The Army

I got my life back on Friday after three days in Military School, or Boot Camp. Not sure how to translate the basic soldier training I have to complete as part of my employment.

Before leaving camp on Friday, one of the girls turned to me and said; It’s been really fun this week! I looked at her and replied that it has indeed been fun. On Thursday night I was the fastest of all girls when we ran 3000 meters. But it’s also been crap at times, physically tough and super intense learning. She agreed.

On Friday night all muscles in my body hurt, I felt tired and I had a headache. I spent the evening watching Simpson’s on TV whilst having two portions of pasta, two pieces of bread and a chocolate bar for dessert. Although I was sitting on the floor in a half empty room – since my flat is being renovated; it was beautiful. I was in charge of my life again and with an entire weekend ahead to spend as I please.

This resulted in attending a carnival in Uppsala on Saturday, meeting up with friends and having lunch, shopping, cooking food, cleaning my flat, shopping more on Sunday, washing, painting an old mirror and putting up stuff on my walls, etc.

I am exhausted!

I was meant to relax this weekend but the highly productive 12-14 hour days in Boot Camp has totally put me in a speeded mode and I find it hard to unwind all of a sudden. At least it’s another short week ahead. Only three days... I can do it.

It’s Sunday and I feel restless. I keep walking back and forth in my flat moving furniture and multitasking house chores.  I think I am tense about next week and a little apprehensive about the summer too.

Our media team is spending Monday and Tuesday in the archipelago this week. The idea is to have fun together and stay in cabins on an island. I’m not nervous about that. I know we’ll have a great time sailing and making BBQ dinner.

However, straight after, I’m off to Boot Camp near Stockholm.

Why? Well, I currently lack the type of soldier knowledge you get after attending a year in what used to be known as our ‘National Military Service’. It doesn’t exist anymore, so Sweden will start recruiting and hiring soldiers very soon.

Anyways – as a result of not attending the National Service – from Wednesday 25 May, I will spend five intense weeks in Boot Camp; getting my civilian self kicked into soldier shape. The sixth week will be spent at a Psychological Operations course near Malmö in the south. 

I have no idea how I will feel after the next six weeks or what I will be capable of doing – physically and mentally – once my summer holiday start. There so many things I’d like to plan now, but will I feel the same once my vacation start?

My challenge is to chill and take time as it comes.

I’ve just come back from a media conference in Stockholm. It was such an inspiring couple of days and many memories from my London radio time came back.

There were lots of speeches too. However, my first booked speech was also the last one I attended. ‘Designing for the digital future’ presented by an uncharismatic Austrian was so boring I walked out after 20mins.

Speaking to the visitors and having coffee with the exhibitors was way more entertaining and I learnt lots from the various conversations. I met a guy whose company is recording the sound for Stig Larsson’s trilogy, which is being filmed in Sweden at present. It’s the Hollywood version. Movie scenes need to be filmed over and over again from different angles and actors are either good at delivering the lines in the same tempo and emotions, or less good, which later impact the editing.

Chatting about sound, images and lights also reminded me of all the concerts I recorded throughout the years for Total Rock Radio. I thought of all the live broadcasts we did, especially the one at Ozzfest in Milton Keynes, where I produced interviews with one superstar after another in a small caravan behind the main stage. Ozzy had his entire family there and the kids took turns walking the dogs. The dogs were tiny so they didn’t need to move far.

I haven’t even included my sound engineering or production skills in my CV and I rarely get a chance to think about those days, let alone speak about them. But they are great memories.

I finished off my media conference with dinner at ‘Pontus By The Sea’ in Stockholm. We then went for drinks and two bars are worth mentioning if you’re around: Le Rouge and Fredsgatan 12 – both in Old Town.

Unfortunately the night ended suddenly when I started vomiting near Stureplan and we had to rush back to our hotel overlooking Humlegården. It’s the second time since I moved back that I’ve become sick from oysters or possibly the ice, at two of Stockholm’s best restaurants.

At least I threw up in style in the hotel suite. It’s perhaps as close to my rock'n'roll past I will get right now. :-)

Many of my normal thoughts disappeared in the forest last week. Instead, my senses switched on full alert, perhaps for the first time in ages.

In the forest – very basic needs had to be satisfied and they were all that mattered to me at the time; staying warm and dry, cooking food to eat when hungry and drinking when thirsty, emptying bladder and bowels and taking care of personal hygiene, meaning staying clean and alert.

All of the above took a lot of work and planning and it required much of my energy throughout the day. However, achieving each was hugely satisfying and rewarding. It had me working in a meditative state with no room for much thinking, apart from what was needed in the present. And it brought on so much content afterwards.

When time off, I could rest or sleep and I really appreciated it. When hot, I could enjoy the wind to cool me down. I could listen to the birds calling each other in the morning and see the landscape transform from day to night. I could breathe in the moist air at sunset and enjoy the silence when the forest became dark. It was all so peaceful before going to bed. And it felt amazing on the inside too, as it made me peaceful, calm and alive. Life became simple.

In modern society we are complicating our lives. We are distracted, constantly –not just by city noises, words and signs, phones, email, TV and Internet but even by our own thinking. We’re planning our lives in a calendar and squeezing in so many things to do – believing we’re productive but actually feeling we’re running out of time. In fact, we only ever really seem to take the time to be, observe and enjoy life, during our longer breaks or holidays. Meanwhile we drink our senses numb to celebrate our ‘time-off’ from the crazy world we have created in our day-to-day lives. We no longer realize what really matters in our lives, or how to make ourselves happy in the long run. Or?

The truth is, we no longer have to fight to satisfy our basic survival needs and we may not even be aware of what these needs are any more. In modern society, we are trying to satisfy newly invented needs instead. These are excess needs we and are all helping to sustain. Or shall we blame it on brands, magazines, adverts or the government?

Chasing so many peripheral goals in order to live up to the perfect picture in our heads, which doesn’t actually exist, has perhaps tricked the entire world out of its true nature consisting of love, peace and happiness. We are simply lost and disconnected from our true selves. The more we try to satisfy the needs we are inventing and believe are important to us, the more trapped we become - all to be approved of and seen as successful in today's society.

And isn’t it funny how we keep on travelling to far away destinations to see, relax and enjoy life, but we fail to enjoy the life and the people that is always in front of us. Just like we have forgotten our basic needs, we keep forgetting who and what really matters in our lives. Try going into the forest for a week and you'll know what I mean...

I was only in the office for three days last week and then we went out of town for a Psyops planning conference.

Apart from listening, discussing and taking notes, exercising was on the schedule. I was expecting a hard-core workout and prepared myself for the worst, whilst people gathered up on the field outside. Then all of a sudden my Dutch yoga teacher from the local gym rocked up and held a one hour class in the sun. 

The yoga was followed by beer drinking in the sauna with the girls and later on we all enjoyed a dinner party until the early hours. I also got my own single room for the night with a real bed! Just like you expect at a work conference I suppose. So all in all, I’m happy to say it was a wonderful military experience. :-)

There hasn’t really been any time to chill however, since our last mission, so that’s what I did this weekend. I slept all Saturday and didn’t get up until 10am Sunday to read, cook and do some laundry. It was great.

Since I moved in to my flat I haven’t had any Internet at home. I tried an Internet service for three days in March and got super stressed from being instantly available to the world, so I returned it to the shop. So now when I am actually at home, it’s like being on holiday.

For some reason I don’t even want to write about the past week on mission. It’s too fresh. Right now I just want to get back into the life I know again. Getting back to work this Monday morning is actually hard. I am realizing a pattern here – I always feel like I’ve overdosed on the Military after a few days in the forest.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s been an incredibly fun week with lots of laughter, jokes and new learning’s. However, it’s been a steep learning curve for me, which makes me want to leave it all for a while. It’s also been a tough week physically as I’ve been carrying around 30 to 40 kg each day. It’s how much our full equipment weights – including clothes, helmet, weapon and backpack – and we’ve been training with most things on all days. Another 10kg and it’s nearly my own weight!

All military gear has been created for men, not women, for traditional reasons. So the equipment don’t really fit my body and instead of tightening the backpack around my waist for example, it’s been hanging off my hips, making two big bruises on my sore hipbones. After walking for five hours with a map and compass trying to find our new location on the last day, my feet were aching so badly I thought my bones underneath my feet was going to explode from the extra weight. On the up side - my arse has never been as tight as it is now. Rock hard.

On the last night of the mission, there was no tent to sleep in and no sleeping bags. To be told we won’t be sleeping in a tent after hiking around with heavy gear for a fourth day, provoked a 10-minutes remorse attack that I honestly didn’t have time for. I had to start finding a spot to sleep, preferably near a rock where I could build a fire and create a bed from pine tree branches. I guess it was a final test of some of the learnings from this week.

I didn’t even sleep for one second. My wood ran out at around 2am and from that point onwards I was looking for sticks and stuff to burn in the pitch-black night. It’s crazy what you do when you have no choice.

One evening we were driven to an ice-cold lake, so that we could have a wash. I screamed as I forced myself into the water and my feet were numb for 20mins afterwards. The guys went after me. Boy did they scream too. All dried up, we grilled hot dogs over an open fire and it was my first hot dog in years. It’s impossible to be a vegetarian on a Military mission. I’ve needed all energy available this week and the hot dogs were a treat I wanted to feel part of.

It’s surreal to be back in the ‘real’ world again and there is something sad about it too. I can’t put my finger on it now.

I am clean now. I can go to a toilet that flush and drink water from a tap, buy whatever food I like in the shop. There are no enemies to watch out for, no fire to guard and I have a warm beautiful home with lots of rooms and a brand new bed that makes me sleep like a princess. Life is comfortable again, but apart from that: Nothing has changed. It’s the life I know again. Hello.