April started where March ended… In Lapland.
Easter in Lapland
The day after posting my last blog post, I left Kilpisjärvi for Kittilä, where I had booked a small cabin for the Easter weekend. I didn’t really have any plans for doing anything particular in Kittilä though.
While on the way, I wanted to stop in Pallas so I could get lost one last time in the cloudy fells. Then, there was the first of the two Stuck in Plastic Spring workshops, starting on Friday evening and ending in the afternoon on Saturday. That was only leaving Sunday free before heading back home on Monday.
When I wrote my previous blog post, I had no idea what to do during that free day. But in the meantime of the few hours between posting the blog post and leaving Kilpisjärvi, I got a crazy idea for the next adventure: go (downhill) ski in Ylläs.
The addiction
But what could be so crazy about going downhill skiing?
Well, first it had been 20 years since the left time I downhill skied. Despite the almost 250km of cross-country skiing I did this season, I wasn’t feeling confident in my skiing abilities on an actual slope. That fear was exaggerated. Indeed, it didn’t take me long before I was able to ski parallel again.
But even overcoming the fear and lack of confidence in my skills, there was another issue. I love mountains. I love snow. And as a kid, I loved downhill skiing so much that I consider it as my favorite sport. For many years I’ve known that going back on a slope was risking triggering an addiction to skiing…
And indeed, what I was fearing happened. I came back home with such a strong desire to ski that I wasn’t able to resist and went the week after on a day-trip to Iso-Syöte for hitting one last time the slopes before winter was truly over.
Last year I bought a pair of cross-country skis for my birthday… Now I know what I will buy this year.
Longing for the outdoors
When I came back home, my morale was at its lowest. After two weeks in Lapland, coming back in Oulu with the snow melting fast was honestly depressing. That feeling was amplified by my desire obsession to go back skiing.
Being back home, also meant going back to barely any social face-to-face interactions. It’s kind of ironic that I actually had more social encounters in the middle of nowhere than in Oulu. I think the pandemic is starting to really hit me hard.
Even though I eventually managed to accept that winter is over and there won’t be any skiing before December, I still struggle with my mood and motivation. I’m constantly longing for spending time outdoors. I have a hard time focusing on work and can’t stop thinking about plans of hiking adventures for the summer.
Back into toy photography
The first two weeks after Easter were quite difficult from a photographic point of view. My motivation for everything was so low that I didn’t bother even trying to take toy photos. On top of that, not only I came back home as usual with many photos to sort and process, but also half a terabyte of video footage with my new 360 camera. While I’m done processing the photos, I still have a lot of work with the BTS videos I took.
The second half of April has been better though. I’m currently working on a few projects including photos of Pokémon, LEGO Vidiyo, a review for Stuck in Plastic, and another project still under NDA. As I’m writing this, the second Stuck in Plastic Spring workshop is about to begin…
And of course, I still have a few unfinished projects from before my trip to Lapland that I hope to complete soon-ish.