Bear's Monthly Mayhem - November 2024!

I can't believe you stuck around this long - thanks!

Dec 03, 2024

I woke up early this morning to absolutely thundering rain that didn’t last long but made me wonder if there’s a flake of snow leftover in the yard (it’s too dark to tell, as of me writing this). Thanks once more for reading this Monthly Mayhem catch-up email. It’s very cool of you to stick around and keep checking in on me!

If you’re a new subscriber, I hope you enjoy this monthly write-up of my most recent reviews, projects, services, and merch gigs, as well as a general catch-up (and a cat picture or two)! The purple links will take you directly to the articles!

Always check the dryer for cats before turning it on

LIVE REPORTS

There were almost no gigs this month. I could’ve gone to Melancholy Mass to see Kaunis Kuolematon but there was a massive blizzard right around that time, so I didn’t feel like leaving the warmth of my house.

I did have the opportunity to go and see Rabbit Cult at Arabiasali on the 26th though after whirling class. I really like the vibe that those two are putting out there, and since I missed their last show as Saruru (I was literally there selling merch, but I didn’t get the chance to see their show because it was in a completely different area), I’m at least glad to have seen their second set under this name! This was actually Marianne’s thesis performance, so I didn’t write it up, but I had a blast watching them.

I wanted to take some pics/vids, but Salla asked us to put our phones away. Imagine my annoyance when I saw the guy behind me taking videos anyway sigh… well, the stage setup and lights looked amazing! That’s a kantele on the left!

MUSIC REVIEWS

I only did one album review this month, which is for a new band called Arctis, whose self-titled debut came out on the 1st. I rarely review new metal bands these days, but these guys came into the scene in a way that was very impressive but not very flattering, which made me want to check them out and give as honest a review as I could. I hope I managed to be constructively critical.

NON-MUSIC REVIEWS

I’ve recently wrapped up a few games and put together a couple of reviews to accompany them! The first of these was a short indie game about grief called The First Tree. As someone who’s been dealing with a lot of grief in the last year, I expected to really like the game. Unfortunately, I did not…

I have two other games, West of Loathing and Cult of the Lamb pending review as well. The former I finished some months ago and forgot to write up, while the latter is pending us finishing the last boss. So perhaps those will come out next month.

Lastly, I finally finished up my review of Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings & the Lost Ocean, which I’ve been working on for a while. That game was really something else — I remember so little of it from the 2000s but it held up to my positive memory and I still think it was a damned cool game on the whole, even if Japanese storytelling is too trope-heavy for me generally.

PROJECTS

We’ve been really getting into “Aphrodite Rising” on a deeper level now that I’ve finished my first read-through. I didn’t want to know too much about the story before because I wanted to have an organic experience with the plotline. I’m really amped about what she’s done in the reworks — it’s coming together very nicely! Check out @stardatextoday on Instagram to see what she’s up to! Preorders are also open now!

Last month, I also mentioned the Luova Lämpiö project from Aalto Artpreneurship that I participated in, and now I can finally share the finished product! As I mentioned, I wrote the script and did the narration for this. I also put in my best effort to do subtitles for YouTube, but if I did a bad job, it’s because the system in YouTube to add them did not function pretty much at all when I was trying to do it, so sorry if the timing’s off a little here and there. But, if you know anyone who needs a native English-speaking narrator or a voice actor, do feel free to hit me up! I really enjoyed working on this project and I look forward to potentially doing part 2 of this video, which was in the original script.

I don’t believe my blog article is up yet on Fabled’s website, since they’re still just getting started, but my print article is finally ready and we also had the first staff meeting at the end of the month. Of course, I’m not in Australia so I couldn’t be there in person, but I was there digitally. It was really cool to finally get to meet some of the others. I’m acquainted with Lana from socials but otherwise I haven’t met anyone else, so this was a really nice opportunity to say hello to some people that I’ve been admiring from afar for some time.

The last thing that happened this month, in a project sense, was that I was voted into the board for Whirling Arts Ry, which is the company affiliated with my whirling teacher, Safa Solati. They’re hoping that I do some writing and help out with some events and things like that, and because I find Safa so fascinating — both as a person and in the art she does — I am very happy to be a part of it, even if I’m not fully sure of my place yet.

ISLANDS OF NIGHTSEA

Hiatus continues…

THE VITMAR CHRONICLES

Nothing new on this front! You can read the first ten pages of the story for free here on my website, you can also watch a video I made about the series here on my home page, and of course, you can get it on Amazon, Google, Kobo, and the Draft2Digital network (the EU links are included at the end of this mail)! A huge thanks to anyone out there who decided to give it a read! I’m really happy with the feedback so far.

Cover largely done by Kathy Criswell, who remains awesome

I have, of course, been browsing the next part, but I think I might need to do an overhaul on my lore in Scrivener, so that I make sure that I’m being consistent with whatever nonsense I’ve made up for the world of Ilynika. Much to do, but there’s also time to do it and I have other more urgent deadlines in the meantime.

And hey, Smashwords has a year-end sale starting on December 12th, so I’ve listed “TVC” for free over there! I’m mostly trying to get it out to the world, so if you’re maybe interested but not sure, check it out at www.smashwords.com/shelves/promo on the 12th and you’ll hopefully find yourself with a free copy!

OFF THE RECORD

This month I finally released the Off the Record interview with Rabbit Cult from the summer! I really enjoyed talking to these two, they were so easy to chat with and they are also both really interesting people as well. I hope to have Marianne on Gathering of Geeks sometime to talk about… probably The Witcher, let’s not lie, heh… but also some other games and the like!

GATHERING OF GEEKS

No news on this front this month, but as I’ve said, I have a few pending for 2025, so hopefully there are going to be some seriously cool episodes coming out next year.

ENSLAIN METAL MERCH

Technically this was on December 1st, but I went to cover merch for an artist called MonoNeon at Vaunusali in Korjaamo. I love doing LiveNation shows because I get the chance to see something new and interesting that I wouldn’t normally go to. In this case, when I looked up the artist, I was thinking, “oh no, that’s too neon, I am too tired for this.” Imagine my surprise when half of the audience seemed well over 40. Turns out he’s doing some sort of funky bass-heavy fusion jazz, not so different from Jamiroquai. I ended up really enjoying the set!

Equally neon merch

GENERAL BEARSNESS

November was a pleasantly peaceful month for me, which is how I like it, because the weather is never particularly inspiring in Finland at this time of year. I suppose it’s worth saying that one of the biggest changes this month is that I seem to have cleared enough of the sludge out of my brain that I’m actually starting to feel like a reasonable human being again. That is to say, my depression feels extremely well-controlled right now, which is incredible, considering everything I’ve been through in the last handful of years.

My recent trips to osteo were also interesting. I’ve finally noticed something wrong with my left foot and the osteopath was delighted to see if he could do something about it — he’s been saying there’s something wrong with my left ankle since 2021 and I’ve never had any idea what he’s talking about before recently.

I’ve been feeling pretty good lately, physically, so you can imagine the crushing disappointment when the day after a fantastic whirling class (where I managed to go into the zone a bit), my body just fell apart completely. My jaw is currently so stiff that I can’t open it very far — talking is no problem but yawning and chewing have become my enemies.

Beyond that, my right shoulder/ribs are janked out of place again, so I’m at high risk for the spine spasms to start up again. This one was apparently not as nicely fixed after my last osteo session as I would have thought. Add that my left wrist is really sore, and the ankle is still bothering me.

Now, I said that my mental health is really good right now, but the physical problems are really the one thing that can pull me back down into misery spirals. As you can surely tell, reading these month after month, I have highs and lows, but then this shit happens and it feels like nothing is ever actually getting better and I get so frustrated and tired of being in pain all the time that it still has the power to break me mentally.

That said, I’m having emergency osteo this afternoon, so wish me luck that it at least lets me start eating properly again, if nothing else.

This physical decline was also distressing because I’ve also had a small return of energy this month. For many years, I’ve been able to just sit at my desk for hours on end and not need to get up very often (or not be allowed, because I’m covered in cats), but now my legs have decided that they’re done with sitting all the time and would like me to be more physical. This means that I’ve started doing yoga again. I’ve been avoiding it for a long time because… I’ve been doing Ashtanga yoga on and off since I was about 19 or so and I can really feel the difference between me now and me then, in a way that can be really discouraging. My yoga teachers used to gently tease me because I’m so naturally flexible that it was unfair to everyone else and my NUCCA doctor said that I’m really in tune with my body. This results in sun salutations where my form is fine, but I can feel that one of my shoulders is locked up, as is the opposite elbow, while my pelvis is all twisted… it can really make me depressed about where my body’s at, so I haven’t done much of it. I’ve also been worried about strengthening things where they don’t belong, as I had done back in the day with CrossFit. So it was really nice to start getting back into it.

However, I’ve tried to adjust my mindset to take the yoga as a learning experience and practice patience, as the osteopath suggested. So, rather than pushing myself as hard as I can go, as I usually do, I’ve been working on stretching and strengthening more gently. Yes, I do still feel every imbalance in my body very deeply, but in those instances, I do my best to take it easy and scale it back a bit. I am fortunate to be able to tell the difference between a good stretch and a bad one 90% of the time, so I can adjust as needed. I aim to do it at least once a week, especially now that my belly dance course is over, but of course I’ve had to stop for the last week or so because of the pain and imbalance in my shoulders/wrist/etc.

I mentioned last month that we had our Day of the Dead celebration on November 2nd. I cannot express enough how much I enjoy this event. This year, I dedicated a good chunk of my brain to imagining what the dead would be doing if they were at the party, because the idea is that they are present in spirit form. I had pictures on the ofrenda of my son, my cousin, and our kitten, and it was fun to think of what they’d be up to with the other spirits who were present. Looks like, sadly, I will have some more animals to add to the ofrenda next year though, as my brother recently had to put down his (quite old) dog, who happened to be a very dear pal of mine.

More food was added before the end of the night

Pretty sweet spread, eh?

I mentioned already that we had an epic snowstorm on the 20-21st, where it vomited about an enormous amount of snow over 2 days, melted a bunch, and then kept going, so I was bouncing back and forth between moving the snow around the yard (something I still have to do with caution because of my back and my casual inability to breathe) and holing up in my faux bear fur. The bonus was that the wind and snow obliterated a plum tree in our yard that was in a very stupid location and never gave us any plums — we were going to take it down and now we have a reason because it’s more or less horizontal at this point.

Seriously, who plants a fruit tree next to a wall of cypress? Not sorry this one got knocked down

We went out to the west coast to visit my partner’s dad for an early Christmas visit, which is always nice. They have a beautiful place and it’s always fun to go out for walks in the snow there. It reminds me of a Finnish version of my parents’ place too, which is always nice.

“Grief is a direct reflection of love. I am extremely fortunate to grieve as deeply as I do, because it means the love was (and is) equally as strong as my sorrow.”

— Bear Wiseman

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Coming Next Month…

I mentioned last month that I would be dropping social media after noon during November to see if it improves my productivity and I think I may need to keep this up indefinitely, though with some soft adjustments to the rules (for example, giving some allowances during merch gigs when I’m bored or at concerts, where I often post a photo or two). I’ve felt like I’m wasting a lot less time casually when I’m limited to just mornings (which is also when I tend to be working anyway).

December’s going to be rockin’ after this last peaceful month or two! On the 3rd (today!) is the final whirling class of the year and on the 4th, Helena Haaparanta’s Christmas circus show (I think?!) has its dress rehearsal show.

Then there’s Johanna Kurkela’s joulu (Christmas) tour on the 7th and 8th in Tampere and Lappeenranta respectively, but we’re also doubling up to see Johanna & Mikko Iivanainen on the 7th, since they’re in the same city and the shows don’t overlap (can I get a hell yeah?).

I’m considering going to see the Ukukele Orchestra of Great Britain on the 10th because I had an absolute blast last time I went to see them, but let’s see where my energy’s at after such a busy first week. Then, I’ll be selling merch for Tyrantti on the 13th in Lahti and I might go see Ensiferum on the 14th.

Then, excitingly, on the 18th my pal Max will come visit me from Germany for 10 days over the holidays, which I’m very excited about (I haven’t seen Max since 2021, IIRC). Merta’s got a show with Brother Firetribe on the 21st, so obviously I’ll/we’ll be there too.

And then, as always, December 25th is Winter Solstish Turkey Thunderfuck, which I look forward to every year. If you’re wondering about the name, it used to be called Canadian Christmas and I’d just make turkey dinner for my friends, Canada-style. Nowadays, as I become more spiritual and more anti-Christan/anti-corporate/anti-consumerist, I have changed the name to something that’s a bit more bespoke to who I am.

Keep an eye open for some year-end best-of lists as well. I haven’t decided exactly what I’ll be doing yet, but I’ve got some ideas in mind.

That’s it for now! I’ll catch you all again next month!

Below is my Best of 2024 playlist! Welcome to follow along!

Bear's Book of Balance