Monthly Mayhem in the life of a recovering music journalist battling through spring fever and burnout (3.25)

A month of trying to be as chill as possible!

Apr 01, 2025

So we find ourselves yet again on the first Tuesday of the month, which means my Monthly Mayhem newsletter is back like your neighbor’s cat on your porch. I hope life has treated you well this past month! The end of March really snuck up on me fast. The whole month was a bit of a blur but in a much more relaxed way than I’m used to.

Luffy’s shy gaze

CREATIVE PROJECTS

HOI! I was busy this month on a creative front. First of all, I spent some time exploring why it can be so hard for me to sit down and write and one of the things I figured out was that music journalism has acclimatized me to writing something in one sitting. Realizing that’s unrealistic for a novella and probably why it’s hard to sit down and get started, I decided to break it into seven segments that could each reasonably be done in 1-3 sittings. It’s made it way easier to get to work when I break my goals into smaller pieces.

While I was doing that, I also continued exploring Substack as a medium for writing, so wrote a review of the 2013 film Don Jon that delves into the depictions of patriarchal masculinity and femininity. I also got some feedback and rewrote (and expanded) three old reviews/essays and published them, alongside an article exploring why fantasy shows tend to fail where sci-fi succeeds. I also revamped my review of the 2009 movie My Sister’s Keeper:

The Brilliant (and Brutal) Way Don Jon Exposes Patriarchy’s Grip on Sex, Relationships, and Intimacy

On Sitcom Romance: How and Why ‘How I Met Your Mother’ Completely Shit the Bed

’The Rings of Power’: How to Spend a Billion Dollars on Absolutely Nothing

Why I Quit Watching ‘House of the Dragon’ in its First Season

On Genres: Why Sci-Fi Constantly Out-Performs Fantasy

The Painful Truths About Grief in My Sister’s Keeper

(All of these articles are or will be available here on Substack too!)

I also had a Zweihänder game after remembering an old character for an abandoned campaign that I could revive who would fit in perfectly. I got to open up a can of unhinged energy back on my players, to my amusement.

The Vitmar Chronicles

As I said, I spent a chunk of this month exploring things that hold me back as a writer and combating them. I am thrilled to announce that I have written about 3/7 of Volume II, but ended up needing a break after a hot writing streak because spring still does weird stuff to my brain chemistry.

I haven’t worked on The Living Dream of Chartholaine much, because I felt like it needed to be lower on my priorities than a few other things for the sake of practicality… I will absolutely get it done, but I should really get my first draft of Volume II finished first, then I can revisit this story while I let that cool down. So I might not quite get this one out to the people who got Volume I directly from me in spring like I hoped, but it is still coming.

I will say that I’ve been extremely amped about what’s been happening in Volume II so far. One of the main characters that hasn’t been introduced yet was one that I struggled to pin down a bit, but after doing some deeper lore work, I found a way to really make her character stand out, and I was thus able to add a heaping ton of fun and emotional depth into this part of the story. I’m honestly excited to get back to it.

If you haven’t checked out “The Vitmar Chronicles, vol. I: An Ending & A Beginning,” click here to learn about the series and click here to read the first fifteen pages!

Off the Record

No new interviews this month and nothing currently booked.

Reminder again for Substack users, you can also listen to these interviews here!

Gathering of Geeks

Nothing new this month but the hiatus is going to hopefully end after my next recording on April 2nd. I am EXTREMELY excited about this guest, but I’ll explain why hopefully next month!

PS, for Substack users, you can also listen to this podcast on Substack too!

PROFESSIONAL PROJECTS

No professional projects underway at the moment, which yet again means my time is more dedicated to creative writing! If you’re looking for an English expert though, please check out my Wordsmithy to see what I might be able to do for you! I’ve re-vamped the page a little bit and changed and updated a few of my services.

Enslain Metal Merch

At the beginning of March, I had absolutely no merch gigs on my calendar, but I ended up getting another totally new name at the end of the month: a Swedish pop/electronica artist called Hooja. It seemed like a fun time—the crowd was pretty enthusiastic and the people I worked with were awesome. It was a good night, with the added bonus that I got to sneak out to get some halloumi bites from the sports bar next door.

CRITICAL REVIEWS

Alas, I have remained under my crusty little shell of journalistic avoidance, feeling guilty as always.

LIVE EVENTS

While there were several events of interest this month, like Shereign’s album release show and a jazz guitar club in Mäntsälä, the only one I ended up going to was the Tampere Philharmonic’s Game On performance. I will not miss orchestras playing video game music unless I am dead, so I went to spend the afternoon with my friend Anna aka Scarlet Memory Photography and we enjoyed a spectacular meal at Dumpling Studio before going to the show. It was a great day trip for a worthy live event!

Dumpling Studio is affordable food paradise in Tampere

Photos by Scarlet Memory Photography - if you like her photos, hit her up!

PHYSICAL & MENTAL HEALTH

Whew, we all know that spring and depression are a gnarly combo by now, right? Pair that with the fact that spring is actually here in Finland right now. Yes, I kid you not, I can see my yard and that doesn’t usually happen for another month or so. Hell, I’ve even been out working on dismantling the apparently super dead plum tree in the yard. The cats have touched grass again!

So, when spring hits I always get a sharp surge of energy, but usually something weird happens alongside it. On this occasion I got walloped by another wave of grief, so I’ve been quite fragile and sapped of energy. These things always come in waves though and I know how to recognize them, so I ride them out as best as I can and then get back to work when it’s over.

I did have a weird revelation with my body recently that was so profound that I’m not even going to talk about it here. However, next month you’ll be getting links to my upcoming Broken Body Series of articles about my messed up medical journey. The first one comes out on Wednesday, called My Broken Body and How Western Medicine Failed Me Completely… so stay tuned!

Suffice to say, I went to osteo a mere once this month and I am currently no longer completely falling apart at the seams, so that’s great! With what I figured out I’m wondering if I can even make it through April without needing to come back… let us see!

GENERAL BEARSNESS

There were extremely few things that I did this month on the whole, but one of them was going to Barcelona for the weekend. There was good food, the weather had highs and lows, and our neighborhood had a fantastic little bodega where we had amazing paella.

The most fascinating part of the trip, however, was when we were walking down a nearly deserted street in a rather quiet industrial area. I had fallen behind a bit and as a young woman passed me, I felt a huge splash on my leg. I was baffled—blue sky, nothing overhead… but on the flight home I learned that apparently people in Barcelona have a huge bone to pick with tourists and they have taken to expressing their displeasure by shooting outsiders with water guns. I know many people find this alarming but I honestly thought it was a rather inoffensive way to protest and wondered if next time I go, I should wear a shirt with water gun targets on it. I certainly don’t mind getting shot with water in a warm country once in a while.

It was a short trip—we stayed in and enjoyed some tapas and wine the first night, and on the final morning, went for a walk and found a very ancient church tucked away behind our hotel.

I also started doing some spring upkeep on the jungle that is all of the plants in my house. A big part of this is switching out soil for Seramis for a lot of my houseplants. It’s apparently a newer thing from Finland, where you use baked ceramic bits instead of soil. The idea is that it has better water and nutrient retention than soil, so your plants should need considerably less care.

After switching, I’ve finally been able to keep basil sprouts alive, and my syngonium has stopped flipping me the bird. I’ve also done some massive work on some vines that I clearly accidentally abused, and some orchids as well! Oh, and I found a passiflora when I brought my friend to a show in Lahti.

Yes, that’s correct, you heard me right! I bought a ticket to a concert, went, chilled out, paid as much attention as I felt like, took zero notes, and left without forming an opinion. It was bliss, made only better by the fact that my friend Anne was visiting from the Netherlands for the event. It was Cemetery Skyline in Lahti, incidentally—very nostalgic Finnish-style Gothic metal. I was, however, bummed out that the best Italian restaurant in town was too fully booked for us to eat there. I clearly need to vengeance visit Lahti for pasta.

That’s most of the exciting stuff from this March. I’ll be curious to see what the weather and world bring in April!

“Share the denial that corporate religion has grown
On commercial breaks mass distraction is shown…”

— “Dragon Must Die” by Marko Hietala

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Coming Next Month…

That’s it for now! I’ll catch you all again in April, where I will possibly be attending DJ Hapan Korppu’s opera show and I’m also going to the Avatar: The Last Airbender show at Finlandia-talo. I’m also hoping my friend Mary (you may remember her from the America trip in January) will visit, but that’s not set in stone yet. And my goal is also to get the first draft of TVC: Volume II done so I can release it by the end of May! Catch you where the flowers bloom!

My (still quite sparse) Best of 2025 playlist can be found here: