Colvinius

Also I miss @colvinius. Twitter (and Australia) is a much less good place without him.

“There was an innate fairness about Mark… capable of “10,000 simultaneous conversations and of making each person feel they were the only one he was talking to”… an oasis of acceptance, kindness, braininess and fun.”

“Colvin’s desire to lift up those around him up was agreed upon by all.
He would remember things you had done and said years ago.”

“He loved mischief.”

That’s what I loved him for the most. xx

Twitter 2.0

My hiatus from social media starts to carry fruit. I have recently looked at a tree for a substantial amount of time, without telling anyone about it.

But the first days were a bit brutal. I felt very isolated from a world that I had grown accustomed to, basically the world as I knew it over the past 5 years. But change is good. Anything that will get you out of your comfy zone is good. And if no-one else rattles your cage you have to do it yourself.  I have since landed back on my feet, with the realisation that it’s OK if you can’t tell the world your every single thought every very moment.

Still, I miss a lot the interaction with the tweeps that have become truly dear to me. As odd as that might sound, because I hardly really know any of them. Or do I?

I think what I need to do is understand Twitter better itself, so I can go back in. As that world is what I am questioning the most at the moment. With an account of hundreds or thousands of tweeps, why do only ever the same twenty odd tweeps converse, and what the heck are all the others doing? Just reading in? Is everyone just a free content producer? To be sussed out by some marketing dude claiming to raise sales with their sekrit gruen? And wotabout the masters of SocMed, those who kinda create a connection, but in the end only to portray themselves in a better light, to make them look pro.

Not finished thinking…

Twitter

This month it’s been 5 years that I was on Twitter. Twitter is the only social platform I frequent; I find it already hard to keep one running while still meeting actual real people in the other actual real life.

People spend a lot of time looking at their phones. Even the word phone has entirely morphed from one thing to something completely different now.

I digress.

I’m taking a break from Twitter. And it feels kinda odd. While I’ve already got more done in just one day than I probably would’ve in three, I miss the voices and the laughter. (no I’m not hearing voices)  I was never one for herd mentality. Twitter lets you forget that not all is good only because the loudest says so. The integrity of a writer is not manifested in the amount of followers they have.  In this short-attention-span world of ours, every single bit of critical thinking is important for sanity and goodness to prevail (hopefully, after all, fingers crossed), so don’t let anyone shout you out.

Anyway, end of rant. Nothing really matters. As you were.

Also, today turned out bearable after all.

On renewal, and how to get there

The world’s crises represent three divides: ecological, social, and spiritual. The ecological divide manifests in symptoms such as environmental destruction, and is experienced as a divide between self and nature. The social divide manifests in increasing rates of poverty, inequity, polarisation, and violence and is experienced as a divide between self and self. And the spiritual divide is experienced as a disconnect between self and self — the “current self” and the “emerging future self”.

A disconnect between these two selves manifests as burnout, depression, and suicide. In 2010, more people died from suicide than from murder, war, and natural disasters combined. Suicide is not an economic problem or a generational tic. It’s not a secondary concern, a sideline that will solve itself with new jobs, less access to guns, or a more tolerant society, although all would be welcome. It’s a problem with a broad base and terrible momentum, a result of seismic changes in the way we live and a corresponding shift in the way we die around the world.

Another symptom of this disconnect is the decoupling of GDP from the actual well-being of people: we produce more, consume more, and are busier than ever before but our happiness and wellbeing are declining.

From https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/sep/26/8-innovations-economic-system-capitalism

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/scharmer-243

Work culture

Down here it seems more important how you look, and everybody else looks, and how the whole day looked in the end, than whether work talks were fruitful, constructive, and/or led to a decision. The term ‘outcomes’ is used a lot, but in the end for no one really a priority. Which -imho- is the reason why so many things in Australia get stifled, don’t work out, or fall over. And everybody wants to complain in the end and throw in their “I always knew it”, but nobody wants to be woken up from their comfy slumber on the way there.

Complacency is such a bitch.

[from: the daily stirrer – observations on the job]

Critique of Romanticism

alaindbJust can’t stop laughing about how much the truth hurts 😀

AlainDeBotton.com‘s Critique of Romanticism

http://abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/2016-08-08/7641598

A few snippets:

Instilled emotions propel us into Romanticism.

Romanticism tells us we’re quite good and pure and perfect, very optimistic, we’re all like children.

This attitude makes you self-righteous.

Bluntly: affected thru childhood and adulthood, we are all demented in slightly different ways. we’re all just holding it together somehow (13:00)

No one can be bothered to tell you your obvious craziness which they know about after 30 mins of meeting you, unlike you who still doesn’t know after 40 years.

And yes spot on about instincts. Cos while once healthy, they’re now totally screwed, and off cue!

The cult of the instinct – we’re looking for forms of torture 😉

Relationships – not about love, but about honesty!

Love is about admiration of what is good and accomplished in another person.

(53:00) But also about being pupil and teacher at the same time, pointing out stuff that sucks about the other so they get a chance to become the best possible version of themselves.

Love is connecting up with teaching. But you have to be relaxed, jovial, slightly lighthearted.

Melancholy is sadness worn with dignity. Sometimes you have to call on that emotion too.

My personal mantra echoed: Life is all about forgiveness. And so is love 🙂 just use your ethical imagination (not your ego).

Be a loveable idiot, and learn to love another idiot.

hashtag herd

my little hashtag herd

all born and fed on this paddock 😉

#wearedatabase
#tweepspirit
#arrrpol
#sproinck
#fuckingmindyou
#Nutellaismadefromhazelnuts
#Imwithseat123
#Twitterisshorthand
#regrettableidiocy
#devopsinonesentence
#zähneklappernd
#thegreenworkdot
#encouched
#lovethymeds
#myveggolife
#SydMuc
#broomsarebeautiful
#3GenRule

these ones I took in for care:
#devcomms
#Sydneytown
#outragementum
#JederFuerJeden
😉

#mylittletwitterfarm

About friendship

I grew up in a society where love for other people, gender-unspecific, was accepted, even desirable. Strong bonds between adults were simply tolerated, allowed, and sought after.

I now live in a culture where such strong bonds are only allowed between family members, more or less extended. That makes for a totally different life. It creates a closed-circle thinking, and the opposite of a free and open community, where members would be allowed to share emotions across conceptual ties.

I miss having the chance to explore freely other thought worlds, ideas, cultures. I feel a bit robbed actually.