Perhaps also it is the meaning we give particular moments that makes memory work. I had been cutting grass and had soaked up the beauty all around me I just had to record something on this moment.
What binds one moment, one experience to another? We are accustomed to using the notion of memory' as our only answer to this question, but the idea of individual memory treats learning only from the viewpoint of the individual organism, and does not look at the activities in which we participate and all the people, places, and things around us that help make memory work (Jay Lemke) Perhaps also it is the meaning we give particular moments that makes memory work. I had been cutting grass and had soaked up the beauty all around me I just had to record something on this moment.
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I am writing an essay on the ecology of learning for a seminar next week so the idea of ecologies has been very much in my mind. The basic ideas underlying the ecology of family(1) is that a family is a distinct closely related social group that interacts with their environment to form an ecosystem. Families carry out the following for the good of itself as well as the good of society: biological sustenance (have children and look after each other), economic maintenance (share resources), psychosocial nurturing (provide empathy and emotional support). Families and the environment are interdependent and they interact with multiple environments - typically each adult member inhabits a different physical/social environment. Adaptation is a continuing process in families. They can “respond, change, develop, and act on and modify their environment.” Interactions between families and environments are guided by two sets of rules: Physical and biological laws of nature and human-derived rules (e.g., social /cultural norms). Our physical environments do not determine our behavior but pose limitations and constraints as well as possibilities and opportunities. Decision making is the central control process that directs our actions for attaining individual and family goals. Families are underlain and held together through shared values including its survival: maintenance and sustainability are important features of life and the “four great virtues that contribute to the ‘ultimate good’”: economic adequacy, justice, freedom and peacefulness. Other virtues that contribute to the quality of family life include: health, education and learning, loving and nurturing relationships, productive work and work environments, experiences and symbolic systems that sustain meaning and a sense of community, beauty and trustworthiness. From an ecological perspective we might reflect on how our family functions and adapts to assure survival, how we collectively try to improve the quality of our lives, and how we contribute to sustaining natural resources. We might also consider how we allocate and manage resources over time to meet the changing needs of individuals and the family as a group. And how the environment (the meso-, exo-, and macrosystems of which we are apart impact on us. Scanning my blog I can see many references to our family and the ecology that sustains it and how the members of my immediate and the greater family impact on my life. For example, in my last blog I talked about my step nephew's search amongst family members for resources to enable him to finance some training to help him become a missionary both my wife and I have responded to him with financial and emotional help and he in return is coming to visit us in a couple of weeks. This week has also been half term so I had the pleasure of looking after my six year old grandson for 24 hours. I have been very conscious since the twins have been born that I have spent less time with him and this sleepover, and the things we did together, were an important way in which we renewed our bonds. As we parted he said (as he so often does) 'I love you ganddad', which gets right to the point of good family relationships. Last Tuesday I, and my wife helped my daughter with childcare looking after all three of her children so that she could go to work. I suppose this is an example of family ecology in action to help sustain the family and enable resources to be brought into the family. During the week my wife and I chatted at length to our two children at university listening to their problems (prep for exams and an important piece of coursework). They discussed their ideas for their future and we provided encouragement and practical suggestions where we could. Thanks to technology and mobile phones even when we are not physically together as a family we can remain in touch and have valuable conversations that sustain our family ecology. Making full use of our physical environment, yesterday my wife took me and our daughter out for a light and chilly (we sat outside) lunch and after cleaning the house and working in the garden (maintaining our physical environment) we had some fun and went to the cinema to see The Great Gatsby. This morning I was made to jump on the scales to see how much I weighed fortunately I hadn't had any breakfast. I then proceeded to set the scales to give me my BMI. She had been reading a book about fasting and she passed on the science she had learnt on to me. The experience of public weighing and telling me that I was nearly obese was also intended to convince me that I needed to do something about it - the family ecology of nurturing our health and educating me was clearly in evidence. On Sunday we celebrated the twins first birthday with a small family gathering for two of my children and their families including all four of my grandchildren. I guess that birthdays are symbolic in families when we pay attention to the particular member of the family whose birthday it is and the celebrations and gifts are tokens of valuing them as members of our family. And as I complete this piece my daughter who is over from Dubai for a few days is staying with us. Last night we spent time catching up and talking a lot about a particular matter involving another member of the family. I was struck by her deep concern and her willingness to provide both practical help and emotional support. These simple stories of family life in the past week reflect the everyday functionings of our family. A family I am very proud of. Each example illustrates the ecology that binds us together and gives us an important part of our identity and our sense of individual and social wellbeing. But these sorts of ecologies are learned. The values, attitudes and behaviours that underpin such ecologies are passed on from generation to generation propagated by parents who teach their children the importance of these things. I know that I and both of my wives learnt the meanings of family from growing up in our respective families and we have simply tried to practice the values and practices that were passed on to us through these lived experiences. I can no see the same patterns emerging as my children and step children find their own independent way in the world. 1) I found this powerpoint presentation which provided the core ideas for the ecology of family www.public.iastate.edu/~hd_fs.511/lecture/Sourcebook17.ppt Bubolz, M. M., & Sontag, M. S. (1993). Human ecology theory. In P. G. Boss, W. J. Doherty, R. LaRossa, W. R. Schumm, & S. K. Steinmetz (Eds.), Sourcebook of family theories and methods: A contextual approach (pp. 419-448). New York: Plenum Press. One of the journeys every parent goes through with their children, particularly as they travel through their teenage years, concerns the 'what am I going to do? question. We have numerous conversations directly or indirectly that touch on this question and we see our children entertain and often repeatedly reject ideas. We also tell stories about how and when we discovered who we wanted to be. Because I have both older and younger children I can see that it sometimes takes a long time to discover your purposes, and I can also appreciate much more now the joy of discovering the parental purpose as I see my own children becoming loving and caring parents. At this point in time the question is an urgent one for my son Navid who is just completing an archaeology degree. It is clear that there is a tussle going on between his passion for archaeology and the realisation that it is difficult to pursue a career in this field. I remember a recent conversation I had with him when he said that finding the thing you really want to do in life was the million dollar question when you’ve discovered what that thing is you can spend the rest of your life working towards In contrast a few days ago I had a wonderful email from a nephew which told me very clearly that he had discovered his purposes and how he was going to achieve his goals. You can't help but notice in his message the deep conviction that comes across from knowing what he wanted to do with his life. Dear friends and family, As some of you know this August I will be leaving England to go to Micronesia, the reason for this is that I will be attending Iris Ministries’ missionary school for 9 weeks. The aim of the school is to train up a group of missionaries who have a heart to go to the unreached places of this globe and/or to the darkest bits. Therefore, upon completing the 9 weeks, this is what I aim to do. In order to do this I still need to raise a further £865 to pay the remaining tuition fees for Micronesia. My heart is very much to go to the places that the world has forgotten about. Having spent time with such people in Southern/Eastern Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia I find great delight in sharing the love of Jesus with these people and watching him transform their lives. Furthermore, I desire to empower the communities that I will be living in, particularly women, seeking to further their advances in education and employment, whilst integrating myself fully into the environment I find myself in. This summer I will be working to earn money, but due to the constraints of when I get paid it won’t arrive until after the deadline for the payment of tuition. Therefore, if you feel compelled to invest in the work that I will be doing whilst in Micronesia, and as a result what I will be doing in the subsequent months and years, then that would bless me immeasurably. Alternatively, if you would prefer to be a long-term partner, donating a specific amount each month then that would be equally incredible. I’m incredibly excited to be embarking on this journey. From a young age I have had a heart to serve God cross-culturally, and now that the dream is coming into fruition I have to pinch myself at just how good it all is. For me, this is very much a vocation, and something that I feel called to for the long run. Therefore if you would like to partner with me and invest in what lays ahead you can do so either through paypal: https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/send-money-online Simply type in your email address, and then mine ([email protected]) and the amount you would like to give. Or if you prefer to do via bank transfer just email me ([email protected]) for my bank details. If you have any further questions that you would like to ask me, or sign up for updates while I’m away then do not hesitate to drop me an email, I will be more than happy to answer them. I would like to thank everyone who has blessed me and covered me with prayer already. It truly does mean the world to me that you are willing to bless what I am doing and I feel very loved as a result. For more information on Micronesia, here is the link to the Iris Ministries’ Website: https://www.irisglobal.org/missions/harvest/micronesia Massive love and blessings to all, Bobby I remember completing a diary once as part of a work evaluation exercise where over a two week period every hour I had to record everything I had done. One of the headings was 'planning' and at the end of the week I was surprised to discover just how much time I spent doing it. That changed my view about the importance of planning in my work but its also true of every day life. A busy organised world requires us to spend a lot of time planning. If you want to undertake anything out of the ordinary that also requires planning. My reflections on planning were triggered by a deadline I had to meet to provide an abstract for an event at which I was to be a keynote speaker in Macau in November. It forced me to think about what I was going to speak about and how I was going to structure my talk. This then led me to think about logistics of how I was going to get there. For the first time I searched to find out where exactly I was going and was pleasantly surprised to find it adjacent to Hong Kong. I discovered that there was a ferry service from the airport. I also checked out the visa situation with the conference organisers. I decided I would try and combine it with a flying visit to see my parents in Australia. So I spent a couple of hours searching for flights and comparing routes and costs and then drilling down how I would get to the airport early in the morning in Sydney. I found myself thinking about all sorts of things all of which were about imagining the future and what I needed to do inhabit that future. This was not the only thing I planned this week I designed a workshop for an event at Southampton Solent University and interacting with co-presenters at the university. Thinking ahead to how we might better optimise our websites I also downloaded a booklet for future reading. I had a conversation with my daughter about how she might conclude the piloting of the Lifewide Development Award pilot. I also spent time thinking about our Lifewide Education conference next March and contacted two potential speakers and someone who could record the event. With my wife I discussed what we would eat at a dinner party planned for the weekend, and with my daughter we thought a few weeks ahead to her twins birthday party which she wanted to hold at our house. With my band I discussed the idea of a doing a concert in our garden in late August.. weather permitting!! Planning and thinking about the future in imaginative and analytical ways pervades all aspects of our life and without it I don't suppose as many things would happen.. or if they happened they would happen in a disorganised way without the results you want to achieve. Planning can simply be thinking generally about something in the future or it can be about deciding exactly what to do. And plans - the results of planning can be explicit and somewhat rigid or vague and fluid. And personal plans evolve over time with different levels of detail being added at different stages in a perpetually evolving process. And plans can be changed as new circumstances emerge. That's the beauty of planning... nothing is fixed until it has actually happened. In my google searches this week (actually searching around what is learning?) I came across a nice short paper explaining why, in the corporate environment, planning is learning. Its trying to understand the future and all the complexities associated with it and trying to imagine how you get there. In doing so it is taking the fundamental step towards learning to find a way into the future. I think the same holds true when we plan our own future. In our imaginings we are trying to understand what we have to do in order to secure a future of a certain type... and from that point of imagining (our rough plans) we continually refine our thinking until we get there. PLANNING AS LEARNING http://www.sims.monash.edu.au/subjects/ims5042/stuff/readings/de%20geus.pd Opportunities to help shape thinking about the future of learning and education don't come very often so I jumped at the chance to submit a paper to the EU's Joint Research Centre Call for Vision Papers on the Future of Open Education. In 2011 the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies published a report on the Future of Learning in which they outlined a vision for learning that was 'lifewide and lifelong'. Not surprisingly we used our own Lifewide Development Award as a model for an European Award and related this to the ways in which it might support the vision of personalised, collaborative and informal learning that was envisioned in the Future of Learning Report. Our paper was not only accepted but was deemed a winning entry by the organisers so, as the author of the paper I was invited to a Foresight Workshop led by Christine Redecker in Seville at the end of April. About twenty people with backgrounds in HE education, policy, research, commercial learning enterprises, interests in technology and not for profit educational enterprises were brought together to engage in a facilitated structured process to consider the question of Open Education and Open Education Resources in 2030 in the context of lifelong learning. Underlying this exercise is the political movement towards greater openness especially with open publication of data and information and the European Commission's new initiative on "Opening-up Education" to be launched mid-2013. With such a diverse group of people contributing to the workshop it was not surprising that there were tensions, for example between those who seemed only to be concerned with meeting the learning needs of people developing themselves for work, and those who wanted to adopt a more holistic view of lifelong-lifewide learning. Some participants were primarily concerned with formal learning that was designed and directed by institutional or commercial providers, and more or less conformed to traditional content-based, transmission models of education, while others were concerned to recognise the needs and interests of self-motivated, self-organised/self-managed learners who would create their own ecosystems for learning and personal development and draw on networks and communities and information from many sources rather than simply relying on pre-packaged educational materials. This group also saw the value of multiple sources and types of recognition systems eg open badges and open awards as well as more traditional forms of assessment and recognition. The workshop revealed that openness and trust are important cultural requisites to achieve the 2030 vision. Some of the more significant discussion themes are listed below. 1 The need for a 2030 society that values lifewide-lifelong learning and is committed to openness. We need to start talking about lifewide learning if it is be a recognised reality. 2 The need to develop capabilities and confidence of learners of all ages for the diverse forms of learning that are envisaged in the Future of Learning vision. 3 An abundance of open source information resources including OER and vast quantities of information not specifically designed for educational purposes. Knowledge grown in social networks and personal narratives of growth and development are likely to be important contributors. 4 The need to maintain good levels of competency in a technologically enabled world. In 2030 technology will be used to help people in all aspects of their learning and development eg · to reflect on their situations and evaluate their learning and development needs · to help match needs and interests to high quality relevant information and learning opportunities · to identify trustworthy communities where knowledge is being co-created · to provide on-going support and feedback · to identify potential sources of recognition and accreditation of learning and perhaps make comparisons between sites · to enable people to capture and represent their learning and development in ways that will be accepted by any scheme for recognition · to help them create the narratives of their development. 5 A wealth of open educational practices to support individuals learning - the issue will be decided which practices to adopt. 6 A wealth of mechanisms and practices for valuing individuals' learning and development. 'By 2030 I want any aspect of my learning and development to be recognised and validated by an appropriate authority if I wanted it to' (workshop participant). The issue will be decided which practices to adopt. 7 A policy that supported the vision but contained plenty of space and resource for improvising and responding to the unexpected. Reflections on the process I am thinking about the idea of personal learning ecologies and the process I got involved in provided a good example of one that was partly my own creation and partly someone else's (the JRCs). My own ecology comprises my big learning ecology to support the lifewide learning enterprise. Much of the learning is emergent and comes from seeking an opportinity - like the call for vision papers - and working with it. But once involved I had to quickly grow an understanding of Open Education. But I was aware that I was part of the learning ecology the JRC team had built to fulfil its goals of exploring open education. Because of this process I have realised that what we were trying to do in the Lifewide Education community is entirely consistent with the visions for lifewide-lifelong learning being developed by the JRC team for Europe. I now see the lifewide education enterprise as open educational practice being co-created and shared by a trustworthy community. Our Magazine, e-book and PoD book are open educational resources and we are continually growing these within our community. We distribute the knowledge we have grown through a suite of websites and make it freely available to anyone who sees value in what we have produced. We also offer open educational services through our Lifewide Development Award and we are growing open educational practices to help learners gain recognition for their lifewide learning. For Lifewide Education, Open Education is already here, we provide a concrete example of an idealistic, inclusive, free, community-based learning enterprise that embodies the Future of Learning vision. The EU Commissions Open Education/ Future of Learning project provides Lifewide Education with a fantastic opportunity to contribute ideas on how the 2030 vision might be realised. Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies WEBSITE http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/openeducation2030/ References Jackson N J An EU-wide Lifewide Development Award. Open Education 2030 Vision Paper http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/openeducation2030/files/2013/04/OE2030_LLL_Booklet.pdf 'The Future of Learning: An EU Lifewide Development Award' can be found in the Booklet 'Open Education 2030' Contributions to the JRC-IPTS call for vision papers Part 1 Lifelong Learning Available online at: http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/openeducation2030/files/2013/04/OE2030_LLL_Booklet.pdf It was the anniversary of my first wife's passing and I came across a dead fox in the garden yesterday. Not just any fox but our resident fox who we had watched grow from a cub just one year ago into the beautiful adolescent he now was. At first I thought he was asleep lying next to a clump of forgetmenots. There were no marks on him so we will never know how he died. Perhaps because of the anniversary it made me feel very sad. I buried him by the wind chimes under the sycamore tree. Today at breakfast I noticed that our two Canada geese were on the lawn...This was the first time they were together for several weeks and I said..ohh the eggs must have hatched. Sure enough there were four bundles of fluff... running around next to them.. Life and death are all around us.. The spring has always been my favourite time of the year. But since my wife Jill died fourteen years ago on May 5th it has also been a time of sadness as I am reminded of her and the life she did not have. I play the events over and over again in my mind always feeling guilty that I did not say more or do more for her. It is the deep sadness within our family that will always be there.. rarely spoken about because we prefer to talk about the happiness she gave us rather than the sadness we feel at her passing. The one thing that makes me smile is the foreget-me-nots that seem, no matter what the weather, to time their arrival for this significant anniversary. They seem to spring up everywhere, without any need for encouragement, ...they carpet parts of the woods and poke out of the nooks and crannies on the paths, and stick out of every corner of the garden. They are spontaneous and rampant and have no need of a cultivator they do it all by themselves. They even appear in the unruly pile of leaves that we call the compost heap this year is sporting a clutch of pale blue flowers. They are modest little flowers and their beauty only reveals itself when you get up close. They remind me so much of her radiant in their beauty and tenacious in their spirit to shine in the world. They have become a symbol of her memory - a memory I know my children share because we have talked about it. This year I resolved to do something more to honour her memory... I bought a couple of big pots and filled them with forget-me-nots from the garden and gave one to my son and one to my daughter. We will never forget you but this simple reminder fills us with joy.. Life is full of symbols and creating a life of shared significance is probably one of the most meaningful things we can do. My daughter and her children are a very significant part of my life. This week I did my Tuesday child care looking after the twins and also Wednesday afternoon while my daughter went to the dentist. I love my twin grandsons as if they were my own children.. My wife said this and I realised it when she said it. There is no doubt about it I have bonded to them and them to me in a big way. They are approaching their first birthday at the end of May. It's been a long, difficult, at times gruelling and emotionally challenging year for my daughter who has had to cope with her three children by herself much of the time. They were born 10 weeks early so developmentally they are really only nine months old. In the last few weeks Archie has learnt to sit and this has liberated him so that he can do occupy himself so much more. His development is in stark contrast to Alfie's who actively resists sitting... In the last few weeks we have become acutely aware and concerned of differences in his development compared to Archie's. We have always been conscious of the consultant's diagnosis before they left hospital that Alfie's brain scans showed signs of damage - probably because his brain was starved of oxygen at some point. Something that I think is not unusual in babies with such low birth weights. We have lived in hope that everything will be okay but we think we are now seeing the effects of this damage in his development. For the first time this week I googled to find out something about cerebral palsy. The information was both reassuring (that there is help and the condition doesn't get worse) and distressing (depending on the degree it can be quite disabling). There are a number of signs that are pointing to this condition for example one of Alfie's arms seems less active than the other, he throws himself backwards when sitting or standing and he often goes into a trance. I know my daughter and her husband are very worried as I am for them and Alfie. The physiotherapist came today and she is going to arrange for some tests for Alfie to check on epilepsy and his cognitive functioning.. I tried to reassure my daughter that the testing is for the best as the earlier any discoveries are made the quicker treatments can be put in place.. But my heart bleeds for them as parents. But she is a remarkable woman and Alfie is fortunate to have her for his mum.. She will I know do everything she can for him and I/we will try and support her and them as family as much as we can. We will not give up hope that his life will not be so limited and I will not dwell on all the potential scenarios and imaginings of of what lies ahead. Instead I will remember the wonderful smile he gives me when he hears 'Hello Alfie its granddad!' and the way he rests on my tummy when I cuddle him. What a funny mix of joy and sadness life can be. I recognise that I am a knowledge worker someone 'who thinks for a living'. I used to be paid by an employer, now the company who managed my pension pays me to be retired - but I still think for a living spending a significant amount of my time developing and using my knowledge to try and achieve what I value, namely the promotion of lifewide learning and education as both an ideal and a practice. I am, what Daniel Pink refers to in his book 'To sell is human', involved in non-selling sales. That is much of my work-related daily activity involves trying to persuade, influence and convince others that my ideas and the knowledge I bring together to support them, are of value. I recognise that much of my daily effort is directed to trying to 'move people' by influencing their thinking and beliefs. The way I share my ideas is primarily through my writing so I guess I'm a knowledge worker and that involves thinking, writing and communicating in different ways. So how valid is my claim and what sorts of knowledge am I working with? This week my activity has been divided between work - promoting lifewide education, helping my family and doing some essential house-related jobs. Three projects that directly related to knowledge working. Firstly, I have put time and effort into the next issue of Lifewide Magazine. The Magazine is a vehicle for exploring ideas and it is a vehicle, persuading people to contribute ideas and for distributing ideas - over 800 downloads for last issue. This week I found and read a number of reports that have given me a better understanding of wellbeing. They provided me with a tool to understand what people are saying about what makes them happy and develop a sense of feeling fulfilled. I used this NEW LEARNING to provide clearer guidance to our illustrator on the ideas that are important to illustrate and the results were very pleasing. I also decided to use what I had discovered as the basis for a chapter for the e-book. Also persuaded RB to write pieces for the Magazine. Personal Learning Ecologies - I have been thinking about the idea for a long time and this week I made a start on putting them on paper. I decided to use the CRA seminar to be held in June to motivate my learning by saying I will present and run a workshop on the theme. I downloaded several papers and began to read them and I am now starting to use the PLE idea as a lens to observe and interpret my activity. I began creating my talk (powerpoint slides) and identified themes that I will try to model. Because of my heightened awareness I am examining the my own practice and behaviour from the perspective of my learning ecologies to help me with my various 'projects'. Seville Workshop - Future of Lifewide Learning. I am attending a workshop next weekend so I began to read the background papers that participants have written and a number of other reports on Open Education resources. I also downloaded a posting Alison Littlejohn had done on twitter to identify the current state of play with OER. I was also invited to complete a template for the workshop which made me address questions of the how to do it type. I could see that I was part of someone else's ecosystem - EU researchers and that I was providing them with my personal knowledge to inform their research and report. They have started to try and develop a personal relationship and provided a tool for us to share our knowledge. The questions in the template made me think more deeply about some of the things I am proposing ie it caused me to make my thinking explicit. So what sort of knowledge have I been working with? I've been mainly working with the codified knowledge contained in reports and scholarly articles, trying to make sense of it and connect it to my understandings and knowledge of lifewide learning. I have also drawn on my own experiential knowledge to think about the idea of personal ecologies. I have drawn on the personal knowledge of other people contributing the Lifewide Magazine and to the blogs I found. All these are being woven together in my own articles, e-book chapter and in illustrations I have commissioned. I was also involved in sharing my own personal knowledge by completing a template of questions for the organisers of the Seville workshop. I also consumed lots of knowledge through media reports, newspapers, TV and radio, Youtube and other on-line venues. weekly report to myself
Opportunities to help shape thinking about the future of learning and education don't come very often so I jumped at the chance to submit a paper to the European Commission Call for Visionary Papers on the Future of Open Education. It was one of those opportunities that came out of the blue.. It was the Monday four days before I was going to China and I had a lot of things to do when I suddenly came across an email from the Future of Learning Linked in group saying that there was a call for vision papers. I knew I had to go for it so I immediately put together a one page summary of an idea for an EU-wide Lifewide Development Award and sent it off to some of the members of the team I thought might be interested. All replied quickly in an encouraging way and I gained some very useful feedback. I set about crafting a short six page paper and by Wednesday, in spite of everything else I had to do, I had the basic content, again I circulated for comment and again I got back some useful feedback with a couple of pointers that helped me refine what I had written. I banged it off to the organisers and went off to China. While I was there I got an email saying thanks for your paper which was quickly followed by another saying that the paper was considered to be one of the winning entries and I have been invited to a workshop in Seville at the end of April. So what do I learn from this? It reinforces my view that opportunities emerge and you have to a) in some way be connected to them b) be able to recognise them c) be able to respond to them. The latter may not be easy given that generally we are always busy with other things but if you miss the chance you might not get another. So hopefully good things will come from this opportunity.All the papers can be viewed at http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/openeducation2030/vision-papers-on-open-education-2030-part-1-lifelong-learning/
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PurposeTo develop my understandings of how I learn and develop through all parts of my life by recording and reflecting on my own life as it happens. I have a rough plan but most of what I do emerges from the circumstances of my life
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January 2021
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