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My year spent as a MacroTransient at FoAM is now over. One year of not being a student, not being an employee, not being unemployed. One year with no expectations. One year of incredibly pure freedom of action, movements and thought. One year to re-design a lifestyle, figure out tough life choices, defining a personal and professional identity. One year of careful help from FoAM to try to answer that crazy questions: "What do I want to do with my life ?" | My year spent as a MacroTransient at FoAM is now over. One year of not being a student, not being an employee, not being unemployed. One year with no expectations. One year of incredibly pure freedom of action, movements and thought. One year to re-design a lifestyle, figure out tough life choices, defining a personal and professional identity. One year of careful help from FoAM to try to answer that crazy questions: "What do I want to do with my life ?" | ||
- | Below is an attempt to summarize this crazy year, and maybe give you a hint of how this feels, or even give you the will to go through the same difficult but rewarding process. | + | Below is an attempt to summarize this year, and maybe give you a hint of how this feels, or even give you the will to go through the same intense and rewarding process. |
====Before this year==== | ====Before this year==== | ||
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{{ : | {{ : | ||
+ | Between April and June, the FoAM Brussels Core Team guided me through the [[http:// | ||
+ | At the end of the process, we obtained four scenarios representing extreme situations. Scenario narratives can be found here: | ||
+ | * [[: | ||
+ | * [[: | ||
+ | * [[: | ||
+ | * [[: | ||
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+ | Such scenarios can be used as a compass. Thanks to this work, I could better understand which of my decisions would guide me to one or the other futures. | ||
+ | |||
+ | We also designed a masterplan of what to do from today on to reach the possible futures, which helped understand which actions I should start now in order to reach the future I want to implement. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===Meditating=== | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{ : | ||
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+ | At our very first Transiency meeting, I was talking with Maja, Rasa & Nik about my issues of body-mind connection, and my focusing issues I was experiencing since the middle of my studies. At that time, Maja had advised me to go through the [[https:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | It was worth the waiting. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I remembered mentionning the quest for "inner peace" to Vali during our first session. This cycle was basically a course on how to find inner peace. With very simple meditation techniques inherited from buddhism, we would quiet, slowly but surely, whatever wind or storm troubling our souls. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I felt more body conscious, and did recover most part of my focusing abilities. But I also managed way better with emotionnally perturbing events, increased my perseverance in unpleasant or tedious tasks, managed to get back to contemplation on a daily basis, and logically started to find beauty more frequently on my way. | ||
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+ | You may have guessed it: with coaching, going through this process was the most positively transformative experience I lived this year, and I cannot not stop being lyrical about it. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===Getting Inspired=== | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{ : | ||
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+ | In May, I was invited by [[http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | On the picture on top of this section, you can see two people. The guy is a former graphic designer. After three months of work, he found out that working behind a screen was not his way. So he knocked at the nieghboring baker' | ||
+ | |||
+ | And he is only one example of the amazing people I met at the College. And he is only one example of the amazing people I met this year in Totnes, Nantes, Marseille, Paris, Brest and so on. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I want to keep meeting diverse people in the upcoming years. With diverse interests, diverse opinions, and amazing life trajectories. Because it is so pleasant & enriching, and it helps me so much re-shape my vision of the world. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====Summer - Experimenting==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===Researching=== | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{ : | ||
+ | |||
+ | In June, my friend [[http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | We had a one-week long research workshop, during which we tried to build supercapacitors out of dead PC batteries. | ||
+ | |||
+ | It was my first " | ||
+ | |||
+ | However, reasearching with Paul was completely different. We had a very nice week, I learned tons of stuff, and even though we did not manage to have anything working as well as we wish it would, I felt it was very pleasant. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I think that the combination of five weeks of mindfulness training helped me deal with the frustration inherent to research. But, also, having someone like Paul as a teammate for this project changed everything. We had very nice discussions, | ||
+ | |||
+ | After this week, I was no longer sure I wanted to give up on " | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===Connecting=== | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{ : | ||
+ | |||
+ | Strengthened by the experience with Paul, I headed towards Nantes, and the [[http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | This event aims at offering a temporary experimental space to researchers of all kinds, from writers to tailors, including programmers, | ||
+ | |||
+ | During one week, we would meet every morning to discuss what were the ongoing projects, and then we would spend the day working on them. Every night there was a party. Wonderful week. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I met tons of people from diverse communities, | ||
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+ | This event confirmed that the essence of what I want in this period of my life is: traveling, meeting people with diverse backgrounds & ideas, and doing stuff with them. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===Wandering=== | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{ : | ||
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+ | I also spent some holidays with Amélie, and later in the summer with my family. During this period, I just spent time with people I like, contemplated many diverse and beautiful landscapes, walked, played games, and read a few serious books. | ||
+ | |||
+ | During this period, I could feel the experiments and works of the past few months sediment deep inside, fermenting a little bit maybe, and starting to produce new flavors in my present and potential future life. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Wandering is also very important. Spending some time far away from the daily routine, loosing some time in between, is vital. It seems that the new stuff I seeded earlier needed this stage for a healthy development. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ====Autumn - Preparing==== | ||
+ | |||
+ | After seeding, letting things develop, experimenting, | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===Replicating=== | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{ : | ||
+ | |||
+ | When an experiment is performed once, it brings a few insights. But to confirm these insights, replication is needed. | ||
+ | |||
+ | I spent most of my autumn expanding the positive experiences I had this year. I went one week in Paris, for a symposium on Biomimicry, and another one on Technique & Degrowth. Then, I brought my microbial fuel cells to Marseille for the Waht the flok ? festival. Guillian Graves and I gave a talk about our Biomimetic Kettle in the European Center of Excellence in Biomimicry (Senlis, France) and in Brest. I went to Lausanne, to discuss a potential inclusion in a start-up, and enjoyed the NipConf. Finally, I brought the microbial fuel cells back to Nantes for a workshop at Plateforme C, Ping's fablab. Besides this, I performed some research on microbial fuel cells here in Brussels. | ||
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+ | All of these experiments were positive, and confirmed that I was heading the right way for my post-Transiency life. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===Designing=== | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{ : | ||
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+ | I was left with the tricky part: designing the lifestyle. Now that I knew most of the components, how could I fit them together in an smooth way ? | ||
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+ | Travelling around to meet people and do stuff with them. Mostly people with low budgets. Keeping a freedom of actions & movement while still earning some money. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The current hypothesis I will try from January on is the following: | ||
+ | * Most of my income may come from my work at a small start-up, based in Lausanne, and dealing with artificial closed ecosystem. It is going to be a very interesting job, in an entrepreneurial contexte, in which we will develop useful technologies for depollution, | ||
+ | * During these periods, I will partly be traveling around to meet & visit interesting people working in " | ||
+ | * I will also spend some time in Brussels, meeting the local communities here I did not take the time to visit yet, and keeping some days available to start new projects at FoAM. I want also to keep some time to read, and explore Belgium more seriously than I did so far. | ||
+ | * I will keep spending some time with people I like, both in Brussels and elsewhere, and some time wandering around, to let space for things to happen. |