Me? I am just a symptom!

This year of 2020 will be remembered by how we all faced up to the world pandemic, and how, as human beings, we are capable of many good and not so good things.   

I can only praise the creativity of many of us, the dedication and the help we have received from, and some times given to, others.  

Have been lucky to be part of families as well as communities which came together via zoom and other means to help each other. With ups and downs, it has also been possible to many of us get by if not improve our quality of life, and keep smiling.  

Myself, I have been fortunate to find a new balance in what I do.  And to acknowledge what and who I really value.  Despite my best attempts to be who I am not,  I have found that I value family, respect, honesty and support above other things.  And I still tend to please others.  

So if you ask me what has happened with me this year, I can only say: “Me?  I am just a symptom.  As such it comes and goes, and it is (not) that important in the grand scheme of things...”

Ending 2020 on a high, I would like to say thank you to those who helped me.  And thank you to those who I try to help. 

What is for 2021?  

Well, lots of things I guess.  

Let us try to be instruments of greater and good purposes.   

Pandemic: Useful and not so useful discussions

I am now at a virtual meeting...and writing this.  

Despite the pandemic, some things seem to remain.  The competition, the "I am better than you", "it cannot be done", the “I do what I want” resurface.  

And I fight back with similar things.

This world pandemic has made us more prone to defend what we know, to do what we had in the backlog list, and to express our fears in different ways.  We have had to simplify our views of the world, and in many cases, to entrench ourselves.

Where have we left the usefulness of having a discussion not to win, or to 'move forward'?

Yes, time is precious, life is precious, let us keep the conversation going, but let’s also acknowledge that it is not about you or me only, it is about the world.  

Who are we to blame ?

Let us face another harsh truth from the world pandemic:  We fear technology.

Yes we do.  It is fine to organise meetings online, to play around with backgrounds and discover new features of software applications.  Technology companies have had a field day during the pandemic, and for sometime we could feel that they and us are now finding common grounds to continue working together.  

But when it comes to our privacy, and feeling invaded about it, we become less prone to open ourselves, our households (which in cases like mine also means letting children use online technologies) to the promised wonders of technology.

We can feel in control when we ask Alexa@ questions, when it is us who call to an online meeting and decide to switch off our speakers or cameras, to leave or terminate conversations.  

But if something goes wrong, connection speed is slow, there is an unexpected guest, or even our own appearance gets noticed (for good or bad), the surviving animal mentality could quick in.  The ideal of working from home, avoiding traffic, being able to decide when or how to interact with others, gets blurred.  At this point, we are all hostage to our instinctive fears.  As if we are called to question or scrutiny, and there is nowhere to escape. 

Fear could then take centre stage.  And to this, we could have two options:  a) To accept that things are deemed to happen in unexpected ways, and plan to reduce possible failures, to breathe.  Or b) to curse or blame the technology, ourselves, our governments, the pandemic.  

These options are not mutually exclusive.  But they could reveal that we are still far from learning to live in a new world that is full of uncertainty, fragility, a world that ask us to be bit more compassionate with ourselves and others.  

I feel fear myself, I have been there, still do and will do.  But maybe I am slowly learning not to see the problem as only residing 'out there', and slowly learning to laugh at myself.  

And you?  

Tired after zooming in and out

It’s not easy to accept that I am tired and am allowed to have bad or less exciting days. 

(Source:  http://clipart-library.com/clipart/741683.htm)

The pandemic has asked to be really alert.  This is like going into overdrive more often than not. Part of the new ‘normal’ for people like me. 

(Source: https://www.istockphoto.com)

For example, taking each of my children to buy sports gear in the last couple of days and in between work meetings proved to be taxing.  I was careful and so were they.  An opportunity to go out and fulfil promises, also to zoom out after being online (which really drains me after an hour or so!). Still, we missed not cleaning an item or checking on another one before using it, and my mind raced to foresee tragic consequences.  To top it all, watching the news made me feel powerless and feel in need of a hug.  

https://dougdvorak.com/worry-never-works-take-action/

When things like this happen, I withdraw and try to recover, often doing so on my own. I curse, I panic, I go into fight or flight mode, only to fall (even more) tired and regretful. 

Perhaps it’s time to continue accepting we cannot control everything around us, and give ourselves a pat in the back for having tried to do our best, or even failing. 

Let’s accept the good and the bad.  Let’s hope we can do better tomorrow, perhaps more slowly.  We are still in lock down, even if that means slowly learning to live differently, with our different selves, and with the virus. 

Our creativity is still at work. Silently, she is leading us to complete the day. She might be saying: “No need for big fanfare. Just a bit of routine, tantrums allowed along the way”, putting her hand in our chests to let us know we are all right.  

Source:  https://sunflowerrosecw.wordpress.com/tag/inspiring/

Let’s acknowledge that in certain circumstances, zooming in and out is tiring, and that we are just learners who are not alone in this journey.  Creativity is there, with all of us living the best way we can, just for today. 

Some thoughts for the new and creative 'normal'

Let us face it.  Most if not all of us have been caught off-guard with this pandemic.

(Source: https://clipground.com/free-animated-surprise-clipart.html) 

We still long to return to the old days where we could to go our offices, cafes, visit friends or family, running around like headless chickens in the pursuit of happiness.

The lock down brought a sense of distance to those days.  But for people like me, it also brought a new form of anxiety, which is manifested in my desire to cling on to what I know, what I love to do and what I fear to lose.  

For the new normal, the return to how things were, it might not be enough to continue supporting systems that contributed to fuel this sort of anxiety.  This is because the elephant in the room, the different selves or identities that what we used to get by, are still there.

And we will have to learn to live with these different guys, being now more anxious because of a greater risk to lose them, or to see them go.  

But where would we start in the new normal?  A spell of honesty with ourselves could help.  

Myself, I woke up today and after a hectic week of trying to keep the work-life balance 'right'.  I realise that I have used the pandemic, and it has used me to do things that my selves wanted to keep:  finish writing a book, publishing an academic article and writing a few more, whilst keeping a good parenting role.  I have also learnt to wake up later than before, do more physical exercise and gardening, and catch up with old friends and things that I thought I did not have time to complete.  

In this new normal, my life has still busy and not so busy moments. I have tried to keep some 'precious' things at all cost: my job, my writing, my family, my health. The good friends to have coffee with and vent our mutual frustrations are now at a distance.  For good or bad, the remote family and the children are closer.  

The new normal has allowed me to keep these and other things.  However, some days I feel tired and sometimes angry with myself and the world.  Why is that?  Is it because I try to keep the old (committed, perfectionist) and have some new 'selves' (i.e. the sporty one) at the same time? 

I fear for the return to the 'normal', for the realisation that I need to let go of some of these selves. I wish I could let go of a competitive-creative self: :  feeling demanding audiences in colleagues and students, engaging in fights about our 'novelty' and 'contribution' on a daily basis, attending requests to get funding, travelling, evening meetings or plagiarism panels.  This on top of being the 'good' parent, whilst my bank account balance disappears nearer the end of each month.  And my other creative, writer self, is still here.  

(Source:  https://www.1001freedownloads.com/free-clipart/ma-2-2)

These realisations have made me acknowledge that the new normal for me needs to be, paradoxically, very abnormal.  It would need to be inclusive of uncertainty, self-compassion, introspection, human-sized jobs, doing good enough, touching fragility, developing simple education, enjoying nature locally, breathing, accepting frustration, welcoming the other selves in myself and my loved ones.  

And if possible keeping the writing going.   

In the new normal, my electric bike is also still waiting to be used a bit more.  

Forthcoming Book: Creativity in Management Education - A Systemic Rediscovery

I have pleasure to announce my new book which is due to be published by September 2020, and which I talked about previously in this blog.  

(Click on the image to go to the publisher's website)

The book is the result of critical analyses of management education and myself as a student and currently an educator.  I venture to explore a number of ideas to help us all rediscover ourselves and regain a sense of creativity and transcendence, for our own benefit and for the benefit of those people around us.

Educational institutions are now being challenged to offer new forms of delivery, and with it a rethink of their roles in societies.  In this regard, this book could offer insights on what to do and where to start.  Among other things, I speak about compassionate and technology mediated interactions, which could help us keep ‘soft’ educational tyrannies at bay, and enable us (re) discover different roles and practices to redress power imbalances generated by such tyrannies.  

So if you want to know more about educational tyrannies, myself, my experiences of nurturing creativity in and out of the classroom (the good and the bad, the ethical), buy the book or recommend it to your librarians or sponsors.  

There will be an electronic version available by August 2020 😁😁.

Further links: 

Link to Springer (has PDF promotional flyers)

Link to Amazon’s website (has bit more of detail)

Creativity and Living with the Virus

Like many people out there and in lock down, I am starting to accept the situation that we are currently living in.

My first reaction from the last few weeks was to catch up with life online.  My teaching had to be moved to the virtual world in the space of two days.   

I initially struggled with the online platforms that are on offer (zoom, MS teams). The workplace had not fully set them up and it took sometime for all of us to learn to share their use.  

Still things can be improved, and now we have a full examination period coming up online.

At home I had to become more patient.  Combining work with just spending idle time has not been easy for me.  And as a creative person, I am supposed to make the best of the situation.  

But I am also an anxious one, so my creativity needs to accept that the adjustment is to take some time.  

Cooking, gardening, reading crime novels, video-conferencing, writing a new book, shopping, going for runs, more gardening, cleaning, more cooking, stopped writing the book (it is with my proofreader now), restarted writing old papers and new papers.   And a good support group with bit more of mindfulness practice have become the activities of my week.  

I thought I was not doing much, but on the whole and looking at the above list, it is quite a lot!

Creativity is still here with me, with my family, with neighbors, with key workers in supermarkets and in hospitals, with the self-employed.  It is not the old creativity we used to know.  Rather, and like the virus, she has mutated for good.  She is asking us to focus on the important things, to rest, to chat with loved ones, to make things simpler, to stop unnecessary shopping, to consider how we are going to make the best of the online world, to be more compassionate with ourselves and others.  

For me this would mean being bit more patient, pray again, meditate again, enjoy my slow writing, my close family, my cycling (when possible), and my garden.  

And for you?  

Try to rediscover your creativity, welcome her back to your home and your souls, don't ask her for the impossible.  And enjoy her company.  

A toast to silent creativity

I propose a toast to silent creativity,

that muse that comes uninvited, when we give her the chance.

That creativity that encourages us not to boast but to work diligently,

to be honest with ourselves and ask:  Why is it that we do what we do?

If we are seeking fame, money or ego aggrandizement, she will walk away in the same way she came in. And we will not notice.  

She will wait 'outside', patiently, for us to prepare our hearts,  to find ourselves in our work.

She will visit us in our dreams, whispering a word, an idea, a feeling,

for us to wake up and get back to work, now with humility, zeal and passion.

If we are lucky, she will keep doing this, and when we feel we are ready, we can defend her in court.

The prosecutors will argue that she is passive, useless and mystical.  

The public will get impressed by the lack of evidence.  

Most of them perhaps will ask for a refund, they thought this was a show! 

What shall we do as her only friends in the room? 

Just listen to what she whispers:  

I am with you, do not worry, just keep doing what you love doing. 

Retreat if you must, but remember your dreams, my dreams, who you are.

Seek solitude, seek friends, seek your old diaries, I will be around... 

Cheers!