La ferita è dolorante,
La cura meticolosa,
Il fuoco latente,
Ma proprio non è cosa.
La delusione è cocente,
L’ardito riposa.
La trama lucente
Nell’immaginazione, sontuosa.
Category: Posts
Quiet Nights and Quiet Dreams
Today I enjoy greater tranquility but I observe dormant dreams and storms.
It is true that while you imagine a different life, life, the real one, happens to you. I find it hard to let go of the moment that passes without ignoring the swirl of the brain.
Sometimes writing about it helps. Although, I feel more and more intolerant of the interminable patience to wait for who knows what day will come.
Meanwhile, time passes.
And you?
Strong Feelings, Strong Memories
The power of trauma engraves events deeply in your memory. I can clearly see what’s around me, what my friend is saying on the phone and the images passing through an old TV set broadcasting live what was happening.
And it was 20 years ago.
The oldest memory I have in my mind is my mother giving her breast to my sister. And it was almost fifty years ago.
Fear and jealousy, two of the most powerful feelings a human being can feel are the strongest markers for memory.What if we could exchange those toxic feelings with joy and happiness?
Yes, I remember the first kiss.
Free-Flowing Reflections on my Writing Practice
I have the thoughts I want to write down mostly when I am not in front of this screen. I need to collect them when I am walking or preparing coffee.
I cannot stand dozens of browser tabs open, innumerable lists of things to do, accumulated unread emails. I want to purge everything, restart from scratch and change the system because this is highly inefficient, frustrating and wasteful.
I have two main creative pulses: writing a journal about what I think and feel about what happens to me during the day and the desire to understand reality. They put me in two different moods, I tend to have urgent needs to journal but I consider it not always appropriate to be published. On the contrary I would want to have more articles with reflections and research but they are usually bits and pieces not refined enough to be published. I’d like to invert this balance.
I find it pleasing to read my daily notes one or two or more years later: it’s the connection I was looking for between my past, present and future selves. It gives more continuity to my life and contributes to increasing my self-awareness. Sometimes it’s superficial observations about practical things, some others it’s about how I react to life’s events. I am looking for this kind of continuity in my research: leveraging on the evolution of my thoughts on things which are not just intimate and personal but looks upon others and the world.
Reviewing and evolving my writings is what I lack and I desire the most. I am trying to be patience because I have so much available time to pursue my daily habit building practice. So I decided to keep it as it is until I’ve achieved the One Year Of Blogging goal which will happen sometime in November 2021. It’s an important experiment and I need not to miss its completion.
So far so good.
Dissatisfaction as a Motivation to Change
Not being satisfied can be a good thing. Feeling like you should be doing different things, or getting different results can be a good force for change. You can embark yourself in a personal development journey.
To get the best out of your self awareness and your sensitivity to something that is missing, you should act upon it. If you don’t make a plan, and you stick to it by doing something, even little, every single day, you run the risk of suffering because if you realize that something should be changed in your life and you don’t do anything or you cannot do anything, then you create frustration for yourself.
Being frustrated is one of the ways to become unhappy. Even if it is painful and if it requires you to feel a distance from your surroundings, perceiving the need to change yourself is a good thing. But at the same time, you need to make a plan out of it. Sometimes it’s not important to have a clear mind and a clear idea about what to do, and how, but it helps a lot to act.
Action brings clarity. The more you do something to move you forward the more it becomes clear: If that is not what you want to do, at least you’ll know what you don’t want to do.
Feeling yourself missing something can be a force for good. Use it as fuel to change your life.
Strategy and Planning
Strategy and planning, they are the best when they allow you to explore philosophical possibilities while remaining well grounded in pragmatism. To avoid getting lost in tangents, structured facilitation helps. TIme-boxing is the most appropriate way to dedicate intense but limited time to strategy first. Then a thorough discussion about the different reactions in the room would be the perfect intermediate step towards a planning session. In the last phase the group, well immersed in the opportunities and the contexts explored before, would be ready to assign practical tasks to each member to pursue the strategic vision through practical objectives.
Keeping the right balance between abstract, speculative thought and practical, executive planning requires careful dedication and self-awareness. Those are the ingredients of a continuously refined strategy and planning in a group
Learning Pains
I started to play a musical instrument. Last time I did it was so long ago that I barely remember. I wanted it and I have it gifted. Only passion and curiosity move me. Now I have fingers in pain and I can barely type these words.
This pain is different from the psychological one experienced when trying to keep my daily writing habit. This is physical pain. I can feel it right now.
And it is so good.
Creating Choice by Managing your Personal Knowledge
If I’m lucky I can choose. Otherwise I need to work to create choices. There’s a gap between the moment when I come up with a need and when I need to explore options. It requires slowing down and thinking to understand what to do to create the choices I will need in the future.
One year ago I ate a beautiful dish but then I was sick with a stomach ache. I am going to go exactly in the same place, one year later: will I eat the same juicy dish?
Recording the events, in this case, helped me in understanding possible connections between causes and effects. I am more informed. Definitely I would have not been able to realize this context if I didn’t write it down in my journal.
To create choices I need information and the capability of making connections between them. That’s a useful outcome of curating my personal knowledge.
This is my 295 daily blog post in a row.
Trees of the past and future
At every moment of my life I’m at the intersection of two trees, one made of all of the events occurred and the decisions I made which brought me to today and the other made of all the possible decisions I will make in the future.
At every moment of my life I can consider and reflect upon the tree of the past but I cannot change it. While I can ponder and change the roots of the future tree by making the next decision.
My future begins with the next thing I will do.
Beauty is in How it Works
If Munari said:
> If the form of an object turns out to be ‘beautiful’ it will be thanks to the logic of its construction and to the precision of the solutions found for its various components.
—Design as Art, Bruno MunariAnd Steve Jobs stated:
> “The design is not just what it looks like and feels like. The design is how it works”
— Steve Jobs, EntrepreneurWe can say that a beautifully designed object is something that works well, for the purpose it has been created for, providing a solution that is effective, efficient, pleasurable, and sustainable.