From My Journal: Re-Evaluating…life?:/

GV post – Poland: Catholics Propose Adding Cross to National Emblem

The recent ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Soile Lautsi, who was offended by crucifixes displayed in her child’s school in Italy, states:

The compulsory display of a symbol of a given confession in premises used by the public authorities… restricted the right of parents to educate their children in conformity with their convictions.

The Polish parliament, however, has decided [POL] to continue allowing handing out crosses in Polish classrooms and on other public premises. And a Polish association of Catholics, Unum Principium, has also proposed including the symbol of the cross in the national emblem of Poland. Currently, the emblem has a white eagle in a golden crown on red background, but Krzysztof Zagozda, the association’s spokesman, refers to the national emblem from 1927, when the eagle’s crown had a cross incorporated on top of it. He explains the group’s proposal [POL]:

Including cross in national symbols is important for patriotic reasons. For many Polish citizens it expresses separateness of a kind or fight for independence. Hence why we need to restore it.

Image source: Wikipedia

This proposal has generated over 500 reactions on the forum of Poland’s main daily, Gazeta.pl.

Maruda.r questions the above statement [POL]:

It’s not entirely right, as Polish eagles were wearing different crowns: […] Emblems, coats of arms change – they reflect certain status, which is not there any more. We might as well reach out for the chicken placed on coins in Piast times.

Feurig59 states [POL]:

Carry the crosses in your hearts. Not everything has to be shown off – worn off symbols, whose meaning is carried by very few in this country, but everyone is scrubbing and polishing their ‘gods’, so everyone could see how strongly they feel about ‘tradition’ and what a good Pole and Catholic they are. Makes me sick:(

Michelange75 points out [POL]:

As a Catholic I say – No. Those people do not understand that this leads to antagonisms within Polish society and a loss of trust in the church for many Poles. Are we to experience the mistake of Western countries, where churches stand empty. That is what those chauvinists and pseudo-Catholics want. If so, than in this entire war over the cross and entire aspect of moving crosses away from school ordered by Europe, and which we do not seem to have to respect, Polish Catholic church will lose. It’s totally irresponsible.

This statement is followed up by a response from ludwigvanbeethoven, who is a Protestant [POL]:

Catholics believe themselves as the only right faith, but I am asking – why? As a protestant, I demand all churches in Europe to look like protestant ones. […] Religion should be an inner business of each citizen, and not a huge balloon and sour faces, that Brussels does not want to include common values into their constitution.

On another site, AdamM sounds very sarcastic [POL]:

But Poland is to be a province of Vatican, so it’s easier this way. Of course during GCSA exams we will pass religion too, and on our CV’s we will need to put dates of our baptism, first communion and confirmation as well as the exact amount of money given during each mass. We will let out on our streets policemen who will check if we all carry crosses and know how to pray, and for those who protest, we will build stakes. We could also do with dusting off the Middle Ages torture machines so that the conversion is smoother.

A Northern Irish Polish forum contains a discussion on how having a cross in the emblem differs from having it next to it one wall; the main thoughts are expressed by 33lncr [POL]:

Aaa, those are the guys from the Madonna concert affair [cancelled due to protest of Catholics], so the case is clear… Seriously, though, for me it’s only an add-on to a picture with a bird. But when I think of it rationally, what has the cross to do with Poles – atheists or Poles-other-believers, who are also patriots, what does it have to do with Poles-Catholics who are not patriots at all (I know the last one is in our country almost an oxymoron, but logically speaking quite possible)?

There are a few supportive opinions, though, like the one expressed by Krzysiek [POL]:

I support them. Poland is a Catholic country and we should protect our faith and show it somehow. If someone is unhappy, they should go to France where Catholics have practically nothing to say, and the majority of people believes in Islam.

This post has been originally written for and posted at Global Voices Online, here.

Make your statement – the right way

Image by luc legay via Flickr

My last two weeks were pretty busy following discussions on few current topics, but also getting back to Twitter and Facebook – quite consciously abandoned for a while to rethink my own social media presence. As I come back to my blogs I start to realise that my content tends to be quite light, so just to warn you – I think the blogger in me starts to grow up (a little bit;)).

There are two topics that currently occupy my mind – blogging vs. microblogging and ethics of Fort Hood events, and I am about to tell you why. You see I started blogging simply because I found blog a handy platform to contact my friends and share my daily reality, concerns, ideas, silliness with them. However as I grew closer to social media marketing and picked up new tools, took part in discussion in communities quite possibly influencing the future of the on-line communication in different regions of the world my old faith in the power of people’s statements became more than obvious. Gradually social media ethics became part of my job. Slowly the ethical concerns became my daily worry and challenge at once. Quite recently I was asked to advice on a case which involved a situation, in which my personal opinion differed from professional advice and I had to face the realisation that work ethics, as in ’sense of obligation to do advice in the best possible, most professional and objective way’ comes first – no matter how opinionated I am here or in off-line world. From cases like that one I learn to stick to objectivity, factual interpretation and careful listening with a degree of healthy scepticism.

This thinking is difficult to apply to Twitter sometimes. Real time blogging is awesome when it actually contributes to discussion but when it needs to be used in the right way.  Dobó Mátyás, when posting about his arrival to World Blogging Forum, refers to the fact (preached by Loic Le Meur)  that blogging is dying out and partially they both might be right. However, blogging will always be there to provide a better platform for evaluation of serious issues, expressing complicated opinions and making our statements the RIGHT way.

It is difficult to decide what the RIGHT is, or prescribe it, but luckily I see great reactions from on-line communities whenever a fait pas does happen. I mentioned it in case of tweeting the abortion once already, and I will repeat until my readers get bored:  there is time for tweeting, and time for blogging – both have different effect on people and those need to be considered. Blogging gives us more time to explain our points, to back up our opinions and ensure the content is understood in the right way. Tweeting is fast, short and sharp – spreads fast as well. It gives plenty of space for misinterpretation and requires a lot of self-control.  When talking about the events in Fort Hood both Paul Carr and Euan Semple are right – we need to catch up with the evolving technology in order to stay human. We need to stop our bad habits, like the one mentioned by David Sasaki:

‘It seems that when we have a choice between getting involved to do what is right and documenting what is wrong, that we choose the latter.’

We need to listen and act, David is right. But we also need to learn to think even faster and actually STOP from posting sometimes. And believe me, I know what I am talking about as I have plenty of my own shit I could share but I have to live daily with not doing so;) We need to learn to choose the aims and tools to contribute, not harness the web in search of temporary fame.

We need to develop the voice of our conscious in our hearts – the voice which made Paul Carr stop from posting the video he rather wants to link to (bottom of his post). The voice which stopped me from posting original file while writing about suicide on JustinTV. Voice which those kids lost:

Working out the genuine content becomes more and more difficult. Our virtual chat rooms grow. Our on-line cities become over populated and it’s getting really hard to pick up genuine, useful stuff from the noise. I do not know how about you, but myself I start to question every single bit of information asking myself: ‘why would someone post it?’, ‘is (s)he trying to make a story?’, ‘is this real?’. As I believe in social media as a PART of the range of tools to document our reality, I still consider it just one of many sources. Not everyone does though – the public will judge before questioning anything, and us, bloggers, we foolishly believe that the fact materials are on-line and CAN be questioned, they will be. Big mistake.

The only choice left it to be careful, trust our sources (yes, I am talking about personal trust in influential voices of people WE KNOW) and investigate beyond the content itself. And always, but ALWAYS question your own self asking: Am I doing the right thing?

TouchGraph, monitoring yourself

As a blogger I tend to Google my name time to time to see who uses my content and generally – where does my name appear. I also spend more time on Facebook this month learning its dynamics all over again, and just came accross TouchGraph Facebook app which graphed my contacts very accurately.

As you can see my FB ‘friends’ are based in Hungary, at Global Voices and around my UK social media activities, not so much in Poland, which pretty much represents my on-line activity and flags up an action point – be more active in Polish circles on FB!:) Will do!

Secondly, I did the Google graph, which came with various results, but I think this one is the most accurate.

I know how I want those graphs to change, and as I am rethinking my blog strategy, and generally social media presence they all come quite handy. I think this and similar tools are great to give us quick view on what our social media landscape is. The more the better!;)

blog strategy?

rethinking my blog, step 1

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 somehow the motive of guilt 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 observer, 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.