Hello.
Before I start
explaining what this literary work that you've somehow stumbled upon
is all about, allow me to introduce myself. I am Santtu Pesonen, a
23-year-old Finnish student, at least at the time of writing this
preface. I'm currently studying music in a vocational school, but I
spent two years studying English in university prior to ending up
studying music. How I ended up from university to studying music,
that process is actually detailed in this book. My hobbies include
music (as should be more or less obvious), video games and deep
thinking.
Now, what you've
laid your hands on here is essentially a collection of
self-reflective essays. I honestly don't have a “one-word”
way to describe it, but you could think of it as a journal or diary
of sorts. It began with me being randomly inspired to write what I
call a “rambling” - hence, partly, the book's title - on
an evening in May of 2016. The eighth day of that month, to be
specific, as you've possibly found out if you paid attention to the
dates marked in the list of contents. And over the next 17 months or
so, I took it upon myself to write 99 more of them, adding up to 100
ramblings in total.
Why 100? Because
I felt that it was the perfect number for this undertaking. 50 felt
too low, and 200 felt too high. (Actually I didn't think of any
specific number at the time – I simply jotted down “/100”
next to the “1” in the first rambling I wrote, so as to
motivate myself to finally write a full book.)
Either way,
there's no single specific theme to this book. Rather, there are
various themes that recur throughout the book. An especially popular
theme to pop up is love, but it's by no means the only theme I touch
upon. Other fairly common subjects discussed throughout the book
include friendship, life and various psychological phenomena.
If you intend to
read this book in its entirety, there is one piece of advice I should
give you: don't judge a rambling by its title. What I mean by that is
that in a lot of the ramblings here, I refer to other ramblings I
wrote prior to them. And in a lot of cases, you must have read a
specific rambling in order for another to make sense. However, I
should also say that it's not necessarily the immediately previous
rambling – it could be one several pages back.
I should also
mention that I use a fair amount of foul language throughout this
book. So if you're sensitive to that, I suggest you put this book
away – either right now or after reading the rest of this
preface. Whichever you happen to decide upon.
With all that
said, please enjoy Assorted Ramblings of a Different Young Adult.