Words by Maria

Life in General:

In august I went back home to Stockholm and felt really good about it.

Friends:

Susanna visited me in Norrköping. Together we visited Makkarakauppa and Kolmårdens Zoo and ate Greek food. I also spent some time with my friends in Linköping and in the end of the month we had a crayfish party at Tobias summer cottage.

Family:

My brother Marcus turned 30 and we celebrated him at his and CC‘s new apartment in Helsingborg.

Personal:

I wrote this personal blogpost about my mum

School:

School started again after 10 weeks of summer holiday. The first day we met our customer for the live project about dementia that we were going to start working with.

LiA:

I started to hunt for a place where I could do my second internship. The hunt took place mostly at Twitter and in my blog.

Work:

I worked first half of the month and ended the summer period at work and ended with a bit of golf playing and socializing in the forest with my colleagues. That was also the end for my summer blog.

Social Media:

I became even more twitter active and used social media to promote myself for another internship period. And as mentioned above I also ended the summer blog I had at work.

Mobile shot:

Marcus and CC's turtle Berta which now unfortunately is dead is eating breakfast.

Photo:

A rhinoceros and a zebra at Kolmården Zoo.

Life in General:

In July most people are having vacation, but that’s the month when I worked the most.  I lived in Norrköping the entire month and realized that I missed Stockholm.

Friends:

I visited Alice and her parents in Linköping and melted when she fell asleep in my arms. When I went home to Stockholm for just a weekend I met up with Jenny and when we had decided to meet up with Peter and Adam we ended up at a rave party. Odd, I know.

Alice and I before she fell asleep. Photo: Stefan Doverud

Family:

I lived at my parent’s house the entire month and together with them I went to the castle in Örebro for a family reunion with all descendants of my mother’s grandparents.

Work:

I worked really hard this month at Lagos Mode, both in the store and with the blog, at the expense of my personal blog which wasn’t very updated during July.

Trips:

As written above I made two trips in July, one to my home in Stockholm and one to Örebro.

Mobile shot:

I caught Jenny when she was eating candy at work. Look how guilty she looks ;)

Jenny eating candy.

Photo:

I missed Stockholm in July and went here when I had a weekend off work. I took a walk at Södermalm where I also took some photos.

View from Mosebacke

Life in General:

June was the month when I packed seven bags to go to Norrköping and live at my parents place for the summer, while being there I realized that I am a real stockholmer since I missed Stockholm a lot. I also turned 27  and celebrated my birthday in the garden with my family and the day after with my friends in Ljungsbro.

Friends:

At our national day 6th of June it was time for a new party at Lidingö together with Lorraine, Sanna, Susanna, Jenny and Elisabeth. Great fun but what happens on the island, stays on the island.

I celebrated the Midsummer holiday at Björn and Josefin‘s place, Bondhälla. Probably the best midsummer holiday I have ever had.

25th of June Stefan and Pernilla got a daughter. A really cute girl, called Alice. She is the closest child I know and I really like to play and cuddle with her. And since she is the first child among the closest friends, she is really spoiled.

Two days after Alice was born it was time to celebrate mine and Andreas birthday at Anna and Andreas house in Ljungsbro. It was a nice party with a lot of nice people.

Alice

Family:

My brother visited me for the first time since I moved to Stockholm at the national day. It was a really short visit though since we had separated plans for the evening.

School:

My first year at Medieinstitutet ended in the beginning of June with a really nice lecture by Teo Härén about creativity. I also received a lot of praise from my teacher in journalism which made me re-think about my future.

Work:

In June I went back to work at Lagos Mode in Norrköping. I enjoyed working again and meeting old and new customers. I also ran around with my camera and photographed my co-workers for the summer blog. In the beginning of the month I also worked as a presider at the election for the EU parliament.

Social Media:

In June I started to use social media at work for the first time when I set up the summer blog at Lagos Mode. I really enjoyed working with the blog and I learned a lot meanwhile.

Me posing for the summer blog.

Trips:

As soon as the spring term was over Elisabeth and I went to Barcelona to get some sun and nice shopping. We had really fun together in Spain. I miss you and your crazy antics Elisabeth.

After I had “moved” to Norrköping for the summer I also made a trip to Vimmerby for a meeting with the big boss, Mr S. On the way there I also visited Sandströms in Vimmerby and Kisa.

Elisabeth at a restaurant in Barcelona.

Society:

The Pirate Party got over 7 percent of the swedish votes in the election for the EU parliament and Michael Jackson died and was mourned by a whole world.

Boardgames:

Andreas and Anna gave me Chez Goth as a birthday present. It’s a shame I haven’t played it yet but I brought it to Stockholm and I haven’t found any boardgame partners there.

Mobile shot:

The tattoo.

No comments.

Photo:

Me and my grandparents at my birthday.

Grandma, Maria, Grandpa

Today Niclas Strandh also known as Deeped on Twitter started to list people he is following on Twitter who has a link to their blog in their bio. I had the great honor of falling in list number one. Deeped and I have only followed each other on Twitter since May this year, and since he is following more than 2000 people, I am proud to be mentioned at the same list as people who I really look up to, for example, Nikke Lindqvist and Joakim Jardenberg. I also got some nice words about me and this blog that made me warm and happy inside.

The only bad thing about this is that I really get performance anxiety over this blog. I really need to blog more about all those things I think that I should blog about but never end up in the blog. Hmm, maybe it aint no bad thing after all… just a kick in my lazy butt. Although I won’t write any more blog posts today before I am finished with the concept description for my final project in school, deadline is today and even though most of it is in my head I haven’t written a sign yet.

Inspired by Nollnolltalet.se a lot of bloggers have started to list their 100 best tunes from this decade during the past weeks. When I first saw this I thought I would never manage to list 100 tunes I like and on top of that rank them. But I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind so last night I thought that I might as well should give it a try. And as soon as I got started I couldn’t leave it behind. And to be honest it was far from as hard as I thought it would be.

What I realised though is that I listen mostly to the same artists and over and over again instead of trying to find musicians I never heard of before. In my younger years I was more influenced by my friends and what they listened to. And it’s not that I’m not sensitive to what my friends want to tell me, but nowadays I rarely get any music tips from friends to be honest. It just Stefan who once in a while tells me he’s found some good music he likes, and looking at my list below there are some bands there that from the beginning were tips from him. I don’t listen to the radio either more than when I drive a car, which isn’t that often. The conclusion of this is that there are probably lots of good music out there who would qualify for a position on my list if I had heard it, but I haven’t. So if you miss something that you think I might like, please tell me, I could use some more variation in my Spotify lists.

Talking about Spotify, there are five tracks on my list who aren’t found on Spotify but here are the 95 other tunes. To compensate the five lost tunes I have made them bold in the list below.

1. Coldplay – Fix you
2. 12 stones – Photograph
3. U2 – Beautiful Day
4. Earshot – Fall apart
5. Sigur Rós – Glósóli
6. Coldplay – Viva la vida
7. Gavin Degraw – Just friends
8. Coldplay – Green eyes
9. Melody Club – Electric
10. Jason Mraz – Love for a child
11. Eskju Divine – Struck by the halo
12. Coldplay – In my place
13. The Hives – Hate to say I told you so
14. Marit Bergman – This is the year
15. Pillar – Bring me down
16. Coldplay – Don’t panic
17. Jack’s Mannequin – Miss Delaney
18. Coldplay – What if
19. Eskju Divine – Darkness all around
20. Gavin Degraw – In love with a girl
21. Raymond & Maria – Ingen vill veta var du har köpt din tröja
22. Kleerup & Titiyo – Longing for lullabies
23. Coldplay – The scientist
24. 12 stones – The way I feel
25. Laleh – Live tomorrow
26. Coldplay – Lost
27. Sigur Rós – Hoppípolla
28. Coldplay – Talk
29. Marit Bergman – I will always be your soldier
30. Hoobastank – The reason
31. Takida – Curly Sue
32. Gavin Degraw – Chariot
33. Snow Patrol – Chasing Cars
34. Gustaf Spetz – You and me
35. Coldplay – Yellow
36. Håkan Hellström – En vän med en bil
37. Bad Cash Quartet – Big day coming
38. Green Day – Boulevard of broken dreams
39. Marit Bergman – Julia
40. Gavin DeGraw – More than anyone
41. Coldplay – Trouble
42. Melody Club – Destiny calling
43. Blink 182 – Anthem, Part 2
44. Laleh – Call on me
45. Ceasars Palace – Jerk it out
46. Kent – Dom andra
47. Lars Winnerbäck – Jag vill gå hem med dig
48. Håkan Hellström – Det är så jag säger det
49. Melody Club – Cats in the dark
50. Snow Patrol – Shut your eyes
51. Salem Al Fakir – Good song
52. Bon Jovi – It’s my life
53. Paolo Nutini – New shoes
54. Melody Club – Play me in stereo
55. Hoobastank – Same direction
56. Amanda Jenssen – Our last goodbye
57. Raymond & Maria – Min pappa
58. The Hives – A little more for little you
59. Avril Lavigne – Complicated
60. Hello Saferide – If I don’t write this song someone I love will die
61. Gnarls Barkley – Crazy
62. Green Day – Warning
63. Blink 182 – First date
64. Gustaf Spetz – Every word I know
65. MxPx – Prove it to the world
66. Laakso – Norrköping
67. Miss Li, Lars Winnerbäck – Om du lämnade mig nu
68. The Ark – Calleth you, Cometh I
69. Håkan Hellström – Den fulaste flickan i världen
70. Múm – Green grass of the tunnel
71. Staind – It’s been a while
72. Jack’s Mannequin – Mixed Tape
73. Kent – Kärleken väntar
74. Carola – Genom allt
75. Salem Al Fakir – This is who I am
76. Christian Walz – Wonderchild
77. Sugarplum Fairy – Love’s turning to boredom
78. Lars Winnerbäck – Dunkla rum
79. Erik Hassle – Hurtful
80. Lene Marlin – Sorry
81. Jack’s Mannequin – I’m ready
82. The Ark – It takes a fool to remain sane
83. Christian Walz – Never be afraid again
84. Lars Winnerbäck – En tätort på en slätt
85. Avril Lavigne – Sk8er boi
86. Evanescence – Going under
87. Titiyo – Come Along
88. Timbuktu – Alla vill till himmelen men ingen vill dö
89. Dido – Don’t leave home
90. NoFX – What’s the matter with parents today?
91. Jason Mraz – I’m yours
92. Kleerup & Robyn – With every Heartbeat
93. Martin Stenmarck – Nästa dans
94. Lisa Miskovsky – Driving one of your cars
95. Sophie Zelmani – To know you
96. Lilleman – Vart tog pappa vägen?
97. Anna Ternheim – Such a lonely soul
98. Markus Fagerwall – Close but no cigar
99. Oh Laura – Release me
100. Bob Hund – Ska du hänga med? Nä!!

Others who have listed the last decade in music:

• Niklas Jakobsen
• Pelle Sten
• Jonk
• Pella Myrstener
• Kim Grönqvist
• Sofia Mymlan Mirjamsdotter

It’s been a week since I posted last weeks, worth to read articles or blog posts. During the last week there are three bloggers who have distinguished themselves a little extra in my eyes. So I would like to share some of their posts. I post them chronologically.

• Twitter is my living room, Facebook my kitchen… – Erik Starck about how he uses different social networks. This one is older than a week but I hadn’t read it before and I can’t agree more so I had to post it here.
• Domen slår mot det fria Internet – Very good written about when the Swedish court forced TPB’s isp to close the site by Mikael Zackrisson.
• This is the Internet: Sweden Social Web Camp – I know I posted a lot of sswc posts last week but this one is so brilliantlty written by Erik Starck that I just have to post it.
• När jag debatterade med Monique Wadsted – After Mikael Zackrissons post he was invited to a debate in Swedish TV4, read what he writes about it here.
• daßlog papier – Sofia Mirjamsdotter aka Mymlan about her blog paper project. Pretty nice idea I must say. Makes good blog posts live longer.
• Birro gör en Mogi – Sofia Mirjamsdotter again about Marcus Birros parody of Mogi

Now gogo read the bloggers who are more creative than me.

I have never wished that my blog was written in Swedish more than I do now. Because this is one of those posts I really would have wanted to write in Swedish, but since I don’t have an arena for that I’ll take it in English. I don’t even know if this post will make any sense in other countries than Sweden but when writing this post I will have Swedish circumstances in mind.

“Fashion and design” is number two in the category list at the Swedish blog portal, after daily reflections. There are 13,691 fashion blogs registered, which represents 13,691 fashion bloggers. I write it again, fashion bloggers. It’s almost as if I shiver a bit when I write the words. Blogging about fashion is no longer something you do, it is something you are. Now I can’t say that I read a lot fashion blogs, but the perception I have got of the typical fashion blogger is a teenage blond girl who posts pictures of herself and writes about “today’s outfit”. There are also fashion bloggers at evening papers who write posts like “celebrities show their style, you decide what is working”. Fashion Bloggers are every so often mocked in other contexts and recently deepedition made a little fun of some young girls who are blogging mostly about fashion. I thought it was terribly funny and I also linked to his blog post from my blog.

Fashion Blogger has become such an epithet that no one over 25 who wants to be in a serious manner would ever want to be called a fashion blogger. At least that’s how I feel.

Now, how should the fashion industry seriously be able to break ground with social media?

I am 27 years old, have just begun my 18:th school year. I’m educated in computer technology and communication. But I happen to be interested in fashion as well, an interest that has emerged during my eleven years in the fashion industry. Last spring, I had an internship at the fashion trade magazine Habit, (probably the most serious magazine in Sweden that writes about fashion). I also have an interest in social media and how to use it as a communication tool. It may happen that I sometimes would like to blog about fashion, but of course I can’t do that because then I would be a fashion blogger which I really don’t want to be due to the above reasons.

This summer I ran a blog from the store where I am employed. My blog differed pretty much from the typical fashion blog, both linguistically and in context, but sometimes I could feel myself that – at a superficial glance – the difference was subtle. Throughout the summer, I was terrified that someone would call me a fashion blogger. To my knowledge, I managed to escape from that, perhaps thanks to the fact that the store’s target audience is slightly older than the typical “fashion blog reader” and a lot of my readers do not usually read blogs at all. In addition, the blog was time limited and I could probably never be known as “Maria – the shop blogger (butiksbloggaren)” or what I feared, “Maria – the fashion blogger”.

Sometimes I feel an anxiety over this. How do I do if I am over 25, want to be regarded as a serious communicator and blog about fashion? I have not even bothered to make a fashion category in my own blog. I would probably never use it because I can not for God’s sake be a fashion blogger.

But what is more important than my personal anxiety about this is how should the fashion industry do it? If they in a personal way want to blog about their business without being “fashion bloggers” with everything the epithet implies. I do not know but I hope for a change and maybe the change will come in a natural way when the young fashion bloggers get older, wiser and are on the labour market.

I have read some good blog posts and articles during the last week that I want to share with you. Most of them are in Swedish so bare with me Danes, Dutchmen and Aussies, (I don’t know but maybe I have readers from other countries as well?)

• Aftonbladet är ingen martyr – de glömde göra sitt jobb – Emanuel Karlsten about this weeks  most discussed article in Sweden.
• Lider du av uppdateringssjukan? – Sandra Carlsson about Social Update Anxiety.
• The Pirate Bay Taken Offline By Swedish Authorities – Enigmax at TorrentFreak about when the Stockholm district court tried to take TPB offline.
• “Skriv ett hyllningstal till Marcus Birro (utan sarkasm och elakheter). Han är också en skön kille… – Alex Schulman about Marcus Birro, without being mean for once. If he’s serious that is.

Last weekend was also the weekend when sswc took place. Since I’m not old and experienced when it comes to  social media I didn’t even think of going there the first time I read about it. But the week before the camp I felt like I wanted to go there as well (but since my brother turned 30 I probably would’ve had problems to go anyway). Here are some selected posts about the camp that gives a hint about what seemed to be a very successful weekend.

• Min blogg hamnade i tidning – #sswc dag 1,5- Emanuel Karlsten was blogging live from the camp
• Sweden Social Web Camp – Ännu ett fantastiskt möte – Joakim Jardenberg was looking back at a fantastic weekend when he came home.
• Tältmöte = Kärlek – Sofia Mirjamsdotter aka Mymlan is writing her own reflections shortly and linking to other posts about the camp.
• SSCW – Social aktivitet och statistik – Fredrik Stenbeck posted the statistics about the activity on the web during the camp.

I should blog about the last week, for example about the wednesday together with Susanna and my weekend in Linköping. But I am lazy.  So instead I’ll recommend to read this post by a more active blogger than me. It’s funny and in swedish  :)

Edit: I also recommend you to check out this one afterwards. Perdey!

Edit 2: The blogpost has generated a debate without reasonable proportions. I still think it’s fun and won’t stop laughing until I see that one of the three girls has taken offense because of this.

This week has been pretty tough for me at work. We have been a few men/women short and I have been working like mad trying to get everything to work out in all departments. I have also tried to keep the blog up at the same time. Today I brought raspberrymuffins with swedish flags to the staff since we all have worked very hard this week and also with a good result. We are simply the best ;)

Next week will be easier, we will have a bigger staff and I will not work as many hours as I’ve done this week. I have this weekend off work so tomorrow I am going to Örebro for a relatives gathering in the castle. Pictures will probably come later on :)