Catching up

I am trying to catch up with life after attending a conference.  Am not succeeding much and found myself disoriented.  Trying to establish new routines and discarding old ones, like changing seasonal clothing.  

Some new routines and resolutions seem to help, at least for the time being. For instance, deciding on being with my son for his new sporting adventures.  Let us see if I succeed in protecting my time to do so, and if my energy levels help.  

There are systemic factors influencing us all, I think, how we live each day, and somehow inviting us to keep up the pace.  I call them systemic because they influence work, family and other stuff in my life.  Just to name a few: 

• National mourning  
• The media and the news raising concerns about energy crises and cost of living.  
• The new academic term coming soon.  
• Emails that normally would not be received another time.  

In the midst of preparations for the new academic term, I feel anxious.  As in a dream where a race or an event has started and am still trying to find my bearings and not succeeding in being there.   I try to join others, only to get lost.  Buildings, elevators, roads, I travel.  Familiar places look confusing.  

Not all is lost I think.  In the dreams I accept that I have my own pace and style to catch up.  I somehow find it satisfying to slow down.  Like in a bike race many years ago when I decided that I was not going to win it, but was going to complete it.  And so I did.  Arrived within the time limit.   It felt rewarding, it felt complete.  And it was not a dream. 

So much for catching up.  I think I will let life catch up with me instead of the other way round.  Like the bike race, will try to pace myself...

Routines and Smells

I am now sitting outside in the back garden.  A fresh current of air is passing by.  Windows and doors are open.  Felt the need to have fresh air at home.

Routines for this summer.  Waking up, getting ready, enjoying breakfast whilst listening to whatever the others are listening to.  And later on, going out to get something to cook.  Looking at people, looking at myself.  How we all get in an out of places, as if we had a clear plan for the day and with little time to spare.  

More routines.  Writing and meeting, checking work.  Taking twins to parks or sports centres.  Answering emails and ensuring bills are paid.  Fighting with the delivery people.  Trying not to be too absorbed by what I read.  Catching up on TV series or movies that were there.  Reading a couple of books now and then.  

Smells of quietness and change.  Now thinking that this rest of year things will be different.  Not wanting to have much of things outside my control.  Accepting perhaps that this is an illusion.  Dry air, humid air.  Quietness.  Noise I do not normally take the time to listen to.  

This summer I have tried to let go of worries and deadlines whenever possible.  I have partially succeeded.  Different routines and different smells, that seems to have helped.  

Rhythms of life

 What if after all these years, thinking that we know it all, we come to the realisation that we don't? 

World of wars and droughts now, presenting it as it probably always was.  Or has been.  Only that we did not want to see it...

World of cycles, multitudes and gatherings, isolation and fear.  Coming to a foreign country and living for decades.   Summer makes me happier. And thoughtful.  So I write.  And remember, to then forget.  The sun shines, the rubbish is there...

There is a rhythm that I can now hear.  Less of a timetable and more of an exploration.  Days go by and we bathe in the sun, we go places.  We buy food and slide downwards in the leisure centre.  We walk and think less of work and more of whatever else.  You and I read.  And you keep reading.  The rhythm of long nights and less clothes.  Of hope and rediscover.   Of pictures and nice meals.   Slow rhythms.  Rejuvenating.  Friends are away, families too.  

And there is one I do not want to hear, or maybe I cannot hear enough.  That of performance and production. The one that is difficult not to listen to, because there is always something to do.  As if I needed to prove myself time and time again.  Fifty or so years and still I dance to this rhythm's tune and cadence.   One more thing here, another there.  Not enough.  Not good enough. 

Country of constant production.  The drumbeats start early.  They go unnoticed until an email arrives.  Questions and more questions.  That dreaded meeting.  Commitments and action plans.  Delays.  Commitments fulfilled and others not so much.  The brain remembers.  A coffee is needed to spark me into action.  Like a train whose sounds one can still remember even after the train passes.  Dig, dig, dig.

And subtly the writing comes back.  Taking the hand off the keyboard and letting it move freely.  No need to know exactly where it is going.  Anxious deliberation: What should I write about today?  Do I need to?  Sparks of life come all at the same time.  A rhythm without rhythm.  A routine that just emerged.  A story to be told, one root and several branches.  My rhythm, no need to follow others'. 

Food and the circular economy

Just finished teaching a two week course for students in China.  It was a great experience, bit intense for all of us, but rewarding at the same time.  Thank you to the university that gave me the opportunity and the students who enrolled.  

In the course, I included some papers about the circular economy in relation to food.  What seems to be going on is a rethink of what food is in supply chains.  Food could be considered a secondary resource.  And this means that it could go back to earlier processes of production and supply.  Elements of food that cannot go back could then be decomposed.  Food could then be catalogued as edible or non edible, the former also considered as surplus as the following diagram aims to show:

Source:  Teigiserova et al, 2020, doi:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.136033 

In this context, there is is scope to apply our creativity in making sure that food is not wasted and its overproduction prevented.  There are experiences around the world that show this.  For instance, my friend Carmen, a very experienced consultant in ecosystems told me recently about regenerative agriculture, a new 'technology' that aims to protect the soil from damaging practices and renew it more adequately than with intensive agriculture.  The downside of this could be that feeding larger populations is not yet possible with this type of agriculture.  And there are important costs involved.  

In terms of the circular economy, food could also be reused with the help of technologies like anaerobic digestion or AD.  With colleagues from other UK universities and Leap-AD, we are currently looking at the feasibility of implementing this technology in university campuses.  As mentioned in a previous post, there is the issue of how decision makers see feasibility in terms of long-term costs and benefits.  

In addition, universities are also subject to league tables like the People and Planet.  One possible way forward is to collect and show data about our efforts to create awareness in our student populations, using behavioural theories like nudge.  Another is to use other, intelligent technologies (i.e. sensors) to detect changes in food waste and help decision makers react more instantly to them.  

My course also included the use of systems techniques like the rich picture and creativity ones to foster divergent and convergent thinking.  We also looked at six sigma and lean to improve processes.  A quick review of lean in the hospitality, restaurants and catering sector showed that there are important developments to help reduce waste in terms of time and food production.  What is less clear is how this sector is moving or could move towards preventing food waste.  

Perhaps this means that there are big challenges to do so.  And in addressing them, one thing that could really help is to consider circular economies as systems, where different elements interact to generate diverse purposes, some of which need to be further studied if not nurtured.  Not only economic or regenerative purposes, but those related to improving the quality of life of everyone if possible.  There is scope to enrich circular economy food programmes with this idea.  And use techniques or methods that could help us align if not revisit purposes.  

Impact and data - not really a short cut when it comes to (food) waste

The last couple of weeks have been somehow surreal.  I got in touch again with a good friend and also with a former student of mine.

  

In both cases there are possibilities for collaboration and further research if not more practical projects.  We have met (online, over the phone) and talked things through.  

I call the experiences surreal because they came out of the blue.  I was not expecting them.  It was refreshing to talk to two people I knew and know they are doing very well in their own field.  

And my motivation to talk to them is also driven by my work environment.  Universities now are to generate more impact.  This means whatever we do has to change the life of organisations, communities or other groups in society.  We are to finally put our knowledge to the service of others.  

The UK government has evaluated us in this regard, and there are talks that this is going to continue and increase.  We are to show more impact.  More engagement.  Perhaps more commitment with those who could benefit from our research or other activities.  

Myself, I consider I do practical things with companies (mostly in the social entrepreneurship or innovation domain) and with my students.    During these weeks I have also met my group of academics and practitioners with we have been working for about a year.  

We meet to discuss how a project is going.  We would like to better understand how it is that people behave towards food waste and recycling.  We would like to collect more data to better understand such behaviour.  And it looks as if we need to spend more time than initially expected doing that.  

There seems to be no short cut for this.  We need to talk and listen to managers and consumers (students).  We also need to assess how it is that organisations like universities are sending recycling messages to their audiences.  Do we need to adopt a firm, punishing attitude to those who do not recycle or waste food?  

Perhaps not.  We have this summer to find out what has been going on in this area, what people have done to motivate consumers and others to pay more attention to the (food) waste in campuses, and if possible, design better messages or campaigns which, supported by appropriate data, could give us a better chance to prevent if not reduce waste.  

Wish us good luck in this effort!

The Disappearance of Rituals

 The philosopher Byung-Chun Han provides a telling narrative about rituals in his book The Disappearance of Rituals.

It is a well written and short account to help us understand when and how rituals have been present in our society.  Han argues that they are disappearing, as we have all been swamped by neo-liberalism and its relentless drive for individuality.  

Rituals are needed, according to Han, to maintain the cohesiveness of our communities, and protect us from our excessive attempts of 'being'.  Information and communication technologies (ICTs) contribute to this excess.  Their 'transparency' and the continuous having to show oneself as news (or as data as Han will argue later in the book) contribute to fragment communities, and also to the fragmentation of our senses of self.  

Rituals can provide us with a sense of permanence, place and wonder among other things.  We can lose ourselves in rituals, submit our inner wills, abide by the forms and signs that rituals bring.  The festival, the village, the silence, the duel, the tea ceremony, the kimono, politeness, these are examples that Han uses to show how we need them as a way to cope with the chaos and fragmentation of our societies.  

Rituals, processes of symbolic embodiment, could help us recreate key features of our social life.  What matters is not our individuality but that which we submit too: a narrative, a form,  a way of relating to each other which is different from what we are now used to: transactions, short and intentional exchanges where we compete for our own image.  

With his historical analysis of rituals, Han (2020) is inviting us to rediscover them, to re-enchant our world with rituals, to spend time just observing in silence, or finding ways to elevate ourselves to the sacred, that which is timeless and which does not require us to continuously play to the gallery.  How we are to do that requires imagination and caution.  Imagination because we are to revive things we used to do, or do them in new ways, for example through the internet.  And caution because we are to avoid simply creating rituals as events that can be recorded and disseminated.  The excessive presence or absence of ritual, according to Han, can lead us to violence.  

I found the book very engaging.  I spent more time than initially planned, as Han writes short but very powerful sentences that required me to stop and digest what I was reading.  I also found that he provides good examples of rituals.  The narrative was clear, only that there was a big influence of Han's critique on modern society throughout the whole book.  

As an engineer or problem solver, I wish Han could have been a bit more specific on how we can make ritual coexist with practices of self.   Perhaps this is my own task now.  

Reference:

Han, B.C (2020). The Disappearance of Rituals.  Cambridge (Mass): Polity Press.  

 

The power of the assembly

Last year, and the year before last, I remember driving to test against  COVID-19.  A drive through motorways and alleyways.  Booked appointments, showing codes, receiving testing kits, performing the test and giving it back. Waiting anxiously for the results, all of them negative at the time.  

Admiring the sheer infrastructure created for testing.  In no time, public venues, mostly car parks, were invaded with trucks and marquees.   Volunteers swarmed.  And here we were, circulating in queues, faces down, sometimes chatty, some other times silent.  Vaccination for me went smoothly.  First time, second time, booster time.  This last one at a church, where the normal assembly was replaced.

The power of assembly.  Our power as communities to come together in times of need.  Or in times of festivity.  A school fayre, a footie tournament, these last two I have just experienced.  At some point in time, if there is any time to bear when the assembly calls us and we are there, things feel quiet.  They feel solemn, they feel slow.  We get there, we take part, we then leave.  

Perhaps we need to cultivate this power bit more.  Now that we are together again, it is time to remember what keeps us together, what binds us together.  A couple of minutes or a couple of hours.  Some sense of communion in between.  A ritual enacted perhaps.  Remembering, evoking, connecting.   

Before I forget the last two years

 My workplace is moving on as you may have gathered from previous posts.  At a meeting this week I did not recognise half of the people attending.  Most of them joined in the last two years.  And if felt strange in many ways.

As if I was now one of the oldest people who have been away for two years.  Years of rushing to prepare online material in the midst of hot summer and with a view of a pool in the garden, tempting me to jump in and stay and forget about lock downs.

Years of teaching with a mask, almost choking in my first session, not sure how far I could be from the audience and aiming to put a smile.  Quantitative methods teaching with a mask, a challenge, also because it was the first time being in the big auditorium as a lecturer.  And as time went by, I felt more confident.  Letting colleagues carry on.  

Years of being at home and delivering sessions where it felt I was on a radio program.  Not seeing people's faces and assuming they were there.  Struggling to get a response and when it came, feeling elated if not scared.  People were there.  

Years of juggling, children at home and with home work, one of the least pleasant experiences.  How could we replicate their classroom, their teaching methods, whilst attending to other things?  Perhaps I did not have what Mary Catherine Bateson calls peripheral vision, this communicative capacity to jointly improvise and adapt to situations that has at its core the idea that we are fluid selves.  Perhaps as a result I was not self-compassionate enough to lower standards, or if I did, I felt frustration.  

Years of asking if I was or am in the right career.  Reading Sir Ken Robinson's finding your element helped me realise I am good at connecting people with learning opportunities, and having as well as developing original ideas in my teaching as well as in my writing.  

I can, but not fully enjoy writing journal articles, unless I can see how they reflect what I am: someone that likes to promote coexistence even if it often affects me negatively.  Someone that enjoys being alone as well as in the company of just a few.  

And someone that still fears disappointing others.  But I am better at managing this.  The last two years taught me that I can be absent and the world is not going to crumble.  

So before I forget: There is no need to be too worried about what comes next.  Let us keep the worries in check.  And people are there, even if we do not see them.  

It feels like a new job

 Great writing retreat with colleagues.  Two days of solid writing.  Day walks, chats, decaf tea, sleep and getting lost when jogging.  

Emotionally pleased with myself, also drained.  I wrote in two days what would normally take me a few weeks.  Nature and routine together helped.  My creativity was there since the beginning I think.  Preparing notes, writing them.  It emerged bit more strongly with new stories to tell on the last few minutes of the last session.  Arriving at home I kept writing notes until my brain just shot down and I had a good night's sleep. Thank you creativity for visiting !

Talking to colleagues during the retreat, I realised this feels like a new job despite being at the same university and somehow feeling part of the furniture.  New members of staff, soon to have new line managers and paradoxically we are to return to teach the 'old ways'.  We keep thinking we have not changed either individually or collectively.  The only things that seem to remain standing are those old and well maintained buildings.

Perhaps life sometimes is about staying where you are while other things revolve around.  We sit and wait, we stand up, we walk, we return, and then get visited by creativity.  And when we do so, we somehow have changed.  

Impermanence as the Buddhists would say. 

Inevitably there were times to check email and get frustrated or annoyed.  The world out there kept moving and not in the directions I expected.  That perhaps is also part of retreats.  Back at home now it feels as if it was ok to have gone and come back.  Life is what it is.   What I wrote is just a tiny bit of what life writes in us all, day by day. 

Thank you for a great retreat.  

Where have I been? Well, I honestly don't remember

6 months ago I wrote my last blog post.  It was a reflection of how 2021 fared.  Some hope was also mentioned for this year of 2022.

Fast forward and this new year has gone very quickly so far.  Lots of teaching and dealing with new situations.  Students have not returned as expected.  Hybrid strategies and models of working have emerged.  And institutional rules have remained.  We still have deadlines, meetings to attend, panels to run to better understand how academic work has been done.  

This has generated some brain fog.  Not only me but peers who also feel that we seem to be busier than ever, as if we had to restart a heavy machinery to catch up with production.  Fortunately there are days in which this machinery stops again.  Or maybe it is our brains that do so.  Sleep and rest, rest and sleep, only to begin again with enthusiasm until the next break.  

There are glimmers of new hope for this year.  Many of us are able to go back again to our offices, have coffee, doing writing, walking or just enjoying a nice morning. Lock-down situations seem to be a thing of the past.  We need to temper these glimmers of hope with what is going on elsewhere.  Wars and conflicts are still there.  They affect us indirectly.  Our restarting of lives is cautious.  No need to fully go back to what we did, who we were or where we have been.  

We have ourselves, we have others to join in new journeys.  We still have the rest of 2022 to create how we want to live it.  For myself I am now accepting that summer is going to be busy.  The hope it is there that there will be new things and people ahead, on the roads or paths of new walks.  

So if you ask me where I have been, I do not remember much, but does it really matter?  Maybe it is more important where I plan to be, hopefully with you.