Pride and proud

Well, 2014 started off with a bang! Last Friday's Gay Gala will be followed with this weekend's Lahti Pride. And today I found out that one of those great things I expected to happen this year, happened. I got an e-mail from the secretary general of Seta today telling me I was one of the chosen ones for Seta's international Affairs committee. We have our first meeting of the year next Wednesday in Helsinki. So yay! Thanks for trusting me.

To go back to my last post, I realize that it might have sounded a little like I expected to be nominated and to win, which was not what I meant at all. It was more in regards to the TV and movie categories and the fact that Finnish TV doesn't have other shows or characters than the gay couple on Salatut Elämät, and that from the 4 nominated in the movie category, 2 of them were by LGBT people and about LGBT issues. I hadn't seen any of them, but I don't think the 2 Peter Franzen led movies were LGBT? I might be wrong though, I rarely watch Finnish TV or movies so I don't really know much about them.

There are plenty of LGBT people working in TV and movies and other arts related industries in Finland, and I felt like they should be celebrated instead of nominating all those straight made shows/movies. But, if we don't know about them, or their projects, it's difficult to nominate them. And there are plenty of locally important projects and people working in LGBT advocacy, but they are not as seen or heard as much as for example Tahdon 2013 campaign, which has succeeded really well in getting into people's hearts and heads and homes. Last year was clearly Tahdon 2013 campaigns, there's no doubt about it.

As an introvert I'm really out of my comfort zone in going to events by myself. I need someone to go with me and if these events weren't important places to be seen and to network in the LGBT community, and if I didn't know that there are going to be friendly faces there, I probably would have stayed at home last Friday and I wouldn't be going to Lahti Pride by myself! And the city of Lahti is totally foreign to me so this is doubly scary! I was gonna drive, but if the snow storm is gonna be bad on Saturday, I might just take the bus, even if it's super expensive. But this is FIRST. EVER. Lahti Pride and it's organized by a friend of mine, so it's important to participate. Hopefully I'll see you there!