Category: Life

posts about personal “happenings”

On quitting

… and the relative impossibility to do that!

Once again I find myself reading out an article on quitting, changing life, changing perspective.

Once again the author is a really talented guy. Nor the average one.

Once again the person quitting comes from a Country on the north of the world. Where everything is really based on merits and where professional profile is very well paid.

I read with amazement, envy, curiosity this behaviour and keep wondering “what about the average person?” … and the below the average person? Does he have to kill himself? In a global competitive world “weaks” do not survive. If I have to live a shitty life as a dishwasher in a big city abroad why bother to chance and go through all the sacrifices?

In these days somebody is warning us of the perils of automation and points to an universal income as a social solution for the masses. I’m not sold to this idea … this is a hypothesis for the far future, I need a solution to my precariousness today.

via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

Quitting is easy if you got no boundaries. No mortgage loan on the house you’ve chosen to live in. No partner with extreme difficulty to leave the current job, or do the same one in an all new — alien — place. Parents in good health (or none or with which you have no relationship for any reason), weak family ties.

If you’re young and you can run away, run away from places were meritocracy, honesty, responsibility, good behaviour and respect for the “public thing” are derided. Run and reach the place where you can get the bare minimum you can live with.

If you’re struck here, begin to choose wisely your fights … avoids the ones you can’t win, fight the daily fight to improve the things you do for your job and your immediate vicinity, and try to make this place of yours the best you can.

via https://unsplash.com/@averieclaire

Those are my conclusion to quitting the life I don’t like. Until something broke or drastically changes … and you have to re-evaluate everything once again.

—
Originally posted on Medium.

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merry christmas, 2018

Pain, whatever its origin and in whatever way it is experienced, breaks the habitual rhythm of existence, produces that discontinuity sufficient to shed new light on things and to be both suffering and revelation.

Anonymous @ Bambino Gesù paediatric hospital, 2017

What the self-help gurus and their critics reveal about our times.

“In a consumerist society, we are not meant to buy one pair of jeans and then be satisfied,” Cederström and Spicer write, and the same, they think, is true of self-improvement. We are being sold on the need to upgrade all parts of ourselves, all at once, including parts that we did not previously know needed upgrading. (This may explain Yoni eggs, stone vaginal inserts that purport to strengthen women’s pelvic-floor muscles and take away “negative energy.” Gwyneth Paltrow’s Web site, Goop, offers them in both jade and rose quartz.) There is a great deal of money to be made by those who diagnose and treat our fears of inadequacy; Cederström and Spicer estimate that the self-improvement industry takes in ten billion dollars a year.
Alexandra Schwartz

Almost one year later, someone pointed me to Improving Ourselves to Death ☞ . Well worth a read, my friend…

the giving portfolio

create a giving portfolio. Here in Australia, there is a platform called MyCause. You can choose from 2000 charities and make regular donations to the causes you believe in through one simple interface. You’re able to adjust the mix and the amount of your portfolio any time depending on what issues need your support most urgently. I’m sure there is a similar tool in your country. In the US, I know of one called Givolio which works similarly.

It’s one small step that everyone with a bit of disposable income can take. For me, my giving portfolio is a little hack that helps me offset some of the helplessness and anger I get from social media.

Kai Brach