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According to Wikipedia (where would we be without it, ‘ey?):
Insomnia is most frequently defined by an individual’s report of sleeping difficulties.

It says that Insomnia can be defined by a positive answer to either of these two questions:
“Do you experience difficulty sleeping?” or “Do you have difficulty falling or staying asleep?”

So, do I experience difficulty sleeping, falling asleep or staying asleep? Yes. To all of the above.

And tonight my main problem is the simple act of falling asleep. I’ve been trying for the past 5 6 hours to fall asleep. And I have to get up in about 4-5 3 or 4 hours.

Tried and failed attempts so far tonight:

• Doing my assignment on feminism in the marxist ideology. (Fun fact: This didn’t bore me, and I didn’t get anything done…)
• Watching a boring movie I have seen 3 times before, and never actually managed to see all the way through without falling asleep at least once. (I watched it to the end this time. The girl chooses the right guy, they get married on the beach eventhough she wanted to get married in the boat-house like her parents, her sister forgives her, and she has 29 brides-maides.)
• Working-out. (This helps sometimes. I guess I just didn’t work hard enough.)
• Seperating and counting my dreadlocks. (I have 27 26, and am wondering where the last one disappeared to…)
• Fixing some of my my nails. (I got bored after 2 and a half…)
• Applying cold, green eye-mask-thingy from the fridge. (Then I just got chills… Not the multiplying kind, thank God! Positive note: I looked like a superhero!)
• Lying around with my eyes closed. (Yes, this was the first thing I tried. And I tried it again, and again, and again.)
• Eating a light meal. (My mother mentioned that if you eat something before going to bed it’s easier to sleep. And I was hungry.)
• Drinking cranberry juice. (I wanted hot milk, but seeing as I’m allergic to milk I went for the cranberry juice instead.)
• Brushing of teeth. (4 times. I flossed twice. I even tried doing it with tepid water, so that the cold water wouldn’t make me more awake. Well, not tepid as in 2 parts cold, 1 part boiled water, but tepid as in “hotter than I want for the water I use to brush my teeth”.)
• Reading from the Catcher in the Rye. And some curriculum stuff.
• Writing this blogpost with a list of things that didn’t work. (And guess what: Not working!)

I would have tried a hot shower, but a friend told me it worked once, and I tried it, and it just woke me up even more.
I also thought of trying a glass of red wine, but the only wine I have is a) white, 2) sparkling or whatever, c) was a gift from a friend (so saving it for something more special…), x) is locked into the apartment of my best friend (who lives in the same building as me, but is visiting her boyfriend) and z) I no longer have her key. Oh), and I’m going to work in some hours, so drinking now would be stupid.

Oh yeah, it is probably my own fault for not beeing sleepy. I slept all day yesterday, because I couldn’t sleep the night before, and instead of sleeping for a couple of hours, getting up, being tired all day and going to bed early I just stayed in bed untill I felt like getting up. So I blame me.

One good thing about this night: I found wonderful music that I will now share with you:

Cristopher O’Riley – Second Grace, a tribute to Nick Drake.

You are welcome.

-Frida

Hi, my name is Frida, and I’m an alcoholic a procrastinater.

For the past month I’ve had a dark cloud over my head. Somedays I’ve forgotten its existence, other days I’ve simply ignored it, but I can’t ignore it any longer, simply because it’s due in 3 days.
What is “due”, you might ask? Well, I’m glad that you did. (And if you didn’t; Shame on you!)
My assignment for the course in Public Politics and Administration. It counts for 30% of my final grade, and I have chosen to write about the theory of power having 3 different sides to it. This theory is made by the author of the curriculum-book; A norwegian professor in the studies of International Conflicts, a subfield in the glorious world of political science, which I happen to study. His name is Øyvind Østerud Oeyvind Oesterud Oyvind Osterud a typical norwegian name.

We got the assignment more than 3 weeks ago. I read the different alternatives of subjects to write about, chose one, read the alternatives over again and chose another one. All three alternatives looked easy enough, which is good. One of them was about the medias varying functions in a norwegian-type democracy. I really wanted to choose this one, as I went to a guest-lecture about it last year, with the norwegian genius politican of guess-which-party Sigurd Allern. Only problem being looking up all the details, which is a lot of work, and i decided to do the easier assignment instead.

One tiny problem though: I know nothing about Østerud’s theories on power. And the book is written in a confusing and irritating way. Or I’m just way too bored with school to find it interesting.

I have spent the past 3 weeks doing nothing. I have worked, sure. And I’ve been to meetings. I had a public letter in some local papers on the war in Afghanistan. I was also in an article on the new rules of absence in norwegian high-school. I turned 20 years old and celebrated for three days running. I hung out with friends. I went to a farewell-party for a friend and his wife going to Africa. I read a really good book. I started reading a kind of boring american-classic (The Catcher in the Rye, it gets better after page 50). I had a friend from Tromsø visiting for some days. I did everything I could to not work on the assignment. I procrastinated like crazy, and I became the queen of procrastination.

And now it all comes back to bite me in the ass!

This is what I can tell you about power and force:
It is the means to achieve goals. (The words of Østerud, and therefor the main-definition in my paper.)
It is when a subject (A) in some way affects the choices of an object (B).
It is an acting party’s ability to overcome opposition to achieve a wanted goal or result.
It is used in relations between human-beings.

There are different kinds of power and force:
There is physical or psychological force, often enforced by governments. Examples being fines for breaking the law, jail-time, etc. This is seen as morally and ethically o.k. (As long as the enforcer has jurisdiction.)
There is manipulation, in which the receiving part of the force is unaware of it. This is concidered bad and immoral.
There is persuasion, based on argumentation and this requires a competence in the field of discussion. Also on the good side, ethically. (Even when lying through your nose, which seems weird to me…)
Then there is the use of authority, which is a legitimate use of force. (Unless you’re an anarchist, according to text-book. I’m not much for anarchy, but I hate it when the authorities use force, so I guess I kind of am one anyways…)

This is what I can tell you about the three different sides of power and force, based on Østerud’s theory:
There is the actual process of election, the participation in the process: The people who vote, the people who run and the people who get elected.
There is the non-determined: The cases that don’t get attention, because of lack of interest, or because of being a too touchy subject, or perhaps because someone with power will gain on it not surfacing. (Corrupt politicians? Noooo way! What a cliché!)
And there is the creating of opinions in others. From an authority, the educational system, parents, government, etc.

Now I have to write this down, use examples to demonstrate force being used by the norwegian government, the state or the sovjets municipalities, and place them accordingly to the three different sides of power and force.

Not too hard, you might say?

Well, no. Writing a two page-essay on this wouldn’t be hard. But I have to fill 5-FIVE-V-||||| pages of this shit. And I have to find primary sources, secondary sources and learn how to use them in an essay. And I have to do this in three days.

And in these three days I also have 2 concerts I want to attend, 3 parties people expect me to come to (and that I really want to go to!), a meeting and a sleep-deprived state that needs to be mended. See my problem now?

Funny side-note to this submission: While writing it in an attempt to continue my procrastination I learnt more about the subject than I did in the two hours prior to it, when I actually tried working on it. Irony, in a good way, and I think I have the first page layed out in my mind.

Song to fit this blogpost: Magpie Eggs-Moddi (A norwegian, young artist worth checking out!)

Untill next time:
Live long, and procrastinate!

Frida
The Queen of all ye procrastinaters

So I know I promised you something political, or motivated by a good book or music or something for my second post. And the emotions leading to this post was motivated by, or has spurred me into, the making and listening to the list of music you will find at the end of it. Question being (as in High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, also my favourite book and author!)  did the music compell us to listen because we were having a miserable time, or did the musicians create the music because of their having a shitty time as well.

I will, of course, believe the last one: Artists in pain will make painfully beautiful music. Or paintings. Or books. Or poems. Or general art.

There is a sentence we hear all the time, and that I remind myself of way too often, which sounds “Better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved.”  Or as a smart guy said to me, earlier this evening: “Without all the pain you’re feeling from having emotions, how would you have known you were alive?”

And it’s true. Unfortunately. Feelings make us realize how alive we really are. Life is more than birth-school-[Metallica-]work-death. And that, my dear friends, is feelings. We have way more than our social standings, our GPAs, our careers and our funerals and final wills to think about. The big feelings. Love, hate, apathy [which I guess isn’t a feeling, only lack of feelings, but we’re all there at some point…], friendship, family and ideologies. And also the smaller feelings. Happiness, pain, disappointment, contempt, meanings and familiarity being examples.

This week I have had all kinds of feelings, and it’s weird. Fear of the unknown, expectations for the unplanned, happiness for the unexpected, and disappointment for the unwanted.

And the only thing on my mind right now is “Better to have tried and failed, than to not having tried…”

xkcd will always explain everything better than me, and I do feel that this is an accurate description.

Yours truly, fully and completely,
Frida

(Musical references/influences for this contribution:
Kut U Up
Deep Blue Something
Postal Service)

(Playlist made along with this contribution:
Just one of those things-or something)

Seeing as this is my first post on BRBcoffee (and may I say how happy I am to finally be here, after a long and excruciating wait due to Bjørn always forgetting…) I will start my career as an openly caffeine-addicted blogger with a tacky, cliché-like an incredibly awesome “Have you met Frida”-post!

So basically this is what it all comes down to:
My name is Frida, I just turned 20, and I only know a couple of the other people on this blog.

Vegard has been one of my closest friends for a couple of years, due to the random coincidence that neither of us were 18 at the time of a festival in 2008, so we were fenced in together for a couple of days. Seeing as neither of us died in a random case of self-combustion we figured we should become friends. And we did.

Bjørn I know from the political party that me, him and Vegard are in. He joined way after me, ’cause he’s a slow learner and so seeing the need for a revolution took him some extra time… But he caught on quickly, and is now a pretty O.K. guy.

Steinar was the neighbour of one of my oldest friends, and we met on the bus once. I have some memories of this, not a lot. Other than that he is one of the strongest believers in the myth of there existing or ever having had existed a little something something in the relationship between me and Vegard.

Elaine only knows me as Vegard proclaiming my undying love for her, but she clearly knew me well without knowing me, ’cause she didn’t believe it for one second, and actually guessed it to be me every time.

The rest of the people I haven’t had contact with, but probably will. Soon. Or soon enough.

Other things to mention, just to give you the feeling that you know me somehow:

-I’m a compulsive singer, meaning I’m always singing. Sometimes without even realizing it.
-I live in Bodø, as opposed to the other norwegians who betrayed their eminent status of being from the north of Norway to go live places where they have sun for more than 3 months of the year.
-I study political science.
-I work part-time.
-I have a terribly bad taste in humor.
-And yes, to all you guys and girls out there just dying to know: I’m single. (I know you were all wondering..) (Exhibit A of my bad humor…)

I’m pretty lame at coming up with things to write about myself, and so my next post will probably be political or about a book I love or music or something. But if any of the readers or co-authors would like to know anything about me you can ask, and maybe I will dedicate a post to answering questions you may have for me.

*weird good-bye catch-phrase to be inserted here in the future*
Frida