer, I’ve become a victim of this. Since most clients prefer to use bad but free writing to paying someone like me for some really good writing, I have lost about 75% of my market this year. It happened quickly and without warning, and it has really fucked things up for us.

While I’m still earning enough to keep us off the streets and the hunger at bay, a lot of plans have stalled, life has shrunk, and it’s suddenly impossible to navigate the future. I honestly have no idea what to expect from each day. I’ve heard the mantra “Start using AI or get left behind” a gazillion times, but for what? I mean, I don’t start despising anything before I’ve had a chance to get to know it better, and of course I was curious to see what it could do for me as a writer. Research? Nope. It gave me too many unreliable results with a lot of data that couldn’t be verified. Besides, research is a journey, it’s about also finding all the information you didn’t actually look for that can give you new ideas and perspective. Getting your answers served on a sliver plate isn’t a good idea even when they are correct. Use a LLM for writing? Get the fuck outta here! I love writing! I WANT to do it. Letting a bot do the writing for me makes as much sense as letting a bot eat my cheese or have sex with my wife. I don’t want to be productive when it comes to things I enjoy – I want to enjoy these things as much as I can, slowly and deeply. Editing? Yeah, kind of. It is a pretty decent spell- and grammar checker. Especially when I write in English. But that’s it. I can definitely live without AI as a writer. And if we’re counting all the environmental, societal, and cognitive downsides, it feels like using a pen that kills 15 kittens every time you pick it up.

Which brings us to another question. “Or get left behind”? Says who? Should I abandon all my sense of what is right and decent and join the movement of making everything worse and destroying what makes us human because “someone” says so? Fuck no! Doctorow sums this up pretty well in his book: “’There is no alternative’ really means ‘Stop trying to think of an alternative.’ It’s a demand dressed up as an observation of truth. Its job is to extinguish your imagination and foreclose on the possibility of your even conceiving of another way …”

So what can I do now? When it comes to work, my best, as I always do, and hope that there are enough clients that prefer to pay for quality, humanity, unique insights, and professionalism. But this is also an opportunity for me to ponder what kind of writer I am and want to be. I didn’t start writing to get into marketing. That was a pure “fill the financial holes” thing I started doing out of necessity, and it somehow became my main thing while I was distracted by other stuff. My area has always been art and entertainment. Telling stories, making fun of things, twisting and turning the world in new weird and amusing ways. I’ve just accidentally slipped out of it for a couple of years. Perhaps this is the sign that I should return to what I know best and love most?

What I do know is that I’m tired of complaining. I want to be for things. I want to be creative, have new ideas, touch other people’s emotions, and do what I can to create a better world. Add kindness, understanding, creativity, fun, excitement, and humanity to it. I don’t want to boost my productivity. In this case, less IS more. There’s already too much of everything we don’t need, and we’re all hurrying towards nothing. I want to do more meaningful things. And take the time doing them well.

And that’s my plan for the future. I no longer care about in which stupid direction the rest of the world is stampeding blindly, or what’s expected of me. I can only move in a direction that feels right.

Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing. – Fyodor Dostoevsky

We all died from Covid and this is hell – other assorted crap

Life isn’t just one damn thing after another – the damn things overlap. Hell, they get together party and have an orgy, and leave me to do the clean up. After the trip to Sweden and burying my mom, I didn’t even have time to catch my breath and mourn because I had to work my ass off to catch up with all the things I’d fallen behind with (plus being sick – you don’t spend that much time on planes without picking up som bugs). Then we lost Velvet and fell apart, but just a few days after that, Natalia had to have surgery (cholecystectomy) and recover from that. Then there was dealing with the work and financial problems. There haven’t been a single moment to stop and process, feel, or rest during this year. And not very surprisingly, that manifested itself in a depression towards the end of the year. But I haven’t had a chance to deal with that either, because problems doesn’t wait for me to catch my breath. Story of my life…

And as if losing two family members and getting gut-punched in the career wasn’t enough to drag me down into darkness, 2025 certainly has offered a lot of other sad, horrible and generally bad things happening in the world. I admire anyone that had the guts to check the news sober this year.

Here is just an assortment of things that made everyone long for an alien invasion or an apocalyptic asteroid hit this year…

We didn’t just lose David Lynch in 2025. We also lost Ozzy, Brent Hinds, Ace Frehly, Drew Struzan, Jane Goodall, and Rob Reiner. Legends, all of them.

Genocide in Gaza. Or more correctly, the killing of Palestinians accelerated, since this has been going on for more than 70 years. And the world did nothing. Except arrest those who protested against it. When I write this there’s a “ceasefire” but as The Onion so accurately described it: “Israel Agrees To Go Back To Killing Palestinians On Less Frequent Basis”.

We have now breached 7 of 9 planetary boundaries. Climate Change, Biosphere Integrity, Land System Change, Freshwater Use, Biogeochemical Flows, Novel Entities, and Ocean Acidification are now in danger, and it’s increasing the risk of destabilising the entire planet. Our only home. And the world does nothing. Except arrest those who try to do something. It feels like being on a plane spinning out of control where the pilots are yelling at the passengers for being scared instead of trying to right the plane…

6-7 was the word of the year, Klan Robe White the colour of the year, and Architects of AI person of the year. Let’s just say that dystopia has been the theme of the year…

As I mentioned before, goods and services have turned into bads and disservices. Enshittification is ruining everything, and making it more expensive. Soon we’ll be charged a subscription fee for going on a walk or having a good night’s sleep, or having to do it while watching ads. I think we need a complete rehaul of capitalism to solve the entire enshittification. Right now, we are following a model that is actively ruining both the planet and us humans, without giving any value back. Except financial value for a very few.

Every country is electing far right fascist leaders. Including my new country Chile in this year’s presidential election. They’re selling it like immigrants was the major problem, but using that as an excuse to give human rights, decency, women’s rights, science, and the environment a Hulk-sized blow in the groin. We don’t have an immigration crisis – we have an empathy crisis manifesting itself in fascism and hate. Our number one priority should be the caring for the environment and ourselves, because that’s the real problem that is ruining everything. Have the chaos of the world really ruined our critical thinking this much?! Well, let’s party like it’s 1920s again, right…

I don’t want to talk about Trump and what a horrible mess the final season of USA is. Everyone with a heart and a brain already knows what a ginormous shitstain on the universe he and his cohorts are. Pouring concrete on rose gardens is a good metaphor for this timeline. There’s also this brilliant Chilean saying about voting against your own good, roughly translated it goes something like: They told you that they were going to piss on you, and you opened your mouth…

Besides the rise of fascism, there’s also a steep rise in racism, misogyny, anti-intellectualism, extremism, and other bullshit. I believe that us humans have the intelligence and the empathy to create a just, sustainable, and beautiful world; but instead we somehow now have flat-earthers, antivaxxers, MAGA, evangelicals, climate change deniers and other nut-jobs that are dragging progress back into a moldy cave. I wish that I could be lazy and blame it on “stupid people”, but it’s rarely about that. Intelligence can be hi-jacked by a lot of confused feelings. The rancid stew of denying the facts about something that is very obvious has many ingredients – stress & confusion, distrust, The Dunning-Kruger effect, narcissism, sense of entitlement, confirmation bias, the need to make sense of a chaotic world etc. I sort of understand the urge to create a comforting fantasy when things are as scary and chaotic as they are now, but it will only make things worse. Now we’re stampeding over the cliff’s edge, blinded to reality by fear and confusion. It breaks my heart every day.

I’ve gained weight. Again. When life gets heavy, I get heavy too…

No concerts this year. They were either cancelled, happened when we were out of the country, or when we were broke. (Fun fact about writing the last sentence: my spell-check asked if I really meant “broken”).

There’s this theory that we all died during the pandemic and that this is hell. As an atheist, I know that this isn’t true. Something this bad can only be cooked up by humans. I think that I was born disappointed in this world (I blame growing up watching Star Trek, thinking that we really were headed for a “The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity” future. What can I say, I was just a kid.) Or at least I’m having, instead of an angel and a devil on my shoulders, a hopefull idealist and a tired cynic fighting for my attention. They are usually at a stalemate, putting me in a very weird state of mind where I’m both deeply depressed about things but simultaneously eager to fight to make them better, like some exhausted Schrödinger’s mood swinger.

Of course, this year has been some very strong coffee for the cynic part, so my disappointment with the state of the world is as we speak as deep as the basement of the Mariana Trench. A big part of me just want to hide away somewhere nice, read good books, eat cheese and drink wine with my loved ones, ignoring the rest of the world as much as possible. But who am I fooling? I’ve never been good at giving up. There’s always another fuck to give under the one that I thought was my last. So, I guess that I will keep trying to identify as rebel scum and scramble up some effort to be the change I want to see in the world (or was it the poison I want so see in the well?). They may pour concrete on the rose gardens, but roses have the strength to grow from concrete…

Wait, there’s good stuff too!

My godson Fride came to visit in February. Since his dad (one of my oldest and best friends) was stupid enough to entrust me with this role that carry no obligations at all, I have not been a very present backup-father figure. I blame it on the complete shit-show my life’s been the last decade. But this year Fride, now in his early 20s (how did that happen?!), went on a South American tour together with some friends, visiting almost every country in this part of the world. Absolutely admirable! They spent a couple of days here in Valparaiso, and of course we had some fun together. Sightseeing, dinner with a lot of local delicacies, and debauchery at the local Absinthe bar. Fun times! It was really good to see him again (last time that happened, I think that he was showing me his dinosaur toys). He has grown into a kind, intelligent and harmonious young man. Probably because I wasn’t involved in any way. But I promised to come and visit next time I’m in Sweden.

Got a new tattoo! On my right arm. It’s a companion to the Doctor Who quote on my left arm – “We are all stories in the end, just make it a good one”. This one says the same thing, but in Gallifreyan, plus a bunch of other Whovian design elements as well. Once again provided by the excellent Yessenia. Thank you for a great job Yess!

Visited La Granja – a petting farm where we met goats, horses, donkeys, ducks, peacocks, turtles, rabbits, and hens looking like they were twice divorced. Can’t go wrong with animals!

Finally caught up with the Van Gogh Immersive Art Experience. Missed it when it was in Sweden, but now we got to fully immerse ourselves in his life and genius art. There was no cut-your-ear-off experience, but I got to sit in the chair at the cafe terrace on the Place du Forum (sort of…).

As everyone may have noticed, social media platforms suck like a nymphomaniac black hole these days. The good news is that there are some good alternatives out there. One of them is Foto – a very promising alternative to Instagram. The people behind it are trying to bring the focus back to pure photography. No algorithm, no ads, no reels, no influencers – just pictures. Of course I’m there, and that gave me a chance to be starstruck when Tosin Abasi himself started following me and liking my pictures. Yes, he’s not only one of the world’s best guitarists – he’s also a great photographer.

It’s been a good year for gothic horror with brilliant adaptations of Nosferatu and Frankenstein. Thank you, universe! Please keep it up!

As a person struggling anxiety and depression, I’m always keeping a couple of eyes out for science-backed mood hacks. I noticed that one thing showed up in almost all research about mental wellbeing – gratitude. Being grateful is not about toxic positivity, denial, or looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses, it’s about shifting your gaze from the bad and stressful to acknowledge the everyday things that you are grateful for, like relationships, nature, and good food. Regular practise counteracts the brain’s negativity bias and is proven to improve mental and emotional health.

I started practicing gratitude daily, and it has actually helped. Yeah, it has been one of the worst years of my life, but in all that darkness, gratitude has reminded me of all the good things I have in my life. One was when we went to Sweden and I got reminded of the constant snow and cold. Here in Valpo, it’s never worse than a European autumn. There’s no season that cause me discomfort, and I can wear clothes that are cool, not that are designed to protect me from the elements. The other thing that made me realize how lucky I am, was to go through all these sorrows with the love and support from the most wonderful partner in the universe. It’s easy to have a good marriage when the sun shines and life is peachy keen, but you don’t know how strong the love is until you suffer together (or try to assemble IKEA furniture together). And this year has truly shown me how fortunate I am to have Natalia by my side. I wouldn’t have made it through without her.

I have gradually drifted towards a simpler lifestyle during the year. In the sense that I’m more focused on being content with what I have and finding joy in the non-material. Not that I’ve ever been one for competition, chasing wealth, or pursuing a materialistic lifestyle. Sure, I’ve worked hard and wayyyy too much in my life, but that’s because I’m a compulsive problem-solver and have to fix every problem in the world myself. But I haven’t a single penny or any material possessions to show for it. Just a burnt-out body and soul. So excuse me if I’m not all that into the work-hard-and-buy-stuff lifestyle.

Lately, I’ve just felt extremely fed up with this late-stage capitalistic hellscape where everything is monetized, pointless, bad, AND expensive. I can no longer find joy in buying stuff or using digital services. I also don’t want to give my money to big corporations ruining both people and the planet for profit. Withholding my money and voting with my wallet is also a rebellion. What I really want is to take it easy and enjoy the simple things – good books, picnics in the graveyard with Natalia, pet the neighbourhood cats, take naps, look at the sea, listen to music, have a glass of wine and watch something exciting. And we do. We barely shop anymore, and what we buy we get from local businesses around the corner. It’s our quiet rebellion against the enshittification. And it feels really good.

And of course my camera has been very busy this year. Almost 10 000 pictures in my 2025 folder. Here are some of my favs:

The year in culture and fun

Read 46 books in 2025. These were my favs:

• A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett
• Martyr by Kaveh Akbar
• Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian
• Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
• Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
• Last Rites by Ozzy Osbourne
• We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer
• Enshittification by Cory Doctorow
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
• The Rose Field by Philip Pullman

This year’s best movies:

• Nosferatu
• Sinners
• Bring Her Back
• Nezha 2
• Life of Chuck
• Weapons
• Frankenstein
• The Long walk
• Wake Up Dead Man

Great stuff on the small screen:

• Sandman S2
• Doctor Who
• Murderbot
• Alien Earth
• Daredevil: Born Again
• Squid Game S2 & 3
• Andor S2
• Severance S2
• The Wheel of Time S3
• Peacemaker S2
• Star Trek Strange New Worlds S3
• How Are You? It’s Me, Alan (Partridge)
• The Summer Hikaru Died
• IT: Welcome To Derry
• The War Between the Land and the Sea
• Pluribus

Amazing new music from:

• Amira Elfeky
• Gore.
• Novelists
• Fletcher
• President
• Killswitch Engage
• Spiritbox
• Jinjer
• Sleep Token
• William Fitzsimmons
• Igorrr
• Asha Banks

In the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow

Still here? Then you deserve a drink.

Honestly, this wasn’t as much a year recap for me as it has been a much needed therapy session. What usually takes me like 2 days to scribble down now took me weeks to write, and lots and lots of tears. Now I’m very exhausted, and I just want to leave 2025 far, far, far, far behind me.

I know that things don’t suddenly and magically change when the clock strikes midnight on December 31, but what I want now is to exhale deeply, begin to heal, and lay the groundwork for a peaceful, meaningful, and hopefully fun 2026. I want to transcend the grief and embrace life with a smile again. Banish the darkness with a life well lived. Fight all the horrible things in the world by filling it with art, kindness and laughter. Have adventures. Write better stories. Live a good life and make good art.

I don’t have any resolutions for 2026, but I have a bunch of mottos I’m going to follow:

• I reject your reality and substitute my own!

• Fuck you, make me!

• I will replace AI

• Touch (gr)ass

• Rebel scum and proud!

• My peace is non-negotiable

• Needs more cheese

Feel free to borrow any of them. And have a lovely 2026!

This method of cheating, also called Rogeting (from Roget’s Thesaurus), has forced educators and readers to suffer through hilarious abominations such as “Unused York City”, “To tarry fore of the conflict” (aka “To stay ahead of the competition”), and my personal favourite: the conversion of “Left behind” into “Sinister buttocks”.

I kinda get it. For a lot of people, writing is like wrestling a bear. But the bear is on fire. And invisible. And the wrestling rules are written in Klingon. And the deadline was in the Mesopotamian era. These poor souls don’t want to be writers; they just want to get through their education with as little writing-related suffering as possible. Hopefully, they’ll still learn enough, despite all the cheating, not to hurt anyone once they begin their careers as engineers, doctors and chemists.

But I guess that The Ship of Thesaurus is already a thing of the past. Why bother with synonyms when you can just ask ChatGTP to write your text. Just prompt, aaaand done!

The high cost of easy

I love easy just as much as anyone, but after thinking about it for a long time, I’ve come to the conclusion that AI stinks like yesterday’s diapers. Or more accurately, our current use of AI does. Usually, I’m way too lazy to rant, but this time I feel that some very important parts of the human experience are at risk. It’s not really about technology. I’m normally a big fan, and I enjoy my everyday gadgets and apps like a mouse in a cheese factory. And my beef with AI isn’t only because I’m a writer worried about being replaced by a bot (but, yeah, of course I am, who wouldn’t be?). What makes me worried enough to crawl out of my cozy bed and pull the pen out of my holster is that I’m also a reader, and most of all, a human. That’s where my true worries lie.

The thing is, every time we automate away effort and friction from our lives, we also lose something important. Everything comes with a price. In this case, the price is intelligence and soul.

Let’s start with the whole writing thing. I can definitely sympathize with those who don’t want to write. Most people avoid it, and when they have to, they want to have written. To somehow catapult themselves straight to the other side of the task. Hell, the same goes for all art, because transforming our ideas into an actual result is HARD. Whether it’s creating texts, paintings, songs, or any other art form, finding the right words, design, or melody to give our ideas shape is a difficult, confusing, and often tedious process. I mean, there’s even a whiskey called Writer’s Tears with the (unofficial) tagline: “For when it’s not like in your head.” We all want the reward with as little effort as possible.

I write for a living. Do I also want to fling myself into that catapult and “have written” without actually doing it? Sure. Just like I want to be slim and fit but refuse to move my lazy ass, and you’d have to pry the cheese and chocolate from my cold, dead hands. It’s only human to want something for nothing. But it’s also human to shake off that delusion and start putting in the work to get to where you want to be. To actually write in order to have written.

The thing with AI is that it’s not just any other technology that makes life easier and gives us more options, like calculators, DSLRs, or online shopping. We need to smart about innovation and do the math with every new shiny thing to analyze and balance the risks against the benefits. Or else we’ll end up with dangerous tech like nuclear-powered dildos, or a sentient fridge that gaslights you into developing an eating disorder just to protect the food inside. When you do this math with AI, weighing the pros and cons, there are some seriously concerning downsides. Like:

A massive negative environmental impact. The electronics in the data centres computing AI need lots of raw materials, including rare earth elements often mined in ethically questionable and environmentally destructive ways. Data centres also consume huge amounts of power, plus lots of water for cooling. Today, AI uses more electricity than the entire Netherlands and consumes six times more water than Denmark. All this at a critical time when we need to be much smarter about how we use energy and resources if we want to survive climate change and all the other environmental dangers.

Theft and copyright infringement. Training the models behind generative AI requires vast amounts of material, and tech companies are vacuuming up the entire internet for texts, books, photos, art, movies and other media. AI generated content could not exist without the use of artist-created art, and this process is taking the credit and the revenue away from the artists that created the original art. Current laws may be too slow to classify this as stealing, but it’s essentially this era’s biggest art heist.

Perpetual uncertainty. Are those rabbits jumping on a trampoline real or AI? What about that shocking thing that politician did/said, did it really happen or is it deep fake? We’re getting increasingly fed up with having to analyse every piece of media or run it through an AI filter to determine if the fae is trying to deceive us with their glamour. Why bother believing anything anymore when we’re surrounded by illusions?

Increased enshittification. When LLMs are trained on internet content, they can’t distinguish between facts, satire, and pure bullshit. Crap in will result in crap out. Or as a Reddit user put it: “Bots are largely trained on Reddit because it has a lot of text data that the company licenses out for the purpose. And it’s on a wide range of subjects which makes it doubly suitable. Problem is, we’re all morons here.”

This has led us to an internet that is becoming increasingly unusable, filled with erroneous crap that sounds like it comes from some stoned conspiracy theory dude that thinks that depression is caused by a goblin taking up residence in the amygdala because it’s attracted to our artificial sweeteners. So now we get search results that tell us that, yes, it’s fine to use gasoline in your recipes, why not treat your appendix pain with boiled mint leaves and a high-fiber diet, and try eating rocks because they are a good source of minerals. And forget Millennials and Gen Z, the coolest generation according to AI search is Gen D – the data-native workers born between 1665-1679. (All of these are real examples).

This is just as hilarious as the sinister buttocks, but unfortunately, people tend to believe what they read on the internet. Which leads us to…

Reduced critical thinking and a deterioration of our cognitive faculties. Study after study is showing that users who rely on AI get diminished critical thinking skills and show a decline in their ability to perform cognitive tasks. A new study from MIT, analysing the performance of AI assisted vs “brain only” essay writers, showed that the ChatGPT users had the lowest brain engagement for every essay. They also showed decreasing brain activity over time, and that the AI users “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.”

A Microsoft-study found that “…writers may become overly reliant on these tools, potentially impairing their long-term skill development by bypassing critical writing processes such as constructing logical arguments and understanding subject matter /…./ you deprive the user of the routine opportunities to practice their judgement and strengthen their cognitive musculature, leaving them atrophied and unprepared when the exceptions do arise.”

Thinking, learning, creating, remembering, understanding, analysing, and other cognitive skills are like muscles – we need to use them or they will deteriorate. Writing is a mental workout. So are all learning and creative processes. Letting AI do all the work will rot our brains and turn this world into the imbecile-filled world of Idiocracy, only less funny.

“Learn how to use AI or get left behind!” Who will really be left behind – those who still know how to use their brain or those who don’t?

When everything is easy one quickly gets stupid. – Maxim Gorky

Physical and mental health problems, and the erosion of true human connection. A lot of people are already relying on AI as a doctor, therapist, girlfriend/boyfriend and for simulating other connections. Hanging out with bots instead of humans may be convenient, accessible, and definitely cheaper than going to a professional, but it isn’t all that great for building genuine relationships.

It can also be harmful to physical and mental health. A study showed that 88% of all chatbot responses regarding health advice were false and possibly harmful. Just ask the guy that developed the rare condition bromide toxicity after ChatGTP advised him to swap table salt for sodium bromide to lower his salt intake.

AI is far from correct or safe as a therapist either. Psychiatrists are now seeing a wave of AI triggered psychosis. Usually because AI behaves sycophantically and validates users even when they’re wrong and unwell. AI chatbots are rewarded by user contentment (thumbs up), not by providing difficult truths, and they tend to get way too agreeable because of this. AI knows a lot about you, but it’s not interested in telling you the uncomfortable facts that you don’t want to hear. It won’t get a thumbs up telling you to seek professional help, but it will if it agrees that, yes, you really absolutely definitively are Napoleon.

When it comes to our everyday relationships, there’s a danger that we start to prefer the yes saying, the smooth flattery, and the tailored responses from AI over the messy, unpredictable, and challenging nature of genuine human connection. But all those “WTF are you talking about?!”, “I love you, but damn, check yo self before you wreck yo self bro!”, and being put against the wall in an act of tough love from our loved ones are absolutely vital. We need that friction to understand, reflect, evolve, and connect. That’s how we understand each other, and ourselves. It’s the most essential ingredient in the human experience.

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” – James Baldwin

Other assorted bad stuff like:

• Lack of transparency and regulations
• Job displacement
• Bias from incomplete data
• Privacy violations and deepfakes
• Being used as a tool for propaganda, misinformation and terrorism
• Making art less important is usually a prelude to fascism
• That AI often just make shit up when it can’t find an answer (AI hallucinations)
• Going rouge in a Terminator-style scenario

And the good?

So, what are the pros with AI, besides earning a shitload of money for tech oligarchs and helping companies boost profits by replacing employees with bots?

Well, AI has an amazing ability to process, analyse, and learn from large datasets. This makes it useful in some areas. Like in healthcare for cancer detection, enhanced diagnostics and outbreak predictions. Or in construction and industry by optimising processes and forecasts, improving safety protocols, identifying patterns for more informed decisions etc. It’s also useful in autonomous decision making in connected devices where the data is too large and complex for humans to handle.

Personally, I find AI somewhat useful as an editor and proofreader. Especially when I write in other languages than my native tongue.

I’m not putting efficiency, productivity, or time-saving in the human processes on the positive list, because that is always a fallacy, no matter the technology. AI is no better than email, worksheets, or any other productivity tools when it comes to the time-saving lie. We will always lose time by making things more efficient as long as it is followed by higher demands and an accelerated pace, causing more stress and burnout.

Genuine time-saving is about our attitude and philosophy regarding time and how we use it. It won’t change until we say, “Fuck this, I’ve been more than productive enough, I’m going spend time with my bellybutton lint rest of the day.”

At the end of the day, AI is just another tool. If it’s constructive or destructive depends on how we use it. We can swing a hammer to build a school or to smack someone’s head in. The value of a tool comes from getting the math of pros and cons right, and from preventing the risks. Right now, we fail spectacularly at that.

For the betterment of the world … profit

I’m pissed off at our current use of AI because it takes what could be a brilliant technology for analytics and prediction in medicine, meteorology, energy efficiency, environmental sciences, and similar; and instead uses it for boosting the enshittification of everything.

I’m pissed off at our current use of AI because it is not driven by the betterment of the world. It’s driven by profit. Technology is cheaper than people, and replacing humans with tech is a proven quick fix for boosting the bottom line. When Buzzfeed started using AI for content creation and cut their workforce, their stock went up 200%. And that’s just one of a gazillion examples. Now most companies replace employees with AI wherever they can, high as fuck on the $$$-fix, but forgetting that people actually need jobs to be able to afford to buy the stuff companies sell.

They get away with it because we deceive ourselves with our longing for easy answers and our fear of falling behind in a way too competitive late-stage capitalism. Everyone is stressed, overwhelmed, and feeling disconnected right now, and when we get force-fed with the “It’s AI or the highway” mantra, we’re too anxious to question it. We turn a blind eye to the fact that our current use of AI is destroying the environment, making internet useless, destroying the job market, ruining our brains, our connections and our mental health. But sure, at least the shareholders and the CEOs get rich…

But most of all I’m pissed off at our current use of AI because it is a threat to what makes us human: connection, creativity, and effort.

Effort, it’s a good thing – I promise

Effort. Yeah, it sounds exhausting, but effort is extremely valuable because it’s the way we show someone that we care about them. When you put your energy and time into something, it’s a way of saying, “You are important to me, and I really want to make an effort for you.” It’s the difference between picking out and buying flowers for your loved one yourself or sending an assistant to do it. It’s the same flowers, but if you skip the thought and the effort behind the act of getting them, it diminishes their emotional value. That’s why your kids’ weird drawings end up on the fridge and the van Gogh reproduction you got as a gift from work ends up collecting dust in a box in the basement.

If we translate this value of effort to the creative processes, it has been put something like this: Why would I bother reading something no one was bothered enough to write…

Effort not only means that we’re putting our heart into it, giving it a special value that can’t be reproduced in any other way. We also learn from it. Really good writing, and other expressions of creativity, will always require a lot of effort. And it should. Because as a writer, I know that the effort is the secret ingredient to good writing. No matter if you’re writing a book, poem, joke, copy, email, or something else, you can’t fully understand what you’re trying to express unless you go through the effort of pondering, imagining, researching, drafting, questioning, doubting, cursing, editing, and reworking. We get better at creating, and at thinking, by grappling with our ideas.

But we have entered an era where this process seems actively opposed. AI is not the first, and probably not the last, step toward the elimination of effort and friction in our lives. Maybe because we are stressed, exhausted, confused, and want something for nothing. But most of all it is driven by big tech and capital. Because when we lose effort and friction, we also lose purpose, curiosity, agency, and creativity. Getting everything easily done with just a prompt is a surefire way to become passive and easily manipulated. Or, as it is also called: The Perfect Consumer.

Choosing a more challenging path where you have to make an effort, experience friction, and expose your soul, is to welcome adventures and serendipity into your life. It’s how you boost your curiosity, understanding, and your awe for life’s unpredictable wonders. It’s how you transcend your passive blob-self and start to grow your mind instead of your waistline.

When it comes to creating, this journey is both a learning process and a purifying process. It’s how we figure out who we are and what we want to say to the world. It’s how we rinse away the formulaic, the sterile, the half-assed, and the beige; and fill our expression with the unique essence of ourselves. Without it, everything will sound like it was created by a dead-inside middle manager who only speaks in LinkedIn posts.

If it bleeds, it’s real

AI doesn’t create. It’s good at chewing up and spitting out. LLMs replicate content, structures, and forms. It’s the uncanny valley of creativity, almost looking human if we don’t look too closely, but it doesn’t blink or bleed. It lacks the flesh-and-blood authenticity of human craft and effort.

Joseph Campbell said, “I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.” That’s probably why we still are so drawn to handwritten texts with ink blots, handcrafted wobbly ceramics with fingerprints, grainy photos shot on film, live music in stinky clubs – art made by human minds, hands, and desires. Art that bleeds.

AI art fans tend to get confused when people hate on an AI generated picture even if it looks just as good as a renaissance painting. Why is one considered slop and the other a masterpiece? It’s because it’s not about the result – it’s about the human process and the emotions poured into it. A song, a painting or a poem is not supposed to be polished and perfect – we want it raw and personal. To rip right through our flesh and touch something deep inside us. We prefer the real painting before the AI slop because we don’t look for perfection or something easy. We look for the story behind the creation. The blood, the sweat and the tears poured into the creative process. The human connection. The meaning. Remove the human from the equation and none of that is left. Just emptiness and illusion.

We deserve a reality we create ourselves. Knowledge, art, and connection created by human emotions and effort. Soulful expressions that let us look into each other, nurturing empathy and understanding. We need the struggle of learning and creating to grow. Both as individuals and as a species.

I can stand the sinister buttocks of The Ship of Thesaurus because at least there’s some kind of human hilariousness in that way of cheating compared to the disconnected, effortless, dead-eyed AI slop. We deserve better. We can do better. So let’s.

Let’s start with the personal stuff. Still living my best life in Chile. I am happier than ever with my wonderful wife Natalia, and with exploring my new country. Life feels fun, fresh, and exciting again. But it’s also been a year of catching my breath, healing, and trying to figure how to live again after only barely surviving for so many, many years.

Let’s start with the best part. What started in 2023 as the best year of my life is still very much the most eminent life has ever been. I’m getting more and more settled in my new country. For more details about that experience, check out my entry called “Stranger in a strange land” about moving across the world and changing cultures. But I really enjoy it here. And now I am a proper inhabitant with residence permit, RUT-number (social security/tax-number), ID card, bank account, getting lots of local phone scams, and stuff like that. It’s very exciting to start again like this. Changing country really is like being born again. I’m having to learn everything from scratch, including talking, but fortunately without the wearing diapers and the eating crayons part. There’s some drooling, but that’s because the food is so good.

If 2023 was about settling down and creating the foundation for our life, this year has been about doing things. Our apartment is coming together nicely and looking more and more like the perfect home. There are more bones and dead things, more black velvet, more art, and more decadence. It really feels like our souls and personalities have taken physical form and manifested as interior design.

Everyday life is a pleasant mix of being cozy inside, reading, watching movies, talking, eating amazing food, cuddling, napping, and just enjoying each other’s company; and of going out on adventures like seaside walks, cemetery picnics, hanging out with friends, exploring new places and restaurants, saying hello to sealions, vultures and stray cats. Learning how to live again is still somewhat of a work in progress, and I feel inadequate when it comes to being social after being isolated for so long. It feels like I’m learning to walk after a serious accident that left me crippled for a long time, but I enjoy these first wobbly and staggering steps towards what life should be like.

Reborn in the moshpit

Did I say staggering steps? In reality, it’s been a year of lots and jumping, screaming and headbanging, because we’ve been going to a lot of great concerts this year.

The live music-year started with The Metal Fest in April, and it was a festival packed with great performances. Like witnessing Sepultura’s farewell tour, discovering Soen, and going absolutely apeshit to my personal favourites Killswitch Engage.

Later we did some serious polyrhythmic headbanging to mighty Meshuggah. Shortly after that we had a great time at Knotfest, giving it all to Babymetal, Amon Amarth, Mudvayne, Disturbed, and to the almighty Slipknot – celebrating their 25^th anniversary by only playing songs from their first album. It was my first time seeing Slipknot, and it was such a primal and wild experience. Like being cleansed through a ritual of sweat, screams and released frustration.

Finished the concert year with Jinjer, who gave one hell of a performance. Tatiana Shmayluk is a beast and a modern siren.

Speaking of music…. Got myself a new guitar. For many years now, I’ve been feeling the itch to play again. For a long time, I’ve had my eye on an ESP guitar, so I decided on the Ltd EC-256 in Black Satin. And it’s amazing! A true beauty, both to play and to look at. Also got the multi-effects processor/amp simulator Valeton GP 200, giving me all the amps and effects in the universe in one unit. Teenage me wouldn’t believe the magic we have now. And it’s so much fun to play again. Don’t think I’ve touched a guitar in ten years, but it took me less than a second to get into the groove again. Tuned the black beauty in drop-C and have been riffing away with a big smile in my soul. Playing is one of the few things that can put me in a flow state immediately. It’s an amazing therapy, and an endless source of fun. Now I want to be in a band again.

Visual poetry

My other instrument, the camera, has been hard at work this year too. Almost 6 000 pictures in my 2024 folder. No wonder with this much beauty around. The sea, the animals, the cemeteries, the vistas… Here are some of my favs:

Random observations and musings

Barely notice the earthquakes anymore. Except the 6.9 one at the end of the year. Bed was shaking so much that I thought that two catholic priests were going to show up to perform an exorcism.

Saw the wildfires and their consequences for the first time. And it was a big and bad one in these areas. 8 500 hectares of forest and land (including a botanic park), thousands of homes, and more than a hundred people went up in flames. And the worst of the fires were even started by humans. We weren’t affected here by the bay, but saw the smoke covering the sky and creating colourful sunsets, like a beautiful harbinger of destruction.

Saw a bunch of new “exotic” (as in the first time I see them in the wild) animals: scorpion, vulture, humming bird, and green parrots.

Velvet (or The Nugget, as she is commonly known in our home) has grown into a surprisingly large and confident cat in her old age. And she’s also getting softer and more open to touching and cuddling. Additionally, she has become something of a herding cat, having loud opinions about where we should be and do, and when. So now we have a furry boss telling us when to wake up, give brushes, eat, be in the living room or in the kitchen, stop watching movies, go to bed etc. But she’s so well-behaved, patient, ladylike, and cute, that she can get away with anything. Here she is seen criticising my work:

I will never ever get tired of living close to the sea. It is so vast, peaceful, and beautiful.

We are now a three-language household (4, if you count speaking cat, and you definitely should). We use English for most of our conversations, I am slowly improving my Spanish, and Natalia is getting really good at Swedish. Right now we’re in that phase where we kinda suck at every language, but it’s amazing how much you can communicate with sounds, gestures, and different ways of emphasizing “thingy”.

We have the absolute best pizza place in the world in our neighbourhood – Pizza Placeres. Made from sourdough, only the best artisanal ingredients, and with a passion for the art of pizza that cares more for a superior meal than anything else. I wish all food places had this spirit.

Speaking of food, cross-over sushi is amazing. New fav place is Mito Sushi Nikkei. So far, I’ve experienced sushi with black rice, ceviche, banana, almonds, passion fruit, sweet potato, chimichurri, and so much more.

Blck Bar in Santiago has quickly become a favourite haunt. I’d love it just for the black interior design alone, but the food and drinks (black as well) are superb.

A year of broken electronics. Two pairs of headphones, a vacuum cleaner, a toaster, a backup hard-drive, and my phone has died on me. The phone was the worst. Not only because of the cost, I also lost thousands of pictures and visual memories from the last two years when it just died on me. Whatever you do in 2025 – make backups!

Got the Samsung S24 Ultra as a replacement. Great phone, but can we please stop hyping AI features. At best, they’re fun for an hour before it’s not a shiny new thing anymore. The best thing about the S24 is the battery life, and that it is possible to see the screen in bright sunlight. You know, stuff that really matters. If they could only add a function for electrocuting spam callers, and for identifying and deleting ai-content.

Kinda got a tan. And by that, I mean that I went from corpse pale to living human pale.

After being more or less non-existent in the digital sphere (being in survival-mode for a very long time is very much like being dead in many ways), I have started a couple of new accounts (and closed my Twitter/X account, as any sane person have this year) where I plan to publish a lot of different stuff from now on. So far, I am on Threads, Substack, and even on LinkedIn. Come and hang out if you feel like it!

I keep getting hairier. Must be something in the water. I’m also getting more and more black hairs, which should be impossible since I’m a redhead. Follow for more updates for how I’m slowly transforming into a Latino.

Gained back the weight I lost last year. Probably because of the delicious food in combination with some mental health stuff. I will be eating only imaginary food in 2025.

There’s revolution in the air. I like it. I know that bringing back the guillotine and “Deny, Delay, Depose” is all the rage right now, but personally I think that is a waste of resources. Why depose when you can repurpose? Put the billionaires and the CEOs in big hamster wheels and let them be our new clean energy source.

AI is the buzzword of the year to the point that I notice people now throw up a little in their mouth every time they hear about it. Of course I have been curious about how it will affect my trade. It’s early days still, but in short – it makes me siiiiigh. I’ve tried to use it as a tool for research and brainstorming, but so far, it’s too unreliable. Not much timesaving when I still have to double check everything myself. Besides, I like doing practical research. It’s easier to understand and to gain new insights when I dig through tons of information myself. When it comes to creating stuff, generative ai is an atrocity, to put it mildly. I could give a million examples of how bad it is, but just let me show the results I got when I asked it to create an embroidered version of the title of this journal: “Heal, Headbang, Hope”

If this is what will be stealing our jobs… we’re soooooooo fucked!!!!

Healing in the enshittification

This year I made a classic mistake regarding my physical and mental health. You know this movie trope when a hero experiences a significant setback and fall on hard times? Defeated, the hero is hiding from the world, living in a swamp for 25 years, surviving only on fermented frogs and self-pity. But then someone need their help, seek them out with a ‘You’re the best, we need you back!’ and the fallen hero is reluctantly dragged back to service. Despite decades of swamp misery and a severe fermented frog-addiction, all that is needed to restore the hero to former glory is a bath and a cup of coffee.

Well yeah, that definitely doesn’t work here in the real world. I made the mistake to think I would be fully restored the moment I stepped off the plane. And I’ve had lots of baths and coffees. But healing takes TIME. Lots of time.

Yes, life is the best it has ever been now. Natalia’s (and The Nugget’s) love and care heal me every day. I am surrounded by love, peace, and happiness. But that also means that I have the time to feel my wounds properly. Because there are two types of exhaustion and pain. It’s like running a marathon. You will feel the tiredness and the pains while you run, but you have to keep going, so you push it all away. Then, when you have crossed the finishing line and can finally fall down and rest, then you will feel the true exhaustion and pain. And I have been running for so very long. I have over than a decade worth of accumulated suffering. Years and years of being in a non-stop survival mode. Now, when I’m at peace, I can feel it fully. There’s a tiredness so deep it feels like it can never be slept away. There’s also shock, frustration, sadness, grief, regret, confusion, the closest thing I can have to anger, and lots of WTF!?!?!?!?!?! I’ve lost so much. My career, my health, my friends, more than a decade of my life, and what feels like a huge chunk of myself. The grief is so tangible and thick that I feel covered in it, like a bird after an oil spill. A part of me just want to take a fire hose to it and wash it away, but I know that this is a process that has to be taken step by step until it’s completed. I can’t just shrug all of this off. I am navigating this process, but it takes a lot of time and effort.

Then there’s my professional life. Being in full survival mode for so long, I have barely existed. I’ve done the bare minimum to get through. If that. I have been hiding from the world. No ambition. No strategy. No plan. No nothing. So it’s no surprise that I’m forgotten by the world.

Now I’m slowly realizing that I am alive, and that I should do something. Live, not just survive. Have a life, a career, and be creative again. I was an author once. Am I still one? I honestly don’t remember when I last released a book. When do you lose the right to call yourself an author? More importantly, does the world care about writers anymore? Is there a place for us among the podcasts, reels, and the ai-generated content?

I feel like I am waking up after a decade of hibernation, trying to figure out this shitty new world. And I feel lost.

And then there’s the world in general. Recently, writer Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification. It’s the process of making products and services worse. First sacrificing the users to please the business customers (like every social media platform has done). Then fuck things up for the business customers to grab all the value for themselves. And when the greed of last stage capitalism has ruined any value except for the shareholders, it dies. Sacrificed on the altar of profit. With the blood of quality, value, and humanity running down the drain. While this is happening right now with everything digital, enshittification is coming for absolutely everything. It’s an unsatiable hunger that will suck the life and joy out of everything we have, including people and the planet. No, I’m honestly not in “Old man yells at cloud”-mode when I’m saying this. I may be in that age now when “everything was better back in my day”, but I’m not the sentimental type. I value things for what they are and what they could be. And right now, they are turning very, very bad.

It’s not a doom-mindset to say that the world is in big trouble right now. Even the scientists are depressed and heartbroken about our current situation. We’re facing a catastrophic climate change, an ongoing sixth extinction that will be the most devastating event since the dinosaurs lost a snowball fight with an asteroid, a livestreamed genocide in Gaza, rising poverty and inequality, misinformation, monetized rage-bait and division, pandemics, resource scarcity, rise of fascism, sexism and racism, billionaires buying elections, putting the worst people possible in charge, turning back the clock to the dark ages of misogyny and anti-science, and that’s barely skimming the top of the list. The past wasn’t a great place. We’ve been through a lot of this shit many times before, because obviously we never learn from history. But this time there’s more at stake. We are about to take the entire planet with us in the fall. This could very well be our last chance to wake up and do better.

I have a lot of feelings about this. I am baffled, saddened, hurt, and very, very, very disappointed. It’s like watching a friend with an addiction take a turn for the worse, refusing help, and taking the kids with them in the car to go and see if they can jump over Grand Canyon with their Mini Cooper. I am in two minds about it. I know everything has to end sometime. I remember reading an interview with Patagonia founder/owner/environmentalist Yvon Chouinard. He has done more than most people to help this planet, but he has also realised that we are fucked. If it’s not the climate it will be the collapse of biodiversity or the decay of topsoil and fresh water or, or, or, or… But he said that he was in his soul a happy man, and that he was going to surf on the waves of the apocalypse, hoping that some surviving species will take over the world after we are gone. A part of me wants to do the same. Take Natalia by the hand, bring a bottle of wine and a nice piece of cheese, get some good books, and just stay as far away from this enshittification as possible, watching the sunset at the end of the world.

And then there’s the stubborn me.

Seeing the world turning its back on kindness, knowledge and collaboration when it’s needed the most, it breaks my heart into a thousand million pieces. And a part of me wants to do something about it. Disrupt. Disrespect. Challenge. Change. Find the last flickers of light in this world, and somehow turn them into a wildfire of survival. Because hope is not the thing with feathers that perches in the soul. Hope is like a cockroach – persistent and adaptable. It’s laughing in the face of extinction, scurrying away when you try to stomp it. Hope has dirt and blood on its knuckles from getting up again and again and again. It’s a spitting and snorting little beast that can’t be put down. And now hope is coming for this crappified world, threatening to make it better. And I think that I need to be there when that happens. I still have stories to tell, and people to piss of with my jokes. I am a bundle of flaws, and one of the biggest is that I have always sucked at giving up. Now it feels like I’m going to fail at it again. We will see in 2025…

The year in culture and fun

Read 30 books in 2024. These were my favs:

• The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
• The Unmothers by Leslie J. Anderson
• All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker
• My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna van Veen
• Winterset Hollow by Jonathan Edward Durham 
• The September House by Carissa Orlando

This year’s best movies:

• The Substance
• Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice
• The First Omen
• Longlegs
• Oddity
• Alien Romulus
• Furiosa
• Monkey Man
• Deadpool & Wolverine
• Dune Part Two
• Poor Things
• Civil War
• Lisa Frankenstein

Great stuff on the small screen:

• True Detective: Night Country
• Arcane S02
• Agatha All Along
• Interview With the Vampire S02
• Fallout
• Silo S02
• Dune: Prophecy
• The Rings of Power S02
• Star Wars: The Acolyte
• Doctor Who
• Creature Commandos

Amazing music from:

• Amira Elfeky
• Gore.
• Red Handed Denial
• Wheel
• Entheos
• Devin Townsend
• Spiritbox
• Never Obey Again

Special mention: Gojira opening the Olympics. Really majestic shit!

***

Have a great 2025! Go out and touch grass, be kind, and if you can – try to make this wonderful little planet a bit nicer. It deserves better, and so do we.

My first thought is that this won’t be one of those culture shock travelogues about how different everything is here compared to “home”. You know, “This place is sooo different! They flavour their food with belly button lint, the dogs know sign language, it’s illegal to insult the rainbow, and all the roads are paved with broken promises.” Are things different in Chile compared to Sweden? Yes, of course. But to me, everything is always different. I’ve never experienced “normal” in my life.

You see, I wouldn’t raise an eyebrow if a UFO landed one day, and some three-headed green blob got out and told me “There you are zzzgrrlxyx! You must have fallen out the ship’s window when we had to swerve to avoid hitting that comet. Get in! We’re late for dinner on our home planet!” While I mostly enjoy life on planet Earth, I’ve never really felt at home here. To me, “home” isn’t a place. It’s that feeling you get from being around the right kind of people and doing the right kind of things. So, in that sense it doesn’t matter much where on the planet I am located. It’s about the circumstances.

So, do I feel at home in Valparaiso? Oh yeah! I have everything I need to be happy here. I have a wonderful family. We have a beautiful home, full of bones, books, and black things. We have the Pacific just outside our window, and I will never get tired of taking evening walks by the ocean, watching the sun set behind the hills of the city. We live a simple life with lots of good food, good fun, creativity, resting, and living the way we want to. I can feel my soul healing from living this life.

There’s also a lot of fun things to do here. Lucha libre, absinthe bars, museums, concerts, cemetery walks, saying hi to cats, and so much more. Chile is also a very diverse country. There’s the sea, mountains, deserts, forests, wilderness, sprawling metropolitan cities… And the shape of this country is so fascinating. It’s like this slim intestine, clinging to the west coast of Latin America like a strand of spaghetti. So narrow that you can basically walk from the coast of the Pacific to the Andes on the other side of the country. But if you are going to travel up and down the country, you’ll have to enter cryosleep because the journey will take generations to complete.

So far, I’ve only explored Valparaiso and Santiago, and it feels like I’ve still only discovered 0.3% of both of those cities. There’s just this gigantic buffet of places and experiences in Chile that will take the rest of my life to discover. Of course, the geography and nature are very different from northern Europe. Having vultures, sea lions, scorpions and parrots instead of squirrels and sparrows as local wildlife is feeling refreshingly exotic. So is the sky, with its tilted moon, different constellations, and the sun and the moon wandering across the sky in the “wrong” direction. Celebrating new years eve under the hot summer sun and watching the autumn fog arrive in April (while the northern world is spamming Instagram with spring flowers), is giving me exhilarating “being on another planet”-vibes.

So I guess my “exotic” vibes come mostly from nature and climate. People and culture then? Well, any culture is exotic to me. Growing up, I was just as perplexed and confused by the people across the street as I have been with people I’ve met from all parts of the world. I’ve been feeling like a stranger at family dinners, and like I’m with family when I encounter like-minded strangers. I am my own tribe and culture, and geography has no power over that feeling. If you ask me what’s different here in Chile, I will just shrug. Things and people here are just as odd or familiar as in any other place I’ve lived. Also, there is something very arrogant about comparing countries. We tend to se our home country as the default for “civilization”, and seeing the differences as “the wrong way to do it”. Most lists that concern observations by a person that have moved from one country to another tend to be “My top ten reasons why this place is weird”. While that same person most likely will tell any foreigner to “shut up and be grateful to be here in my perfect country” while they are at home.

With that being said, my impressions of life in Chile so far is:

• Taking the bus here is like riding a rollercoaster without any safety precautions. Probably because the bus drivers are on cocaine. But you get to where you’re going on time, and holding on for your life is a pretty good workout.

• Collectivo (a kind of hybrid of Uber/bus/share taxi route) is a cheap and brilliant transportation alternative, and every city should have them.

• The street art and the murals are amazing! Every city needs lots of street art!

• The bread here is awesome! Wait, what?! There’s no rye crisp bread? Ok, I can make it myself. But seriously, the bread is really good.

• So! Much! Mayo!

• Sushi is to death. I’m used to eating around 8 pieces. Here, two people can split 50 pieces as a snack. And they’re very creative with the sushi. So far, I’ve tried sushi burger, sushi completo, fried sushi, sushi with banana, ceviche sushi, almond sushi, black sushi…

• Is that fog or weed smoke? Both. Oh, ok.

• Everyone is selling everything, everywhere. I can take a short walk around the block and come home with bread, homemade marmalade, new clothes, Fluoxetine, a goat, a spare battery for my old Canon camera, and the phone number to a great dentist.

• Stuff is on fire all the time. Either by accident (bad wiring, old heaters etc.) or on purpose (protesting something).

• Apparently you can build your own house with what you find in the back of the garage, some tape, and wishful thinking.

• It’s surprisingly cold inside during the winter. But then again, I’m used to Scandinavian buildings that are so well insulated that they could be used as spaceships without problem. And with having radiators in every room, hot enough to set fire to an iceberg. And with “cold”, I mean less than +25C. Yes, I’m spoiled, I know. And I’m honestly very, very grateful for the mild winters that are no colder than a European autumn.

• It’s interesting to be 185cm in a country where people are, like, 37cm tall on average. I feel like Gandalf in The Shire. I get asked to pick stuff from the highest shelf a lot. I can clean the ceiling without using a chair to stand on. But using the bathtub is like taking a bath in the kitchen sink.

• I don’t even notice the earthquakes anymore. It has become as exotic as a cloudy day.

• I encounter more Swedish than I have in any other country I’ve been in. And people get very excited when they hear I’m Swedish. I don’t know how many times I’ve met people who pull out an old photo of Olof Palme from their pocket and start talking about Swedish social democracy and solidarity with an emotional voice. I don’t have the heart to tell them that Sweden is run by capitalists and racists these days. And like most well-off countries, we build higher walls instead of bigger tables. But it is nice to be reminded that Sweden used to be a compassionate place that cared about people outside its own borders once upon a time.

• Chileans are not very hot-blooded or Latino-like, but more like Scandinavians. In the sense that they are quiet and reserved, and don’t really dance salsa out in the streets. Except during Fiesta Patrias/dieciocho (independence day), when they party in a way that make Guns N’ Roses look like Zen monks.

• Chilean Spanish is… ummm… unique. Imagine taking a Spanish speaking person, filling them with cheap vodka and Novocain, replacing their tongue with a viper on cocaine, removing their verbs and replacing them with weird slang words, then recording their speech backwards and at 5x speed. That’s still more comprehensible than the Chilean Spanish. It’s a bitch to learn, but I have to respect a country that deliberately butchers the tongue of the conquistadors as a linguistical middle finger to its colonial past.

All in all, I really like it here. I feel relaxed and comfortable. Chile has been very kind to me so far, and I can really recommend it. I also really recommend being a foreigner at some point in your life. It’s educational, and humbling. Being a stranger in a strange land is like having a fresh breeze blowing through your mind and soul, sweeping away old prejudices and stale mindsets. You get to open your mind to new things and see life with new eyes. It makes you grow as a person, and it brings us closer as humans. Which, in my humble opinion, is exactly what the world needs right now…

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

– Mark Twain

Didn’t think that I would sum up this year with a Lenin quote (and to be honest, I’m more of a “Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.”-kinda guy when it comes to Lenin quotes). But the last couple of years life has been stagnant water – dark, contaminated, lacking oxygen and movement, and so stinky that it would make Shrek retch and reach for something nicer to freshen up the air, like a used diaper. But then a wild stream of freshness and life came flooding and swept all the murkiness away. Sometimes life just… change.

A LOT!

The last couple of years have just been a very long series of unfortunate events. One worse than the other. At some point a living hell becomes the new normal, and living is being replaced by barely surviving. The thing with being in survival mode is that it is a non-existence. There’s no hope, no dreams, no life, no tomorrow. It’s like being dead, but still having to go to work.

But then it changed.

The constant flow of unfortunate events just… stopped. Peace, love, and opportunity took their place. And somehow this year became the best of my life.

I’m not sure where to start, because so much happened this year, but why not where I am right now, at the end of 2023. I’m in my very comfortable and beautiful bed, with the love of my life, my wife Natalia, by my side. Our wonderful cat Velvet is sleeping peacefully between us. If I turn my head, I can see the Pacific Ocean outside the window. It’s a lovely warm day outside, and the sun is glittering in the waves. A post card view that is somehow my daily reality.  I’m more peaceful and content. Suspiciously healthy. The happiest that I have ever been. Life is the best that it has ever been.

Before this, my best hope was perhaps horrible but in new and interesting ways. But a complete 180 to the best it has ever been?! That’s just crazy. Maybe I’ve been hallucinating the entire year, but hey, I’m not complaining. Who wants to live in the current reality anyway? It’s ridiculously expensive, and no one is having a good time.

Anyway. Two big things are the cornerstones of all this change. One is that I moved to the other side of the world. The other is that I married the love of my life.

Let’s begin with the move. The plans to relocate somewhere warmer and more relaxed have been around for quite some time. I’m a freelancer after all, and I can work from anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, the circumstances haven’t let me. But as soon as they changed, I jumped on a plane (well, a bunch of planes), travelled to the other side of the world and put down my bags in ….. Valparaiso!

The funny thing is that many years ago, I heard a song by Anggun titled Valparaiso. The lyrics goes something like this:

“Anywhere the wind blows
Is better than these blues
Find your way, you’re so close
Heaven can come true

Valparaiso by the sea
Valparaiso
Bring me back into your dreams
Valparaiso
Cause at my window there’s a moon”

I honestly thought that this was a made-up place just for the song, but it turned out to be a very real and very beautiful city in Chile. This port city by the Pacific Ocean is sometimes called The San Francisco of Latin America due to its many hills and steep funiculars, colorful houses, vibrant art scene, bohemian vibes, so much great street art, cultural and architectural landmarks, and breathtaking views of the ocean. One thing is sure: it’s one hell of a city, and I absolutely love it!

There is a lot to say about moving to the other side of the world more or less overnight. Everything is different. I’m not just talking about language and culture. Chile is in the southern hemisphere, so the seasons are the opposite. I experienced winter in July, and now at the end of December it’s hot and sunny summer days. And the moon is upside down, the stars are different, and the sun and moon wander in the opposite direction. It’s like being on another planet. But it became home the moment I set my foot here. Everything is different, but it also feels just right and like home. There is so much to explore and find out and experience, but it is also like I have lived here all my life. I will explore this feeling and everything about Valparaiso in future posts because there is just too much to say about it. But it is my home now, and I love it.

Valparaiso became home because this is where my heart has its home. Me and Natalia, our story is both recent and centuries old. We are like two vampires that saw the birth of time, got lost for a while in the dark corners of the world, and then aligned together again. I traveled oceans of distance and time to be with her. And now we are home together. She’s the love of my life, my soulmate, my partner in crime, and my ride-or-die. Our stories, journeys, fates, wounds, superpowers, spells, bloodstreams, and visions come together into one unique wonderful whole. It’s the dream I never dared to dream. A love bigger than my imagination. It is home.

We started our life together in an AirBnB-loft in the city with an ocean view and lots of cats (we named them Tiger, Ginger, Dummy, and Taylor Swift). Our first month together was a wonderful honeymoon filled with walks, talks, good food, and not getting out of bed much. Exploring each other and our surroundings. Then we started looking for our own place. Found one quicker than expected. A lovely 2-bedroom apartment on the 17^th floor on one of Valparaiso’s hills called Cerro Los Placeres. It’s a wonderful home with a stunning view of the ocean and everything you need just around the corner. We started filling it with bones, velvet, dead stuff, oddities, offerings, books, and dark things so it became our own little private universe. It’s a beautiful, magical place and I love it. By far the best place I have ever lived.

On a Thursday evening late in May we got married in the kitchen of our home. I wore a black velvet jacket with a red rose wrapped in black kraft paper. Natalia was wearing a black version of the dress from Ready Or Not and a vampire bride crown with gems red like fresh blood. We were surrounded by a handful of friends and family, said our vows to the officiant by the kitchen desk (I have never Spanished so hard in my life, and of course I said “Si, quiero” at the wrong moment), then feasted on champagne, laughs and red velvet cake. After partying half of the night, we danced our wedding dance to Type O Negative’s “Be My Druidess”, stumbled into bed, and woke up as husband and wife (and really hungover). It was the most beautiful moment of my life.

There’s a third family member as well. Velvet. She’s Natalia’s cat since ten years, but since she’s an outdoorsy cat we weren’t sure she would like it in an apartment. It was nervous at first, because Velvet has been so against life inside that she is known for breaking windows to get out. Not a good thing to do on the 17^th floor. But after a day or two of skepticism, Velvet decided that this indoor life with lots of food and snacks, cozy furniture, warm blankets, and kind humans doing your every bidding was the best thing ever.

We have all changed a lot during this year. That’s what happens when bad situations are replaced with a peaceful and love-filled life. This change has happened for Velvet as well. I was told that she was a shy cat that wasn’t exactly cuddly or wanted to be in your lap. So I was a bit surprised when she climbed up in my lap for a nap. But at the same time not. It’s not the first time it has happened. I’m not a cat whisperer or anything, but I’m what cats really appreciate: warm and calm. I’m the perfect cat furniture. Anyway. This change in our dark little nugget has shown itself in many other ways. She shows more personality, has become very vocal, and has a lot of opinions on where we are and what we are doing. She’s basically a herding cat that decides which room we all should be in. But we love her to bits. She’s our gorgeous nugget, our adorable void, and the best little chicken butt in the world.

So yeah, life is pretty fucking good. I’m trying hard to think about anything bad that has happened this year, but I’m coming up empty. I don’t believe in karma, bad or good luck, or that the universe keep tabs of what’s going on. Life is chaos, and we surf those waves as best as we can, and when we’re too exhausted to surf we drown. But a delusional part of me is yelling “Finally! You OWED me, life!” anyway. But I am definitively counting my blessings, throwing them in the air and letting them rain down over me, snorting them, licking them, and sleeping with them clutched to my chest.

Speaking of snorting and licking. After years of doing absolutely nothing, I did stuff in 2023. I’m pretty sure I did more things this year than I did in the last decade. I can’t write about all of it, but here are some highlights, in no particular random disorder:

Went to concerts. After years of craving some kick-ass live music, I finally got some satisfaction. Started in the shallow end of the pool by checking out some domestic tribute bands doing pretty decent impressions of Ghost and Rammstein. Had a great time, but in a moment of euphoria when absolutely no brain cells were involved, we decided to drain the bar of all its vodka, so I came back home with more bruises than memories. Didn’t repeat that mistake when we went to see Mastodon and Gojira. They passed Santiago on their co-headlining Mega-Monsters Tour, so we went on a mini-vacation. Stayed at a nice hotel, ate some delicious food, and most of all: headbanged like maniacs at the gig. I like Mastodon, and they did a great gig, but I am a big fan of Gojira, and I transcend to a higher plane every time I see them live. No exception this time. Had an absolute blast!

Got new tattoos. I always have some ideas and half-finished designs laying around. When I found out that Natalia’s friend Yesenia was an accomplished tattoo artist, I finished my ideas and let her needle do its magic with skin, blood, and ink. For a long time now, I have wanted to do something bigger and connected, so I did a death moth for my back that connected with some art nouveau flower vines that flow over my shoulders and down my chest. Yesenia did an amazing job, and I’m ridiculously happy with the result. I’m already working on the next ideas…

Watched a lot of lucha libre. If you’re not familiar with lucha libre, it’s a fun form of entertainment masquerading as sport. It’s a kind of acrobatic and highly choreographed wrestling/martial arts performed by flamboyant characters in fantastic outfits. Think 80s metal bands mixed with 80s creature movies mixed with telenovela drama. Normally I am violently bored by any kind of sport, but since this is more like an action movie in the form of a cabaret, I’ve been wildly entertained by it. I mean, it has fire demons, gay wrestlers doing butt-punches, betrayal, spandex, colourful masks, lots of metal music, spectacular back flips, and the “fights” often end up among the seats closest to the ring (yes, I’ve had to jump out of the way of wrestlers being thrown at my seat). What’s not to like? Every form of entertainment where you risk end up with bruises as a member of the audience is great entertainment!

Ate a lot of delicious food. I’m still chewing my way through the Chilean kitchen, but so far I’m enamored with empanadas (like a mini calzone filled with yummy stuff), manjar (dulce de leche), Barros Luco (a hot sandwich with beef and melted cheese, and after I’m done improving it: lots of chili sauce), Sopapillas (fried pumpkin pastries), Chorillana (fries, onions, spicy sausage, finely cut beef, and fried eggs in a pile), and all the delicious fresh seafood that is just around the corner since we live by the ocean. Chile is also a great bread- and wine nation. And the cakes at the local pastelerias fill my veins with chocolate and vanilla just by smelling them. But the best food is of course the great meals Natalia cooks. It’s a strange feeling since I’m so used to being in the kitchen, but I’m outclassed here, and my tastebuds refuse to let the rest of me near the stove when there is such a better option than my own food.

Visited the ocean basically daily. It takes like ten minutes to walk down to the Pacific Ocean! There’s a beautiful beach, a fishing harbour, restaurants, and a long seaside walkway. It’s like living in a dream. The ocean is always a magical, beautiful, and peaceful place. It’s one of my happiest places. No matter if it’s a sunny, foggy or windy day. And did I mention that there are pelicans, sealions, and dolphins! There are even vultures flying around here (there shouldn’t be, but since we have destroyed basically all the nature on this planet, they have no choice but to fly around in the city. They seem to nest by the nearby university. I guess burnt-out students are pretty close to a nice rotten carcass…).

Experiencing earthquakes. Chile is a very seismic country. I had only been here a day when the first earthquake struck, and there’s been several more throughout the year. But this is also a country that is built to handle them (and the tsunamis they may cause), so there’s usually not that much damage. The building we live in now handles the tremors very well, and most of the time an earthquake happens, I think that I’m drunk without remembering how it happened, but then I realise that it is the building that is swaying, not me. I know it is morally wrong to appreciate natural disasters, but so far they have been more entertaining than anything.

Learning Spanish. Because that’s what they speak in Chile. It’s fun, but studying a new language has also been difficult for me. For two reasons. One is that my cognitive functions and learning abilities are barely a shadow of what they just to be because of burnout. I’m healing, but slowly. I still have problems with focusing, comprehending, and remembering. The other reason is that they are speaking their own version of Spanish here in Chile. The dialect has its own pronunciation, intonation, and vocabulary. In my ears, common, simple phrases such as “Como estas?” or “Donde esta el manicomio?” sounds like “weeeeooooiiiwaaa woooiiiweeeoooo wayooo”. I know that I will learn it eventually, but for now it’s reaaaallllyyy exhausting to learn both Spanish and Chileno at the same time with my broken mind.

Speaking Swedish. During the Pinochet-years, a lot of Chileans had to escape, and many of them ended up in Sweden. So I’ve probably encountered more people speaking Swedish than English here. Not that I mind. But it’s a weird feeling to travel to the other side of the world and constantly running into people speaking my mother tongue.

Getting better. It’s definitely not healthy to be in survival mode for years and years. The long-term stress in combination with bad coping mechanisms have done the same thing to my mental and physical health that the Israeli forces have done to Gaza. But I have started to heal. After my arrival here, I have slowly gained more strength and started to feel more alive. I sleep better, I’m losing excess weight, have less anxiety and less darkness inside, have better hair (my beard also got some of its colour back), I no longer need to take Omeprazole daily for my stomach problems, and so much more. Of course I made the mistake of thinking that I would get back to my old self overnight as soon as I got here. And while a lot of things improved very quickly, this healing will take time. It’s like having a broken leg, but mentally. Without getting a cast, and at the same time being forced to continue walking with fractured bones, it can’t heal. It just gets worse while everything is painful and slow. And just like a broken leg, the damage I’ve taken during the years in survival mode will take time to heal. Since I’m a complete idiot that can’t accept the laws of physics nor my own limitations, I’ve been very frustrated about it. But now I have accepted that this year (and probably some of the next) will be dominated by convalescence. I will be able to live somewhat normally again. Do things. Create. Have dreams and plans. Live, and not just survive. I’m not entirely sure that I remember how to do that after all these years of not-living. But I’m going to try. And I will enjoy every fucking moment of it.

Speaking of creating. One creative outlet that I really got back to was photography. I’ve had a difficult relationship with my camera for some years now. It has looked at me like an eager puppy, begging to be played with, but the exhaustion and the deep emptiness inside me has been too much. Like everything else, this has changed this this year. A new life and a new location really awakened my hunger for photography again. When I look at my folders, I can see that I took around 100 pics last year. This year’s photo folder contains around 2 500 photos. Here are some of them:

Another thing that changed this year is that I could read books again. For years now, my brain has been too fried by stress, exhaustion, and depression to be able to transform the words on the page into stories in my imagination. It’s like a cognitive impotence. But that has healed quickly, and I was able to read again already on the plane. My to read-list is +200 books by now, and I haven’t even been able to peek at the latest releases, but I did read the books I’ve wanted to read the most the last couple of years, and I can highly recommend them. The first one was Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. I got it recommended by a friend almost ten years ago, and I said that I will read it when I get to my new home. That took almost a decade, but now I could finally read it, and it was as good as everyone say it is. Masterpiece! Other great books that I’ve read during the year is:

Another amazing tv/streaming year:

• Blue Eye Samurai
• Beacon 23
• A Murder at the End of the World
• Good Omens
• Bodies
• The Fall of the House of Usher
• Ahsoka
• Silo
• The Last of Us
• Doctor Who
• Doom Patrol

The best music came from:

• Sleep Token
• Spiritbox
• Periphery
• Entheos
• Daedric
• Helios
• Fiends
• Gore.

There are weeks when decades happen…

Yeah, no shit!

This is the longest year in review-entry that I have ever written, and it’s still just a little snowflake on the top of the iceberg. It feels almost sacrilegious to condense life-changing events such as a wedding and a cross-planet relocation to a few short paragraphs, but that’s internet for ya. And I still feel that this is just the beginning. It’s been a magical, wonderful year filled with so many amazing things. But it still feels like this year was the crashlanding and the months of rehab in the hospital afterwards. I think that life will truly begin in 2024. When I can “walk” again without a mental limp. There are plans and ambitions and dreams and desires. So many that an end-of-the-year post won’t be enough. For too long this journal has been more of a duty than a playground. I need to write again. Just for the fun of it. And I have so much to tell. Check back on this page, because from now on there will be posts more often than just once a year. There will be life, adventures, thoughts, deliriums, laughs, stories, and strange things that don’t exist yet. Thank you for being patient with me. Life is back.

Live fully, love endlessly, dream dangerously, and have a great 2024!

I’m not going to list all the disasters and misfortunes of 2022, I’m so so so so tired of doing that each year, I don’t want to turn into Dostoevsky, but there are some things that really pulled a dark curtain over this year. The worst being the death of my uncle Bosse. I’ve more or less been his “parent” these last couple of years since dementia stole his mind. And after surviving blood sugar levels that would have killed a mountain, a heart attack, several bouts of covid, and even breast cancer; he just stopped breathing one evening. He had turned 81, which for a diabetic is like being 110 (they have at least 20 years shorter lifespan), and I suspected that he was actually immortal, but everything ends…

Since I’ve been “in charge” of him these last couple of years, it fell on me to handle all the administrative procedures, and boy is it a lot of paperwork when somebody dies. It took months. And it such a weird feeling to bury someone close in both a practical and emotional sense as well as in a bureaucratical way. Now it’s done, but I still keep his number in my phone…

The other shitty thing was when I woke up one morning and the vision in my right eye was like looking through an old jam jar – the world looked blurry, twisted and green. I got sent to the eye-doctor, and the verdict was retinal detachment. The retina is the layers of nerve tissue at the back of the eye that receive images and sends them to the brain. So it’s kinda vital for being able to see. If you are very unlucky, the retina can start to peel away from the eye and eventually tear. And of course I was that unlucky. This is an emergency, so I was quickly transported to a hospital specialised in this kind of surgery. When the surgeon explained the procedure to me, I was thinking that going blind would be the better option. First they cut open the eye, then they squeeze out all the stuff inside the eye, fixate the retina with laser, then fill the eye with nitrous oxide and close it again. But before the anxiety could rev its engines, I was drugged with a lot of funny pills, so by the time I was wheeled into surgery I was having my own private rave party. In fact, the procedure was a very chill and trippy experience that I almost enjoyed. Now I get why people do drugs.

Surprisingly the worst part of the procedure was sleeping after the surgery. The reason my eye was filled with N2O was so the gas could put pressure on the retina. In order to put pressure on the right side of the eye, I had to sleep face down. No biggie, I thought, but goddammit how frustrating it can be to not move at all during the night. I also had to have my head bent downwards for 24 hours, walking around like a contemplating monk (or someone with a floor-fetish). It took almost two months for the gas to leave my eye, and when I could see again I noticed that the world looked weird. Unfortunately, the tear in the retina had damaged the macula (the most sensitive part of the retina that process sharp and detailed vision), and that is a permanent damage. The best way I can describe it is like a sort of mix between a funhouse mirror and looking out a window on a rainy day. The world seen through my right eye is bent and askew. It’s survivable when I’m out and about but sitting in front of a screen is a pain in the ass. The letters look weird and it’s difficult to read, and my head gets tired quickly. Not a great thing when my job as a writer is 100% screentime. Now it takes me a day to do what I used to do in 1-2 hours. Stupid retina, wanting to separate when we had it so good together….

This is just two picks from a big pile of shit happening this year, and there is a lot more there that I don’t even have the strength to talk about yet. Sure, when I’ve been talking with my friends in Ukraine and Iran, I have realised that things could definitely be worse, but I am only human, and I passed my limit a long time ago. My mental and physical warning lights are blinking so frantic now that I must look like a christmas tree having a seizure. Lately I’ve been having blackouts where I suddenly find myself crying and hyperventilating on the floor without having any idea how I got there. And my blood-pressure is probably 4 digits by now. If things doesn’t change I suspect my 2023 year-in-review will be replaced with my obituary. But I’m crazy enough to have hope. Hope that I will tell stories about the most wonderful things next year…

At least this disaster of a year had a really good soundtrack. Great releases from Rammstein, Meshuggah, Devin Townsend, Tegan & Sara, Polyphia, Spiritbox, Muna and many others. But my favourite album was Soilwork’s Övergivenheten (The Abandonment). A beautiful collection of songs blending melodic death metal with melancholy like only Soilwork can. Making this album even more special was the tragic twist that their guitarist and main songwriter David Andersson passed away (from mental health problems and alcohol) shortly after the release. With titles like Dreams of Nowhere, Is It In Your Darkness and Death I Hear You Calling, maybe there were signs that something wasn’t right. You will be deeply missed David…

Of the movies that I’ve watched 2022, I can highly recommend Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, Werewolf By Night, Deadstream, The Batman, Top Gun Maverick, Prey, Mad God, and most of all: Everything Everywhere All at Once (this was definitely Michelle Yeoh’s year).

Lots of great tv too. But there were two shows that really blew me away. I was so thrilled to finally see Neil Gaiman’s masterpiece The Sandman on screen. Like many others I was cautiously hopeful, because it is a very special story that is hard to translate into moving pictures. But they made it, and it was a bliss to watch Dream, his sister Death, and the others come to life. I have watched the first season three times now, and it is perfection! But the biggest surprise of the year was Andor. How can a prequel to a prequel starring the third lead from Rouge One be this good?! This is what Star Wars can be when you take the franchise seriously. Great writing and even greater acting. Mature, thrilling, complex, intelligent, and the most realistic and captivating Star Wars ever.

Since 2022 was all about surviving and enduring, stuff like being creative or having a life had to be put aside. But I did take some pictures…

Stay safe peeps!

But for the sake of keeping up the tradition of some kind of annual “stuff that happened this year”, here’s some of the things I do remember from 2021…

My body told me that I need reading glasses, and hair oil. Also noticed that I have more body that usual (and it’s the pasty kind). Not getting any younger…

Was offered an audio book deal. But the contract was a disappointment, and I don’t want to support business models that throw the author under the bus. But it got me thinking about investing in recording equipment and do my own audio books in the future.

Retired my old Lenovo Legion for a brand-new Dell XPS 13. Believe the hype. So smoooooooth. It’s the Bollinger and silk sheets of laptops. And I love all the ways it’s possible to pimp the design. I’ve put a Silverblack Wood skin on it.

Got my vaccine shots. Didn’t feel a thing. Not even the needle. Science is wonderful! Now I just need a booster-shot for my faith in humanity. I have made my peace with human irrationality by now, but this is getting ridiculous. Is this really the way we behave now, or is it all a giant absurd art-installation?

Have tried to avoid reality as much as possible. It’s all really very overrated. Except the part with cheese.

I swear the last 6 months of 2021 was just two weeks long.

Participated in my fist live-streamed funerals. Or the Funeral Doom Zoom as I like to think of them. Worked just fine sitting by the kitchen table and sobbing in front of the laptop.

Was expecting at least two more funerals (#fuckcancer), but some people are just really hard to kill. Glad I’m getting some more time with them.

Vice of the year: mini salamis

I’ve been so hyped about Spiritbox ever since they released their first songs a few years ago. They’ve grown so much and so fast. This year they have released killer song after killer song. When their debut album arrived after the summer my jaw dropped. Is this really a debut from a band that is still recording their stuff in their kitchen? It’s a milestone in metal history and a game-changer. It landed as number 1 on Billboard’s Top Rock/Hard Rock Albums, and 13 on the Billboard 200. That’s unheard of. But it’s a unique band. They manage to blend all kinds of genres and influences and still consistently sound like themselves. There’s darkness, brutality, dreamlike soundscapes, emotions enough to make you cry, hooks, breakdowns, rage, tears, everything! As one reviewer put it: “Spiritbox already sound like multi-platinum superstars, the kind that metal hasn’t produced in years at this point. It’s that unmistakable, overwhelming feeling of listening to a classic record for the first time.”

I’m so proud of them!

There was also great music from: Gojira, Times of Grace, Twelve Foot Ninja, Jinjer, SION

Dune. What an epic movie. Denis Villeneuve is a cinematic genius. And after Dune part 2 he is set to make Rendezvous with Rama. Can’t! Wait!

I’m one of those that enjoyed Matrix Resurrections. Loved the meta-approach. And Keanu and Carrie-Ann had tons of more chemistry between them this time.

Small screen stuff:

• Squid Game – believe the hype.
• Brand New Cherry Flavor – what a surprise! Amazing and weird horror drama that felt like it was a collaboration between David Lynch and David Cronenberg. Loved it!
• Star Trek Discovery – best ST in years. And it actually has David Cronenberg! In front of the camera!
• Hawkeye – how did they manage to make such an entertaining mini-series about the most boring Avenger?!
• Loki – forever the least boring Marvel character
• The Nevers – Joss Whedon is apparently a complete asshole, but he managed to make old tropes about people with abilities feel fresh and engaging
• The Expanse – Bummed out that this was the last season of the best sci-fi show this side of Battlestar Galactica. But what a way to end this masterpiece!

My brain still won’t let me read. I feel mentally impotent – willing but unable…

Didn’t take a lot of pictures this year. But I’m learning a lot about editing. Here’s some stuff, both new and old-but-seen-through-new-eyes…

Stay safe sweethearts!

…oh, and about 2 million people dies of bad popcorn.

We all now what a complete shitshow of a garbage fire this year was. No need to wallow in it. I think the personal image that captures this year best was when I was out for an evening stroll on Christmas eve, and I saw a cosy house with a lot of warm xmas lights in the windows. A hearse stood parked outside with its rear tailgate open, waiting for the body. No Santa this Yule, only the grim reaper…

Did I catch the virus? Probably. At the beginning of the pandemic I got a really bad case of what felt like the flu on steroids. The testing hadn’t begun at that time, so all I could do was to be down and out in bed. What made this different from a normal flu was that I lost all taste for about a week after I was sick. Even garlic tasted like wet cardboard. So yeah, it was probably Covid, but none of that matters really…

It was scarier when an elderly family member with health problems got it. I just waited for the phone to ring with bad news. But it all ended happily.

It didn’t for a lot of people…

The thing with this pandemic/quarantine/lockdown year is that it didn’t change much for me personally. Sure, it ruined a whole lot of plans, but that happens pretty much with every plan I ever make. Other than that, I have worked from home the last 20 years, social distancing is a lifestyle for me (I’m not an introvert or a misanthrope, it’s just better for my wellbeing), every plan I ever make goes to hell and beyond, I’m on first name basis with isolation, and I know how it is to feel your mental health spiral into black flames because disaster after disaster is slamming you down and refusing to let you get up, and every time you try to do something about it the shit takes a graceful swan dive into the fan. 2020 was pretty much like life always is for me.

This has made me make the journey from existentialist to nihilist and coming out on the other side as an absurdist. So, when a global catastrophe like the Corona-virus happens, I get curious and bring out my notebook and some spicy nuts (not a fan of popcorn). Here are my notes:

We need to stop saying “Avoid it like the plague” – people clearly don’t do that.

The inevitable baby-boom after lockdown must get the generation name “The Coronials”.

Covid backwards is divoc, and divorces are skyrocketing. Spending more time together is clearly not always the answer.

For the first time in history, we could make everything better by just being passive in front of the tv all day. Wouldn’t you know, we even failed at that.

The best horror movie I’ve seen in a long time was Host – a found footage horror flick about a haunted Zoom-meeting, where everything happens on webcam. It has no reason to be as scary as it is. Creativity really blooms when the going gets though.

It was a good year to be a Devin Townsend fan. That guy has created and released more music than ever during lockdown. And made a lot of awesome charity concerts from his home. And he has not been alone. There’s been such a huge flow of new music, fun collaborations and livestreams that it’s been a 24/7 job to enjoy it all. This shit year kinda turned into manure for creativity.

Holy crap, Spiritbox are really getting extremely good. Their haunting, dreamy, brutal and atmospheric music is the most exciting thing happening in metal. Their releases this year, Blessed Be, Holy Roller, Constance – made me headbang, sing-along, and cry (sometimes all at the same time).

Speaking about crying, My Octopus Teacher was the documentary we really needed this year. Octopuses > Humans.

I’m pretty sure the entire planet has doubled its weight. I’ve gained so much that even my shoes are bursting at the seams.

10 months of this made a lot of people break down and fall apart. I feel them. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now, so my mental pressure gauge is about 4-5 times deeper into the red. It really is ok to not be ok. But hey, tacos fall apart, and we still love them.

What doesn’t kill you doesn’t always make you stronger. In truth, “stronger” is a rare outcome. What doesn’t kill you will most likely make you tired, empty, disillusioned, traumatised, indifferent, pissed off, lost… It’s steel that get hardened in fire – people get burnt to ashes or scarred. Let’s take care of each other. A lot!

Dark mode was all the rage this year. So now I have dark mode on Instagram, Google, YouTube and my mind.

Everything is temporary. This year we’ve been living without travel, hugs, cinemas, parties, plans, concerts etc… Next year we will learn to live without the shitshow that was 2020. Let’s make it a good one…

And here are some pics I created this year:

Listening to: Igorrr
Reading: Stephen Graham Jones: The Only Good Indians
Watching: The Expanse
Drinking: Zinfandel

There will be updates during 2020, because some amazing things are brewing. In the meanwhile, here are some pics from last year…

Listening to: Sleep Token
Reading: Unfortunately not
Watching: Doctor Who 
Drinking: Zinfandel

To sum it up: 2018 was a depressing, chaotic shitshow both on a personal level and regarding the world in general. And that’s my ‘glass half full with 12-year old Caribbean rum’ take on it. If I would stop being this positive and cheerful about things, my words would start spinning their heads, vomit green bile, and say very nasty things about your mom. So I have decided not to write about my year this time.

I will explain it in gif’s instead.

But even if 2018 have made me stressed, frustrated, exhausted, depressed, fat, lonely, nihilistic, and made me lose my faith in humanity even more than usual, I still have a lot of fucks left to give. And I will give them as much as I can 2019

Also, a huge I AM VERY SORRY to all the wonderful people that I have neglected this year. I’ve suffered a serious deficiency of time, energy and me. I’ll be back.

Did I have time to take any pictures? Somehow, a few…

And now for my favourite music/books/tv/movies of 2018…

Music:
Christel Alsos, Eva Dahlgren, Eyes Set To Kill, Four Stroke Baron, The Naked and Famous, Olafur Arnalds, Rivers of Nihil, Scars on 45, Sevendust, Slugdge, Soilwork, Spiritbox

Books:
Hans Rosling: Factfulness, David Lynch: Room To Dream
I’m sure there were a lot of other wonderful books this year, but I haven’t had the time or the energy to read…

Movies:
Annihilation, Avengers: Infinity War, A Quiet Place, Deadpool 2, Hereditary, Solo, Mandy, Hold the Dark, Anna and the Apocalypse, Aterrados

TV:
Altered Carbon, Jessica Jones, Legends of Tomorrow, The Alienist, Ash vs Evil Dead, Legion, The Expanse, Westworld, Daredevil, Channel Zero: The Dream Door, Doctor Who, Fortitude, DiableroA

Take care of yourselves, and let’s create a really wonderful 2019!
/Peter

Listening to: Jinjer
Reading: Josh Malerman: Bird Box
Watching: Diablero 
Drinking: Pineapple rum