184

 Changing space

I enjoyed living furniture-free for just over half a year. Before that I actually never owned any furniture, it always was someone else's. When my partner and I decided to move in together, we knew that our space would not look exactly like the place where I lived. 

Living furniture-free was wonderful. I would move a lot every day. It felt grounding and simple. I felt like it would be very easy to relocate when the time comes. I don't think my guests enjoyed my furniture-free space much, and also it was rather cold to sleep on the floor in the cooler months in Finland. But I don't regret living this way. Very often I still sit on the floor. I work from the floor, and my partner and I still sleep on the floor.

Living furniture-free was something I always wanted to try. There is a strand within extreme minimalist movement. It unites those of our fellow humans who take extreme minimalism this far. At least I believe for many fellow humans in our society living furniture-free would be taking sustainable living too far. But when I was living this way, I was not missing furniture at all. There are so many more items that I find more useful than pieces of furniture. In my so-called "sufficiency list" there is no furniture at all. 

And I was always on the go. Nowhere felt like home to me. Until now. With my partner we decided to buy some furniture from Danish companies, made from European certified wood. All of those items we intend to keep for the rest of our lives and then hopefully pass on to our fellow humans. 

We decided to get a clothes rack, a bed frame, a bench and a table. The chairs in our home my partner has owned for a long time. I think he inherited them. These items will allow us to remove many of our things from the floor. The place we live in is a small studio flat. And because there are two of us, there are more objects. 

What we live with is still a lot less than what a normal family here in Denmark would have. But both of us want to have a minimalist, ecological, simple and cosy life. For storage, we use cotton storage bags. 

183

 Being at Roskilde university in Denmark

These days I'm visiting Roskilde University (RUC). To be here for any meaningful length of time, I had to go through what I can only describe as hell. I've written an entry about it to document my experiences of unfair treatment and harassment. The manager was not happy with my research visit at this university because my partner works here. She thought I wanted to be in Denmark and at Roskilde university for personal rather than professional reasons. She said I should research Finnish businesses rather than Danish ones, though in my postdoc I have freedom to research what I want. At the time she was saying all the sexist and even racist things, I felt incredibly bad. I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression. I complained about the manager's misconduct but still nothing has been done about it. There has been no apology from her, the university did nothing to remove her as my manager and nothing to assist me with being in Denmark more. Denmark is where I feel good and at home, have my partner and a place I call home, understand the language to a large extent, and where I research businesses. In the manager's place, I would have apologised and resigned. Instead, she felt even more empowered to give me tasks that mean I have to work unpaid overtime. She instrumentalised another colleague for this too. In the end of her emails she would ask me to acknowledge receipt of her emails, which is degrading but also unnecessary. Moreover, it is bad for nature, as emails have a carbon footprint. As a researcher in sustainability she should know this. As a sustainability researcher she should also know that it is essential to act in society with care and concern for fellow humans, none of which she manifested in my case, or in any other case at work that I'm familiar with. 

I was thinking a lot about being at the same university as my partner. It is so old-fashioned to think that love somehow interferes in negative ways with work. In my experience, love only contributes to creativity. I already felt much better psychologically and physically when I was visiting Aalborg university. I'm feeling so happy, calm, and productive at Roskilde university. I was not feeling this way at the university I'm affiliated with. 

I'm sitting at my partner's office, and to the left from where I'm sitting there is a bookshelf. My partner and I are in the same field (degrowth). He is interested in the political economy of degrowth transformations, while I'm interested in the micro level, that of businesses and individuals. We often use the same books in our research, and it's wonderful to have those books right here at the office. 

The area where Roskilde uni is located feels very calm in comparison to Copenhagen where we live. I can see a lake and beautiful willow trees from the office window and feel so positive about working on the book I'm writing.