Sharing Connections

I discovered permaculture this year, and tonnes of free resources about it,  on the internet.

Facebook has been blocked at work. This is problematic for personal and professional reasons.  Personally, FB is a staple for me, much like a Tim Horton's double-double when in Canada.  So far from home, FB helps me to connect, to friends,  ideas,  inspiration and Canadian cultural norms.    Feeling uninspired by office paperwork?  Discover a post by innovator Jamey Coughlin, or Doula Andrea Monroe, or fellow CUSO International volunteer Margaret Graves...and find the light, and bigger picture again, then breeze through the little repetitive office work for the rest of the afternoon.

Professionally, Facebook is a big, free, networking tool that my office has yet to embrace.  What better way to reach our public, in real-time, and expense-free to advertise our upcoming workshops in Sanitation and Hygene, Nutrition and Backyard Veggy Gardens?

The other key location in my life right now, that has yet to embrace the beauty of social media is the movie theater here.  There is not one person, local or foreigner, who can tell me what the movie of the week is, if they have not made a special trip to the theater to see the poster with their own eyes.  I am soooo tempted to go and offer to make a FB page and a Twitter acount for them, and get them to call me once a week, so that I can update the page, in exchange for 2 or 8 free weekly tickets. 

Being in Honduras this year really made me reach out for ideas and people.  Especially during my first few months,  when I couldn't easily carry out many intellectual conversations in Spanish, I reached out to satisfy this part of my being on the internet.  TEDtalks, YouTube, Facebook...some of this year's key findings are listed under my Awe Expansion page.   Now there's all this talk of SOPA and ACTA, and all the other censorship devils who are trying to curb this free flow of internet information, and curb the new ways of thought and action...it worries me.  I've never felt more hopeful for the future in all my life, and much of that has to do with the amazing flow of ideas and information and connection available through the internet that I discovered this year.   Knowledge used to be power because it was so scarce. Now there are free online courses offered by MIT and available to anyone in the world. The internet has spread this knowledge far and wide, and the powers that be are afraid. I hope that now that we've had a taste of freedom, we fight to maintain it.

The 8 to 5 wall

It never fails, my peak flow of creative juices hits at 11 pm, just about the time when the rest of the world has hit their first round of REM.  I'm enjoying my second week of Christmas/New Year's vacation, and my pattern of stay up late and create, and blink awake to noon sunlight, is in full cycle.  This, and my recent cruises of inspirational websites and ideas about lifestyle design, urban farming, and permaculture, makes me question my current and past 8 am to 5 pm jobs, and how much more I can sustain them.  Does anyone else resent this handcuffed schedule like I do?

Several of  my fellow Gen Y, international cooperant, friends working in Santa Rosa de Copan try to innovate with their work schedules and locations, and come up against strong resistance here.  Whereas in Europe and parts of North America, working from home, focussing on results, and strolling in at 9:30 am because you worked lastnight until midnight, is becoming accepted practice, here in Honduras, that shit don't fly just yet. At my workplace there's a special electronic sign-in-with-your-thumbprint machine.  Since the 2008 economic crisis, they are having trouble paying salaries, but they prioritized this technology to make sure everybody is at their desk when the 8 am whistle blows.  Interesting.

Also, employees are very unaccustomed to ever saying "No." to their supervisors or bosses.  If, on Friday afternoon, the director says, "Let's meet tomorrow at 8:30 am to discuss this until it's resolved."  Employees will nod their head and say "yes".  It doesn't matter if their kid is celebrating his 10th birthday,  or their cousin is getting married out of town, or....they almost never say "No." .  You can imagine then, the great pleasure I recently derived, when I received a phonecall during my vacations, and was requested to drop everything and come into the office, by a man who is not even my supervisor or boss.  I said "No." in the direct Canadian way, not in the beat-around-the-bush Honduran way.  I would have liked to see his expression.  Boundaries are oh so important, especially for nice girls like me.

All this to say that these past couple weeks I've been bursting with creativity and interest in self-directed learning on the net...and I'm dreading getting hand-cuffed back into the 8 am to 5 pm office lifestyle.  Crampy. Cramp. Cramp.  Cheers to all you brave entrepreneurs and free-lancers out there who make up your own schedules and have the discipline to make it work.  When I grow up, I want to be just like you.