Decisions

[liv]

Having spent the weekend sorting my head out, I'm now at least emotionally committed to leaving this job and Sweden mid-June, and probably spending the summer in New York doing Jewish learning. So today I talked to both my boss and the head of HR for the department and gave formal notice that this is what I'm doing. I haven't actually bought plane tickets or a registration for Drisha yet, but in my head it feels like a decision. And this comes with the realization that I actually only have a month more here. I hope I can make the most of it, I have plans for jack coming to visit and running activities for Shavuot and hopefully will have some actual goodbye parties now I really am leaving.

• The phase between about mid-April and mid to late May, where the whole of spring from the first snowdrops to lilacs in full bloom is crammed into just one month.
• Winters where proper snow is a given, usually several times in the season.
• Stockholm is as much sea as land, as much country as city, and the mostly fin de siècle architecture improves on the beautiful setting.
• Good, affordable public transport.
• My darling little flat with its light wood floors and its white paint and its well-insulated construction and its half-wild garden and the amazing crops of cherries, apples, plums, pears that just fall into my hand.
• Älvsjö which is 10 minutes from the city centre but has its own forest and fairy lake and looks like something out of a fairy tale with all the colourful wooden houses.
• Every Thursday is pancake day, and the calendar revolving around cake rather than religion. Living near a really excellent bakery.
• Really tasty salmon just for the asking
• The wide range of good, interesting restaurants which all have a decent range of veggie food.
• The work-life balance here; people work hard and take their jobs seriously, but they work 40-hour weeks and 40-week years.
• My lovely colleagues.
• Being at KI and getting to hear all the famous scientists and take part in all the excitement around the Nobel prizes.
• The absolute bedrock assumption that parenting is a gender-neutral concept. If I were even slightly considering having kids I would do anything, accept the most menial of jobs, to be able to raise a family here.
• The intellectual stimulation of working in a foreign language, one that by now I know fairly well. The lilt of Swedish with its intrinsic tone, and the musicality of Swedish accents in English.
• The wonderful people I've met through the Jewish community. My involvement in the blossoming thing that is Scandinavian Progressive Judaism.
• It almost goes without saying that what I'll miss most is my friends, EBH and SA and Joanna and SS and all that crowd.

What I won't miss:

• The wildly unbalanced day lengths. The endless months where it's cold and dark and wet, and the period in summer where it never gets properly dark and I can't sleep well enough to be balanced. Plus it's hopeless with the religious calendar being based on sunset times!
• The bloody north sea getting in the way when I want to snuggle my Beau or take part in social gatherings. The amount of my life eaten by Ryanair and related travel stress.
• The high cost of eating out. It's pretty impossible to find a decent meal for under £20, and alcohol is essentially unaffordable.
• This job slowly sucking away my joy and my confidence. Sharing facilities with co-workers who don't understand the basic requirements of asepsis and keep breaking equipment and then behaving like guilty three year olds ineptly trying to cover up their mistakes.
• Being an outsider and missing linguistic and cultural nuances and above all having to expect other people to work in a second language if I want to be able to express myself properly.
• The official structure of the Jewish community, even if the individual people are wonderful.
• Geography aka being in the wrong country for practically all my friends instead of for half of them.

Comments

[llennhoff]

When you're settled in NY drop me a line if you'd like to meet me (and my wife Malka Esther if either of you are interested in meeting the other) in real space sometime.