A lot happened in November.

First of all, I lost my job.
I didn't have a contract so technically they could just ditch me any time, with no explanations. Aaaand that's pretty much what happened.

No reason, no warning, no conversation. 
It was like being dumped with a message, but without the message.

This thaught me the valuable lesson that, in this economy, all employers suck and will treat like you are disposable. All of them. Even the ones that used to be nice and make small talk and offer you a beer. Even those.

Clearly, I still have a lot of anger inside and, according to my friends, have spent the last month emotionally exploding at the oddest occasions:

Got infuriated about some new sexist lottery campaign and almost cried in the streets,
 
 
screamed at other people's facebook status,

and discovered the concept of passive-agressive cleaning.


A few days ago I went back to pick up my things from the hostel. Kind of like in the movies when the person carries back a little carton box with framed photos and the plant they had sitting on the desk.
Except that all my belongings were a tower of empty tupperwares.

it says a lot about my priorities

And suddenly I'm back to having people ask me about what are my plans now ? (Nobody did that in the last few months because maybe they really thought being a low paid part-time receptionist was my life plan.)

Having to repeatedly explain why I'm not working anymore and how clueless I am about what to do next isn't exactly helping my grim mood. But, luckily, a few nice things came in the way this month to distract me from turning into a grumpy monster:

Started vintage jazz classes.
They do jazz hands. Not ironically.
I'm fairly tall and thin and vintage jazz is the sort of dance that always makes me look like a clumsy grasshopper, even when I'm doing the steps right. 

Which can be both awkward and liberating, depending on the day.



Went to TWO Autumn parties.
"Let's all celebrate the season and roast chestnuts in our tiny and weak student-apartment hovens!"

Gave a talk in my old faculty (while with a fever.)
In my defense, I didn't know I had a fever because it had been 8 years since I had been that sick. I just felt weird and thought it was nervousness. Immediately after the presentation (that went surprisingly well, by the way!) I fell ill and stayed in bed for 2 days watching nothing but crime series. all. day. long.

Started working on a french translation of my book.
The publisher sent me the translated text last week and it's really funny to read my own material in a new language. 

 

In spite of all that, I'm glad this month is over and I'm very ready for December's present-giving, mulled wine drinking, and blinking lights. This year I'll need a full shower of Christmas spirit. 

or at least this suit:

Baby, it's cold inside.

Let's say you're an erasmus who moved to Porto this semester. Or you're just living on your own for the first time and never experienced the reality of student apartments. Welcome. I made this guide for you, and it's a collection of all the knowledge that kept me warm kept me from freezing this last 6 years.

ADVISE FOR SURVIVING WINTER IN PORTO.

Fix your room.
Porto's housing prices are pretty low compared to other cities in Europe. You probably got excited about renting a huge room for only 200 euros per month, right? 
You were very happy about having large wide windows, and so much space you could fit a whole mariachi band in there.

But now winter started and you discovered bigger rooms are colder rooms.
Don't worry, there are still a few things you can do to make both your room and your house better:

    - Buy rugs. They are magical.
    

    - Check if wind is entering through the windows and doors. It probably is, in that case buy some of those sand-snake thingies (I don't know the name, they look like this.). There was a time I just rolled some teatowels and put them along my window frame and it worked too.

    - Close the blinds at night.
    If you are foreign there's a big chance you never used those ugly blinds almost every house in Portugal has:

They are there for a reason. Usually windows are not very thick and they don't close so well. The blinds will protect you from the sun and heat in the summer and the cold in the winter.
 
Get a heater. 
Here are the choices:
Oil heater: it heats up slower but it's less energy consuming.

Space heaters:

They warm up a room much faster, but consume much more energy. Unlike oil heaters, this ones consume the oxygen in the room. So there's a risk of monoxide poisoning if you're not careful.

If you can't afford a heater, let this english sailorman teach you how to build your own with nothing but a bread tin, ceramic flower pots and Ikea candles:



Alternative/complementary heating devices:
Electric bed cover - They stopped selling this in a lot of countires, but not in Portugal! Just remember to turn it off before going to sleep, because they may lead to some fire hazards.

If you don't trust yourself with a bed cover maybe just stick to a hot water bottle.

a classic

and, if you are a super clumsy human being and always end up spilling boiling water when trying to refill them, there are microwaveable heating bags made of lavander and seeds that are safer and smell good. If you're crafty, you can make one yourself: Fillings can include rice, wheat, millet seeds, flax seeds, beans...

Let me introduce you to polar fleece 
Maybe you never had winter pyjamas. Maybe you never even bought pyjamas, at all. 
Well, in Porto you'll need them.

"What do you mean You sleep in your underwear?"

Nowadays you can buy bed sheets AND pyjamas made of polar fleece. That's the warmest combination invented my man. Also, polar fleece maintains the heat, so if you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night you'll come back to a really warm bed!
There's only one downside to it: it's too effective. 
When I first bought polar fleece sheets my bed was so warm and confortable it got much harder to get out of bed in the morning, and I missed classes more often.

Exercise
I never really did this. 

But I lived with a girl who would go to her room and exercise with a pilates ball when she was cold. And it worked. 
I'm more in the lazy side of the spectrum and rather just wear more clothes and eat hot stuff, but her technique is probably the healthiest and you may want to consider it.

United we'll make it
Call your friends. Get together in one room (preferably the kitchen) cook something in the oven. Celebrate the winter, hug and be hugged because this is the best weather for that!

 

Suomi mi mi mi

Guess were I spent my weekend? Yes, Finland!

Helsinki Comics Festival accepted my application, plans were made, tickets bought, and once again I'm carrying  a big suitcase filled with books on my way to the North of Europe.

 
7 things about my weekend in Helsinki:

1 - Awesome weather!

Who would have thought I'd be sunbathing in an island in September?

2-  More exhibitions than time to spare. 
But luckily I managed to go to Tove Janson's centenary exhibit and spend there a great deal of time staring at little Moomin's pictures. I realized I have a weird pleasure on finding out how drawers fix mistakes:

3 - This:

4 - My table at the festival was in the feminist tent at the Small Press Heaven.

I've never been in many comics festivals so I can't really compare, but Helsinki's stroke me as a really diverse space, for all kinds of readers and with a great deal of good books, publishers and artists.

It was big enough to welcome all that variety but small enough to make me feel comfortable about being there.

Unfortunately, I was always very clueless to what was going on most of the time.

Not sure if it was my fault or the organizer's. Probably a bit of both.
 
5- Sold all my books.
 

  

6- Was compared to Kate Beaton. Twice. 

7- What It Is, by Linda Barry
The city was really expensive and I knew if i was going there I couldn't spend money on anything but food and transports. But made an exception to buy this book, which is my new favourite thing in the world and here's a picture of me hugging it:

*Hug your books*

*and they'll hug you back*

*no they wont*

In the airport in Vilnius there's a store that sells incredibly overpriced reflective badges. This store plays the best music in the whole airport and that's important to know because it was next to it that I waited for the gate to open and sat crying in silence.

Which is that type of crying where you just shake and make absolutely no noise. Like you stopped breathing.

Like a vacuum of sadness.

Going to Vilnius again was surprisingly natural, a bit like visiting my parents at my hometown. It’s not your home anymore, but it's familiar. You know this place and this place knows you back. 

Summer days feel like a blessing, in Lithuania. There’s an almost tangible need to go outside and enjoy the day before it starts raining again, and it’s something I don’t feel so much back at home.

I had also forgotten how bright it all is. Seeing the sun rising at 4 am still feels like witnessing some rare space oddity.

For the first time, I was in the city with plenty of time. I could be lazy. I could be a tourist.

I went up to the TV tower. and to the Bell tower and to the mountain with the crosses (not to be confused with the mountain made of crosses) and to the castle mountain.

I saw Vilnius from all the high places.

And then I came down and did all that I used to do: Went to a poetry reading, drank beer, hang at Elena’s place and walked aimlessly around the city just noticing people.

I had a book reading in Vilnius and another one in Riga.

When in Latvia, I got a call from my mother who was very worried about a plane crash not far from where I was. To my mum, all post-soviet countries are near each other. 

 I don't consider it bad geographic sense but a wise conclusion that the world is small, that we are all linked and that if just met a portuguese man in a bathroom in Kanepes Kulturas Centrs, so Ukraine isn’t very far either.

I told her I was taking 1, 2, 3 flights on my way back and none of them would fly over conflicted lands.

But, as I passed the airport gates, I felt very much like a conflicted land myself and only by the time I was in Frankfurt I managed to be slightly less teary and more resigned.

The next day I went to work early in the morning. Porto was foggy and the seagulls were very agitated, shirping loudly and flying around like crazy.

The city looked like the beginning of a crime mistery film. It was not a cheery sight, and couldn’t contrast more from the hot sunny mornings I had been having for the past 2 weeks.

But as I passed Praça da Batalha I noticed that theater S. João, that had been covered for construction work for what seemed like 5 years, was finally unveiled.

Like an unwrapped welcoming present, just for me.

Last week a seagull pooped in my eye.
THIS HAPPENED!
IT POOPED!
IN MY EYE!
RIGHT IN THE EYE!

I was in one of the busiest avenues here in Porto and everyone stopped to stare. A man came for my help, with napkins and directions to the nearest bathroom, while ladies in a cafe looked at me with pity.

Some tourists that had, by a few centimeters, missed the shit shower were staring at the floor horrified: they had just realised that Porto is the kind of place where feces rain on you.
They don't tell you that in the city guides, but Porto is a SHIT TRAP: you need to be constantly careful about where you step and, at the same time, watch out for big flocks of birds! 
Luckly, starting from this week, I'm in the hospitality bizz. So I can warn foreigners about sky poop matters.
YES! You heard it right!  I FINALLY GOT A JOB! (well, sort of, it's a part-time. and i'm still doing the training...) I'll be working in the reception of a hostel, and have to deal with reservations, be nice to people and know by heart all the places where you can listen to a fado show in Porto (which is easier said than done.)

But the hostel is really cool and I've been eating my lunch in the upper floor, with this view:

Which always makes me fall back in love with Porto and think that, in spite of the constant danger of seagull shit raining on your face, this is the prettiest and nicest place to be.

 Even though I've been back from Lithuania since AUGUST, there are still people meeting me on the streets of Porto and being all "OH, You're back!"

"hmm... yes.. I've been back for 10 months now"
Coincidently, ten months was also the amount of time I was away, and apparently, it's the longest I can go without packing my things and leaving because this month I did it again. I moved out of my parents home (Can you really move out of your parent's house completely? I have more panties there then here. Real home is where your old stretched-out underwear is.) and came back to Porto!!

But it's not strange that people are still surprised to see me and act like I've been back from the Baltics yesterday, for 3 reasons:

- my facebook account doesn't say where I live.

- I'm dispensable in their lifes.

- I spent a big part of the last 10 months alone, working from home, on this book that just came out this week:

And, at the book launch party last Thursday, a few people asked me how I managed to work on a project for so long, all by myself, without giving up.  So I decided to share with you some of the things that made me more motivated, organized and kept me from losing my mind during my sabbatical reclusion, last winter.

WORKING ON MY OWN: A SURVIVAL MEMOIR.

TELL EVERYBODY!
I'm the type of person that cares deeply about living up to everyone else's expectations and I'm very  afraid of letting people down. At least professionally. So I always try my best to have everything ready on time.
But, when I'm working alone, trying to meet my OWN expectations seems way less worrying and I only feel a faded sense of guilt as I press the snooze button on my alarm clock for the 14th time.

To force myself to respect my own deadlines I started telling them to everyone around me. My mum, my dad, the neighbours, friends...




Because, if I tell everyone that by Friday I'll have this printed, damn sure I'll work to make it happen! I'm too proud to admit I got lazy.

Though this works for me, I'm aware not everyone is so sensitive to social pressure, so I have this other alternative, invented by my former flatmate, Ceren:

SLAP DAY!
This is very self-explanatory. Ceren was doing her thesis and had a bunch of books and texts to read, but kept slacking off. So she instaured what I called "SLAPPING SUNDAYS". She would decide what she had to read that week, and if by Sunday she hadn't finished reading I had permission to slap her face.
Luckly, the fear of being of physically hurt was enough motivation for her to read the whole thing, every week. I say luckily because I doubt that I would be able to hit her. I would probably start crying instead. But I'm sure we can all think of a friend that is less scrupulous and a little sadistic about this things. So, next time, call him/her and start a Sunday Slap tradition!!

 WHAT TIME IS IT? IT'S PAGINATION TIME!
Working alone is the best opportunity not only to find out your favourite patterns of sleep, but also the patterns of work.
For example: In the evening I'm way more focused at making the sort of mechanic and monotonous tasks that would drive me insanly bored and annoyed in the morning. But, when it comes to editing a text, coming up with a solution, or answering emails, I'm at my best during the day, sitting in the sun with a cup of coffee on my side. I had never had the opportunity to make my working and sleeping hours float so freely around the type of work I have to do at a certain point. When I started doing that, and taking on tasks depending on what I felt like doing, it made a huge improvement on my overall sanity.

THERE ARE GOOD TO-DO LISTS AND BAD TO-DO LISTS.
I tend to be an over-achiever when I'm writting lists. I get super confident, write too many things to do and tend to postpone the ones that I dread, over the easy not-so-urgent ones.
Now, I set some sort of priority hierachy. Making a huge list but then underlining only 3 important things that I really need to do now, TODAY! NOW! NOW!
This sounds kind of obvious now that I write it down, but it took me ages to come up with this solution.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE ALWAYS HAPPY
Some people say that when you do what you love, it's not a job.
I would like to punch this people in the face.
Of course it's a job!  No matter how much you love what you do there are always parts that aren't pleasurable at all and will make you feel bad and fantasize about having chosen a different career.
 
That doesn't necessarily mean you are making a mistake.
 
CHRONOMETER YOUR LIFE
If I'm very focused, working on the computer, I forget to move.
or make pauses.
or eat.
I may even be sitting on unconfortable position with a fat cat on my neck.

I will stay still for a long time if nothing distracts me:  And when you're home and alone, there's not much to distract you.
So I dowloaded a software (this one: http://www.dejal.com/timeout/) that litterally blocks my computer every now and then and tells me to move my neck. uncross my legs, or even to make a longer break.
I have a love and hate relationship with this thing. On one side, it works and I feel better when I use it. On the other, being told to take 5 by a female robotic voice coming from my computer makes me really annoyed every time.


 
HAVE SOME SORT OF EXERCISE/MOVING-AROUND ROUTINE.

I'm not very athletic, but at least when I was in school I had to walk everywhere.
Living in Penafiel, I didn't need to move a lot, and some days I would find myself having a hard time sitting still, as if I had too much energy to work. My mind and my body kept wandering off and it took me a while to understand that that was my body telling me I needed some action. So I started dancing around the house or jumping on a little trampoline we have in the living room. (My mum put it there because Dr. Oz told her to.)
I feel there's a difference between doing proper exercise or doing fun things to tire yourself out. I generally choose the latter.

 

So, have any of you worked alone? Do you have any cool tips you'd like to share? Do it and I promise to try them out during the makings of my next book!

The Creative Spiral of Embarrassment.

I wish I could tell you I've been massively busy and that's why I haven't written in here sooner, but that would be a lie.


I was just lazy. And didn't have a lot to write about, to be honest.
The thing is, a lot in this blog is the re-telling of funny stuff that happened to me. And that means that, sometimes, I have to go out and live my life a little and eventually get myself in blog-worthy situations to tell you about.
My creative process looks a lot like this:

Right now, I'm just finishing my comic book, strolling around Porto and getting misterious food poisonings. All things that will, in time, sound very interesting but I don't really feel like sitting down to write about it just yet (so I'm watching all seasons of IT Crowd instead).