SHOW CANCELLATION & DIGITAL LIFE

Gig cancellation

I found myself telling an interviewer some time ago that my blogging is like exercising: always the first thing to go. When life is full, I forget.

Right now, I am back from Rome, snuggle at home with a head cold and the grey of the outdoors waiting for November to really deliver its dark magic.

I'm really here to inform you that my show at Sofia Future Farm in Helsinki on November 10th has been cancelled. I am needed elsewhere, as my family will be burying a member that day.
If you have a ticket already, You will be able to get your money back.

I will be playing my last show of the year in December. Welcome to Ateneum-klubi, Helsinki on December 19th. Hopefully, see you there.

Social media shutdown

Today is the third day of my social media diet. I think that it may have played a huge role in being less active here... who knows, maybe I'll find myself blogging more and constructing some larger posts now that I don't have to compulsively produce content daily via Insta and FB. I haven't quit using those, but have taken them off my phone. I am noticing some heavy symptoms of addiction, as I am withdrawing. The urge to grab my phone "for a quick check" or a some smart update that suddenly occurred to me, is finding me constantly.

I had no idea just how addicted I was. I am already noticing that now I have time to talk to my partner and to listen to my kid, and to read and to write in a journal. Hey, maybe I'll even start to make phone calls... that would be radical.

Social media has enriched my life because I have been able to connect with people I would not normally meet or talk to. I have at times felt like there is a community.
But then there is the stress that comes with needing to be always present, alert and at work.
I am someone who has never been able to read the news daily, because I carry the bad news with me and become incapacitated by my inability to change the conditions of suffering at once. With social media, I have become emotionally involved every day in things, carrying others' lives and turning my experiences into publishable emotional tales. Some of that is fine and enriching, a lot of that has sucked me dry.

Now I'm signing out and resuming my duties: a new keyboard, mike and the need to mix Koistinen/Swan EP ASAP.

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Astrid