Greenbackyard

New technologies at the service of civil society

For those who don’t follow me on Twitter, I recently was invited to participate in a panel during the launch of a series of workshops organised by Idealistas.org and I talked about it on my work blog. Head there to find out more

Old and new passions

When we were planning on coming over to Argentina, Danielle told me that she wanted to go to a football match and so we got in touch with Alejandro, a good friend of mine, that’s also a supporter of River Plate. The team hasn’t been doing great lately, last year, for the first time in its history, it finished the tournament last (how sad). Alejandro told us not get our hopes too high. My youngest sister, who had never been to a match, decided she wanted to join us (even though she is not a River Plate supporter).

We were very lucky to get free tickets through Alejandro and a friend of his. The tickets were for the “Platea Sivori“, which was behind the goal that River would be defending in the first half of the match. Most of the first half was OK until just as we were reaching half-time, a player from River plate barely touched (disclosure: I support River Plate) an Arsenal player and the referee didn’t even blink, declared a penalty and expulsed our player! What a start! This was the first match that both Danielle and my sister would be witnesses to? Seeing my team loose?

Fortunately, less than 5 min in the second half, my team equalised and after an excellent swap of players, Gallardo (aka El “Muñeco” Gallardo) scored a great goal in the first few minutes of the field and not much later a second, epic goal! Ok, I was happier now. This was a match worth watching. I even shot a very short and dodgy video with my phone.

This match had everything. 4 players saw the red card, we had a penalty, 4 goals, a roaring crowd … all of this in a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Buenos Aires. What started with some doubts ended up being a memorable afternoon.

Alejandro said that Ana (my sister) and Danielle had to witness all the matches from River Plate from now on since it was such a great game!

The Crowds as viewed from our seats

What really stood up for me was that after nearly 9 years overseas, I was really missing coming to a game here, where everyone is so passionate. It’s difficult to explain, as there’s a lot of violence during, before and after games and football has become such a money-driven show that conveying how a match like this one can make you feel seems impossible. However against all my preconcepts and all I remembered, I saw many families at the stadium. Fathers with their sons and daughters! Some of them little, younger than Zeek …

I really loved it! So did Danielle and I think Ana as well.

What to plant, when!

I just found this fantastic resource for gardeners:

http://www.gardenate.com/

I put in my growing climate (subtropical) and Gardenate tells you what to plant right now, and what to prepare for, for next month. How handy for those of us who just can’t remember what to get into the ground in time. Currently it works for residents of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

So, how does it all start (part 4)

I have neglected my story over the past 3 weeks, I have all sort of excuses though: trip to Argentina, trip to Barcelona, work, life … all very demanding circumstances that distracted me for a bit. Some of these distractions are actually a product of what I was going to talk about in this post and life has provided me with real experiences that I can now share

As I was mentioning previously, we had just purchased, almost impulsively, this beautiful 10 acres farm in Northern NSW and we were now facing the most challenging times of our lives in recent times: we were new parents, we now had a mortgage and a house around 7h drive North of Sydney and my job was in Sydney or in Adelaide. Danielle was already working in a mostly remote situation, so for her the prospects of moving to the country were not as daunting as they were for me. Living in the country meant big changes without any doubt.

Let me quickly digress to a topic that’s not entirely related to the tree-change but will reveal a deep, troubling change that I went through and I think it’s one of the fundamental issues with moving away from the city, at least from my point of view, due to the way we are perceived in today’s society. I realised that I was building my own personality based on my profession or job title. I started to see myself through my work. I had been very lucky to have worked most of my life with extremely bright people, that were as eager as I was to continuously improve and learn, people that believed, like I did, in some basic values: collaboration, transparency, honesty. And when you get to spend your career working mostly in environments that are full of passionate, creative people, it’s hard not to get this type of “association” with work. I worked with GaiaSur in Buenos Aires, Argentina, then Greenpeace International in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and finally Rising Sun Pictures in Sydney and Adelaide, Australia. This is not my full work experience however it’s the last 11 years and in all those years, I had that privilege. I worked with some amazing, passionate, honest and creative people and I believe that it’s thanks to them that I became the person I am today (from a professional point of view). Of course, I have to claim some of that credit however the environment, the people that surrounded me, the people I worked with, showed me, in practical terms, what those values looked like in a commercial and non-profit world. It didn’t matter so much what type of work we did, from creating the infrastructure for a major ISP from the ground-up with mostly open source software, to figuring out how to engage world-wide audiences to solve the world’s environmental problems, I always got deeply involved as did all the people I worked with. And when you put so much energy into work, you start living your life through it. Or at least, that’s what happened to me. My own perception of myself was that I was that guy that worked with technology and people.

This perception of myself changed dramatically when Zeek was born. I think the specifics of the change are a topic for another post as it’s quite a deep change, which I saw in some good friends as well. Don’t take me wrong, it was a great change! I am extremely happy about it however it’s not an easy transition.

So, getting back to the tree-change. I was this persona, a CTO of a great company -this opens many doors in today’s society- and I only realised this after a few months of living up North and having a bit of time to reflect, if I moved up I would have to give that up, return to be Bruno. Could I actually be happy without a buzzing environment around me? Would this affect my career? Do I care about a career? I didn’t even know I would be asking those questions when we bought our house. And I am glad I didn’t otherwise I would have been paralised by fear at the time of making that decision.

When I turned 30 (almost 7 years ago), I swore to myself that I would not be paralysed by my fears, that I would face them and conquer them. Step by step I’ve been conquering some of them. For example, I really couldn’t stand spiders, I would freak out at the sight of even a tiny little one. Now, I can take a big hunstman (ok, it’s not a red-back or funnel-web) with a glass and take it outside without killing it and without sweating too much. I’ve started working towards my Private Pilot License and I am afraid of heights. So, when I was confronted with this fundamental fear of loosing that job title, I thought to myself “is that fear based on something real or fake?” and I believe it is fake. I decided I wasn’t my job title, I was myself, with all my flaws and also with all my experiences. And, what was the worst that could happen? The worst would have been to have to come back to our parents place without a house. Well, that’s not worst not taking the risk. It’s not a permanent loss. I never thought of material possessions as a fundamental definition of who I am even though I lost sight of that for a bit.

With the many people that I’ve talked about a tree-change, many mentioned keeping a certain level of income as one of the biggest challenges. Some mentioned keeping their career. The vast majority look at it as a way to get away from the vortex of our current consumerist society, reducing the stress, living a more balanced life. And finally, almost everyone thinks it’s a dream, something impossible to do. Danielle and I never really deeply thought about it until after we did and, despite the fears, the obstacles, we always thought that the changes it might bring would make us (her, Zeek and myself) much better for it, and if we gave up now, without trying, we would regret it all our life.

In the end, this post ended up being more about the fears that I had to face rather than obstacles. I think I will leave that to a follow-up post as I want to go and enjoy being with my son and my beautiful partner now and not be in front of the computer in a beautiful, sunny day, in Buenos Aires.

[To be continued...]