Cultivating Thoughts... Day Two

So those who visit my house at the open don't get invited in.  Because things are in disarray.  Tonight I dreamed of a space that works for our family...  What do we need how do we connect to the garden...  What is our sitting room even for?

Helpful stuff to download in a brain doodling session,  which I very much enjoyed.

Really surprisingly the sense of satisfaction and closure from writing the next day's date on the subsequent page is nostalgia inducing from my previous career... It's unexpectedly pleasant.

The picture shows the centre of the diagram with the room in question in the background. (It is just stacked full with stuff)

Cultivating thoughts... Day One

Those of you who have been with me from the beginning in what seems like another life and was indeed another blog... May remember that I like actions. I like actions very much... Doing stuff is where it's at as far as I'm concerned.

I've tried many things/hobbies/pursuits over the last 30 years... I play recorder, flute, piano, ukulele, act, (can't dance have tried doesn't prevent me treading the boards anyway), poi spinning, card making, sketching, painting, colouring, pastels (oil and chalk!), cooking, baking, website design, desktop publishing, loom knitting, cross stitch, candle making etc... etc... etc...

I've joined choirs, bands, societies, clubs, churches, teams... I've given up meat and chocolate (never try to start both concurrently) given up the later with the temptation of a lovely chocolate cake and then given up former with trying to live with my carnivorous father's attempts at vegetarian cooking as I became bored with cheese sauce a'la frozen veg and got a little too thin.

All in all I am a great starter... And if pushed (or I enjoy it) I'll stick at something. But the dead blogs of the past are, unfortunately, testament to why I find giving up easier than sustaining something long term. I did teach myself to ride my bike without stabilisers in a concerted effort one afternoon aged 10 and aged 19 I read an entire book about writing HTML cover to cover, even the dedication, but most of the websites I designed never made it past the file structure of my C drive and I haven’t ridden a bike in years.

However, with a little persuasion, I've been encouraged to take up a challenge this month to coincide with the month of Ramadan by the team at New Unity in London. Rather than the idea of denial and self sacrifice I have often associated with Lenten rituals, I've been reminded how important it is to CULTIVATE FOR GROWTH... Read about the idea here and Andy Pakula's message here.

Aside- Saturday I ate a really rather sour and tiny strawberry from a three year old plant... It was dreadful... It was a lucky strawberry to exist at all, but I haven't tended that pot in ages and the compost therein is certainly spent.

And so I thought upon what I would like to cultivate in myself. And if #WeBecomeWhatWeDo all in all I decided like to be less bothered by stuff.

I'd like to worry less and achieve more.

This seems simple enough and if I were of a stronger, more tough and decisive persuasion that statement alone would be enough and I could get on with my life... Although if that were the case I'd most likely not worry so much in the first place and there is the rub.

So I realised I needed to work out a practice, which is going to support my new found position. And looking back over the past history of abandoned projects this one had to be easy enough to do, not take up too much time, and it needed to give me the sense of satisfaction of a job well done that means I'll stick with it for the duration and not fade out part way through.

What I have realised is that I actually achieve loads, but I am really terrible at recognising and celebrating stuff I do make things happen and I am also chronically inclined to defer doing something, either until the very last opportunity, or just abandon an idea completely and in the process letting people down or carrying a large amount of guilt around afterwards for no discernable good reason. That sort of pattern doesn't leave much time for celebration or satisfaction.

I decided early on in considering this cultivation that I like writing… I’ve been enjoying putting this blog together for the last few hours and I’m still enjoying it, but I'm excited by the idea just now and I realise I couldn't possibly do this every day! There are also many projects like #100happydays or the post three positive things to your Facebook page for a week... which I have been nominated to do and ignored... I only got half way through the lovely Gretchen Rubin's book The Happiness Project before I had become overwhelmed by all the ideas I'd thought of to try out!

So inspiration struck me that when I'm stuck at something I draw a diagram. I have a love affair with A3 paper and felt tipped pens... and I treat these diagrams with the utmost respect.

• Bimonthly at work I draw out a new one to highlight any up coming projects or important dates to my colleagues and pin it up on the wall by my desk.
• If I am listening to a lecture or trying to learn a new set of instructions to work a particular computer system in my job I doodle my way to understanding with page after page of colourful hand written notes and pictures which I use as a visual reference later on and eventually fix in my mind so I no longer have to read them and can navigate my way clear when I revisit a topic.

A very famous gentleman has the copyright on one form of creating these diagrams, but honestly I think I knew about creating them long before I ever read a book about the process... I'm naturally inclined to connect stuff in that way.

So I stayed at my desk a little while longer after work today and started writing/drawing until I became distracted and couldn't think of another thing to put down without having to work too hard to draw it out of my brain... and I felt better for having "downloaded" my thoughts.

So this project book was picked up after work today... I cracked out my new tin of pens!

I drew it a nice cover!

and I took some time to make a quick copy of the earlier prototype thought web from the afternoon.

A blurry Day One!

The plan is to draw a different one each day... the first one is stuff that was floating around in my head come a Monday afternoon in one of the busiest periods of my life so far! But there are other things I'd like to explore that allow me step that bit closer to cultivating the kind attitude which allows me to just get on and do stuff. So the first one is called Aleks' Brain and I didn't mind sharing it but I can't promise that they will all be public access!

I will however make an effort to share an associated photo... but the point of the book is it's real and it's offline... it's physically sitting in my conservatory begging to be played with!

The pens are good too! :)

So I've been quiet... I've been in here thinking....

Firstly this post is going to be a little personal, if you've read back through my posts or you will do... I never intended this blog to be so personal. I hope that in the future it needn't be so revealing and that I actually have some more local and community based stuff I am involved in to shout from the roof tops about.

But for now I want you to consider these three statements:

• I want to change the world.

• The world changes. I change.

• I already change the world a little every day.

I want to take a few moments of your time to think about perspective.
Now I am a person who deeply agrees with the first statement.
Many of my friends are too... on the whole that's why they are my friends, but most of us share more than that drive to make a difference.
We also share something more important and vital to how we view the world.
We're human and we struggle with our human brains... now this blog isn't about my mental health per say... although being ill has been the reason I've been so quiet for the first part of 2014 despite having plans to have written about six or seven posts on various things which have come up and begged to be written about!
It's a LOT of burden to want to make a difference... many of us unfortunately feel we're going against the current cultural norms if we speak out or stamp our feet... we shouldn't feel like this... we need to carry on talking AND listening.

Consider the second statement. Essentially we can't stop change... try as we might time moves on, we get a day older, we live, we grow etcetera etcetera! The world is dynamic... constantly changing and moving... and it takes us with it whether we want it to or not. Embrace this shifting... we're on a ride that isn't going to stop moving... so learn to relax into it... don't fight it... jumping up in the air doesn't defeat gravity... gravity is much bigger than you and constant jumping just makes you tired! :)

The third statement for me brings things full circle. I am already making a change.... if I'm thinking and acting in a changing way I am impacting my community... the ripples are already spreading and I don't need to make HUGE waves.... because if we all just ripple a little more BIG things can happen... but they don't need to... because small things do just as well.

I know this probably sounds like a weak answer to the worlds BIG problems! But you know what? It's really important to realise you can't solve them all alone... it FREES you up to actually start changing the things you can change.

I smile a lot... I am a VERY cheerful person... going back to my mental health for a minute... I often have a hard time with people believing I could possibly ever be depressed at all so sunny is my general disposition!
I make a point to smile AT people... and say please and thank you... and even... BLESS YOU in response to just normal stuff not just sneezes! It creates a connection between those around you, it also gets smiles returned and they get passed onto someone else because you just lightened the receivers world a little.

I want you to know how much changing that perspective makes a difference... recognising you already make a difference makes a difference. So put away the stick you're using to beat yourself up for:

• not completing all those projects you started
• not having cooked all the recipes you collected from last month's magazines which looked AMAZING
• not having found time to plant the seeds/bulbs/plants you bought last summer/autumn/winter
• anything else you just didn't do yet!

Spring is here NOW... and it's going to turn into the Summer somehow... be it a wet or dry, hot or cold.
Go out into the world and create some ripples.

Imagine this... Re-imagine this

Imagine this scenario…

A young man from migrates to the UK, he doesn’t have anywhere in particular to live when he arrives, so stays in different places and uses his network of friends to find work (cash in hand). He drinks and is physically violent towards his partner when he does. He has several romantic relationships with different British women, these result in an array of children to different mothers up and down the country, he never pays any maintenance for these children. He eventually he settles down in one place long enough to meet a young woman, a migrant from his home country, she doesn’t speak any English. She came here speculatively with nowhere to live either or any contacts she was just looking for a better life. They take jobs in the UK, they rely on the NHS but they don’t claim any additional welfare. They have a son and eventually get married. They only speak their native language at home and spend most of their time with others from their religious and cultural background at the large religious centre their community set up in their city they don’t integrate into the British way of life. As he grows up their son doesn’t speak English either, so when he gets to school he needs help learn the language as well. As their son grows up his mother can’t read is school books with him or help him with homework, his father doesn't really care. Later in her life despite living in the UK for many years the woman still doesn’t know more than a few words of broken English and relies on her husband has his own small business for work. When when she is widowed she relies on her teenage son to communicate with important stuff like taxes and bills…. You get the picture need I go on?

Are you niggled by this story? 

What is it that bothers you?

The people who arrive in the UK with no plan?

Their use of an NHS, which they haven’t paid taxes into?

The fact that they cannot properly support their child’s education?

Do you worry that this is going on now all the time?

That this is an increasing problem which we can't stop?

That our boarders are going to be flooded by people who have no intention of integrating into British life?

Then Re-imagine...

How do you feel if I reveal that the year that these migrants came to the UK was 1945/6? And although I took some small liberties with the facts that essentially this story describes my grandparents?

My grandfather was stationed in Perth, Scotland during WWII and never went home to Poland. My grandmother was brought to the UK by the British army when she was released from forced labour when Germany was liberated. She too was Polish.

When I read this editorial via my friend +Andy Pakula on Thursday of this week. I was not surprised. I was pretty used to racism by the time I was at school. When you’re white the prejudice is pretty insidious anyway and a great number of people convince themselves that it isn’t that bad, because it’s not like you look that different so they can say what they like.  Since “They’re not racist but…” you have a weird name… where were you born… when did you come to Britain… will you ever go home…. why do you celebrate those odd festivals… what is that strange food in your lunch box?

No child deserves to be bullied. Full stop.But the constant stream of bigoted and racist rhetoric in the media and by certain sections of society is affecting the lives of vulnerable children today.

Children repeat what they hear at home. When was I trainee teacher in 2008 my classes generally struggled with my foreign name, but I would tell them about my cultural background and some of the history of my family knowing that there were now again first generation British Poles like my father in classrooms in our school and it was important that these children were welcomed. One day I had a really memorable conversation with a child I will call Ryan. Ryan was 10 and White English/British, his family had emigrated to Australia and then subsequently returned to the UK. He was “local” he was a nice kid, but what came out of his mouth still haunts me. It went something like this:

How is it being back in Hometown Ryan? My dad’s still not got work Miss, he dad says it’s all people who come over here Miss, like the Polish, Miss… coming over here taking the jobs, not paying their taxes.

I was dumbstruck. This child was barely 10 years old. And here I was listening to the insidious racist line that has been repeated in this country generation after generation. Replace the nationality or race of the “incomer” but the message is always the same. I remember my response was something like, “Excuse me Ryan but I pay my taxes” To be honest having attempted to teach Ryan percentages the week before I’m not even sure he knew what taxes were. But most importantly despite, all my training and experience, I had no idea how to challenge him.  If he’d said something about another students skin colour, or used some identifiably racist slang to describe a particular person or group … I had a protocol for that! My brain would have kicked into action and something would have been done. But in between my ears was a small voice that told me I had no right to question the “God given right of the English” to be masters of their own land.

You see it’s not just about what we say to our children. It’s the way we pass on our insecurities, here was a child whose whole identity was wrapped up with defending the home of his ancestry and that message is getting stronger. It’s in the media, the government use it to spread fear and hatred. And I occasionally pause as I write my name and nationality on a job application form. I’m British, I was born here, but what if they don’t believe me, maybe they’ll assume I don’t speak very good English, maybe I made up the qualifications, my grandparents were aliens after all.

Welcome to 2014- An Individualist Like Me

I have been racking my brain lately... or rather it's been racking itself. Recent events in my life have kind of picked my head up and given it a shake. Therefore I have found the contents rattled and spilling out at various points into conversations and meetings with others. Many of my friends are great listeners, many of them understand. But sometimes something just needs to be written as concisely and eloquently as possible and sent out into the world where it can live on it's own.

I have a serious problem with a word...

Freak- as defined in a Google search in these terms-

a person, animal, or plant with an unusual physical abnormality.
"a few freaks have been discovered, one amazing cat tipping the scales at no less than 43 lbs"

synonyms: aberration, abnormality, irregularity, oddity, monster, monstrosity, malformation, mutant;
freak of nature
"the mouse was a genetically engineered freak"

informal
a person regarded as strange because of their unusual appearance or behaviour.
"her books offer us the independent girl as something of a freak"
synonyms: oddity, eccentric, eccentric person, peculiar person, strange person, unorthodox person, individualist, free spirit, maverick, misfit; crank, lunatic; queer fish, oddball, weirdo, weirdie, nutcase, nut, nutter; odd bod; wacko, screwball, kook; case
"they were dismissed as a bunch of freaks"

My reasoning is this... I've been called this... I've been called lots of things, but this one hurts to remember and for some reason memories including this word are more vivid than most. It was used to describe me and my twin sister by some particularly idiotic members of my school community.

I think the reason it hurts so much is that as an insult it's true... I could ignore other words... like whore... or even the boys who found it ironic to shout.. HEY SEXY! I took these as untrue and therefore easily dismissed. But by definition my sister and I were and still are an irregularity... we're identical twins... we're rare and we're odd. We look and sound the same and once in our school uniforms despite our differing heights you'd have to know us very well to tell the difference. We also relish each others company, we're close and a conversation with my sister is even more rewarding to me than a conversation with any other person in the world. We talk we, philosophise, we share our separate spheres of knowledge knowing that the other will almost instantly understand if not accept our point of view.

The other parts of the definition that fits us very well is our unusual appearance. We're taller than average... especially me... and we're of Polish extraction which means in our case fair hair, extremely high cheek bones, piercing blue eyes, a pronounced nose and a strong jaw line... I recently described this to a friend in the following terms. "You know when you look at a Polish woman that if you mess with her she'll break your spine."

But the reason I'm writing this isn't to bemoan the bullying of my teenage years hurtful as it was. I'd like to reclaim the definition... I particularly like this chain of synonyms in the definition... individualist, free spirit, maverick

Being individual is hard for anyone. People can fail to separate your identity from that of your family or friendship group, but for me as much as I love my sister we really struggled with developing separate and distinct identities. With a few of my traits this meant almost suppressing things about myself in order to make myself different from her.

She was markedly alternative so I tried my hardest to be as "normal" as possible...
She was the Goth... I was the one in Marks and Spencer clothes
She was alternative and Pagan... I was the mainstream Christian
She was gay... I was straight
She did a science degree... I did an arts one

However I think that as get older I discover that really I am just as individual and unique as I choose to be. I like to dress in my own style and to suit my own shape. By beliefs are wide and varied and take in many different views and traditions. I'm bisexual and also pretty uninterested in living alongside any predefined gender stereotype either. And after my Music degree I studied IT instead and now spend my work time divided between training systems and using the creative technologies to design learning packages.

I guess those who called me a freak were right... but not for the reasons they were thinking of. Prejudice and fear is the root of many scenarios that result in bullying and insults, however I've moved on so far from where I was when I was 11 that I think that in my 30th year I intend to embrace my real self and be free-spirited and maverick. It's really the only way to make a difference.

Closing Doors Report- A Level Physics

On Monday a report was published about the gender bias of advice and encouragement given to girls to study those subjects traditionally studied by boys. From the Institue of Physics (IOP) website-

Professor Peter Main, Director of Education and Science at IOP, said, “For the first time, the full picture of the effect that gender stereotypes have on students’ subject choices is becoming clear and the results are very worrying.
“We are highlighting these findings to encourage schools to think seriously about gender balance. Leaving these stereotypes unchallenged creates unfair and unnecessary barriers and stops students achieving their full potential.”
The report investigates six subjects – physics, maths and economics, as three that show a male bias; and biology, English and psychology, three that show a female bias.
Although individual teachers are clearly important, the evidence strongly suggests that it is the school culture that determines whether the damaging effects of gender imbalances are overcome or at least reduced.

The statistic which was quoted on BBC 6Music News throughout the morning was "1 girl to every 4 boys studying A Level Physics". I can relate to this, I kicked up a fuss to get a second Physics class to run in the correct options block at high school so I could take both Physics and English! (My other three subjects were Chemistry, Music and Maths- I was part of that great experiment/total f*ck up known as AS levels ;) )

I was the only girl in my class of six.

I did feel like there was an expectation I would never be top of the class or excel in the subject, that I had to prove myself, to my male teachers, to my peers in the class. More was expected of me too- I was a girl- I had an example to set in terms of behaviour and standards, my work should have been tidier and I wasn't expected to easily understand the maths to do the mechanics equations!

The report highlights that it is generally the school environment that affects the choices young women take, and my school, though it had an exemplary exam record and was often highly praised for many things, did have quite arcane views on gender equality. I had been encouraged to study Physics by my lower school science teacher Mrs Gwillam, who unfortunately had left by the time I got to the Sixth Form. She was a wonderful and inspiring teacher who gently took her time to tell me that I would do well at Physics and I shouldn't be put off by the obvious and wide spread male domination of the subject.

I did, as I said before take English Literature as well in my AS (lower sixth) year... a fact that one of my teachers and I used to enjoy joking about since he had gone back to college to study it later on. Although as I progressed through the modules I, more than once, found my exams for these two subjects scheduled in the same date and time slots... statistically the combination of these two subjects is so rare that it's not seen as a problem to the exam boards to sit them in the same period.

That said there are two shining moments of acceptance from my male colleagues which really stick out for me.
Once in the first year when we had a quite frankly dozy newly qualified teacher. One day while he was on a course he left us some work from the textbook. We were already struggling as a group to catch up after his confusing and unstructured lessons, so my classmates were bamboozled by the task and asked me if I would teach them what I understood. I stood up in front of the class and explained the principles on the board to our group. It won me a huge amount of respect from my peers and they began to come to me for help. It was nice... Although they rarely called me by my first name... I was Zig... One of the boys.
A similar exchange happened in our final term... One of our teacher's decided to ask us to bet if we could answer a question using a stack of monopoly money... I stood up and explained an equation from the astrophysics module of the course. The rest of the class were agog... They just couldn't see how I'd worked out the answer so quickly. I was of course a girl... so I was allowed to be confusing... my sex could be used to dismiss my ability as quickly as praise it!

I did for a short time consider studying a combined degree of both Music and Physics as there is a huge and significant overlap in the subject, but it's not a widely offered combination and in the end I was genuinely put off by the male bias I encountered. When I did finally get to study Music I did find that in the first year of my degree I was at a slight advantage to the rest of my Practical Music Technology class in the understanding of how sound is created and recorded. I was also significantly more advanced in my expectations of technology than my arts peers, but by then I was up against a whole new set of prejudices against those who wish to study music and not focus on performance with the goal of becoming famous/professional musicians!

If I had my time again I would go back and apply to study Physics at one of the best Physics schools in the world! So if you're a young woman and you're reading this don't let your school put you off enjoying Physics... you're most probably brilliant at it and you should totally study it. Your brain is just as fantastic and inventive as any man and even though I love The Big Bang Theory physicists aren't all like Sheldon Cooper!

Everything's coming up violets- Change resistance and gardening

If you've come looking for something deep and meaningful today, sorry I'm all out! I have frivolous and opinionated and probably wildly wrong instead... this post is going to ramble... sometimes I just have to.

My room/view sometime in the early noughties!

I feel deeply connected to certain places... I loved the house I grew up in. In particular I loved two things. I loved the view from my window and I loved the garden. My room was a shrine to flora! The 1990s had brought me a fabric with ribbons and bows and imagined flowers set on a yellow and white stripe. When IKEA had that advert where they encouraged Britons to chuck out their chintz I believed they had my fabric in mind!

My room looked out over a large back garden. The fortuitous plot which the natural incline of the hill had provided gave me a view straight into the trees from my bed. And when I stood by the window I could really only see greenery unless I was compelled to open the window wide, crane my neck and snatch an almost hidden view of Dudley Castle!

Now my parents had created from scratch pretty much everything I could see below my window. The garden, when they had moved into the house in 1983, was just a post construction muddy slope with no topsoil and more importantly NO WORMS! I was born in the spring of 1984 and my parents had set about planning a garden which tried to bend the strange and unusual shaped plot to their will. As that garden grew so did I... parts flourished, some things over grew, they changed, they adapted. It once accommodated an entire playset- swing, slide, see-saw, climbing frame. One hot summer my grandfather built us a never completed brick Wendy House in one corner. I learnt from my father about soil composition and how to dig, hoe, edge lawns, and plant seeds. I learnt about the various creepy crawlies that dwell beneath our feet and even now I have the most beautiful and vivid memory of, as a small child, singing gently to the butterflies as they rested on flowers and truly believing they heard me. 

18 months ago my parents moved from my childhood home forever, a place I loved and I'll never see that view again. That which was once my haven will never be again... and for many reasons lately this has made me feel a deep sense of loss.

I am as resistant to change as the next person. We fear the unknown, it is what makes us prejudiced, it is what makes us wary of others. And in the 21st Century in particular I believe it is often the reason we don't know our neighbours. I moved from my parents home in 2007 and I live on an estate... I'm surrounded by other houses. I once made a rough calculation of how many households lived within a 100m radius of my front door. I got to about 90 households and then sort of gave up with the scale of it all... That could easily be 300 to 500 people living right on top of where I am and I have no idea about who most of them are! Most of the time I try not to think about it, doing so might make me go a bit bananas, but every so often it bothers me. Occasionally an ambulance will stop on our block and someone might be in trouble, or I'll hear a child crying or some other reminder, that behind our closed doors we're all living our separate lives.

And so I come to my garden at the front of my house.  British households tend to garden their back yards

and leave the front of the house to itself... unlike many of our American cousins who have porches and sit out front in a neighbourly way. If you started occupying a seat in a suburban front garden in the UK people would comment, it's just not the done thing! And this is why I love my front garden so much, I intend one day to put a seat out front, just to be subversive. Because when I garden the quite frankly meager patch of earth between my kitchen window and the pavement something magical happens. I see children playing, people stop and comment on how pretty things are looking. Dogs leap up to say hello and their owners stand and talk a while if they wish. I want to see a tiny revolution take place where I live... I want to see more people out in front of their houses. I want to be able to walk through my neighborhood and stop and chat with them about their flowers and their planting.

I've been out there today trimming the lavender and starting to sweep up leaves and put the place to bed for the winter. I've noticed something quite interesting in the past few weeks, considering we've reached December... my garden is resistant too. It's been resisting autumn... a couple of spring and summer flowering plants have had another go at waking up again before the winter... and very soon we'll get a hard frost one morning or some snow and all thought of them staying up all through the cold will fall quickly away. I am always deeply amazed by the skill of plants... from the tiniest origins they form into so much... stuff! The sweetly scented cuttings of lavender filling my green waste bin every December are testament that fact.

This winter everything is coming up violets for me. I planted some violets the summer before last and there doesn't seem to be part of the garden... pot or flowerbed which they don't seem to have infiltrated via their tiny light weight seed spreading! I love this, it feels like nature is helping me garden, adjusting my vision for the space, bending my will slightly. And so as I grow to love a new place and it grows for me I find myself settling season on season to find joy in the small changes I can make to my surroundings. And I attempt to become less resistant to the changes which are enacted upon me.

If you want to see pictures from my garden check out my Pinterest for some captured close ups of how I see my garden. http://www.pinterest.com/alezed/my-urban-paradise/