End of year musings

Property of Stormberry
The picture just wants to look like that.
So I let it.

As 2022 slips away, I've found myself listening to more viking-inspired music, mostly from Peyton Parrish. No, I'm not preparing to hop on a ship and go raiding, but there is something in that music that gets to me in this moment of my life. What does it make me feel? It makes me feel strong, like my capabilities are there, even if I'm tired, even if I have no idea how to continue or proceed with my thesis, if it feels like I am up against a giant: I am not giving up, I will strap on the shield, tighten my fingers around the axe or the sword and I'll keep on going.

Something I talked about in one of my videos was the Wheel of Life, which is like a pie chart for you to map important areas of your life, or whatever. I had one completed, based on a pre-made template, but it didn't really do much for me. In it there were areas I was scoring quite high (as in, 10), and so, as I was looking at it - with areas that are not important for me at all, or do not apply to my case, I decided to make a blank chart and fill it with the things I do want to concentrate on. The thing was, what do I want to concentrate on?

This took me a while, and I printed out many charts named them, colored them in, and slowly the final version is coming out. I want to chart areas that are important for me, over which I have some degree of control, and that I can measure to some degree of confidence. This is an experiment I will try to get on for 2023, as well as my planners and diaries channel. Boy, it already feels ominous, trying to come up with 52 topics to talk about next year. How will I manage? Right now, I don't know, but I will figure it out.

Planning

 

Property of Stormberry

I started a new YouTube channel dedicated to planners and diaries but un Spanish. I was inspired, in part, by my new planner and all the research I did around it, and also in part by the friends I talked about the ordeal of getting my planner. I've met these friends through a book club and through it we've talked about journaling and how do we journal.

In here I have this "thing" about the concept of "journaling". For me, journaling means writing a diary, recording events past and thoughts about things that have happened or I hope to happen, while "keeping a planner" or an agenda is more a matter of... well... planning. I make a difference between planning and recording. With the fanciful spreads of bullet journals and planners - full of painting, collaging and extensive use of stickers - the division between both ideas blur into inexistence.

I found the small slice where I could speak my mind and share a simpler, less decorated, more functional style. My friend Pri told me to break into the Spanish market, for she found there were not enough planner content in Spanish, and so I started. Little by little I started filming and uploading, and then I found myself selecting a date and planning out topics.

I have ideas from here to the end of the year, and then... then I'll have to come up with new ideas. But be it as it may, I am happy I can put this out. Maybe there's someone who can't enjoy videos in English, so they can watch mine. Maybe I can help someone to feel ok with their less than artistic spreads. Maybe I can help someone who doesn't feel like fitting into the bullet journal world. I want to believe I am helping someone, but I also enjoy this.

Waiting for my new filofax

 

Property of Stormberry
From my shopping cart
at filofax UK

It has taken quite sometime and a lot of luck, but I think my Personal Lockwood Zip Filofax is inching closer to my hands. I ordered this on October 2nd, and it landed on Customs here on October 20th. The tracker page filofax provided me with, showed where it was, because I could never get the tracking number to pop up on Costa Rica's Post Office. So, after a couple of days of no action, I started writing to all available contacts I could find, and on Tuesday, October 25th, I've got a reply to an e-mail I wrote, and got an opening, assuring me that the parcel was in Costa Rica (Yay!), so I had to send the paperwork. They provided a link, but it wasn't working.

That same day, I've got the number of Customer Service, called and got answered really fast. The guy who got my call was wonderful and sent me the paperwork and the address to send the paperwork. So, I printed out the pages, filled them, scanned them and sent it back. But I've got a bit vigilant now, and realized that my e-mail didn't pass through, and the notice was delivered to my spam folder. So I called again, checked and it seems the problem was that I sent some documents on JPG format and not on PDF format. So I printed out the images and rescanned the whole thing, and sent it again. So far, it seems it was gone through.

My purchase could be considered small, in the sense that I didn't order half the shop, with magnetic clips, washi tape, stickers, sticky notes and extra inserts (which I don't really need). For some, it might also seem like I ordered too much, like why order new A-Z coloured tab dividers, when I already have a set, or an extra transparent ruler page marker. For anyone wondering, I ordered those because I know I used them A LOT, like really a lot, so I rather have an extra ruler and an extra set of A-to-Z dividers of the kind I like, for when the ones I'll be using break or tear up beyond repair. And yes, I have also dividers, but those are not black nor colored.

In my personal experience, these products actually last for several years. My problem before was that the personal planners I had weren't made out of leather, so the binders themselves deteriorated before the dividers or the rulers broke (ok, I think I have 3 more personal rulers, but mostly brown or black, and I prefer transparent). My A5 planner is in leather, so I know those binders last so long that the dividers and rulers are gone before the binder ever does.

Unlike what you normally see, I don't plan on making huge set ups. I do plan to print out what I keep currently in my A-to-Z tabs, so I don't need to write it out over and over, and also because in printed version I can reduce the bulk all that info would amount to. I'm still don't want to run amok with inserts and ideas for my new planner before I get it in my hands... but I'm out here planning to get the minimal possible printed out stuff. Which trackers I do want to use, how to fit them in a smaller size and so on.

I plan & hope.

Little Grievances

 

Property of Stormberry

It has occured recently, that I had to face a very uncomfortable situation brought forward by what I felt like other people's inconsideration, and that made me mad, mostly because it wasn't discomforting me, but someone I care a lot about, and yes, me too.

Last week my friend and former classmate from the Master's studies - let's call her Andy - was here from her country of origin, for a week to work on her Master Degree Thesis. Andy and I are best friends since the first Quarter we shared in this program, which was in May of 2020. We were assigned to work a project together in a Macroeconomics class, and ever since we've been doing every single possible team assignment together, and have been messaging and talking nearly non-stop. Nearly because we have to eat, sleep and work, mind you.

Andy never really clicked with the rest of the class, and though I did speak to the others, neither of us could call any of the others "our friends". They were classmates, not our friends, and though I was out to help everybody I could, we didn't really kept in contact with them. So much so, I have heard others say that of the whole class, there were only two friends, and those were Andy and I. Nobody else had really friends. Maybe two guys - a clown and a more serious guy -  were close to be friends but they were more like joke-friends or party-friends.

Andy and I were so close, that when she came here to participate last year in the Globelix seminar, she stayed at my place. We share a similar ideology, we both wanted an emphasis in Labor (which we didn't get), and we both would like to get into the doctorate program and wish to do so together. We talk a lot, analyze together a lot od things and even share secrets.

By the end of last year, Andy got a really important calling at the Government of her country, and so, when she couldn't get through with some stuff in classes, I did my best to help her. But also, whenever I was lost with something, she was always quick to help me out and explain what I didn't get. I can say, we really have each other's backs.

Property of Stormberry

This year she has continued in the Government, so she has been slipping back with her thesis work, and so our professors' suggested she came here, away from work, so she could advance and talk directly with the professors. And she did so this past week. I took two weeks of vacations (because I had all that time to spend), and in the first one I made sure to plan a lovely stay for her, with a reservation at Astral Speakeasy, a hidden bar with a Speakeasy bar feeling to it, but also a trip to our favorite metaphysical store, a coffee tour, a trip to our Art Museum, Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks (there's no Starbucks in her country), and coffee at my favorite French pastry shop.

This time around we didn't stay late talking our heads off, as Andy came really tired. One can tell her jobs are taking a toll on her. Then, we had our week of thesis work, meeting our guidance professor and fixing meetings with friends.

From the begining, before her plane even took off, I told our former classmates that she was coming, what were our plans and if they wished to meet with her, that we should either organized a meeting of all of us together, or meet one by one. They wanted to meet all together, but the agendas were complicated. First, I offered to include everybody in the reservation for the Astral Speakeasy, but nobody wanted that. Then they suggested to meet on Wednesday, but that wasn't doable because we had a meeting that night with our favorite professor. Andy's and my favorite professor, mind you, because nobody else liked him. (He assigned too much reading material).

When I mentioned that, there were some comments for us to ditch the professor, but that wasn't going to fly. Anyway, we decided on Thursday, which was Andy's last day. So I told them that, because Andy's flight next day is early, we should meet in my city.

Then came Thursday. Suddenly people want to meet in the Capital City, not in my city (even though everybody couldn actually make it fir they wanted to), because two of the classmates work there until 5 pm and "they would have to take the bus". No matter how many times or how strongly I told them that for Andy and I it was not feasable, they insisted. They kept pushing and pushing, ignoring the fact that neither Andy and I had the time to go there, meet with them, come back, pack and sleep enough to get to the airport. They plainly didn't care, and were offended that I was being so mean as to impede others "who also like Andy very much" to finally meet with her in person (all our classes were online due to the pandemic).

The discussion ended when I told them that they could sure come pick up Andy at the Uni where we were working, and then drive her back to my place, because I wasn't going to go to the Capital City, and instead would finish all the errands and stuff Andy had to complete before her flight. So they've got offended. I guess they love her diearly, as long as they don't have to move a finger for her.

We ended up meeting in our city, and it was the most annoying  meeting ever. They didn't care she was there, but instead launched into a conversation among them, here and there bouncing topic off Andy. for instance, once they asked here what has she liked best of Costa Rica from what she has seen, and while she was thinking on the question, they started saying what they liked best, and completely forgot about her. She never got to reply, nor where they interested in hearing her opinion. I guess they were also mad that Andy and I made time to visit our favorite professor, and didn't prioritize them.

As expected, our meeting ended rather fast, and though we all did our best to be polite to each other, a clear riff came between us. They went away feeling offended because particularly I was so mean as to deny two of our former classmates the chance to meet Andy in person (two people who never even spoke to her, according to Andy), and impose on others my locating preferences. I went away feeling disappointed in them, on how they expect others to bend backwards to satisfy their wishes, regardless of the problems of discomfort that may cause to them.

Through the week, we have known a few things about them, how they made a disaster of an internship they were offered abroad, and how the very reason they like to boast about it (basically a scholarship paid spring break trip) was the reason the hosting institution issued complains about them. To Andy and I - committed, hard working students - it was horrifying to watch them laugh about skipping classes and spending their scholarship money on trips and booze. Unbeknown to them, that care about the opportunities they are offered, the way they abuse of what they are offered, was put in painful display also in that meeting and their attitude. Two of the classmates had a chance to enroll in their prefered emphasys because Andy and I decided to give up Labor for them. To help them, and they took that as their right to walk over us.

By holding into this small determination, I felt a bit vindicated. I didn't give in, andy stood by me, and we had an awesome day, with plenty of time to pack and rest.

Words are wild things

Property of Stormberry

 This month almost went by without me blogging, even though I was trying to blog at least twice a month. Who said that thing about words being wild things? Maybe I'm mixing up the quote and it goes more like "hearts are wild thing, which is why they are kept in cages". What a horrible idea. Wild things should be left free.

These past weeks have been crazy, as they usually are, but this time mostly in the sense that things seem to be unraveling at work. It's like a giant, long Mercury Retrograde has been shadowing everything, or maybe as if we were experiencing a particularly nasty epidemic of "stupid". When so many people around me behaves or speaks in such insanely stupid ways, I always find myself questioning myself about whether it's not me, that people can't be that stupid, nor is it statistically possible that so many people, being so stupid could be gathered in such a small space. Many years ago I had a nervous breakdown for this very same reason: I was overworked and it felt like no matter what I did, it never got ahead because everybody around me kept doing stupid things.

Back then I've got sick, and I remember my psychiatrist telling me "yes, all of them are stupid". Oddly, that wasn't reassuring, because if it would have been all in my head, I could work on it, but I can't work on curing other people from "stupid".

With time I realized that there was a reason why people were stupid around me, and the truth was worse: many people either had accepted jobs they were not prepared for, and so they were filling a position in which they had no idea what should they really be doing, which led to either micromanaging or to making things up. Others had accepted jobs they were originally prepared for, but then felt no need to refresh their knowledge and by then all they had of their knowledge was a diploma. And finally, some were there because they wanted to use their position to advance their personal agenda and couldn't care less about what happened to others or the company itself.

Source: magyarno.com

These days are threatening, and things have happened that shake the unsteady ground on which the spurious fortunes of many have been built. This isn't necessarily good for those who have worked honestly for what they have achieved, but it's certainly shaking a lot of people. Well, these past weeks have been like life had dealt the Tower Card over and over and over for these people. Sure, from time to time I have decided not to hold my tongue - like the time someone tried to claim credit on a work fo mine, saying we had done it together and I disabused the person of that notion, in front of everybody telling her that no, that work was entirely mine and her "contributions" were not in it, and as a matter of fact, I had received no contribution from her or anybody else.  Oh, right, because I'm now such a meanie that I don't consider a "Yes, I agree" as a contribution for the analysis of a 200+ page document.

And so, as the year slides on, and I grow older and wiser (and "wiser" in me might look mean to some, but then again, witches have always been considered mean by those who feel threatened by a free thinking person willing to standup for themselves), and it seems that the Tower energy is also sliding in, showing posers the extent of their lies.

You learn in society to mind your words, to be careful, to measure what you say, and often you wonder why so many people tend to avoid confrontation. I am one to avoid conflict. But then, if words can be accepted as wild things, and we are also encouraged to write and journal and express ourselves, I think we should also stand up and speak out. There is a difference between insulting and telling the truth, between being mean and telling your opinion. Some people might take the truth as an insult, but that only reflects on how they see what they do, and show that maybe they lie to themselves in order to pretend that their bad actions are actually "smart" or "strategical". It might also reflect how some people are afraid of the thoughts of others when they can't tolerate other people's opinions.

But also, insulting isn't telling the truth: insulting is insulting. Being mean isn't having an opinion, it's being mean. Truth is easily proved by confrontation: show facts, show data. Opinions - when you really have them -  can be explained and shown how you've got there. And also, an opinion is a thought, not an imposition on others. Opinions are not threatened by the opinions of others.

Words are wild things, but they are not to be caged, they are not to be repressed, but they are to be considered, thought well and understood.

Organizing Thoughts

 

Mind Map created with SimpleMind

Right now I started watching videos on Mind Mapping by Sheng Huang. I was doing my usual rounds on YouTube after work, cheking on planner videos and organization videos, mainly because more and more I'm leaning towards buying a new planner for 2023. You know, the Personal sized, zipped, leather variety of planners. Now it might sound like quite a mental leap to go from checking planners to watching mind map videos, but nobody said YouTube tends to be consistent in their offering of things they think you may like (or even nailing what you were looking for).

Mind maps are graphics you draw where ideas are written in a concentrated, concise form (let's say, fitting a bubble), and then are connected with other ideas through lines or arrows. The connection can mean anything, like a next step or an idea that's born from a previous one, or a relationship betweem two ideas. It's pretty freeform, not like a flowchart, where even the shape of the bubble has a meaning. The point in a mind map is to help you catch an idea you have, develop it in general lines (what comes next, what can be connected with it, what other parts or details it has, and so on), so you can either capture the idea and the review it before putting it to paper definitively. It could also work as a guiding general map for a project, where you can have a birdseye view of the parts of the project and what goes into each part, or how they relate to each other.

As I was watching the video (and after I have spent also some time copying into a word file some info I want to migrate eventually from my A5 Malden to my Personal Lockwood - when the time comes), the idea occured to me, that maybe now a mind map could help me clear out some of the many mixes I had in my head regarding my thesis. Spoiler alert: it didn't. But as I was watching one of the videos, I went into the App Store and typed "mind map" and hit enter. I've got a couple of options - and why is it that the add part of the app is always so fantastic, but then the app itself is not so much. I started tweeking the app, tried it out with the general topic of my thesis, and though I've got some ideas landed on it, it just wasn't working for me. Things were hidden and I couldn't see the whole thing. It didn't feel like something I could actually work my way.

On the videos, the youtuber was working on paper, in a Traveler's Notebook and using two frixion pens, a blue and a red. Though he was constricted in space, his process seemed more clear and more manageable that what the app was doing for me on a space that was supposed to be more flexible. There I've got thinking of my braindump notebooks, which I use haphazardly, and which are the cause of why I lose information (because I forgot I didn't wrote it down in my filofax, but in the current braindump notebook, a spiralbound notebook I would love more if the lines of the pages weren't so bold). I have not tried yet to do the mind map exercise in my current filofax, but I must admit that it did get me thinking: if I start doing mindmaps, would it be sustainable in a personal size planner? I tend to write a lot, and my fountain pens are pretty much M-nibbed. Even my F-nib Lamys write bold like hearty M-nibs. So, shall I rethink my pens or my planner choice?

The mind map hype may end up in nothing, but I did got thinking about how different ways of planning and organizing ideas can coexist in different planning systems. I will try out the mindmapping, see if it's something for me or not, and I'll try to keep you posted.

Reflections & Moving On

 

Property of Stormberry

Life is a constant flow of movement, where all kinds of elements enter, roll around and move out. This is the thing in which we live, we could say. For some of us, some characteristics are desirable and valuated, like "stability" and "dependability", but in the end we must get to terms with the fact that even though there are things that will accompany us through the most or the whole of our life journey, most of things will eventually fall out. And such is people and the emotions we tie to them.

There is someone - I doubt to say "in my life" because, really, how much in my life is he? - for whom I have always harbored marked feelings. Not always positive feelings, but feelings are feelings. With him I had always been in that situation where you feel you have strong feeling, but they are a mixed bag of "I like him" or "I enjoy his company" with "I can't stand him" or "why isn't he dropping dead?". Let me put it like this: do you know that kind of person that you would really like to like, but can't avoid disliking? Like, you really have good reasons to like them, and they have some features you consider just amazing, but at the same time they also have features you would never want around you? Yeah, that one.

Heads up, toxic and manipulative people are like that.

So, there's this person whom I know, who is like that, and whom I couldn't quite ever got to love nor managed quite to ignore, though that last part isn't all that so: I have been able to ignore him for long periods in my life, when we moved in different circles and didn't saw each other. Him not being there never meant a feeling of something missing. However him being there always meant a rolling thought in my mind.

We used to have long conversations, and there was a time when we exchanged e-mails, and I enjoyed them very much. But then, as we came closer and started talking more, things started cracking. I still enjoyed things of our exchanges, but then these cracks - in the form of lies piled on top of more lies - started building up and I found it harder and harder to muster love and care for him. Yet I still remained his friend, but I started the process of "closing doors".

I call "closing doors" the process of cutting topics out of a relationship. Imagine that every relationship in your life is like a house, and each room of that house is a topic of conversation or a topic of life. As the relationship progresses, you realize that there are certain topics that are problematic. What I do, is that I shut the door on that topic and no longer discus it with that person, and so a room in the house of the relationship is closed.

This happens and it's natural, I believe. It might even happen that some doors need to be closed and then, after a while, they can be tried again and slowly be visited and opened. It may also happen that in a relationship you go on closing and closing doors until you have basically closed the whole house, and when the house is closed, there's no real relationship.

This man and I actually would have a lot of rooms with doors open, or so I had thought for the longest of time, and why I held onto: he's one of those rare people with whom I potentially have nearly all doors open. But then came the lying. There were stupid, small lies, and then revisiting the past and retelling of facts, and things piled up and grew to a point where I remained standing, thinking if actually there were no rooms at all, because he had lied just about everything. And I mean everything.

Thankfully I have always doubted of him, and since I ran into him again some seven years ago, I made sure to google everything he told me (that could be googled), and I kept a record in my journal of some of the things he said, and later realized he was contradicting himself over and over with different versions of the same story or multiple denials of it. So, I can say I was warned by the way he relates to facts, the truth and the things he thinks he can tell me. And I have told him many times that I can tell when he lies - and mostly I could.

The shock came when I realized that some fundamental things that he was supposed to know (we are both economists) not only he didn't, but when I was correcting him (because I happen to have studied them particularly), he kept gaslighting me and denying my facts and insisting in the validity of his lies. This is when the bubble broke. Suddenly I was thinking of all the things he has said, which I just assumed to be true and that may have been false as well. That's when the house vanished into thin air.

In spite of everything, it is hard to move on. I will win nothing by calling him, shaking him and screaming in his face "what was the point of lying to me?", because no matter what he says, I can't no longer trust he would be telling the truth. Gods he lies about insignificant things, such as when he said that "you don't serve different types of meat in one meal". Really, he did say that, dead serious, like it was a known rule of etiquette. And I'm sure he has eaten bacon cheeseburgers and meatlover pizzas. And if he's so desirous to lie in such things, and has also lied about the books he claims to have read, the people he claims to have talked to and the things he allegedly knows, what else is he capable of lying about?

He's not the only one I have gone through a vanishing-house experience like this, nor will he be the most painful one, but it is painful nonetheless.

I still remember and I still cry thinking of my once best friend of 20 years, in whom I trusted so deeply, so blindly, only to find out that all had been a lie, only to have been a vehicle for her to embezzle another friend of mine.

It's always hard to move on, to let go someone from your life, but these things happen and we can survive them.

Mid-year filofaxing

 First of all, blessed Litha to all! Today is the longest day of the year, which not everybody celebrates, but still, in the Northern Hemisphere we have the day with more sun light hours of the whole year. In the Northern Hemisphere they have the day with the fewer hours of daylight of the year. However, all in all, we still have - no matter where we are - 24 hours in the day, for us to spend, plan, fill, waste as we desire or as we could.

Property of Stormberry

Each first Sunday, as you may know, there is a Philofaxy Meeting via Skype, were we talk about all sorts of topics, and there´s always something about planners. Not to mention that it also happens that you get the chance to pick the brains of true Filofax Connoisseurs such as Steve Morton (THE Mr. Philofaxy) and Graham Rhind among others. For instance, the other day I was pondering about my current planner, an A5 Filofax Malden Ocher, which you can see in this picture, and which always tends to fatten through the year like a Christmas piglet or a Thanksgiving turkey. You see, as the world continues to change, and I had been going out to coffeeshops in order to work on my thesis - the change of scenary does wonders for my inspiration. However, since I haven´t been going to the office daily as in the pre-pandemic days, each time I go out I have to ensamble my bag, and it is a struggle, not to mention I always forget something. One of my struggles recently was the planner question. My filofax is so big and so heavy, it practically fills my whole bag, and if I add my laptop, and a book, it breaks my back.

Property of Stormberry

So, as I was podering on this question, I started thinking about going back to the Personal Size. But I wanted more. I have old binders in Personal size, which was the first size I tried out with Filofax, but those are ruined. I really "worked them to the bone", so none of them are in... working condition. Now, I do have another one, a Saul Book personal size binder a friend gifted me, but that one is so pretty, so delicate, that I don't have the heart to push it through the kind of treatment I normally give to my planners. So, aditional to a personal size, I was thinking I needed something durable, but also something that can, somehow be compressed. That meant basically a personal size, leather, zippered filofax.

Through the Philofaxy meetings I've got to learn of some of the options I had in that area that fit my requirements, and from then on, I went on researching. In that regard I'm still pondering on my options and what would really work for me, as it sure will end up growing big, and I know I tend to put strain also on the rings themselves, and personal sizes usually don't have rings that go past 23 mm (it was 23 mm, right?). At the same time, I have to consider the reduction in the page size. I know I can work my planning in a Personal size, but when it comes to the pages for note taking, the size is too inconvenient, specially for someone who takes copious notes as me.

I'll probably consider this matter from here to october-november when the time comes to order the new inserts, or the new planner.

Property of Stormberry (the five first diagrams).

Through the meetings, I also had the chance to talk to Graham Rhind, with wnom we have had an interesting conversation regarding planning systems such as the Chronodex and all it's variations. One thing I've seen in his videos (he has a YouTube channel), is how he integrates his version of the Chonodex in his inserts. He calls his version Zirkuluak, and it's basically a ring and a half for a whole of 17 hours of daily planning, from 6 am (or 6.00 hrs) to midnight. It takes a bit more space than a regular chronodex, a spirodex or my simple concentric rings, both in 24 hour options and the one I use starting at 4 am (4:00 hrs) and ending at midnight.

I made these "chronodexes" in 2,5 cm and 3 cm size in order have a stamp made out of it. That's the one you can see in blue stamping ink in my filofax pages.

When talking to Graham Rhind, he mentioned that something he doesn't like is the difference in size in the hour slots between the inner and the outer rings. It does make sense if you are trying to mark or section quarter or half hours. The way I use it is less precise, and rather more of a coloring of the our blocks. I used to use arrows and lines to connect the colored sections with the detail of the meeting or the appointment. Then, actually seeing how Mr Rhind arranges his Zirkuluak in the pages, I thought of another way of working: putting the chronodex in a side of the day space, coloring the hour blocks corresponding to the appointment, and then writing down the appointment detail and coloring the first line of it to make the connection and helping explain the different blocks.

I'm still working on this new way of planning, so I'll probably keep you posted on how my new planning journey progresses.

A Question of Inks and Politics

 The other day I was surprised to find a post or a tweet or something like that from Goulet Pens, an online fountainpen & ink store, that stated that due that it has been brought to their attention that the name and imagery of the Bernanke Red ink was racist, they where going to stop selling Noodler's products until they've got a satisfying answer from the owner, Nathan Tardif. I found that strange, and went to check my bottle (I have a bottle of Bernanke Red in my collection, along with Rome Burning, Atlantic Salmon, Firefly, Aurora Borealis, Apache Sunset, and 54th Massachusetts), and checked the lable. 

Source: Reddit

Bernanke Red is, evidently a red color ink, and depicts Ben Bernanke with horns and the hammer and sickle of the Soviet flag.

Now, for context, I'd like to point out that there is a Bernanke Black ink and in it Ben Bernanke has no horns nor Soviet symbology. I don't know the whole of Noodler's inks and the different names, but I do remember an interview with Brian Goulet from Goulet Pens, where Nathan Tardif said he tended to give controversial names to his inks or some of them. I do remember, for instance, that I've got Atlantic Salmon, a pink ink when there was no more Hellfire, the original pink ink I wanted. 54th Massachussets was a name selected after a Regiment of the Union, from the American Civil War, which had African Americans join and which failed to pay them, even though they had a hard time in the war, according to Nathan Tardif. So yes, the controversial names and topics it has chosen are part of the brand.

Source: Amazon

I admit that I am not all that well educated about the Hebrew religion nor have a deeper knowledge of Judaism and the issues Jewish people have gone through other than what we learn in school, so maybe the deeper layers of hurt created by this picture are invisible to me. I read comments that say that Jews have been molested and told to "show their horns", something communist and witches and Pagans have also been told. Personally, I never understood the image to be a matter of "jews are bad" but more of a reference to how people can see the actions of the Federal Reserve (the Fed) as good (black ink) or bad (red ink). Hurt, however, needs to be addressed, which I believe Mr Tardif did. This apology is not mine to accept, and I have not heard of anyone from the Jewish community accepting it or not.

I came to know Noodler's inks some years ago, through a sample set I bought from Goulet Pens, and fell in love with 54th Massachusetts, even though I am not a person who likes blue or blue inks. 54th Massachusetts was the ink that made me make peace with blue ink after... well, after highschool, though I believe I stopped using blue ink when I was 15, and retook it when I was... 40? I ordered my first bottle of 54th Massachusetts from Goulet Pens, and I think I'm still using that one. As soon as things get back to... "sort of normal", I plan to restock and order some more inks, just to make sure I have all I need, and that means more 54th Massachusetts. I may even order a bottle of Bernanke Black, who knows?

I like the inks and I like their colors, their quality, and the amount I get for the money I pay. I like that the bottle is very simple and the lables have interesting art (on some of them). I don't know enough of the company or the owner in order to join a boicot campaing, and I have seen from him a swifter action in the face of controversy than I have seen from bigger brands or influencers. So, in the measure of my means, I will probably continue supporting this brand, while I'll also purchase inks from other brands as well. It's not a matter of exclusivity, and I am buying the ink, not the ideology. For me, clearly the names and the art are a way of marketing, not to promote his libertarian views, but to create buzz, amek people talk and get morbid interest reaching for his products. Maybe one day Noodler's will be able to break free from the controversy to sell his inks, and until that day, if this has been working for him, he will keep doing it. Why not?

Art Journaling

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Journaling has many reasons and fulfills many purposes for different people. It's not only a record keeping system to collect things that happened, but also a way to record emotions, thoughts and all sorts of memories, expressions, desires, fantasies and so on. One could say that journaling is the free-for-all place where you do whatever you want and/or need to do. Anything goes.

I started journaling at the age of 10, though maybe even earlier, as I always loved to write and always loved to store my thoughts and secrets in written form. From this time on, journaling formed for me as a way to record the many thoughts and conversations I had in my head. (Much like this blog, but holding back nothing). My journals were always worn and battered, with broken spines much like paperback books, but usually closed well. I was never a daily writer, though in my first journal I think I tried that, and as it didn't work, I moved to the system I currently have: "Write whenever I feel like it".

With time, I started adding here and there a newspaper clipping, or a recipe or a nice napkin, though I do have had a "junk box" where I stored all the pretty napkins, postcards, pieces of paper, and stuff I collected through life. You know, the kind of treasures that are usually called "ephemera". My journals still closed and more and more they were packed with words to the very edge of the page. My thoughts got more complex and here and there I added graphs and ideas for formulas on economic issues I wanted to solve.

It took decades and journaling sessions with a friend in Germany for me to start adding more, to paste things, decorate and going to the point where my journals couldn't close, but the pages fanned out and the spines started to rip, the covers slowly bending and detaching from the body. And yet, I still keep mainly writing.

A couple of years ago, through YouTube, I found out about sketch journals and art journaling, and I was astonished. I love watching videos of people art journaling or taking their sketch journals to some place and draw or paing in them and do art, but I often wonder how one looks back at an art journal. Do people fix memories to the art created? How? What kind of memories? Or are they emotions? And can one recall them exactly or that's not even the point?

Maybe I will art journal at one point in my life, but I need words and prose so much for my journaling, that even if I ever get to art journal, I will probably still keep a prose-journal too.

Drawing and painting is something that has interested me for a long time. I used to draw quite a lot back in the day and enjoyed it very much, but then I stopped and decided to give all my time and all my effort to writing, and then to studying. Maybe an art journal would be a way for me, to start getting back into my old, rusted hobbies. We shall see, but in the meanwhile and for the foreseeable future, I will continue putting pen to paper and writing away my thoughts.

Study Blogging

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 On the 19th of this month, while celebrating the Quinquatria with the girls of the informal coven, one of them asked me to take a picture of her bubble tea. She's a booktuber/bookstagrammer, and she took the chance to vlog the process, and as she pointed her camera at me, she called me a "studygrammer". My reaction was "What?????". 

Am I a studygrammer?

As most people in the planet, I have a wide range of interests, but maybe, the most prominent of my interests are books, comfort and the aesthetics related to writing, reading and researching. As such - and since I spend a large chunk of my life studying - I search and share a lot of pictures labeled as #studygram, mostly because these include handwriting, notebooks, books and all sorts of stationery. But am I a studygrammer? I would have thought I'm not, and rather I would say, that if anything, I'm more a foodstagrammer, if I'm any kind of -stagrammer. 

Property of Stormberry

The curious thing about lables is that they often not match. One thing is how you see yourself and another is how other people see you. And it's not even a matter of your view of yourself against the collective view of the rest of the world. Take this snapshot of my IG feed: what do you see there? Maybe you see the coffee, or your eyes go to the cocktail, or to the journals, or you interpret the journals as books and notebooks and think these are study stuff. Or you see the witch-haul. Like interpreting a Tarot spread, different people with see different things and if asked to lable it something, there will be different lables including the all-catching "lifestyle".

I see my feed and I think that this is but a fraction of who I am and what I do, and even from this I can interpret something that might be entirely different than what others see.

So, who is right?

Property of Stormberry

Nobody and everybody. Factually, physically speaking, there is only one me, but at the same time there are millions and millions of me, and I'm not talking of the multiverse, but the millions of me that live in the minds of the people who know me (that includes you, dear reader), and all those me-s are real, even if they are different from al the other me-s and the me that I know. There is no "right" about that, there is just "there is". So, my "me", the one I know and live with, is not a studygrammer, but someone who enjoys studygram and studyblr, but the me in my friend's head is indeed a studygrammer. And we both can coexist, even if in different planes.

The point of this is, if you are you in your head, and someone else sees the facts of you, but in their head you exist with a different form, should you  try and be like the you in that person's head, or should you try to reshape the you in that person's head to match the you you see? Unifying the image of you in the minds of everybody must be a very exhausting exercise and quite futile, as it is impossible they would mach. Besides, what's the real benefit of having everybody seeing you in the exact same way? Why would that be better than how things are with different versions of you running around the world?

Think about that, and when you do, when the answer starts to clear in your head, take a moment to also think why the opinion of others could hold any power over you.

Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe you could reclaim your freedom, be you, an independent, strong and wonderful you, and let all the other you-s live out there, freely.

What is really adding to your life?

Property of Stormberry

It is a common place to value and desire the truth above all, and despise lies, but inspite of that, we are surrounded by lies. The fact is, everybody lies. When someone says that they never lie, they are right then lying. You may not outright lie (all the time), but you may be lying by omission, which is when you leave out a piece of the truth and you let others get to wrong conclusions. That's also a form of lying.

It's also lying when you affirm something you are not 100% sure of, and you don't clarify that you are not 100% sure it is so, or you say it in a way - to save yourself in case it turns out false - that still gives the idea that this thing you say it's true. So, as you can see, we all lie, and we are all told lies, all the time. However, in the face of all these lies swirling around us, we take different attitudes. Some decide to "ration" their lies and tell them only when they feel it's needed - needed to protect, for instance, someone else or themselves -, and other may choose to use lies to joke, entertain or make things more interesting. Yet others may choose to benefit themselves or someone/something, often disregarding the damage they may be causing to the people who believe they are being truthful.

It also happens that we tell lies to others, but also to ourselves. We tell lies to ourselves about ourselves, about our situation, our environment, and also about others. Relationships are a fertile ground where we tell ourselves a lot of lies. We justify the behavior of someone towards us because we don't want to face what's really happening, we don't want to break illusions we've built (positive or negative) and we wish to remain in the safe world we have created, even if it's all built up upon the lies we ourselves have concocted.

I believe I have lied for a lont time to myself about someone. I may have been trying to believe that there was a connection, and though there might be a connection, it may not be of the type, the depth and the nature I have imagined it to be. It doesn't matter how perceptive you otherwise are, these lies to yourself are hard to pinpoint because you purposefully don’t want to see them. I'm still in the fence about this situation, but as I was talking to a friend of mine about it, she told me: "this person is so toxic. Really, what are they adding to your life?", and that got me thinking.

What are they adding to your life?

I would have jumped immediatelly to explain how we have many shared experiences, and how this person is the one person I currently know and understand my background for many of my ways of seeing the world. I would have said that this person shares so many of my building experiences and knowledge, that they are the best qualified in my life to get how and why I see things. But before I could answer my friend's text, I stopped to think, and I questioned myself "Do they?".

And here is the tricky thing, because it doesn't matter that we are contempporaneous, that we grew up in the same neighbourhood, that our parents belonged to the same party and they worked for the same sector/company, or that they and I studied the same career in the same university at the same time. We are not equall, and shared memories do not mean that understanding is automatic. I had to go through old journals, check my records (because my memory is very bad), and a patterns seems to emerge: I am the one trying to make our connection and our conversartions deep, while they trade in gossip and unfounded conspiratorial misinformation. We may have walked down the same path, side by side, but we are not in the same page.

It's a lie I've told myself and I keep telling myself, because I do want this connection to my past, I don't want to lose it, but I must prepare myself to face the music: this person is a stranger to me and has nothing to add to my life. And it doesn't matter the value of what I can give them,  they are not prepared to see it for what it is. What I could give them would be wasted on them.

Love, love, love

 

Source: Hola!

One of the most complicated journeys I'm embarking in this year, is a journey of love. This journey is more about making connections and allowing myself to get in a relationship with someone, extend trust to someone else and get out of my shell, try not to be so judgy, and give it a chance. Yes, I mean exactly that: give a chance to love.

This year I started seeing a psychologist with the intention of working on my shadow, as you know (I think I wrote about this last year), and as part of my process, I want to understand the way I develop relationships with others, and also, learn to learn from them, be more tolerant (and not just cast out every single partner I have under the umbrella lable of "gods! they are just so stupid!"), and also learn to be participant in a relationship in a way that really adds to the relationship.

With my psychologist I'm learning that is also part of working on yourself, to work on your relationships with others. Yes, it would be so much easier if I could do all my work solo - because I am such a delight to work with! - but then there's what I do and who I am and how I react when I'm with others. And I think I can be really mean to people in my romantic relationships. 

Yesterday I went for an extended coffee with a friend who has recently married their partner of 10 years. Their relationship has been very traditional, and so, now that they are living together, a lot of issues surface that seem quite astonishing to me. Astonishing mostly because these are things that are usually ironed out slowly, in time, in today's relationships, where people start living together slowly, spending a night, then a weekend, then a couple of days, a couple of weeks together, until they finally decide to move in together for good, and then, after some years of this, decide whether they want to get married.

In their relationship and their new troubles I found an interesting window on also how relationships work when there are changes and how love can or can't carry you over them. This has also inspired me to pack my travelbag for this journey of love, to remember that sometimes it might be worth remaining on a given path even if I find little annoyances that can be worked over. It's not going to be a short journey, I'm sure of it, but it will be one worth making.

New Laptop

Property of Stormberry

It has come the time (ok, it came over two weeks ago), when I had to replace my laptop for a new one. The last time I replaced my laptop was on... 2014 or 2015, I believe. It was when I was in the middle of my Accounting thesis and my laptop of back then (a 10.5 inch ACER) just... gave up. Then I bought my 11 inch Toshiba, who has been my faithful companion since that day, under the name of Björn. 

Up to this day, all my computers - which have been laptops since 2001, when I bought myself my first laptop, a used IBM Think Pad, Lain - have been... how shall I call them? "Windows" laptops. Or PC laptops. Well, this time around I knew I needed something else, something that would give me the chance to remain fast more than 12 months, reliable and durable. I wanted a long term, long relationship laptop. And so I planned and invested in a MacBook. I asked more about it, consulted with friends, at the store, checked prices, and finally, on my brother's birthday, this year, I've got my Mac. His name isn't Mac, he's Virgil. I had to pick a name quite quickly, on the store (later on I realized I could have just given it my name, but... Virgil isn't me, just as my car, Nathaniel isn't me), and Virgil was what came to my mind. I certainly liked the Aeneid, and right then I wasn't thinking whether I should call it after one of my Gods (Mercury, Neptune or Odin). Yes, it could have been Minerva, but this laptop doesn't feel like a "she", but a "he". (Only my first two laptops have been "she", Lain and Iria. Both were IBM Think Pads).

I'm still learning how to use it, and there are like a gozillian things I still don't get, but I'm getting there. So far, I like it.

This year I started going to therapy with a psychologist a friend recommended me. Actually, I heard her talk about her, mostly for being a Pagan-friendly shrink. I have decided to start working on my shadow in order to start getting over and moving past recurring themes in my life and maybe also getting off the hamster wheel I feel I am in with certain people. There is so much my lovely mind can figure out, but then there are other parts I need professional help to figure out and to know how to start solving. Hope all that works well. I have been in therapy before, but now I expect something different. I want to work on issues I have found I may have rooted in unsolved family dynamics, that may not be helping me move entirely forward with my life, or that make me more sensitive to certain things than what I would like to be. And yes, I want to be able to let go of the deep, burning hatred I have felt at time at some people. Sure, feeling hatred is something I encourage in order to know your hating self, but I know plenty of my hating self, I don't need more, and hatred doesn't bring me any joy or any satisfaction.

That sounded strange, right? Well, think about it: some people seem to thrive when they are in a situation where they can gang on someone or something, when they can unite in hate, be in an "us vs. them" scenario. People who thrive in conflict and fight. I am not one of them. First of all, I am a Moonchild, a Cancer-born, and as such, I avoid conflict. Second, I actually find joy in emotions like love, happiness, mellow, harmony, soft, comfort, cozy and so on. I would fight if I have to, as I have proven time and again when I have faced situations and given voice to concerns and doubts while others cowered, but I rather cocoon, put on a record of jazz, were soft socks and read, knit or do something like that, in my blue couch, with a comfy beverage.

And so, I want to work out to reach my blanket-and-blue-couch-with-knitting state of mind.

Studies are going well. This is the last quarter of the Master's program, and... I feel expanded. (Ok, maybe that is Mr Jack Daniels talking through me ;) I had a night cap). Each day I try to pull two oracle cards and today I've got Jupiter. And yes, I feel less like I'm moving nowhere, and more like "I get it" with my thesis. I see the big picture, I see the point of it. I see the prospect and the promise. Last time my thesis tutor said: "I feel like I can expect more from you", as in, more as what he can expect from others, and that felt to me like my topic is going to take more time, BUT it will reach into something important. How exciting is that!?

My house of seven gables is also doing well, and I may be on the verge of adopting a new cat. Goodness Gracious, a decision I can make by myself! My house, my rules! I can become the cat lady! I love having my own house.

Slowly but surely, my life is rolling out, taking form. I see my sister-in-law getting into all sorts of fights with some neighbours, my brother trying to manage his life and family, my nephews and niece finding their path in life, my parents getting by... and I have a life that feels like all that cushy, fluffy, warm, nice comfy and cozy comfort, peppered with heaps of witchy, the kind of music I like and the kind of food and cooking I want. More than free and independent, I feel... whole. I feel me. I just want to feel more me, more... how can I say this? More unlimitedly me.

2022 is here

Property of Stormberry

A new year has arrived, like so many others before it, and again we see the same things around us. There's the people bitching about how "it's just another day, like any other, nothing special about it", and then also the people giving advise about making New Year Resolutions, or not making New Year Resolutions, and then the lots of people making all sorts of old jokes, and those who take this moment to remember things that happened. In general, people either try to share the experience with others or just try to get attention for whatever means.

The New Year means for me lots of planning. I spent the last days of 2021 preparing my calendars and planners for the new year, penciling in birthdays, appointments, Pagan Sabbaths, Roman Celebrations (those related to my Gods), and so on. I managed all of my calendars and planners (only five in total), but I still had the digital stuff to take care of. For years I have been using an Excel sheet to track my finances - mostly my spending - and each year I tweek it a little bit, to improve the system I use, in order to make sure it ends up working better and better for my purposes. It's not a perfect system yet, but each time I adjust it, it gets better.

In this particular case I'm quite proud because though I've been using this tracker since 2013, last year was the first year I actually followed it quite regularly. 2020 was the second year I filled the whole year, I believe, and with less backlog than in previous years. This year I will try to record more than just my expenses, and I'm still thinking about how to make a dynamic Budget Tracker, where I can check effectively which of my planned expenses have I completed and when. My idea is to make an easy tracker where I can keep track of which bills I've paid and which are still to be paid.

Property of Stormberry

Last year, for several months, I kept a cycle tracker, where I recorded my weight, body fat, water, muscle weight and bone weight daily based on my menstrual cycle and the Moon cycles. Eventually this tracker was making me anxious and turned out to be counterproductive for my health, so I stopped. In this same line I took out of my planner more than six different trackers for water, food habits, exercise, journaling, blogging... and something else. These I just couldn't really follow. I have used these trackers for years, since I was using the bullet journal system, but I never really used the infomation for anything. No matter how I grouped it or what I tried, it just wasn't adding any value to my life.

I celebrate the New Year, not only because I like celebrating things (I'm a Witch and I choose to celebrate the eight Sabbaths because, hey! they are celebrations!), but New Years mark a defined point in time to make a review of the last period, what has worked, what hasn't, and so I can keep on improving. Sure, the New Year is "just another day", but it's a day globally chosen to mark a given period. A year is a convenient chunk of time to have tried something, and to review the results of it. Using it is also convenient, because this day we start also new calendars, which is mostly important for those of us who still use paper planners, but also because many legal, fiscal and financial programs and paperwork - to call it somehow - finish a cycle on this date.

This is not the case for everybody, but it is the case for me. Is it your case? Be it as it may, it's good to have a moment, a marker of period for you to evaluate and review your progress in time, to decide what works, what doesn't, what can be adjusted, improved, and what needs to go.