Thursday, June 1, 2023
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In the beginning of the blogging journey

This post is also available in: fiSuomi

Welcome!

You just arrived to the first post of my blog (which is very much in progress, and will be for a while since I am a WordPress newbie). I’m glad you found me in the beginning of my journey and I hope you enjoy your time browsing here. I’d be happy to hear from you via comments!
I am searching for a life style that supports personal productivity and growth without sacrificing creativity and ‘the good life’. My journallings have become an important personal platform in this. My angle on bullet journalling is to use it for improving productivity and focus at work and beyond; to learn and improve both professionally, with hobby related interests as well as more generally to grow as a person.
I am very flexible with my bullet journalling style. I do like to “prettify” my bujo at times, but also feel totally comfortable with a functional no frills approach.

Taking a bilingual approach

I live in Finland – one of the Nordic European countries. I have decided to make this blog bilingual. The posts are translated and language can be changed from the top of the right side column. I will write in English and Finnish. Finnish is my native language and English I have studied since 3rd grade in elementary school and use daily for work to write, research and teach.

Sometimes the texts are almost direct translations, and other times I make a summary of the original text depending on which language I start with. (If you are curious, this one I wrote English first.)

Sometimes my text is more directed towards the global journalling community and it makes sense to me to start writing in English and make a summary in Finnish. Sometimes I might be talking about something oriented towards my local fellows and it makes sense to start with Finnish. Also, sometimes with culturally specific content it will make sense to add an explanatory note in the English version. So, basically I am writing about a chosen topic and slightly adjusting the text content to serve the purpose for the international and the local audience. I have not found a blog that attempts to operate this way, so fingers crossed this will be successful.

However, although my language skills are fluent I will certainly make small mistakes here and there with grammar or write some funny ways to say things. I hope you will not mind these and will appreciate my effort to write in a language that you understand although the results might not be always perfect. Please do not get offended or create drama if something I write or comment sounds blunt – I probably just lack the language skill to understand slight nuances or just could not find a better way to express my thought. Also, I probably will not get all jokes and need to refer to Urban Dictionary sometimes, but I think we will be fine together!

Mixing languages in my bujo

I will write about this more in a separate post later, but you will note that my bullet journals – especially the main journal – randomly mix English and Finnish. This is because much of my work content and activities are based on using English, and I might not even have a translation for some terminology. At work we tend to talk this “Finglish” which is blending English terminology in Finnish sentences and applying Finnish grammar on them. It’s just purposeful for us like that. Sometimes I think in English at work, so that is how I often write my notes.

Later I realized that it makes sense to write work stuff in English as I could then take a photo of my page and send it to my English speaking colleague. So there is a purposeful aspect on it as well.
I am not worried about my language skills in my native language getting poorer – we live in an open world and it is fantastic to be able to communicate with someone on the other side of the Globe like they were your neighbors. And at the same time we broaden our perspectives about the cultural differences. I especially love the Bullet Journal Junkies group in Facebook that has people from all over the world and all voices are actively participating in the discussion.

3 comments

  1. NIIN mukana. Minun mielestäni kaksikielisyys on vain plussaa, koska se kasvattaa myös lukijakuntaa.

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