Story snippit

I’m reading the story I wrote for the NaNoWriMo 2010 for the first time. In my head, this story turned into the most cliche, most boring, exactly the same as the previous story of all times. Luckily, my imagination took over somewhere in that process, because it isn’t all that bad. One sentence in every hundred other ones is actually well put and rather ingenious.

I want to share this part on this blog. Because it made me think. (Part of the fun of reading it again is that I honestly have no idea how it will end and I have no recollection for the most part of what I wrote, so I can actually read it as any other book). The story itself is over 50.000 words (part of the challenge), so this is only a little part of it, but in itself worth putting up here, I think.

She didn’t look up. She wasn’t going to give up this feeling easily. She was going to stay in it for as long as possible. But the old man did not allow her that time. With a rasping voice, he intruded into her realm.
“Now how could a young missy like you be in so much trouble?”
She didn’t reply. He had no right. He was already judging her by the feel of it and this was the last thing she needed right now. 

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Spring Haiku

 

 

 

Blossom petals
Fall like nature’s confetti
It’s a spring’s party

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Share your failures

Yesterday I attended a talk about crowdsourcing. Interesting subject. Inspiring talk by @JWalphenaar.

What inspired me most was not how he kept being surprised about his own successes. It was the opposite. It was the full genuineness of his feelings when things weren’t going as planned. Still, he kept going. He didn’t give up. He had hardly a choice, with the whole of the Netherlands breathing down his back, but still.

He showed me that showing your failures is ok. It is ok to fail. And it is ok to tell other people about it. You learn from the processes you create for yourself. And by sharing both your successes and your failures to the world, you can teach everybody something.

Sharing failures is not the same as whining. Sharing failures is letting others know it’s ok to fail. Let’s all celebrate our successes AND our failures. Again, why do we keep pretending?

So. I’ll start.

In the process of naming my company I wanted to experiment a bit. On a fling, I decided to give it a go and ask people via twitter and Facebook to associate on things with us, while we were doing all the creative things in a room in Utrecht.

Unfortunately, it didn’t really work. There were a handful of friend reacting (thank you for that!), but timing was, of course, off, and they didn’t know what the process was about so for them it must have been confusing. It must be hard to tap into the energy of a creative session from a distance.
It could have been due to the lack of preparation (which consisted solely of: hey do you think we can do this?). It could have been that it just doesn’t work, being creative through Social Media. However, I’ve not given up. If ever I have a creative session and would be able to incorporate Social Media channels, I think I’ll give it a try, just to check whether it really doesn’t work.

What’s your latest failure? And what did you learn from it?

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My 10 songs in 10 weeks

So. My event is over. And I made it!

My goal was to write 5 singer-songwriter songs and 5 a cappella songs. And here they are:

Singer-Songwriter songs:
– People wander in the streets
– Happiest song on the planet
– Watered out
– Butterflies and clear blue skies
– No room for thoughts

A cappella songs:
– Rollin’ (Soul-ish)
– Toba Ngue (African-ish)
– Soil, Sun, Water, Time (folkish)
– Foolish Pride (weirdish)
– Circling (musical style)

I’m happy that I posted everything on YouTube. I’m grateful to all the persons helping me with this and supporting me by leaving comments. I think I’ve proven that I can write a song in a week (now what can I do with that new knowledge?). And I’m happy that I now have some material to use for either my own a cappella choir or my own singer-songwriter person. 🙂 It has taught me that you can force yourself to be disciplined. And you can force yourself to be creative (even with music). And that motivation is a wonderous thing…

Sigh. That was fun. And I’m glad it’s over. Now what am I going to do every weekend?

Let me know which one is your favorite and why!

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Guest post for CultureSofa

I have written a guest post for a non profit organization called CultureSofa. You can check it and them out here:

http://www.culturesofa.org/family-visit/

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the Lizard Brain

Half a year ago, when I still have a regular job at a company, the dream of visiting my sister who lives at the other side of the ocean was there, but I never acknowledged it, because I ‘only had 20 vacation days’.

It was only after giving up this job, that I realized this was in fact a very silly reason not to go visit her.

Seth Godin in this talk explains this by saying that we all have a lizard brain whose job it is to be afraid when you’re about to do something cool. We chicken out. A chicken only has a lizard brain. Us humans, in addition to the lizard brain (the amygdala) have other parts of our brain that makes us the cool beings we are. And I’m in the learning process of using these parts more and more.

I like this talk. It inspires me to get more done and get less stuck in the things I’m doing.

Go watch it!

http://the99percent.com/videos/5822/Seth-Godin-Quieting-the-Lizard-Brain

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My quest for a name

Today I had an appointment to get my company officially registered. The reason why I hadn’t done this earlier is, that I did not have a name for the company yet. If you’re interested, here’s the story of the quest (or hunt) for my company’s name.

Chapter 1: The early days…

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5th song of 10s10w

My fifth entry of my own 10 songs in 10 weeks challenge. Created with not enough time. But there anyway. 🙂

It’s about my times when the world seems unfair and I feel invisible. I have my times. Fortunately, they’re don’t define my life, but I would be fibbing if I would say they’re not part of my emotional scope. This song is a description of how I feel in one of my ‘water-darkened-states’.

Watered out

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4th song – Kayu revival and dreams of the future

For my fourth song of the 10s10w challenge, I crawled back into the familiar skin of influences from other continents, languages that don’t actually exist and playing with rhythms and funny measures. It’s my dream to start up an a capella choir someday (wanna join? contact me!), which will have all the elements I miss about Kayu (my old worldmusic band) combined with the bliss of singing with a bunch of people using pleasant or intricate harmonies (or both).

Recipe to my a capella dream:

– me
– fun people who I can relate to (musically and personally)
– original music (written myself or together)
– playing around with rhythms and measures
– playing around with languages or even languages that occur through music
– playing around with harmonies
– playing around with voices and percussion

There will be more songs like this (and this one will evolve into a song that feels right)!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OCss6r4LhU

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My WHY, HOW, WHAT

And after a few weeks of not quite knowing, it all fell into place a couple of weeks ago: I knew what I was going to do.

Up until then, there was a vague idea, and a vague explanation. Now, it’s all so crystal clear. And that feels good!

This is what it is. I used the WHY, HOW, WHAT principle as was explained by Simon Sinek at a TedTalk. Watch it, it is pretty inspiring!

My WHY:

– CONGRUENCY: I believe in the feeling that things fall into place. They feel right. They are supposed to be like this. Whether it’s quitting your job to start up your own company, finding a solution to a design problem or using a product for a specific purpose. All that should be congruent with everything else that is part of reality at that moment.
– VALUE: I believe that everything I do should have value. I try to only do things that I think are valuable to me, the world and other people in the world.

My HOW:

– NATURAL: I do this by turning things into something natural. Use of a product should be intuitive, easy, unobtrusive, effortless and supportive of the goals.
– STORIES: I do this by listening to stories of real people. Every story is worth listening to, and is of value because you can learn from it. Feeling connected to others adds value to the process.
– CREATIVE:I do this by being creative, by looking beyond the problem at hand and finding the solution beyond the ones that already exist.
– SMALL: I do this by starting small and then spreading. I believe in an agile, flexible process that fits with what is really needed at that point in time. Doing lots of little things at a time and adjusting them has more value than doing one bulk of work with the possibility of getting it wrong. Without losing the overview of what is really important.

My WHAT:

– USERS: I look at users
– SITUATION: I look at the situation the user is in
– NEEDS: I look at user’s needs, even the ones they don’t know they have
– PROBLEMS: And then I solve problems to make things easier.
– SPECIFIC: I do this for specific situations and target groups.

(I can hear you all ask: of WHAT exactly? I’m working on getting that clear right now)

I call myself the user’s advocate.

Pleased to meet you.

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