Ripples

First snow

First snow
Originally uploaded by Squonk11.

This weekend it has been snowing for the first time this winter here in Belgium. This picture was taken just after midnight, from the front window of our little appartment. It looks kind of magical...

Of course, snow is magical and fine if you're well off, cosy and warm inside. It's less fun for people who need to go on the road for their jobs and who get stuch in huge trafic jams. Or for those who were hit by a power cut as consequence of the snow. Or the worst, what about those two homeless people who died of the cold this weekend in Brussels...

A new life

Today at 7:52 our little son Jonas was born. Needless to say that we're immensely happy with this wonderful little boy. But also very tired, so I leave you with this picture of my beloved and our new treasure...

New life

It's been more than a month since I last posted here. But I have a very good reason to come out of the woodwork again. I have a very important announcement to make (important to me, at least): my beloved is expecting our first baby!

We're not that young anymore, so we were not sure if we'd ever be granted this immense joy. We certainly hoped so. You can imagine how happy we were when we learned early this year that she was pregnant. We couldn't believe our luck. Indeed, we were so worried that something could go wrong in those early stages that we kept it to ourselves for a long time. Until very recently, only our parents knew.

But now things have been steadily evolving without any problems or complications, and all tests contributed to reassure us. So since a few weeks we've started spreading the news to family, friends and colleagues: we're expecting a little boy somewhere in September. That's around my own birthday...

I've also set up a new blog where I write letters to my unborn son. It's written in Dutch, my mother tongue(*), as this is quite personal and emotional, and these things are more difficult to express in a foreign language. If you understand Dutch, feel free to come by, read and comment...

Of course, all this takes away some of the time and energy I need to keep these Ripples flowing, so you may temporarily see a bit less postings here. I'll try to keep it going at an acceptable rate. But you'll understand that my main focus is elsewhere for now. Wish us luck...

__________
(*) In fact, that should be my "father tongue", as my mother speaks French...

Sunny Sunday

This is absolute bliss... I'm sitting on the terrace of my beloved's parents' house at the coast. This weekend must be the finest we've had this year: sunny weather, agreeable temperatures... I've decided that I'm going to have an avsolutely lazy weekend: no running around, no chores, no goals to pursue, except for relaxation... Sitting in the shadow (because the sun's too hot, and I'm not a sun-seeker anyway, as opposed to my beloved), I just catch up on reading some of the magazines I accumulated, listen to music on my MP3-player(*), take out my PalmOne T3 for some playing around or typing this blog entry, or just do nothing at all, dozing away... Only a leisurely stroll down the shops in the main street provides some variation, but essentially I don't move.

The feeling of putting all obligations to the side for two days is absolutely refreshing, and I'm thoroughly enjoying myself. If you can afford it (and you don't need a house at the coast for this: simply at home is just fine), this is something to do every once in a while. Recharging the batteries before diving into the hassles of work and day-to-day life is priceless, and makes the experience of that ordinary life afterwards much better too...

__________

(*) Currently I'm listening to Kino's first album "Picture":.

Permutations

As you may know, I like to have a cup of coffee in a nice café or coffee bar every once in a while, well quite regularly actually, and to be truthful this means at least once a day. And as I'm a creature of habit, I have my preferred spots. So for example, every morning I start off my working day with a "cuppa" in a simple chain coffee bar on the underground floor of a shopping gallery, where I emerge from the metro. There is a second place in the shopping centre near my office where I tend to have my noon break cup. And a third place sees my visits either at noon or after work, before I go home. This last place, the café of a a luxury hotel, is one of the most expensive in town (currently €3.20 for a cup, which is not cheap for Brussels standards), but it has this marvellous Paris brasserie style terrace, which is also heated, meaning you can find me there in the middle of winter sometimes...

As I'm a regular at these places, I know most of the people waiting there. These last days, I observed a few funny things. Yesterday at noon, I saw one of the waiters of the expensive hotel having a beer at Place #2. I supposed the prices at his place are out of a simple waiter's league... Anyway, it's curious seeing the "casual" version of the man who's always nicely dressed in the Café's black and white waiter's attire.

And then, today after work, I saw one of the people working at Place #1 having a beer... on the terrace of the expensive hotel! Life is full of such nice coincidences...

Have a nice day

One of the work colleagues of my beloved is trying out a little experiment. He remarried and moved recently. His new house has no garage, so he rents one a few blocks away. Every morning, on his short walk to pick up his car to go to work, he passes a bus stop where a few people are waiting. And since he usually comes by at the same time, it's always the same people. So, as an experiment, he started saying "Good morning" as he passes them by. In the beginning, nobody reacted; In fact, I suspect they must have been rather surprised. By now however, he reports that four out of the five respond, with just one still ignoring him.

It may seem a strange thing to do in an urban environment, and city people certainly aren't used to this. But I wonder if the fact that someone comes by and wishes them a nice day, even if they only know him from sight, would affect these people's moods, be it just a little bit? While it's clearly unfeasible to walk around a large city greeting everyone, still there may be occasions like this we're missing the chance to have a positive influence on people...

Anyway, whoever you are and whenever you're reading this, have a nice day!

Book Bliss

Reading through my backlog of entries from Steve Pavlina's blog, I keep coming across interesting entries. The one called "Read a Book a Week" again got me thinking. In it he explains how he took on the habit of reading one book a week back in 1992, and the benefits this habit yields.

I've been an avid reading for most of my life. One of my fondest memories is of a two month school vacation when I was about 16 years old, which I spent almost completely sitting in the garden reading SF novels (my favourite genre at the time). Today, I'm still constantly reading books whenever I can, either in paper form of on my Palm (which is great for those situations where it is not practical to take paper books with you, or for when some unforeseen reading time pops up). I don't manage the rhythm of 1 book a week, although in my student days, I once reached 70 books in one year (which paled into insignificance next to a friend who managed 180!). But I read tens of books a year.

I've started reading in the field of personal development around 1996, first with Stephan Rechtschaffen's "Time Shifting". But it really sparked off when I came across Covey's famous "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". And I've devoured quite some books in that area since then. As Pavlina notes, it is worthwhile to keep exposing yourself to new ideas. Even books that are not so good can bring you a good idea or two. And constantly learning more expands your repertoire (to use one of Vera F. Birkenbihl's favourite terms).

But while I fully subscribe to Pavlina's analysis, I have one nagging doubt. I sometimes fear that all this reading is an form of procrastination. As long as you can tell yourself that you're in the process of acquiring knowlegde and insight around certain problems, you have an excuse not to start taking action. "Yes, I know it's time to tackle this problem, but let me first read this one more book that will help me approaching it just that little bit better..."

The challenge lies in starting to act, even knowing that your skill and knowledge can always be improved, but that starting in an imperfect way is better than waiting for the ultimate perfection. Which we all know never comes...

Quantum weight loss

I don't remember how I first came across Steve Pavlina's articles on his Dexterity Software site. But they certainly struck a sympathetic chord with me. I've carried a few on my Palm and re-read them regularly. So I was excited to recently discover that he has taken what seemed to be an important interest for him and developed it into his main business, with a new website sporting a free article section (including some reworked versions of earlier Dexterity articles) and a fascinating blog (which boils down to almost a free article a day!). Go have a look, there is great stuff there!

So these last days, I've been loading tons of his articles and blog entries into my Palm and reading them on the go, whenever I have a spare moment. There is one such blog entry I can relate strongly to: it's called "Making a Quantum Leap". In it he describes how hard personal growth is, and that it requires constant effort and inspiration over a long time, until you at last reach the point where you make a "quantum leap" into a new state of being. He gives the example of trying to lose weight, and here is where it touches my personal experience.

I've been very slowly and gradually gaining weight over the years, nothing spectacular, but I ended up somewhere around a maximum of around 90kg (which for my 1m80 represents a BMI of 27.8 or overweight). These last years, I realised that I was getting a bit too heavy and wanted to get rid of some of these overenthousiastic kilograms. But somehow the nice life seemed to prevail and nothing really changed, regardless of some reading and halfhearted efforts.

Until last August, I stumbled on the book "Eat to Live" by Joel Fuhrman in an eReader newsletter, as I recounted here. And suddenly, something clicked. I've adapted my eating habits and started steadily losing weight, quite spectacularly at first. So much so in fact, that after a bit more than 2 months, I reached the BMI upper limit for "healthy" weight (25 or 81kg, see here). And it hasn't stopped. These days I'm hovering just below BMI 24 (between 77 and 78kg), and I have the firm intention to bring it down to 75kg, which I set as my target weight.

I'm confident that I won't backslide and drift back up to my old weight, because somewhere in my head, a switch seems to have been turned. As I always tell people who wonder how I did it, I don't follow any diet, I've just altered my eating habits. These new habits are something I'm quite happy with, I still eat with pleasure and joy. But what I eat is healthy. So there is hardly any temptation to change that. I've made my quantum leap.

How not to blog

As you can tell from my posting frequency these last months, it is not always as evident as it may seem to get around to writing an entry on my blog. I might say that I've discovered some quite effective ways not to blog(*). Being too tired, having too many other things to do, lack of inspiration or plain lack of enthousiasm may all come to mind, and apply to differing degrees at different times.

A surprising realisation struck me a few days ago. Most of the time, I actually positively want to blog. I'm sitting at my PC, trying to come up with something to write about, a pursuit at which I miserably fail. Why is that? Well, I noticed that inspiration rarely (or never) comes when I'm sitting down to write. It only works if I know in advance what I'm going to write about. Once I get started, the words normally start to flow, and I can piece together a reasonable entry. But the trick is: I have to know the subject in advance. Ideally, I already thought it through a few times in my mind, and have a reasonable idea of how it's going to turn out. This entry, for example, has been simmering for a few days.

What did go wrong then these last months, that this inspiration seems to be lacking? When I started my blog, this was something new and exciting for me, and I regularly thought about ideas and subjects. But as time goes by, routine sets in. I'm less keen on finding new ideas and pay less attention during the day. And when I do find an idea, often it appears to have already been used before. Or by the time I sit down before my PC screen in the evening, I have completely forgotten what it was.

So what should I do? First of all, I have to start paying attention to the world around me again. Life is full of nice little stories, waiting to be told. The trick is to notice them. Blogging (like journaling) can actually be a great mindfulness exercise, making you much more aware of what goes on in your life, and of your thoughts and feelings about it. And second, when these ideas come, I need to capture them before they're gone, by making a note in my Palm, ot even start to write a first draft as soon as I get a chance.

So now that I know this, all I've got to do is actually apply it. I wonder how long it will be before my next entry...

__________
(*) To be fair, since January I've been paying more attention again to my Dutch language blog, Squonk's Musical Box, where I essentially write about music. I could write the reviews I do over there on this blog, but I try to cover more subjects here. Maintaining two blogs in parallel obviously also accounts for some of the problem...

One year already

Today it is exactly one year ago since this post launched this English language blog(*) on TypePad. Such an occasion is a good excuse for some introspection, so I'll oblige.

What can I say after one year of blogging? First of all, and most obviously, I'm still here. This is not so evident, if you consider all those blogs that are started in a first rush of enthousiasm, only to quickly wither and die. This doesn't surprise me: I learned from experience that it's not always easy to come up with things to write about with any regularity. And as you may have noticed, my blogging frequency has not always been as regular as I may have wished for... Sometimes, you're just too tired and have no desire or energy left to sit down behind the computer and try to send out a halfway decent post. And as anyone trying to build or change habits will know, after the initial enthousiasm wears off, it's very easy to let things slip. And each day you skip makes it more tempting to skip the next one... Which increases my admiration for people who manage to blog daily, like this one.

What about readership and statistics? This is certainly not a highly scoring blog. After one year and 130 posts, TypePad tells me I have an average of about 7 hits per day. I suppose this is not counting any people subscribing to RSS feeds of this blog. I'm not technically proficient enough on this domain, or rather, I didn't spend the necessary time to investigate this subject, so I cannot tell how many more hits this represents (if anyone can give me a quick pointer there, you're welcome!). Bloglines tells me there are 6 subscribers to my blog feed, so that's something.

A lot of the search hits to my blog come from Palm and GTD related queries. But a surprising search that keeps sending hits down my way is "The law of diminishing returns", which points people to this entry. Why this search is so popular escapes me.

So what's next? I'll continue to write entries as regularly as I can manage. Try to tune the subjects and the writing a bit to increase readership maybe. Not that having a large audience is my objective, but it's nice to be able to build a small comunity of people who are interested enough to read what I write and possibly connect back in some way. But most of all, I'll continue as long as it remains fun and satisfying for me to do so.

So here goes for another year!

__________
(*) I also keep a dutch language blog, Squonk's Musical Box, that almost exclusively focusses on music. But this obviously also requires some time and energy...