Can you believe it? I certainly can’t, which is why I once again forgot this blogiversary was coming up. I always vaguely remember that it’s sometime in early June, but when the WordPress notification tells me “You registered 8 years ago. Thanks for flying with us. Keep up the good blogging.”, I am always, always, always surprised and caught off guard.

After blogging for such a long time (really, who would have thought?), it’s tricky to come up with something new for these kind of celebratory posts. I’ve done countless Q&A’s, giveaways, challenges … it’s starting to repeat too much. But, my friend The Orang-utan Librarian has thankfully given me a great idea for what I could do. My style, the content of the blog, me as a person, have all changed over the years and so has the audience here. Some of you have been along for the ride from pretty much the beginning and others have only joined our little community recently. I cherish all of you and thought it was time (and hopefully also fun) to reintroduce myself!

ME, MYSELF AND I

To get some of the basics out of the way: I’m a girl in her late 20s, currently living in Austria. It’s where I’m from originally, but I’ve also lived in Germany, France, the US and Canada before, which is why I always put the “currently” in front of whatever place I’m at. You never truly know where you’ll end up … or at least I don’t.

This blog has gone through several changes since I’ve started it. I’ve purchased the lifeandotherdisasters.com domain a couple years back and haven’t regretted it yet. It somehow made everything more real, confirmed that this was my place and mine alone! There comes a certain freedom with that. Now, when we talk about the content though, I’ve always heavily focused on TV shows, movies and books. Sometimes I will sprinkle in some insights on writing or life or whatever comes to mind, but those topics I mentioned before are definitely the pillars.

But back to talking about myself (couldn’t sound more narcissistic if I tried) – here are a couple things I love:

• I adore drawing portraits of people! As you can see above (or on my art insta), it’s really all I do. Landscapes, animals, abstract creative musings – none of that has ever really interested me. I love figuring out the shadows and proportions of faces and have found my favorite medium in watercolors. If you ever want to read more about my process, I wrote a handy post, which you can find here!
• My friends have called me the Queen of TV for ages now, mostly because I’m great at giving show recommendations tailored to people’s specific taste, maybe because I’ve been on TV like four times already, but also because it’s actually my field of work … kinda. I’ve studied film-, TV- and media-production (which couldn’t sound more vague), but that gave me a great foundation regarding the economic side of the film biz. I’ve since worked in film distribution, casting, event management, marketing, PR, press and much more. I feel so at home in this area and am forever grateful that I get to make it a career, even if it’s still a work in process and has been halted due to the pandemic.

Actual quote from a previous employer: The fact that [Ms Katja] follows the world of film and TV outside of the workplace makes her an inspiring interlocutor.

• My most favorite place in the whole world is Vancouver (in British Columbia, although I’ve been to the one in Washington State as well). It has the ocean, mountains, forests and a downtown area with skyscrapers. It’s on the bigger side in terms of people who live there (at least for Canada), but super easy to get around. I’ve made such great friends there and just had the best of times. It also helped that it’s considered Hollywood North, which means there were loads of film and television sets to visit.

• I’ve always loved to devour and tell stories. Those two things just sort of go hand in hand for me and I would never want to miss either from my life. I don’t know if I’d want to pursue a life as a published author, but there has never been a time where I didn’t want to share my stories with the world. So, we shall see where my road leads to here. I think I have a couple really good tales still in me.
• I’ve done about three workshops for acting and I love it. It’s truly a craft in my eyes and I enjoy it a lot, despite not being great at it. There’s people who can just let go, but I always hold back. There’s emotions I have a really hard time letting roam, but I learned (despite usually being very camera shy) that I adore camera acting. Many people love being on stage and I’m the complete opposite. I love the intricacies and detail that goes into camera acting. Your smallest movements get detected, you can do the same scene over and over in a million different ways, it’s entirely different than when you have to project to a large audience in a room and you only get one shot to do it right. But still, I could never do this as a job.

• I’ve gone to several comedy and improv shows and there are few things that bring me more joy, but I always find them funnier when I’m in the room than when I watch a taping or recording of it. There’s definitely times when I think I have a terrible sense of humor, but when you’re in a room full of laughter, it’s just the best and such an infectious atmosphere!

I hope you now feel like you’ve learned something new or know more about me than you did before. It’s a very personal post, but so is this freaking milestone I still can’t believe is true. The fact that I already (accidentally) paid for the domain for next year means I’ll also be sticking around. Sorry, hope you’re not getting tired of me yet!

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So, that’s it! All of this is me and I would love for you to (re)introduce yourself in the comments! Let’s start a little discourse here!