Predictions

Talking of predictions, I am not sure if you have seen what Loic Le Meur predicts for Twitter for next year, so here it is. Some very valuable points there! One I find most interesting is the increase of value in gaming – I never thought of it, but I agree – we will see more and more time spent on gaming (even I got dragged into silly FarmVille on FB!;)

It’s fun to compare it to 2009 marketing predictions, like this one for instance:

IQ vs. EQ

When writing previous post I used term ‘emotional intelligence‘ and found in my Zemanta photo suggestions this slide (see the visual). It intrigued me and led to a quite interesting comment on Flickr by Intersection Consulting:

Is marketing EQ becoming more important than IQ? If building a successful brand or simply selling your “stuff” depends on creating an emotional connection with your target audience, is emotional intelligence as a marketer becoming as important as the ability to implement marketing tactics?

I am a great fan of emotional intelligence and as I learn more and more about traditional marketing for my studies, I start to realise that my personal brand choices almost all the time result from choices based on campaigns or tactics characterised by rather high level of emotional intelligence. I wonder is there is a study about it somewhere…Any tips, any one? I would appreciate it, as it really interests me now!:)

Image by Intersection Consulting via Flickr

From My Journal: November

Image by filtran via Flickr

November is my favourite month. This year – once again – it surprised me with few little miracles in my private life and to counterbalance – few new challenges in my more professional commitments.

Novembers can be very gloomy, provoking me to stay at home and hide under a warm blanket with a warm cup of Pu Erth. Which I intend to do as often as possible. I managed to kick off my marketing studies with readings and new passion for Economist, as well as few little books in between. I read ‘Trust Agents’ again, this time not really taking notes – just enjoying it as it is. I watched ‘Revolutionary Road‘, quite frankly identifying my last relationship with many of notions pictured in the film. I speared an evening on ‘the Reader’ (movie) too, and must admit that Auschwitz related topics still give me shivers…maybe it was not such a good idea for my dad to lie I was 10 when he took me there for the first time, I think he overestimated my emotional intelligence that day:/ Somehow I did not feel so bad after the book, I must say. And somewhow the motive of guild dominates more in the movie production, I have to say.

November means evenings with friends, and I am glad I could have them over and share the tender warmth of fireplace as opposed to out usually heavy conversations. I am also looking forward to this week’s guests – old university mate, and lovely GVers. It’s good to serve as host sometimes, after weeks of travelling here and there – I think the fall brings out the introvert in me…

November is my time to write, reach out for dusted journals and put down on paper all those thoughts that keep me awake at night or whisper in my ear at 5AM. It’s time to cherish written word, in my native language for a change. Time to look at the sentence and learn the new self. I think due to my childhood Catholic tradition I tend to spend autumn on meditating my yearly achievements to be able to move on to celebrating later, and making new plans over in January..maybe that’s it.

Whatever is the case – I am quiet, trying to relax as much as I can. And the new people in my life, even those who bring pink roses, are there to share those silences and to dig out the other side of me – the poet, the artist, the observes, the outsider in a way…the ghost I sometimes feel like in the crowd of the unkind.

It feels good.:)

Google logo

yesterday…

and today!:)

Updates:

7.11.

9.11. Google.de

Sharing

Image by Lee Sie via Flickr

Some of you have probably seen already that Google is sending new Google Wave e-mail with additional pack of invites. My first reaction was to post it on Global Voices mailing list and on Twitter. In seconds they were gone, and I was happy I could give then away as I enjoy sharing. But something @agakwiat said made me think: do we always share? do we live culture of sharing? For some of us it’s obvious that certain information is there to be passed on others, to improve and simply contribute to their lives. However it is MY assumption!

We do live in different tribes, live different stories, and I am not sure we all understand what sharing culture of social media is about. Myself, I very rarely come across someone who does not have this attitude, but it happens very, very rarely and is usually rooted in their lack of experience.

Do you share?

Retrospective

For the last few weeks I was working on few things – a blogger interview, though this time on the other side – I was interviewed by my dear fellow GVer, Juan Arellano, in series featuring people working for Global Voices. I poested already about the site, community and how it enriches my life, so I am happy that celebration of 100th post on GV Polska we could collaborate on this text. It’s good to have all my current initiatives in one piece, and good to know that others share my thoughs. Here is the entire post.

As a result of this post I was pointed to this OSI initiative and suggested some new, brilliant ideas for Barcamp Transparency! Amazing, how blogging makes my life more exciting.

I have also met and had a chat with a great ethics blogger, Emmanuel Tchividjian. It all started with my comment under his post on recent arrest of Roman Polanski, but since we are in touch now I hope we can collaborate. I will try to think of few interesting posts for you, but in the meantime I strongly advise you to check his blog! It’s worth it!:)

I usually do not post about topics directly related to work, but as this one has many of my friends involved and is interesting for everyone to some extent involved in social media, I decided to link you to it. It’s called WOM Expert Groups and is a monthly chat about social media in different regions. It’s open, friendly and fun! It’s a great place to learn about events and developmemnts happening in different parts of the globe. You can always see the recent discussions here.

Tomorrow evening and on Thursday morning I am in London representing Global Voices and meeting specialists of media, journalism and citizen journalism to discuss few opportunities for government to move to the new levels of communication on-line. I am really interested in this one, and in the fact I will meet personally another GVer and listen to Skype session with Jeff Jarvis (whose posts on ethics were my starting point when I decided to move in the direction of social media ethics, whose words prepared me for presentation in Cairo, and whose attitute towards blogging is an example of what transparency is about). Promise to post my thoughts on Twitter while it happens or later here!

Emotions…

Image by jesuscm via Flickr

I met someone. I spent lovely time over a coffee, two. I realised how much time I spent ‘not talking’ about emotions. We meet every day and ask ‘how are you?’, ‘how is life?’, ‘had a nice weekend?’, but not really speak, and do not truly listen.

I miss Budapest tonight and I am very happy it’s November soon, my favourite month, will mean meeting a lot of my old friends again. I am happy there is few of us here, in the UK.

I miss talking about emotions.

Ideas Worth Spreading

I did not pick it up, it was Blogus Pospolitus again, but it made my day! It’s the light in the tunnel of my pretty challenging life recently!

I am very, very excited about Google Wave, but the way it changes our communication seems linear to me – we will speak faster and host discussions on our blogs so we will loose the moderators role a bit. Not that I want to put aside the marvelous work of many Google Wave developpers, no – I still think you guys and ladies are doing great job!

However this development made me realise how close we are to something I always dreamt of – some of you will probably find me crazy at this point;) – blogging via microchip in my head. Watch the TED clip! The point when the student is taking photos with his hands is exactly what I want to do – I want to be able to blog, take photos, record podcast WITHOUT any additional devise! I want to be albo to walk the streets and have an ‘on and off button’ in my head  – I would love to be able just to think ‘I am starting to blog now’ and have that happening on my wordpress site; but hey – if a middle solution is to have to say it out loud – I could cope with strange looks;)

Can someone please, please, please build it and do it fast! I am loosing out on a lot of good content simply because I have no time to put it down ‘on paper’.

BTW, would love to see what you think – solutions like that have huge ethical consequences!

This Sixth Sense stuff is awesome!:)

Keeping it light

I had a very interesting discussion with @cornerthemarket yesterday about tonality of blogs, why we blog and how we keep them personal but still try to follow the main line of the site. You see, this one is dedicated to social media, activism and arts (arts simply because it’s part of my life, and I think one or two photos time to time, or mentioning of an exhibition helps me to ensure the content is not too ‘heavy’), but recently evolved, and I think it’s moving towards my Polish one, very personal journal.It might be because I am considering moving all my blogs to one, self-hosted domain, or maybe because my life is evolving too.

Because I work in social media I tend to spend a lot of time at home working around topics related to work and somehow work topics, and my private interest in social media very often co-exist and complement each other. Now, working on WOM Experts Panels, I talk to extremely interesting people from all around the globe and constantly share insights into their and my region, which contributes to my understanding of the space. However I also run the risk of ‘thinking geeek’ all day so I thought I’d share with you few sites I use to loosen up a bit, and take a time off ’serious thinking’ – but still in a geeky way.

First of all ICanHasCheesburger – I do not know if someone wrote a study about the reasons behind geeks falling in love with cats, but there is a strong dependency there, and this portal brings the best of it – always offering a funny moment or two. Actually, the more I read it, the funnier it gets!

There is the Simon’s Cat, currently active on Facebook due to the release of its book version (can’t wait to order it myself).

There is the Savage Chickens blog.

And the always reliable Popjam, where Seven Legged Spider is still the best of ‘all time’. Yesterday I met Rachel, who is posting on Quotes from the Street – a very good one, which also made me look back at Overheard in New York.

Gapingvoid is my eternal source of wisdom when it comes to life philosophy of a social media fan, enthusiast, professional  – whatever term you want to use.

Blogus Pospolitus is the source of fun in Polish edition for me. But all of those, managed carefully (read: daily newsletter for instance) bring a lot of lightness to all those heavy geeky and social topics. Enjoy and let me know if you find another rich source of everyday happiness!

Google Wave

I am still testing Google Wave and it will probably take a while so for those who are not waving yet, here is a taster, pretty well done;)

Apologies for the language, treat it as a quote from a classic movie;)

Blogging tips from Monik, fellow blogger from India

This a guest post by Monik Pamecha, student in his actual life, a blogger, entrepreneur, web developer and designer while he’s on-line. Passionate soccer, table tennis player and amateur photographer. Read his Tech Blog Etiole or catch him on Twitter and Facebook.

Blogging, ha? What the Hell is this Monik?, What do you do sitting in front of your computer for hours? Why don’t you come with me and play video games than sitting on the computer? – These questions were thrown at me when, I started blogging 4 years back.

It all started in an amazing way, unexpected though. I had a big fight with one of my mates at school, and at that time, all I knew was internet for finding project information on-line. But that day, I was just jumping from one website to other and landed on wordpress.com. I don’t remember exactly which blog it was, but it said you could make your voices heard by just making a account on wordpress.com and then publishing it. Once published it will be up and you will get famous.

I wasn’t good with my grammar at that time, so all I knew was how to use pics. So with some support from WordPress Help and Forums I found how to add images. One thing anyone would notice of my friend, that he had lots of hair over his body… So I posted something, called Hairy Potter. That was just the beginning. Within 2 days the post got 200 visits as the message spread all over the school and children started teasing the boy.

Proud I was, as I was too young to understand the consequences, later I was forced to pull of the content due to force from higher authorities (you know who I am talking about ). I just thought that night, if I could do something like this, why couldn’t I use this tool to spread info! There my journey began.

First, I started blogging on monik2kinom.wordpress.com , which later got shifted to etiole.blogspot.com and as I started generating revenue I shifted to etiole.com as a custom domain on Blogger. More progress and then finally I jumped to wordpress . Well, that’s my journey till now. I hope to go a long way, and spread my knowledge to affect and mostly to improve .

But my journey has gone through many up and downs. From 1000 visits a day or none at times, I still focused on blogging, as at that time (I mean now also) I blog for my love for writing and not for attracting readers, but what can iI say? Humans want attention so, I am forced to follow it. But it feels nice to know, that what you are writing, someone is reading. But you should not loose focus on your content or you may crush out your dreams of making a successful blog.

Don’t just post stuff that’s online, give your opinion. You can find news everywhere but your opinion, insights are all what differentiate your blog content from others.

Marketing also forms a important aspect, but concentrating on content is major part of marketing being done. If you have amazing stuff, then you really don’t need to worry much about consumers. They’ll come running to your blog. Check out a blog post by me on how to increase blog readers which mentions some marketing tips .

Using media is an amazing way to enhance your content, video’s and images will make it easier for readers to understand stuff you write and if you do some math then, a video is worth 1000 words and if a video is worth 1000 images then a video is worth 1000000 words!

Also, respect your readers. Always reply to comments and be interactive with your commentators. If they have taken the pains to leave a comment, you can surely give a reply to them. It will make them feel happy, and you too!

That’s it for now. I do give tips on blogging and free consultation Contact me anytime – monik@etiole.com

best social good video EVER:)

Don’t you think? I wish I could do that!

Our climate is changing…it will affect me, you, our children!

Interested? I hope so, because Climate Change might be a slogan you are tired off, it might be a remote problem of completely unknown faces or another activist story you are spammed with. However some of us do not realise that changes in climate affect entire planet and there is no way back. It is about you and if not you than your children will be affected!

We are talking about mutual understanding yes, but we are also talking about shared responsibility. Look around you and tell me what do you do for climate change?

Image by sniggy via Flickr

Me? I tried to make a list:

- commuting to work,

- saving electricity while working in the evening (one little lamp is more than enough) and while heating the flat only when we are at home,

- washing once a week, all clothes at once,

-recycling,

-considering bying fair trade food and other items to support the countries who suffer the most,

-taking part in Global Voices mentoring project for Climate Change here.

Yes, in a way I feel better about myself, but also feel I am raising my voice in demand towards word leaders who are to meet in Copenhagen this December, because I am doing my bit, and I expect them to do theirs!

There is a lot happening on-line this fall and winter, and I suggest you make you mark in one of those projects too. Apart from today’s Blog Action Day there are few major projects like 350, tcktcktck, Vote Earth, Seal the Deal, Beyond Talk, Think About It, NY Post and Hopenhagen. All those sites have plenty of information on what climate change is about, why your voice is needed and how you can make it heard. There are plenty of organisations out there, like Oxfam, Greenpeace, DigiActive, Avaaz and social media platforms where thousands of world citizens make their mark to express their opinion about how the world leaders are expected to do. As always, every single word matters. Only via Blog Action Day there are 10, 000 bloggers ONLY today posting about this crucial issue, so I urge you to join. To see examples of posts go here.

Why? Simply because I want to show my son what we have done, from home, from our own pc’s, and close down the computer suggesting a walk in a nice and friendly world outside. World which is OURS and WE are here to decide wow it’s going to look like in 5, 10, 15, 50 years time.

And so we can switch the TV on and see happier stories than this one:

Love, a note from my journal

Image by D.Munoz-Santos via Flickr

Love is tricky. Love can be very empowering. Love can also be very dangerous.
Yet, when it happens we are helpless. When it doesn’t we behave like fools.

I have no words to explain how I feel today. This one will be rather tricky….yesterday I was one step from fulfilling one of the dreams of my life. I was prepared it’s a dream, so might stay outside of my reality. I was also prepared to live it. As were my landlords, my friends, some of my colleagues, my son, even my parents! Once in my lifetime I really, really, really wanted something that would make me very happy and I had all the support I needed to cope with both gratitude of getting it as well as pain of the failure. All this support made me realise life is not about achievements but the life we share, respect and understanding.

There was also something else. Another dimension of my life, pretty unsuccessful. A paradox, since I am a linguist. I do not know how to communicate with men! Simple as that. There were only few important men in my life, most of whom stayed my friends even though we had a lot of pain on the way. But I think there might be only one who understood me truly, and he knows he still does. He is my soul mate.

But there were others. Most of my partners in the past claimed a lot of ownership over who I am and very often one of us had to step out and say – it’s too much. There were different types of love – intellectual, spiritual, physical, platonic, crazy and dangerous, painful…And I got tired. I met my ex husband whom I gave all my life, body, soul, art, and of course commitment. Something went wrong, as he proved to be a criminal and treated me as his garbage can, including kicking it. I took a rather brave step to stop it and so I broke free..from lies really. Sadly, by some, I am still perceived as a victim. Happily for me, experience has shaped me into a rather flexible, questioning, slightly distrustful but optimist person. I have learned the best of it, made the most of it in my daily life, actually build on it.

Met someone new. A perfect guy – really! Who would give me expensive presents, spend hours, days babysitting my son, travel hours to see me, and talk only about my troubles (not sure if putting aside his was a smart tactics). I decided to fight all my fears, worries and despite of myself, build something new…but I did it all on my own. I fell in love. I was left with it. I fell in love again and promised myself I will not do it again. I broke that promise too! My son fell in love with him. It all looked perfect on outside. I have never ever questioned my believes and my emotions like with that person. It did not work due to the lack of common understanding and maybe a little spark. I went to Cairo and saw the desert. I realised it was my heart!

Terrified I turned away, and decided to be on my own for a while. But person I was with fought for me, was still around – which my empty heart found rather painful as I needed peace…

And just then life faced me with a man who was a mirror of myself – broken, put himself back to normal again, stronger form his weaknesses – complicated in the same way as me. A man who smiled and I melted. A man whose absence made my bones ache…even though he did not touch me a single time…maybe once simply studying my tattoo, nothing more…magic! A man, who had so many women in his life I simply did not fit in, so I decided I have no power to continue with it. I decided to stop loving, chose rather practical approach. Earlier I did not know you can decide to stop loving, but now I know you can, at least to a certain extend.

The previous man was still fighting for me. A friend convinced me I made wrong judgements. I agreed. Tried again. Failed again. Completely lost it all. Asked for silence.

And yesterday, just when I was living my victory over the failure, I received another note with gesture to help. A message starting with ‘I  do not think I have to tell you how I feel…’. A message with a lot of I’s, but not a single question. A message stating his life is full of wrong signs and that we we stronger together. All my thoughts turned into the blindness of it, lack of respect towards what I feel…some kind of ownership over my life…I cried, I could not sleep, I cried…

Today again I was asked to meet him as a friend, to talk, to sort out my life, but with the letter written in my head – plenty of hours to get rid of sadness – I had to go back and almost snap. Brake the strange wall of complete lack of understanding. And of course, end up being educated that I will be happy in a relationship is once I stop thinking of myself. Why is it that when we do not get what we want we throw into others face all the presents, commitments and support? It completely looses it’s meaning as help – as it becomes conditional! We all commit – time, support, trust – we give just as much as we take. But very often, and trust me – it does not happen to me for the first time – we want to take it back! How foolish! I feel I have wasted two years of my life, and I so didn’t want to feel this way…

It’s true. When it comes to relationships with men, I am an egoist. I think of how happy it makes me, how much I want to be with the other person. I FEEL I want to be with the other person, against all odds! I do admit it and I do put my happiness as measurement of quality of my relationship with a man! I do not measure love  only in commitment, I am sorry. I measure it in the moments when I feel we are one. That, I think, is the most cruel and true state of my heart!

I am upset when men do not ask me right questions. I am upset when I do not get flowers. I am upset when I do not hear words every single day, because I am a poet, I live the power of words. I am upset if acts are not followed up by words, and vice versa. I am upset when I need to explain things that are obvious for me.

I feel happy, when I look into someone’s eyes and all the crucial elements of my and his existence are there….I know how much I can commit for someone whom I love, I have been there. The question is – whom do I choose to do it for?

I am so damn sad that all this lack of understanding causes pain – to him, and sadness – to me. I feel belittled, very small today, actually. And I know this experience, this road is shaping me. Something inside of me whispers that this is not good enough.

And thus I will mourn a bit. I will keep on walking, more carefully maybe, until I come across right person, right time, right place…for the price of not getting there at all. Maybe one day another dream of mine will come truth: I will sit down with Walker on one bench and look in one direction for a moment, silently, just before he smiles and…before I fly away again;)

It’s all about honesty and pride. I am sorry, I am a very proud person and I hope that there is more women out there who do not compromise and arrive to their destinations with dignity. Sometimes even for the cost of being called a ‘bitch’. Regardless of what others say, stay strong in your weaknesses!

I better…

Image by ok_qa via Flickr

..not post today.

It’s what we leave to our children that matters – Yes, We Can by Barackapella

I’d like to think we can;)

10 against torture when Obama receives Nobel Peace Prize

Well, I must say I am very pleased that it is Obama, not Twitter, who received the Nobel Peace Prize! I know there is a lot of criticism around, even in FB threads I can see people disagreening with this choice. But I think it’s not about ‘well deserved’ in this case, it’s about responsibility this award carries with itself. Obama is good in speeches but he is also gradually introducing changes. Closing Guantanamo was a big thing – for some of us, activists – a miracle! Great step towards what can be achieved to fight for human rights all around the world. We all know it is not easy to introduce changes, and it’s not easy to clean up the mess after few years of irresponsible management of a country. But everything Obama says and does, everything he represents is of a great importance to us all. And maybe I do not agree with the imperalistic and very individualistic mentality embeded in American though since the early times of that country, I do however support smart management of that thinking. If US President is an icon, let him be. If he gradually makes the Change for good – let him do so.

And times like this are the best times for us to point out next steps! Amnesty International has congratulated Obama his award and initiated great action where ten very influencial personalities have made their statement about torture asking Obama to investigate into the times before March 2009 and learn from the mistakes of the past. I fully support each of their letters, and I hope you will find a second to read, sent and spread the word about this project. I think our voice matters just as much as Obama’s.

The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinberg

Tamar Weinberg is best known from her contributions to Mashable and her post ‘The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook’, but recently her book ‘The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web‘ becomes equally popular.It is basically a student book for everyone interested in how social media works for marketing purposes and personally I think it should be a mandatory course tought at every single marketing school. From the introduction to social media and settign up goals and strategy, she is guiding us through major types of media – blogs, microblogs, social networks, social bookmarking, news sites, touches upon types of content (photo, video, audio) to finalise the process of understanding on-line marketing with coherent approach and ethics of it. Perfectly structured book full of practical advice and interesting additional reading coming from the best source! I strongly advice everyone already working in social media marketing or intending to do so to read it and keep it on their shelf! It’s one of those books you read once and come back to it many, many times!

I am so happy Tamar decided to put it all on paper and share with us! Thank you!:)

Tweeting your abortion – Twitter Ethics continued

I have not posted about Twitter ethics for a while either (a bit occupied with ethics of Google Wave really) but there is a lot of discussion around the tweet above and I feel strongly about it. Social Media Today is reporting on Penelope Trunk’s original tweet, post and follow up discussion around her tweeting about having miscarrage while sitting in a meeting at work. You will find responses to her post here and here, but I bet you there is plenty more. Why? Because sometimes we tend to cross the line of common ethics. According to Fromm’s ethics theory there are two types of ethics – the traditional (given from above, classic example – Ten Commandmends, and modern ethics where the accepted rules of behaviour are pre-defined by the common agreement of the group they apply to). Social media is based on modern ethics and we all decide what is acceptable, and what isn’t simply based on how majority feels about it. Any attempts to change those rules by a shocking, by others perceived as ‘tasteless’ behaviour end up in criticism which is exactly what the self-regulatory nature of web is about.

In this case we are talking about posting on-line a very personal message that is not really justified. OK, I understand that the author might feel upset about the difficulties in having an abortion, but if we put the tweet in context of what happens next – buzz, CNN appearance, using the tweet to raise money for the right of women to have an abortion I think it could have been done differently – by a blog post explaining how she feels about having abortion when she is at work and about the fact those issues are still tabu for many.

I simply think tweet is abrupt, uncertainness and does not have enough of characters to explain why’s and to take into consideration many women who spend years trying to get pregnant. We all know miscarrage is not a question of hours, it is a process, which gives a woman a lot of time to consider others, prepare a post, justify your opinion (not because it’s a tabu topic, but because it’s a topic which might hurt others!). It could have been chanelled right!

Additionally I see no sense of regret or at least consideration towards women who try to get pregnant or never will be able to, lost their child or have other reasons to find this tweet hurtful, which makes the whole story cruel, in my opinion.

Yes, I am biased because my close friend is one of those women and I know she will be enraged, hurt and very, very sad to see a foolish move like that tweet.

This is what ethics is about today – considering others and making your statement strong an effective in the RIGHT way, where RIGHT stands for ‘appropriate in the community you are talking to’ and community of every blogger and Twitter user is the entire public – many men and women from different backgrounds, countries, religions, cultures…It’s sad to see we tend to forget about it, and when reminded  – we do not care.

The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas by Ariane Sherine

I have pre-ordered this one (because of my faithfulness in authors I already know and like) when the Girl mentioned she is contributing her story to it. Last few weeks were very intense, difficult (as I was ill), sometimes almost surreal, but the moment I received the book I real the above mentioned story and – as I suspected – I loved it:) It’s one of those stories you read with a smile on your face but appreciate the heaviness of issues it’s touching upon. Zoe’s story made me realise few of many issues I need to consider before sending my son to school next year – a decision I am terrified of already now! It made me think of parental responsibility to introduce children to the traditions of their parents which in  my case means teaching Dawid Polish, Hungarian (I lived there so long, I feel it’s a part of me) and British Christmas. And last but not least – how do I explain to him my religious journey from a Catholic to agnostic? I feel tempted to send him to a Catholic school, or Church of England school where he will pick up the difference between right or wrong (something his dad was never thought which resulted in complete insecurity followed by cruelty) and closely keep an eye on any sign of insane devotion, hoping that my own education will help him develop as an open minded kid who one day will make his own choices. I think it’s harder to do it the other way around – as Zoe describes her childhood.

But let’s stop, because if I start to describe everything the book raised in my head this post will be enourmous. For now let me leave you with the message of the first story from ‘The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas‘ written by Ed Byrne called ‘It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas’ related to the fact we already see Christmas items in shops (does that not drive you crazy?):

‘It should Only Feel Like Christmas One Month a Year’.

And if it does, we will not have to explain to our kids that Christmas  tradition in the UK is about Christmas Day (at home, with family) and not Christmas Period (time of shopping, shopping, shopping celebrating best brands).

To learn more about the book, check out this video.