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Showing posts from April, 2016

Ingenious humility changes everything - This Changes Everything Showing Aftermath

Published on Footpaths Leicester The room was full of people ready to witness images of people across the world fighting to live in a world where the land from which they sustain themselves from can be protected and cared for. This Changes Everything documentary is a snapshot of the battle between capitalism and climate, between capitalism and people as described in more details in the book 'This Changes Everything' by Naomi Klein.

Getting out as soon as possible

You are probably stuck in one position and you probably cannot get out anytime soon. You are looking to escape but you have yet finished the main project you are working on. Give yourself a deadline to finish the project and do everything possible to not overrun. You have to get out as soon as possible. If you are able to, finish earlier than expected, there is no point in torturing yourself in dragging time just to complete the imparted time. FINISH OFF and GET OUT

Waking up from Manipulation and doing something about it

Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable. Joyce Brothers The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words. Philip K. Dick It has been an interesting past 6 weeks where I've learnt first hand how it feels to wake up from manipulation. The past week has been the last chapter where  my eyes finally became wide opened on what has gone on in the past few months. I did not want to look at the truth because I wanted to please others, I wanted to feel connected to them but I always ended up feeling betrayed and my tasks at hand going through the windows because I was too busy trying to meet others half way and depleting all my energies in agenda that were not beneficial to me. I am a nice person. This is who I am. But p

The New Mobile Phone Dilemma PART 2

This Saturday at the Restart Party, we haven't managed to repair my poor mobile phone ( PART 1) . Luckily, one of the members of the Hackspace have a spare one that is happy to lend me until I am able to repair my own. I accept gratefully. I get home and get myself two spares part to replace the screen on my mobile phone. They arrived at home. I put them in a drawer. They stay there. The current mobile phone that was lent to me is perfectly convenient for the time being. I forget to bring the replacement screen at the next restart party and I come to learn that the person who lent me the mobile phone has gone and will never come back to Leicester and I will not find a way to give it back to him. I accept fate. Months pass by and I never manage to repair my old mobile phone. it is somewhere in a drawer with its spare parts. I forget about it. I have a working phone in my hands. Until this Sunday morning after having repaired the bottom drawer of a cupboard, the scre

Efficient procrastination

Procrastination is one of the signs of the soul at work, undermining and sabotaging the grandiose aspirations of the hero-ego, perhaps so that something real can happen, or not happen, as it, not I, wish. In Hillman's work procrastination means uncountably many things to the soul. It's an intrinsic part of the work process, resisting the pen the way the knots in wood resist and redirect the chisel; it's like the dance of avoidance all animals do on the way to their most primal gratifications, building up the intensity of mating or fighting by postponing it. It's much like the way we turn red-faced and flee from the very person we've fantasized confessing our love to, or the way we eagerly look forward to going "home" and then sink into a ghastly regressive lethargy. (Amba 2005) There is a plethora of self-help books and articles online suggesting ways to beat procrastination and how procrastination is bad for us and our performance. Procrastination appe

Forget Short Showers

Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday; or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons; or that dancing around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”? Why are these “solutions” not sufficient? But most importantly, what can be done instead to actually stop the murder of the planet? The description of the video 'Forget Short Showers' just reminded me how insane I am and how a lot of people are too ( Inside Voice: just look around you for a minute, they are all craaayyy, they don't want to admit it, what abt you?) The insanity can be summarised into keeping ourselves busy with personal endeavour to tackle climate change (embracing simple eco-living

Repair - Diary Entry (1) Green Festival of Making & Mending Leicester

Since September 2014, My main project focus has been on repair. I have been working with Zina, founder of Footpaths, a carbon reduction project in Leicester to organise the Green Festival of Making & Mending on the 31st October 2015 and a serie of events throughout 2015. Our main aim was to introduce people to ingenious ideas to repair and upcycle items in an environmentally friendly way. The event idea stemmed the recognition of our own vulnerabilities. Zina and I were not really the creative/diy type. For me, personally, my hands were only used as so far for typing and some random drawing but never to make something tangible. Maybe they were but I never appreciated their magnificence. Is gold in our hands? A year working on festival and following up to that, I mended all my clothes, darned socks and gloves, repaired a mobile phone, made a rag rug and a banner, painted signs, made sculptures out of papers and christmas decorations, repaired pieces of furnitures, shortened cu

Learning to say NO - Essentialism

It is official I am burnt out. I have for a very long time taken too many activities on just because I felt that they were worth doing to help in the transition towards a sustainable system. But the past few weeks has shown me that my creative spark can destroy me completely and I can fall easily in the Madness of doing more. What led me to that is learnign to say yes to everything. I said yes to do so many things to the point I wasted so much time in things that were not really beneficial to me. .My thirst to success by doing more just led me to failure. My thirst to be accepted by others led me to disappoint those individuals as I burnt out. My stress level also rise up to the sky and I burst into despair. A solution had to be found. My fist step, to cancel one after the others all my appointments. My second step, to look for an answer. I came across to 'Essentialism' by Greg McKeown. He asked this simple question 'What stop people to breakthrough to the next

Questions rushing through

Questions are rushing through my head. Why do I need so much to feel that I am alive? Why do I need people who like-minded to feel alive? Why do I need so much a community? Why do I want so much to bring people together? Why do I fail miserably each time I try? Why am I never satisfied with the attempt that I am making to bring people together? Why do I find always a way to blame others for our failure to bring people under the same understanding that we have to be together to help one another. All those questions are rushing through my head and I am not sure how to answer them. I will try. Why do I need  to feel so much t hat I am alive? I need to define first what I mean to be alive. To be alive means that having this sparkling feature that make it worthwhile to wake up every morning in order to do something. Why do I need people who are like-minded to feel alive?  I need other like-minded people to feel that my own vibration is at the same vibrato to others. To feel