about a year and a half ago I posted a list of 100 Things I Want To Learn (More) About…. I wrote the list when I was in a more active phase of my DIY Masters, a very slowly ongoing project which I can say has led to many good things in my life even if I haven’t yet earnt and given myself a DIY degree. Anyway, the list had a lot of random skills and activities which ranged from learning how to cook family recipes to more advanced work skills.

A couple of friends started to write their own lists and a couple even made it up to 100. Recently Pete Hindle, returned to his list of 50 things and updated it with comments as to what had been achieved and his current thoughts on his list. Pete almost died and so has a) a really good excuse for not finishing things on his list b) his life has changed drastically which definitely changed his opinion about some of his learning items. It will be interesting to see if the life changes I’ve gone through (finally meeting a good man, getting a job, getting another job, travelling away from Berlin a lot) have affected how I feel about items on my list.

100 Things I Want To Learn (More) About… Updated!

1. Botany
   Hmmm. I haven’t yet learnt to identify plants using a taxonomy. So. No.
2. A musical instrument: guitar or cello
   Let’s just say that 360 days ago I was given a beautiful guitar and can barely play 3 chords. So this learning task is active, but moving slowly. Actually taking lessons might be the next step.
3. Haircutting
   I can cut boys’ hair if they have some curl to hide the mistakes. The mistakes aren’t as often or severe as they used to be. But I haven’t learnt any fancy techniques (yet).
4. How to make a sponge cake
   Really, why would I make a sponge when there are so many other amazing cakes to bake out there? Not Yet.
5. How to maintain my bicycle
   In general I’m better at working with bikes thanks to a couple of sessions at Regenbogen Fabrik’s bike workshop. But my bike in Berlin is not currently maintained – sadly the type of maintenance I know won’t make it better, it will just keep it existing for longer.
6. How to make bagels
   Nope. One day, when I’m making brunch for people. I do finally have a recipe I want to use.
7. Throat Singing
   Hah. I find the idea of throat singing fascinating, but I don’t want to learn it that much. Let’s just say I may have still wanted to impress my ex at this point.
8. Bookbinding
   Not yet. I don’t have anything I want to bind at the moment, and it’s pretty easy to get amazing notebooks in Berlin.
9. Basic Arabic
   Nada. But my amazing new flatmate is doing Islamic studies and she can write essays in Arabic.  I know who I’m going to ask for help.
10. How to make better Karelian pies
    I’ve not made a Karelian pie for ages. I think that visiting friends in Finland and buying Karelian pies has to be higher priority than making my own… I’m getting really good at making Spinach pancakes, one of my other Finnish food desires.

    (more…)

There’ll always be times when keeping up with your mindapples (the mental health 5-a-Day) just aren’t enough – and you find yourself overwhelmed with anxiety or the sads. For example, I know that the heavy grey skies of Berlin can really affect my mood, regardless of any steps I’ve taken to avoid depression.  So I’m always looking for ways of walking and talking myself out of a sad or anxious mood.

A couple of years ago I posted a step by step approach to dealing with bouts of anxiety or depression. It was some home brewed cognitive behavioural therapy that got me through some heartbreak. The bad times passed and then I deleted the post.

And even though I still followed some of my own advice, I’d forgotten how specific and useful a paper (or electronic) set of the reminders could be in times of the crazy sads.

A few months back an old housemate asked me where the post was and I couldn’t find it in either my archives or anywhere online. But yesterday I hit paydirt and found the text again. I twittered it and was told by a follower that she’d forwarded the link to a friend who’s going through some tough times – and that her friend had printed up two copies to keep by her side.

Which of course made me feel all happy, that maybe this list of actions might help more people than just me.

So… here is the In Case of Emergency list again. Please feel free to leave comments or further advice.

from on .

My latest vodcast – as recorded on May 29th, 2009.

I only just realised that I could have included links to bands, projects and friends using the amazing power of titles.

Oh well.

My friend Marc, is the writer behind http://www.un-understand.co.uk.
The Australian band I mentioned was Brillig http://www.brillig.com.au.
And my friend Andy Gibson http://sociability.org.uk is the founder of Mindapples http://mindapples.org!

One of the things that motivated me to start learning more about friendship is the modern and instant types of “friend” as represented by social networks.  I sometimes feel that the meaning[s] of ‘friend’ are somewhat weakened by the more binary Yes / No labelling of friendship prompted by “Do you want to add person x as a friend?” *

As part of this learning I’ve started listening to a series of short lectures by  Mark Vernon, author of , recounting and responding to Aristotle’s philosophy of friendship.

In Lecture 3, Vernon elaborates on Aristotle’s idea of 3 types of friendship: Useful,Pleasant and Good friends.  A lovely Australian friend, the zinestress extraordinaire  Maddy Phelan, describes these relationships as Situational (school / work), Activity (music, hobby) and Excellent (life long friends) friendships.  You meet most of your friends at work, school or in situations around your hobbies and passions, but not all of those friendships will last once those situations change. The friends who last despite life changes, are your Good or Excellent friends.

Before listening to these lectures, I’d already begun thinking of people I know as belonging to those categories. It prompts a series of questions: Why do some people stay friends while others drift away? Is this drifting something you can predict? How do you know when someone’s become an Excellent friend? Do you need a life change (new employment, travel) to really find out which friendships will survive? Do you need to share specific experiences / spend a certain amount of time with someone to strengthen and form a long-lasting friendship?

Mark Vernon describes Aristotle’s Good / Excellent friends as people you love for what they are or who they are in themselves. They’re the people you are friends with because of their “depth of character, goodness, passion or joie de vivre”.

As a personal exercise as part of 150 Things I asked myself to write a list of my most Excellent friends. I ended up with 7 people who I feel are my truest soul friends – people who I’ll continue to be friends with for the rest of my life, even if I only see them every few years. These are the friends I know intimately and who refresh my sense of self and personal energy whenever I see them.

I also made a list of about 15-20 people who might be in that Excellent friend category if I could have enough chances to spend time / communicate with them and develop a friendship further.  Luckily several of those people live here in Berlin. After only five months living in this town I feel very happy and lucky knowing that I have potential Excellent friends.

“The better these friends are as people, the better the quality of the friendship. This friendship is therefore also the rarest. And it takes time to grow: they must savour salt together, Aristotle says, and trust one another…

…What is quick to arrive is a wish for friendship – what is not quick to rise is friendship itself.”
Mark Vernon,

*To tangent away from friendship itself, I want to add that the social networking sites I feel most comfortable with and trust more as brands are those which are more honest about the type of connection / relationship that is being made: Do you want to follow person x? (Twitter) or Do you want to add this person as a Conact? Are they a Friend or Family member? (Flickr)

For me, the phrasing of the questions also encourages me to think more about the type of information I’ll share with members of those social networks. Facebook seems to encourages people to share far more information online by the use of the word ‘friend’ to describe contact: “of course I’ll share my home address with this person who I’ve met once – they’re my ‘friend’”.

One of my favourite songs by one of my favourite bands, The Van Pelt, is called “Let’s Make A List”. I love Chris Leo’s vocal delivery and the guitar line, but it’s the lyrics about frustrated teachers that really get me:

let’s make a list so we can feel like we’re accomplishing something, so we can feel like we’re working together…

I’m a big fan of making lists, especially as a creativity and brainstorming technique. List-making also has a tendency to come out as part of my writing style and has been a method for one of my 150 Things About Friendship. I often wonder whether I get more or less things done as a result of list-writing, but the act of making them is somewhat satisfying and meditative.

Usually I just list my most immediate thoughts and ideas, rather than pushing through to a specific target amount. Recently, a friend added the article “Tackle Any Issue With a List of 100” to their delicious feed and it started me thinking about “extreme “listing. I’ve been meaning to write a Learning list for a while as part of the DIY Masters project, so I decided to attempt a list of 100 things I want to learn.

I think my question was very general which resulted in a list of general learning rather than “100 Things I want to achieve with my DIY Masters Project”. Most of the 100 things are skills that I want rather than a body of knowledge. Looking over the list I can divide the list into skills I can learn as a result of the DIY Masters project (highlighted), some long-term general learning (botany, musical skills) and a lot of smaller life skills.

Since writing the list earlier this week I’ve found that there’s a local printing museum which runs bookbinding and letterpress tutorials in German. And I keep on coming up with even more things I want to learn, like 101. How to assemble a yurt. As I eventually want to build my own Mongolian style yurt / ger, I might just have to make a new list 100 Things I Want To Make.

But that is another list, for another day.
Anyway, here is the list of things I want to learn in the order they came out of my head:
100 Things I Want To Learn (More) About…

1. Botany
2. A musical instrument: guitar or cello
3. Haircutting
4. How to make a sponge cake
5. How to maintain my bicycle
6. How to make bagels
7. Throat Singing
8. Bookbinding
9. Basic Arabic
10. How to make better Karelian pies (more…)

When I changed battlecat servers at the end of last year I briefly read over my previous I Would Like list and removed the list from my major links. I’d just moved to Berlin and was feeling very unsure of myself, so I didn’t take the time to review what I’d achieved in the 2 and a half years since I wrote the list, nor did I consider adding any new goals.

This week however, there’s something in the air which is prompting me to look over the list, refresh it and then work on it. Maybe it’s the slightest hint of the forthcoming spring, the return of my beau from 3 weeks abroad or the realisation that I’ve now spent more than 3 months in Berlin. Realistically I think a lot of this feeling has to do with the latter idea, specifically with the knowledge that I stop subletting and move into a permanent flat with a great flatmate this week.

For more than a year now I have been hopping from country to country and from temporary housing situation to temporary housing situation. The last year hasn’t been about travelling, and it hasn’t quite felt way I imagine a nomad’s lifestyle to be either. My experience has in some ways been exciting, but primarily it’s been exhausting and unsettling. While I wouldn’t say that my relatively privileged position of some saved funds and usefully flexible citizenship is anything like that of a refugee’s situation, I now have a greater understanding of the feeling of displacement.

So, this weekend I’ll finally have A Room Of My Own again. I’m not sure whether to panic and run away, or to celebrate and invest in very heavy objects that are difficult to move. Even though I’ve spent the grand sum of 9€ on an extremely portable desk lamp, I think that I’ll be commemorating this move with reviewing these lists and working out how I can move forward without having to move for at least 6 months.

Update Below!

So far, it feels that I’ve made very little progress with my DIYMasters work, as I seem to do more thinking about what I intend to do rather than actually sitting down to write, study or create.

Overthinking and never taking action is so much easier to do when you don’t have an opportunity to talk about your ideas.  When I have a chance to discuss a concept with someone else I am far more likely to move to a new level of understanding and be more likely to commit to an action. Which means I need to bring other people into my DIYMasters project.

I’m looking for people to become involved with my DIYMasters at several levels:

• Mentors
• Teachers
• Peers
• Task Masters
• Sponsors and Funding Angels

(more…)

, originally uploaded by .

I’ve been thinking that in a community with a size of 150 (commonly cited as Dunbar’s Number), not all of those people will be friends.

Even though I have a Facebook friend list of over 450 people I wanted to see if I could quickly name 150 people who I wanted to actively maintain, create or repair friendships with. I gave myself a limit of about half an hour to make the list.

Some limits:

• I didn’t look at Facebook.
• Family members and “romantic” partners were eligible.
• I had to have met people ITRW.
• People on the list had to be alive.

At the end of half-an-hour I had 89 people on the list. Compared to my Facebook friends, that’s not that many people.

The vast majority of people were between the ages of 23 and 40. I felt a little sad that I don’t have that much interaction with much older or much younger people. In the future I want to return to this topic as I feel age range is an important element of community.

Only two people on the list were from Berlin and I’ve known them for longer than the two months I’ve been here. I think that’s a sign of how friendships evolve – there are some lovely people who I like in Berlin, but I’m still not sure if they’re going to become friends.

I intend to repeat this exercise in the future so that I can compare how people drift in and out of the list. I won’t compare the lists until I’ve done several.

For a few reasons I won’t reveal the list:

• Even though I’m consciously and publicly thinking about friends – they are still personal relationships.
• I feel weird about listing people’s names on the internet without their permission.
• I don’t want awareness of whether someone’s on the list or not to alter their behaviour and our friendship.
• Future Things may be dependent on the secrecy of the list.

Prompted by: the Love / Hate lists I wrote in diaries in primary school.

I’m still thinking a lot about how to approach the studying and academic side of my DIYMasters, but on the creative side I’ve become a bit more relaxed.

For a while I was feeling intimidated that I would have to set myself “assignments”, whether I had to create  an electronic friend “sensor”, a film or a sculpture made out of marshmallows and toothpicks.  Instead I’m giving myself permission to do small exploratory actions and reminding myself that anything, no matter how tiny it is contributes towards a body of work.

So I’m setting myself the rather grand task of recording 150 things that I create and do during this informal study of friendship.  I’ve chosen the number 150 because it is commonly cited as Dunbar’s Number, or the upper end of group sizes in which people maintain stable relationships with each other.  Of course how many of those people we count as true friends is probably much smaller, so it’ll be interesting to see how many of the 150 “things” are significant pieces of work.

So that I don’t start off with a feeling of being overwhelmed at doing the first Thing, I’m going to list my BarCampSheffield talk on friendship as the number one action.

• How can common sense be taught (and understood) in a society where there is no term to describe “common sense” in the local language(s)?
• What methodologies can be taken from online social networks to distribute ideas and knowledge in remote environments where access to technology is incredibly limited and literacy skills are still rudimentary?
• In the “real world” what do you consider to be important when becoming someone’s friend? (This is in opposition to Facebook, MySpace etc when you can just “add” friends quite randomly.)
• Lee! Give me the goss on Sheffield!