Luckily, not everything stayed the same. People changed. And that is good – the first lecture in Sweden they already ‘warned’ for coming back and you’ve changed but nobody else did, which leaves you with a complete changed view on the world and nobody understands you. None of that, but the environment didn’t change that much. I can still find everything on the same place (also meaning I have to do some room cleaning, still as I left it). I don’t have to do any thinking or searching, I can just join in the household here and things work the same. A very strange feeling, also because in some way I don’t feel a deep continuous longing for going to Sweden again.

In Sweden we had some 8 different garbage places under the kitchen sink, for the different garbage you have to separate. Just a month before I left there, two more were added. Or, actually, one of them was separated further into 3 different categories. Which was a good thing, but meant more space needed. ‘Here’, in the Netherlands, we maybe had something like 4 (paper, glass, compost and the rest), but only 2 of them (compost and the rest) were under the kitchen sink. Paper was in the hallway and glass in the garden.

Now, apparently some time ago, things changed here as well. Now plastic needs to be separated. So, more place needed under the kitchen sink. But there was none. There is the garden stuff and other cleaning stuff. And of course the olive oil… Ok, logical to replace that right? Enough places come to mind. But no, not possible; “it is good for olive oil to be in a dark place”.

But actually I do. Or, I started, I started having that longing for going ‘back’ again, back to my own place, our place. Stings in this household still go slow now and then. Things don’t happen, they don’t change. No experiments. All new thoughts are going down directly because this or that. There is always some ‘rule’ or ‘knowledge’ that prevents things from changing.

So nothing changes. The olive oil stays in place. The plastic is placed next to the cats, not really nice, but ok.

Oh, and it is not that I’m not playing a part here. It is just the combined atmosphere or behavior in this house. But I don’t want that anymore. I want to initiate new things.

Oh yeah, about the vacation adventures..

On vacation in your own house. “Where are you?.. over..” “At the vacation photos of 1991.. over..”

Official now, or at least, Frida can receive mail here :)

It is becoming a real ‘house’ now. Now practically every box is unpacked, things have their place. And the reward for that is definitely there, a nice place to be :) Even the guinea pigs start to feal at home.

But also the dishes (after eating tomato pies) start to pile up also. How to deal with that? The shadow side of decisions?

Be careful of what you wish for, you might get it all.

Luckily, I’m still very happy. It helps me a lot with the things I find hard in life. Growing everyday. That’s why we did this.

(…) it’s no secret that the most beautiful thing you can wear is an authentic smile, and that the most beautiful people among us would be just as beautiful barefoot or in burlap, rather than in Manolo Blahniks. We’re a weird species that will spend fortunes to have the latest things, only to throw them away a season later, or spend our time and money on things that cover our bodies rather than make our bodies as healthy, fit, and beautiful as they naturally could be.

There are these moments, mostly about education, creativity, understanding or being yourself like above, that give me goose bumps. It reminded me of a blogpost about a woman giving a presentation on goose bumps (Dutch only). In a way it shows me what the things are that really hit me, that go deep. Are those the things that I should actually spend my time on?

The past week I’ve been thinking a lot. Nice thoughts about life, the universe and everything (*). Sadly, I didn’t came out on 42.. I spent a lot of time on thinking a lot of things, but when I think back of it, it is still ‘a lot of things’. Not one nice conclusion. It will come once I guess. I’ve had this for longer that I got the/my point of a discussion a day later.

Oh yes, and that book about design and sustainability.. It isn’t about this I guess. But it does look good. The book begins with defining ‘design’ and ’sustainability’ before it goes in the ‘real stuff’. The author, Nathan Shedroff, excuses himself for having to define things first. But I think that those definitions are exactlywhat makes this book stand out from all of the other books on design and sustainability. Here is an interview with the author and the excerpt of the book. Go and read “Design is the Problem: The Future of Design Must Be Sustainable”.

Thinking of the world out there, what to do in that world?

A new one first (full size):

Look dizzy until you see four grey dots. Than you can try to look dizzy at other points, for example your own finger moving back and forth. You’ll notice that the distance between the dots will differ on where you focus. You have to focus until the two middle dots are one, they come together. So then you’d see only three dots. That is the right focus, focussing on the picture then would ‘make it 3D’.

Another way of seeing 3D here is to focus on your nose. Move your face in about 10cm of the screen and focus on your nose. Then slowly move back. There will be a moment at which the focuspoint on your nose is the same as the one needed to see this image in 3D.

It remains hard to explain something which has become second nature. I can see these images within a second now and I’ve noticed my eyes always correct me when I try to ‘destruct’ the 3D view. My eyes just start to focus until both middle images are one again :) But, when I was learning it, it costed me a full day.

Now we have to write a paper about being a leader in an organization leading the organization for change. In the end I chose the organization to be my own, the company I want to create. Not the easiest one, but good to start the development on that one. So I have to find out what kind of leader I want to be. I feel that at the moment I’m more a personal leader, leading myself. Which is actually perfect, though not for this paper :)

But, just do! So, I’ve writen a sort of history describing my fictional company. I can design the whole thing, how things work, what kind of people there are, etc. Nice! Today I had a follow-up with the teacher. She helped me in reframing the ‘problem’ (as we need to have a problem to be able to change the organization). And we came to a conclusion on how where it was. I’m going to write about a network of people who are working together and now some want to create a company out of this. How to lead this group in this transition? The transition in the practicle side, but more on the personal side. What about the people who don’t want the company? How will it influence the atmosphere?

Interesting process :)

It was good to be in a project again. Very different from the project at the HKU. First of all because we had a group of four ‘leaders’. But also because we had a week for the whole project and it was hard to make a good separation of the tasks. Then it becomes more of a problem that we’re all leaders, because we were for example all responsible for the documentation, all responsible for the presentation, all responsible for the research.. Good learning moments. Also I finally experimented with putting together a presentation with my knowledge from the last years of interaction design. Thinking about every step, what to do, what effect it has, what do I want this step to lead to, etc.

Since my time experiments of the last weeks I’ve been trying to slow down more. But interesting enough my frustration inside the group came from me going to fast. Though I thought that this friction with other people’s time might be the hardest, it was not the first problem I encountered. The first difficult thing was that – much more than I thought – time was enclosed in my personal culture. How this striving for being in time is in every task I preformed. Wanting to finish something instead of going for quality. Going for quality also suits me way more, but actually doing it is step two.

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Well, we thought it was less social. During the experiment we held at our presentation the observing group noted that the group with the large bags was more social because they ate less. Of course not counting for the right environment and group differences, but still.