Elias

some of my thoughts and notes

On the 20th of July 2024, the day of the summer solstice, I got my access card for the hangar at Torp, just a day after flying in the DC-3. We were also looking for apartments in Sandefjord to move to.

Read more...

Five years ago, in September 2019 I had just been to Madrid and gone through some of the worst insecurity and sadness of my adult life.

Read more...

My biggest fear at the moment I wrote this was that if I ignore my desires, wants and needs, I will lose contact with myself, become dissatisfied, and... probably just fail at whatever I need to do.

Now my experience has been quite the opposite. I am quite satisfied, my needs are fulfilled and there is not much that I want.

Yesterday I came across the idea that success is when you can look in the mirror and say that the 18-year-old version of you would not be disappointed by you.

To check this and to imagine myself as my 18-year-old me, I read into my journal that I started exactly 11 years ago, in August 2013.

Read more...

I wake up knowing that my family is doing well because they are close to me. I am surrounded by trees and plants and sunlight. I feel relaxed and motivated for the day.

Read more...

Over the past weeks, after following Chat-GPTs recommendation of reading the book Perfume by Jean-Claude Ellena, I have been training my sense of smell, or perhaps more precisely, my olfactive memory.

Read more...

The base below every perfume is the skin of the wearer. The base of a perfume is what stays the longest and is designed to enhance the scent of the skin.

Read more...

Just two days ago, on Wednesday, I had an amazing online-conversation with an 81-year-old British guy, that flipped my mindset into a much better state.

I first discovered his website more than five years ago, and a few days ago, after seeing a post from him on LinkedIn, I reached out to him and booked a time in his calendar.

Read more...

Last year in February I spent a few weeks in Portugal, some of them in a forest estate in a northern valley. I loved climbing the lemon trees every few days and picking some ripe lemons to make fresh ice tea. The grated the peels to extract as much as possible of their beautiful fragrance, and I loved standing in the trees where the fragrances of the wood, the leaves and the lemons mixed. I also loved the fragrance of the wet earth and moss in the forest.

Feeling how little time we have to do the things that we need to and want to do, there is a clear need to somehow make more time. Three ways for doing so:

  1. Blocking time for important activities that demand uninterrupted focus. This is especially important for creative activities, but also for activities that we tend to procrastinate because we don't want to do them.
Read more...