The Hometown Metaphor

Hello dear readers,

The days are passing here in Odda as if nothing ever happened. It has given me a lot and maybe even too much time to reflect on certain moments in my life. It has also given me shitloads of time to spend with my family. The sane part of it that is ;)

I am learning that they have changed as well as one would do through the years. Young sisters have a family, older brothers as well. Younger siblings are turning into young adults with their own character and personality helping define their paths.

I always joke that nothing changes in Odda, that people stay more or less the same and that the world around it just moves whilst Odda remains the same. As a sort of Hobbiton  if you will.

It is of course  just a metaphor like the one Tolkien made in his book, a metaphor of his home. The feeling hometowns gives of not changing might just be us hoping it will not subconsciously. Yet even in the books of Tolkien as well as other authors that have these vivid metaphors for their hometowns show us just how much i changed in the end of their book if not sooner. It very often has a dramatic flare to it and a melancholic aftertaste of sorts. Whilst I think changes in Odda is a good thing I certainly do not find them dramatic. I guess the funny twist to my story is that coming back to this town makes me feel like I stood still all this time. That might be a dramatic flare from my side I suppose or just me feeling I have not done enough in my time. It is relatively easy to feel like you are standing still in a world that moves so fast around you and let´s not forget. It is more than possible to feel like a random mistake when everyone else seem to have it all sorted out.

Yesterday I made a first step in a huge decision, it is still not set in stone yet but if I go through with it next year I know it will change my life forever. Though I am not going to tell what it is right now it does make me feel rather happy to think about making this step. It has nothing to do with a man at all, it is something completely different and more importantly I am making the step for myself and nobody else. All I can say is that even though it is something that is more probable to happen in the course of next year it is something that feel strangely natural and very rewarding and the journey starts here.

Photo uploaded from Google Images

Also thinking of taking some extra courses when there is time and stability for it. I am looking at the option of moving to Stavanger now after September because if I could find myself a management job or tech.support job there it would be perfect for what I plan to do. If that latter does not happen I will have another look at the UK and the Netherlands options again. It is about time to figure stuff out because Odda is beautiful and it is where I grew up but it will not do much for me since I do not intend to work at the factory for a living. I wanna do grand things, i wanna use my brain as much as possible and I wanna see new things and go places. I wanna feel like every freaking day will be a different adventure and though Odda is nice in lots of ways, it certainly does not leave me with that feeling. It might be a place to come back to for when I need to gather myself when I have fallen, but it is not a place I find myself growing and developing my life further.

Xx Viking