Life

On the bus back to Oslo yesterday morning, besides sleeping, I also had some time for thinking about life, the universe and... What I suddenly realized is that I am actually quite happy with my life. That's something, isn't it? It's not like everything in my life is perfect and that I'm hilariously happy - but my life really isn't half bad these days. I have a job I enjoy, I did well on my exams and that sure gave me a lot of happiness and I've got some great plans for the near future, so what's not to be happy about? I see so many people going through life doing things they don't enjoy, complaining that life hasn't giventhem what they want. That truly is sad. As far as I know we're only given one life on this earth, and having to go through that being constantly unhappy about all the things that didn't happen for you must be terrible. And often it isn't that easy for people to change their lives into something else either because of commitments, society's rules or what ever. I guess I'm lucky; so far I've been given a pretty good life.

I am quite aware of the fact that the most cause for my happiness is probably that, even though I do enjoy the work I'm doing now, from New Year on and through the next 3 years I'll have the opportunity to pursue a dream - and that to me, seems greater than everything else.

What my plans are? Well, first of all, for those of you who still don't know this, I have been made redundant by the Norwegian Defence from January 2006 - this means that I get to keep my salary for 3 years whilst being a student. My primary plans for these 3 years are the following:

• Spring 2006: Nordic literature, 1st module, correspondence course, University of Bergen
• Autumn 2006/Spring-Summer 2007: Master Creative Writing, University college Chichester
• Autumn 2007: Nordic literature, 2nd module, correspondence course, university of Bergen
• Spring 2008: Nordic literature, 3rd module, correspondence course, university of Bergen
• Spring 2008: Authorized translators’ exam from English to Norwegian
• Autumn 2008: Nordic literature, 4th module, correspondence course, university of Bergen
  

So, there it is, my grand plan for the next 3 years. The reason why I'm doing so much of the studying as a correspondence student is that I am also planning to spend a lot of my time writing, and I will also try to get to do some travelling. So far in my life I've still not been outside Europe and it seems to me it's about time I do something about it:

I want to go to Iceland, on horse back vacation - riding on horses across Iceland for a week or two.
I want to spend time in Africa, watching and ideally doing some volunteer work with animals, preferably the big cats - love those!
I want to visit the US (even though I'm really not at all happy with the current president!) and Mexico.

I guess those are on the top of my list of places I want to go - hopefully I will get to do some of it some time before 2008.

So, today this is my life and my plans for it!