Take a Moment to Chill

Property of Stormberry

 The title is more for me than you, but if you feel like you need to chill too, by all means, apply it to yourself as well. These last two weeks have been full of activities for me, and even though the workload at the office have been low, my personal and social life has been taking a lot of space and time. This is what happens when you commit to a group and that group goes through a period of expansion.

In the last days I've been working after work contacting people who want to affiliate to our political party and going through the mechanics of doing background checks - something basic and simple, nothing nefarious -, interviewing them and then adding them to the right chat. And at the same time, I - who am not fond of WhatsApp or group chats - have to go on checking so many chat groups that I am considering to write myself a "chat dictionary" so that I know which one is for which.

and next week won't be much different, as I'll take a workshop to be able to conduct induction talks to the new affiliates, which means that, on top of carding through lists of people requesting to affiliate, doing the background checks, and interviewing them, I'll also have groups assigned to give them induction talks at given times per week, for which I'll have to prepare. And that's just part of it! I have all this energy for action and I'm finding places to use it: help in a district improvement plan, work with the Women's Committee, tackle a project to systematize all the Bills the Party has put forth, make a financial analysis of the municipal budget, and so on. And I'm excited about all of this!

But, the truth of the matter is that we are finite beings with limited resources. Each of us only has 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and limited amounts of energy. We must prioritize, distribute energy and also find spaces to replenish. If we can take a moment to charge our phones, tablets and laptops, why couldn't we do the same with ourselves?

Unplug, journal, read, knit or just watch a series or a movie if you really can't tear yourself away from the screen (though it's better to do so). Step away from work and projects, grab that old record player and put on an LP. Take your time, concentrate on placing the needle, and listen to music for 20 or 30 minutes. Measure time in a different way, away from the trappings of modern life, designed to keep you scrolling.

Take a moment to chill.

Politics don't stop

 On February 1st we had the Presidential Elections in Costa Rica, with a disheartening result. If you believe in Democracy and the role of institutions as checks and balances  for Government, you certainly fear for this small country and its blind turn towards autocracy, extreme right and the plunge into a cesspool of misinformation. People in many parties are folding their flags, putting away their political paraphernalia and going back to their civil lives. And so I thought I would.

But, is politics just rallying for elections? Is that all we do? Many may think so, and there are others that want people to think so. Politics is just elections. Democracy is just elections. You go, you vote and that's it. Then politicians scream, do "political stuff", get paid, get rich, appear on TV and then people go vote again, and things start over again. And if something goes wrong, it's "politics". From prices to employment, from public health to the environment, everything that goes wrong or that we don't understand is "bad because of politics".

Politics seem to appear when something goes wrong and people can't understand why, and so "it has to be the fault of politicians", and that makes it "politics". What people fail to realize is that politics are far deeper embedded in daily life than they want to believe. 

Politics are in out education system, in the availability and shape our healthcare systems take. It's also in the price of every single thing we buy and whether we can even buy it in the first place. Politics shape our vacations, where we can go and how many days we have, and also in our jobs, whether we have one, how much are be paid, how many hours we work and in which conditions. As members of a particular society, the politics practiced in that place shape every single aspect of our lives. The question for us, people, is how much do we want to be part of those politics, and how much do we want to influence them.

I thought that, after February 1st my participation in the party would dwindle, but it only changed. We replace party t-shirts, flags and paraphernalia for notebooks and pens. Our political flyers are replaced for excel sheets and phones. Our work now is to recruit and holding informative sessions to explain our ideals and principles to those interested in forming part of the party.

We are working on brainstorming sessions, coming up with ideas of what can we do to improve our communities and determine what do we need to get to a better place as society. From creating content to inform and educate, to proposing workshops to help small entrepreneurs connect with new customers and navigate the fiscal system, we are changing the way we do politics. We are going to the community, to connect, to understand, to learn and to help.

And that is politics too.

A Lovely Printer (Another)

 I had fully intended to post weekly on this blog, but that's not something I can fully achieve right now. It's not only a matter of "life happens" - which is an expression, I know, but really, what the hell with "life happens"? Life doesn't "happen", life is lived. Gods, sometimes expressions can irk me with their stupidity - but more a matter of me being busy and my head being twice as busy. We had presidential elections last week, and sadly, we had to find out just how profoundly stupid the population can be, how easily they fall prey to demagogues and manipulators. I know, I know, "you shouldn't call stupid the people who choose an autocratic, anti-democratic figure, because they have been let down by previous parties". Can you read that again please? Why would anyone sane enough choose someone who has proven to be abhorrently bad just because twelve years ago someone was somewhat bad? I tell you why? Because people want to believe lies, want permission to be violent and lash out, they take what they have for granted, expect promises of abundance to be kept and threats of exploitation to be "just words. And they vote in real life, with their heads in a bubble, and think that they would be spared of the horror they wish on others.

Explain to me how is that anything other than stupidity, if you were so kind.

Yes, I'm upset, BUT I'll cut that thought thread here and concentrate on pretty things. Like my new portable printer. Goodness, I am in love!

Property of Stormberry

If you are a journaling enthusiast, you may have come across the portable photo printers. A couple of years ago they were the rage. If you followed social media - which I used to do back in the day - you've probably saw the rise of the portable photo printer splashed all over your feed, with wonderful tiny pictures being printed from your phone, idea to be added to your journal, as a way to enrich your record keeping. This allowed you to print out not only photographs you made, but also pictures you've found, interesting quotes and so on.

The first ones I saw in social media were printers that used heat paper to print, and they were mainly monochromatic. The paper was thin and it didn't add bulk to the journal, but I was worried about the longevity of the print, which most influencers using these printers didn't talk about. 

But, how long does a heat print last? Well, if you are used to request and keep the vouchers of your card purchases - you know, that curling strip of paper you can get with your purchases - you may have noticed, that many of them have significantly faded by the time you have to do your tax declaration. I happen to usually keep my recipes for up to two years, thus I know that these prints don't last two years. This bothered me about the heat printed pictures. Why spend money, print and glue down a picture only to have a piece of paper in your journal two days from now that has nothing on it?

Portable photo printers are a luxury. No, not like a luxury bag, but definitively they are not a necessity. Thus, though I was tempted to get one - because being influenced is real thing - I spent years mulling over it, researching options, discarding the idea and then going back again to it.

At one point I found this Kodak P210R Mini 2 Retro printer in a comparison line up, and it came up like the one that produced the longest lasting and best quality photos. They are printed, and you can actually see each color - yellow, magenta, cyan - being laid on the page, and finally being coated, so the end product doesn't look like those pictures printed on photo paper, where the ink clearly sits on top of the upper coat, taking away the satin of the page.

It wasn't easy to synchronize with my phone, and you have to make sure it is on each time you want to print, but other than that, I am pleased (so far) with the printer.

Something I like is that it reminds me of old photographing experiences. Pictures were more precious when you had a roll of 12 or 24 or 36 pictures and you had to make each one count. You would think carefully of each shoot and make it count, consider how many pictures did you had left, and then go and have them revealed. You would sit from time to time with friends and family, or by your own with your photo album and relive those memories. It was so different from today's pictures-in-phone, where people scroll unseeing from loads of pictures to find one they need, and just for a moment. It's like we are so flooded with pictures they loose all their value, all their interest.

A portable photo printer is not going to change the perception people have of pictures, but for some of us it's a way yo go back to those days when photos were scarce, reserved only for special events.

Printer Hell

Property of Stormberry

 My EPSON printer has spent a year - give or take - refusing to print in black. I've been printing stuff in blue but I had enough. So I bought a new printer. Not an EPSON because I didn't want to go through the same ordeal, and my parents recently bought an EPSON ECO tank printer and it decided not to work anymore before it  turned two years old. So yes, no EPSON.

On Wednesday I took my eldest nephew to dinner, to celebrate his birthday, and so I tied that with a couple of errands, that had to do with printing. Specifically, I had to have some documents printed for my mother, so that she can get some healthcare procedures done, and the one place I know of where you can print out things is at the Office Depot. Getting to the Office Depot takes me around 45 minutes. It's not sustainable.

Since I had some surplus money (a financial compromise I had didn't go through), and so I invested that in a printer. A Brother.

Yesterday I tried to install it. It's not the first printer I install, and it's not the first printer I install on my Mac, but this is the first that just don't want to cooperate. Boy. it's driving me crazy.

One of those "planner" times

Property of Stormberry

January could be called "the month of planners", though in the planner community, "planner season" happens somewhere between July and October, depending on the brand of planner or planners you subscribe to. During planner season, people who are into planners, such as myself, hunt down the planners they want to use the next year, and usually put them away until the fated date comes when it's time to start using them and filling them up with annual information such as birthdays, anniversaries, start and end of school/uni periods, tax filing days and so on.

In today's digitalized world, this is not a ritual many people have, as digital calendars (or social media) has all the birthdays already in for eternity loaded and programmed into your calendar (until such a day when you have to renew or update your app), and so with all the other days of appointments, due dates and due-payment days you may have to keep an eye on. Back in the day, before the internet and computers were inserted in every aspect of our lives, you know, when a telephone was always a landline, and stayed on a wall or a table, and not in your pocket, most people had this ritual of noting important dates in the brand new planner or on the calendar. Those planners and calendars, as far as I remember, could be found in school and paper supply stores somewhere around December, and not sooner. And most people spent either the last days of December or the first days of January writing in important dates, like birthdays, anniversaries, payments and check-ups that happened only a handful of times in the year.

Though I do know of cases where people used their planners and calendars to annotate certain events of their daily lives - I do remember I was told I should be keeping the record of my periods when I started having them - but in general planners and calendars were used to know which day it was, to calculate past and future days, and to know if you had something to do that day or in the future. If you wanted a record of your past days in more detail, you've got yourself a journal or a diary, which was a notebook of some kind, in which you wrote about your day. Or so was the idea, at least where I live.

With the era of the internet, you started to learn about other people, and how they did things, what they've got and how they used things. In the case of planners, one could find out that some people did use their planners as a daily log, where the book contained not only their plans and appointments for the day, but they also noted how many hours they did at work, the meds they took, or even a small summary of their day. I guess people started finding different practices interesting, cool or inspiring, and soon we were flooded with ideas of how to do this and that. I imagine that this may be were the planner world got so inundated with different practices and interesting ideas, that it may have given the impression to some, that you have to do all of them. FOMO became A Thing.

Soon you started seeing videos and posts in different platforms, about being confused about how to use a planner/journal, or feeling like they failed with this or that planner/journal, and going through planners and layouts multiple times a year and yet feeling like they are not reaching "planner peace". Goodness, in the 80's and 90's there was no such thing as planner peace. You had a planner you've got on December of the previous year and you worked with that. Your only concern was whether you remembered to check it often, and whether you didn't forget to pencil in all of your tasks and appointments. Today there is such a thing as "planner peace" and lots of people don't get to it.

Back when I had a planner channel on YouTube, I explained my mother about it, and she looked at me like I had sprung another head.

"What is there to explain people about how to use a planner? You open it, you write your appointments and then you check it."

And yet, today, in the era of more information than what you really need, and yet not enough of what you actually need, these are valid concerns.

For a while now I have been scaling back on Social Media, and now I'm off YouTube as well. Through this process I have realized something: I have no FOMO. I have a particular taste in most things, and I'm a little harder to impress, and yet, when I was deep in social media and YouTube, I did found myself wanting many of the things I saw. many I did not buy because I am not so easily convinced (so I went pondering a purchase of weeks and then suddenly it wasn't even that hot), but others I did got (like the six of so Kat Von D liquid lipsticks). After several years of watching unboxings, I finally took the step to get a subscription box, only to discover after some time, that this is not for me. For a while, I was also tempted by luxury bags, and had been seriously considering a Marc Jacobs The Tote Bag, since that was the one that stood closer to my preferred style.

And then I stepped off Social Media and YouTube. And I no longer feel the pull of subscription boxes and all sorts of specialized, strange stationery items that are all the rage. Last year, I went twice to Choosing Keeping in London, a stationery store where people make a line outside to enter. Like at an exclusive club. I went, I saw... and in two visits I spent a whopping £15. Two rolls of washitape and one bottle of ink. I was already de-FOMO-ed. I was no longer wanting a Marc Jacobs tote bag for €220, and instead sought out a €18 Merci Gustave tote bag I've got at the CDG airport, which has become one of my favorite bags. Well, not to mention that my already copious tote bag collection (39 tote bags) grew with the addition of three unexpected tote bags: one from Stonehenge, one from Waterstones and one from The Daunt Books. Two due to bag emergency and one because it came with the books. No FOMO, just need or gift.

This has got me thinking whether much of the issues many people have with their planners and journals and the expectations they set for themselves are due to the content they consume online. Do they really, really need to fill each page of a planner? Do they really, really need to journal everyday, many times, in many different books? Does every little thing has to make it into the planner and the journal? Do they really, really need to have X amount of "top priorities" each day? Do they really have to have to do lists that include things like waking up and eating breakfast? Do they really need mood tracks and reading journals, and morning pages and gratitude, and meal prep, and the-Gods-know-what other stuff?

What would Your planner and your journal and your daily practice look like if you were not spending a single minute on social media and content platforms like YouTube and TikTok? Would you find planner peace or maybe would be at peace with your planner?

End of the Vacations, Beginning of the New Year

Property of Stormberry

 There's something beautiful about ending the year away from home, taking a bit of distance to see things in perspective, recharge, and then come back with fresh energies. I love being in Europe, but my life has lead me to find my chances to work and earn a living outside my beloved continent. That income is the one that made it possible for me to save up and build my house, to be able to pay my debts, and to visit my darling Europe. I really love this place.

I'm writing this in the last minutes I'll spend at the hotel (less than an hour), and I would love to, at least, start journaling a little bit too, all before I have to go across the street, buy a new Navigo card, a new One Day Paris Visit Pass, because yesterday I lost my card. That really got to my nerves. I know, I know, there are larger problems to have, than having lost a public transport card you just recharged with €45,40 (a two day Paris Visit Pass), and now having to pay €33 or so for the card (€2,00) and the one day pass. Why one day and not just one ticket? Because I like being sure I am covered for the day, even if I only have to go from Gare du Nord to Charles de Gaule. I like to be on the safe side. 

I believe the card must have slipped out of my pocket when I put my phone in the same pocket and then pulled it out. Because the card is really gone.

Not having that card ruined a few things for me yesterday. I had plans and once I found my card missing, not only I didn't feel like doing them, at my age (that would be 50 years-old) walking that much, in winter is not as feasible as it used to be when I was 40. Now I like to wander, yes, but having a public transport card in my pocket that can take me back to the hotel when I'm too tired to make another step.

My plans had included going to Foucher, the chocolate shop, to get some chocolate and candied fruit for my mom, and then find a LEGO store to see if I can get a particular LEGO my brother wanted, but I forgot to buy in Budapest. Or check if it was already available. From the hotel, I decided to walk to the chocolate shop (a 31 minute walk that felt like 45 minutes), since the but I was counting on was not available due to construction work on the street. So, at that moment I may have had the card in my pocket, or maybe had already lost it. I went to the chocolate store, bought the chocolates, and when I was out and started looking for my Navigo card to have it ready for swapping at the Metro gates, I noticed it was nowhere to be found. That's when all got pear shaped. 

My next stop would have been Châtelet-Les Halles, where the commercial center was where the LEGO store was... as well as a FNAC. It was going to be a look-for-LEGOs-check-more-books kind of trip. I had no chance but to walk back.

That walk back felt annoying and long and more tiring. Though I logically knew that I could buy a new Navigo Card, that I could recharge it with a new Paris Visit Pass, even again a 2 day one, and honestly €45,40 isn't that steep of a price I couldn't afford, it felt like a catastrophe and ruined my mood. I went back to the hotel, bought food and holed up in my room, annoyed. It was funny because I was anxious about getting that big LEGO for my brother, and how would I get it through customs at the airport, as it surely has no "cabin luggage" size. Now I was off that task because I wasn't getting the LEGO, and still, I felt upset. I felt upset because of the card, and for disappointing my brother. Not like he can't buy the LEGO by himself, and all he wants is to have it before it arrives to Costa Rica, and not like I have the moral obligation to supply my brother with huge LEGOs every time I travel. Gods, I am not a courier! And still, my mood was ruined.

How many times have something small, logically irrelevant ruined your mood? Maybe more times that you care to remember. Through my conversations with psychologists, I realize I tend to rationalize a lot, and my first instinct usually is to think things through rationally. Well, I'm an economist, I work with numbers. However, there are times when logic doesn't help and may even make things worse, for instance when something small, irrelevant gets the best of you. Why bother so much for something that can be fixed so easily? No, I don't have €45,40 laying around idly, and yes, that is still money, BUT the point is that, if there was a real need, like the train is leaving me and I have to jump on it in that moment, I could have paid it again, and only be mildly annoyed about having lost the first card. So, if it was so "grave" why wasn't I going to the next station, look for a ticket seller and getting one? Because the point wasn't rational, it was emotional. I was upset I would not make my brother happy. I was upset he would be sad because I didn't get him the LEGO he wanted.

I was annoyed for the one logical, rational, material little detail - the Navigo Card and the pass already paid and lost - and getting riled up because it was so small and irrelevant and yet, I was thinking it was making me upset. But I wasn't really upset for the card, but concentrating on the card was easier that facing my feelings: I was upset I was disappointing my brother. Once I was ready and willing to face that, I could start working on feeling better, and I will. I still have to work on stop rationalizing everything, accepting that's how I feel and knowing that the feeling will be over once I see him, he makes a sad face and then we will move on. And the world won't end.

Sometimes it is worth to think a little bit deeper about what annoys us, give ourselves time and be willing to ask ourselves not from the logical, rational perspective, but from the emotional one. We are, after all, also emotional beings. All of us.