Profesor: singur față în față cu online-ul - Mic Îndrumar

O lună de la începutul noului semestru și trebuie să predai brusc altfel. 

Te-ai întâlnit cu studenții de 3-4 ori, ai așezat lucrurile pe un făgaș normal, în care toată lumea știe ce are de făcut și pandemia decide să îți strice planurile. 

Primești informare că toate activitățile se mută în online. Care e abordarea? 

Nu mă voi referi la partea tehnică a platformelor, ci mai degrabă voi incerca să ofer câteva sfaturi pentru o interacțiune optimă, din experiența proprie. Un Mic Îndrumar de gestiune a riscului de tranziție la online. 


Experimentează cu primul curs. Știu că e dificil pentru unii să își arate vulnerabilitatea în față studenților / elevilor. Ei sunt însă generația născută direct digital. Noi… nu prea. Admite în fața lor faptul că experiența aceasta este o aventură și o lecție atât pentru ei cât și pentru tine. 

Asigură-te că ai infrastructură care să îți permită trecerea la online: intri de pe laptop, calculator, telefon? Ai baterie? Merg aplicațiile? Se încarcă platforma? Ai net? Pot părea întrebări stupide, dar vrei ca la ora stabilită pentru curs sau seminar să poți avea acces pe deplin

Asigură-te că ai la îndemână adresele de email ale studenților astfel încât, în măsura în care platforma dă erori (din varii motive, unul putând fi că nu mai ai conexiune la Internet), le poți comunica problema tehnică.


O platformă de blended learning, cum este cea pentru învățământ la distanță, presupune o interacțiune fizică cu studentul, la un moment dat. Că de aceea e blended și nu online learning integral. E bine să știi asta. Însă, deși sperăm cu toții că situația este doar temporară, realitatea este că nu avem de unde să știm cât va dura. Oricum, blended learning și online learning sunt tendințe pentru învățământ. Așadar, șansele sunt că aceasta să fie nouă noastră realitate pe termen mediu: să împletim partea de interacțiune online cu interacțiunea față în față.

Asigură-te că toți studenții cu care ai interacționat la curs au acces. Adică? Poate ai avut studenți Erasmus, poate unii nu știu cum să acceseze platforma. Cum faci asta? Le dai un mail, de preferat cât mai rapid, recomandându-le să verifice dacă au acces la cursul sau seminarul tău și, dacă nu, să te contacteze.

Reține că într-o platforma de blended learning rareori ai partea de “videochat”. De cele mai multe ori capacitățile platformei sunt limitate la postarea de materiale (inclusiv filmulețe), quizzuri, întrebări punctuale, forumuri sau chaturi. Acestea pot fi extrem de utile pentru seminarii, mai ales dacă presupun lucrul individual. Dacă modus operandi la tine era să le dai să lucreze în echipa, poți face acest lucru, dar va funcționa mai degrabă că temă, nu în timpul alocat interacțiunii pe platformă (deoarece ar aduce timpi morți). Ceea ce ne duce la punctul următor

Pentru o prelegere poate vei considera că este necesar ca studenții să te și audă. Poți face acest lucru live, pe durata cursului, folosind un alt instrument, de tip Cisco Webex, Zoom, Facebook live, YouTube live sau înregistrandu-te înainte de curs / seminar. Majoritatea instrumentelor live permit înregistrarea și posibilitatea de postare ulterioară. De asemenea, majoritatea permit chat-ul în timp real, adică studenții pot propune întrebări sau comenta în timpul prelegerii.


Asigură-te că ai la îndemână toate elementele pe care dorești să le folosești că material didactic în timpul cursului / seminarului. Să spunem că vrei să le indici un studiu de caz: este de dorit că el să fie încărcat pe platformă înainte de a începe cursul sau seminarul. Dacă vrei să le arăți în timp real un link, ar fi bine să îl ai deja deschis într-un alt tab (pe o altă pagină) al browserului tău.


Fă un test înainte de a începe, alocă-ți cam jumătate de ora înainte de prima interacțiune integral online cu platforma pentru a vedea cum funcționează. Dacă intri și cu parte video, asigură-te că te vezi bine (nu doar cu jumătate de față sau cu imagine rotită la 90 grade), nu ești contre jour, nu ai lumina puternică în spate. După această prima parte de test, nu va fi nevoie să aloci la fel de mult, dar va fi necesar să aloci măcar câteva minute înainte de începerea prelegerii pentru trecerea prin acest checklist “de dinainte de decolare”.

Pregătește dinainte scenariul cursului sau seminarului: Dacă ai parte video: cât stai în video live? Nu îți recomand mai mult de 45 de minute. Vei pierde atenția audienței, care (cu o probabilitate foarte mare) face și altceva în timpul acesta. Mai mult, cu excepția cazului în care ești deja prezentator TV sau vlogger, nu ai capacitatea de a transmite doar prin verbal ceea ce în sala de curs o făceai cu verbal + non-verbal + para-verbal. Dacă nu ai parte video: ce întrebări le pui, care este succesiunea în care vei pune acele întrebări. După primul curs / seminar de experiment, vei vedea dacă ți-ai propus prea mult sau prea puțin. 

Pregătește-te ca limbajul, mai ales pe partea de chat, să conțină emoji  (adică smileys), prescurtări (de tipul LOL), propoziții scurte și trunchiate. Nu considera aceasta o ofensă, vine doar din obișnuinta de a scrie scurt într-un mediu de tip chat text. Seamănă întrucâtva cu un dialog pe un grup de whatsapp.

Ritmul va fi mult mai rapid, interacțiunea mult mai dinamică. Așadar, e bine să ai răbdare cu ei și mai ales, tu cu tine.


Pregătește materialele pentru un curs online. Această presupune să le pui la dispoziție mai multe instrumente de interacțiune, cum ar fi răspunsul la întrebări / teste. Platforma permite acest lucru.


Alocă un număr de ore înainte de curs / seminar pentru a pregăti aceste scenarii și materiale / metode de interacțiune. La nivel pedagogic, ai făcut deja acest lucru înainte de începerea semestrului. Însă sunt făcute pentru interacțiune față în față, sau (în cel mai bun caz) pentru blended. Nu pentru full online. Vor trebui refăcute. Vei vedea exact ce ar trebui să adaugi sau să scoți după primul curs.


Primul curs full online va fi extenuant. 

Nu te îngrijora, va fi bine :) Cere-le sprijinul studenților. Am trecut din paradigma profesorului ca depozitar al cunoașterii în paradigma clasei ca spațiu de co-creație și învățare comună. Și am trecut brusc. Nu-i nimic. Suntem rezilienti. Important este să reușim să transmitem cunoștințele și abilitățile studenților noștri în acest context disruptiv. 

PS: Ajută să ai umor ;) și să tratezi situația responsabil, dar relaxat. Vei face greșeli. Așa. Și? 

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My Very "Robert Rodriguez Kind of Movie" Week

Fade in. 
The classical freeze-frame: the main character, wearing boots, a skater winter jacket is alone in a cemetery, on a Saturday afternoon at dusk, with the snow falling down, the ground muddy and the dogs howling someplace in the distance. She is trying to get her car to start, hood open, frozen fingers clutching a 10-key. 

”This is me now, you probably wonder how I got here.”

This is either the beginning of a horror movie or of a very demented comedy. Choose the latter.

My week started slow, with a cold and lots of work, continued with exciting discussions on business intelligence with Qlik, innovation and the new Innoteque, blockchain and the BLOCKS project.

Thursday was the turning point. All morning at work, lots of meetings, new projects, the usual suspects stealing ideas. Nothing new. The day was supposed to wrap up rather quickly, around  3-ish. It dragged into the evening, pleasantly, with conversations about OUG 114 (do not Google that, you will get annoyed) and the lack of morality in the current global society. I got home, the cold still raging, got ready for bed. Wishful thinking. A loud knock on the door, panic. The neighbor from across the street, a lovely lady aged 93 that seemed eternal, was found dead in her house by her grandson – the source of the bang on the door. We got dressed, crossed the street to her home, met another couple of neighbors there. They had already called the ambulance. Apparently, you don’t need to call the ambulance. Anyhow, it came. And said that the procedure is to call the police. Which also came: one car, then another. More neighbors. „What happened?” …. Surreal scenes in which the four cops are asking each other about which form to fill in. Overall, nice people all of them, compassionate, solved the issue quickly and left. We also left, the family remaining to deal with the usual…

There must be a lot of anthropological material in the way Romanians tackle death issues. Far from somber images, the funerals are a mix of circus and grief, old traditions and imagined ones, everyone has an opinion about everything. What else can you expect from a people that have as favorite dessert a „meal of the dead”’ – sweet wheat porridge only served at funerals (and hipster restaurants with ice cream)?

Friday was calmer, with the other old ladies on the street, her posse, so to speak, becoming Miss Marple and trying to piece together the details of the previous evening, adding to the story, imagining earthquakes at the wake, remembering other funerals… I grew up here, the crowd got smaller with the passing of the years, members of it moving from the seating position to the table in the center of the room. One by one. Leaving memories of laughter and tears.

Saturday was cold and snowy. The kind of day that you would hate being out unless it is on a slope and there is mulled wine at the end of it. Mushy streets, the priest saying that he will arrive after 2 pm. There is a new priest in the neighborhood. The previous one retired. He knew all the old ladies, this new guy is disconnected, he can’t understand the quirks. Didn’t pass approval as of yet. He felt the need after the funeral rite to say a few words. Nice ones, about the need to be kind and atone. They reached deaf ears because everyone was stressing about the snow and the fact that dusk was coming. It all sounded very Robert Rodriguez. The night is coming, and we must get this over with.

The cemetery was muddy, cold, snow came down faster, the rite went by quickly, there was another funeral coming, and they needed to wrap up by nighttime too. Going back to the car, contact. Dead. The battery that is. Suitable for a cemetery. Get people out of the car. Call an Uber. Send them home. Call for help reliable friends. They send back ETA: 33 minutes. Dusk is coming. The other funeral wrapped up too, people leaving fast. The gravediggers finished their business and went, after asking if I need any help and if I am sure it is because of the battery. Nice people, compassionate.

The snow is falling faster, the raised hood of the car cannot keep all of it away. Success, I manage to make it start, dusk at my heels. If it were a movie, it would be incredulous: the heroine managing to start the car, in the nick of time, zombies approaching… There were no zombies in the Saturday snowy cemetery. Just memories of laughter and tears. And of kind people helping when necessary.

Some other time, I will tell you about the story of my grandfather’s funeral – a series of unfortunate events which are the food for a very Balkan movie.

Nighttime. I am home, a bit freezing, a bit cold. All is well, the car is in the garage. The dogs are not howling. My neighbor from across the street was a lovely lady. May she rest in peace.

The main character sits in front of her laptop, very Carrie Bradshaw, typing away. A full moon rises.

Fade out.

The Burnout

Robert Doisneau. Les Tabliers de la Rue de Rivoli. 1978. 

Being part of the so-called burnout generation, the dreaded millennials, even in its earliest instances, is not an easy thing to come to terms with. Aging is hard for everyone, that is a truism, obviously, but it seems to be harder to us, accepting the adulthood and turning to be an adult into a verb.

What does it even mean? Getting married, having kids, taking the place of our parents in decision-making? Oh well, then I only check one out of three. There is a joke about being scared when people ask for the adult in the room, and you panic and look around for a ”more adult.”

Doing the clean-up for Christmas, I noticed a photo from my parent's wedding, with them and my aunt and uncle. Respectable adults. And it hit me: they were in their late 20s, early 30s at that time, 8 years younger than me now. I showed up when mom was 25 and dad was 32. My grandmother had her first stroke when my mother was 31. By the time mom was my age, I was going to high-school. And that brought perspective. There are people in my generation that have kids ready to got to high-school. Do they feel old? Did my parents feel old in their late 30s? Never asked, maybe I should.

Do I feel my age now? Hell, no. Sometimes I still feel like answering I am 28 when asked. It is doubtful to me too. And yet, after all these years, with two burnouts under my belt and another one creeping in, I get it. We are the burnout generation, burning bright, putting all our efforts into actions with impact. High energy, low impact activities are skipped, moved further down the line in the to-do list and innovations come for them: the dishwasher, the Roomba…

In the brief introspection about the lives of my parents as compared to my own, I still wonder how they could do things which seem unattainable for me. Mom was washing clothes weekly, outside, in a tiny washing machine, that required taking them out and rinsing them in three or four different tubs of cleaner and cleaner water. Oh well, I still need to take the clothes out of my washing machine, that rinsed and dried them. Too hard. My parents came home from work, had a meal with me and then left for the theatre or a restaurant with friends. How many times did you manage to get back home before an evening event? In my case, twice in a year, in special circumstances. I just link meetings, work, salon and doctor appointments in a stream, input in my Google Calendar, optimized to fit as much as possible. Is the world running faster? Are we busier? Why? Will I be as happy as my parents are in their 60s? Probably not, although I travel more in a year than they did in a lifetime.

It is all a matter of approaching time. We alternate periods of high activity with stretches of laying on the couch and binge-watching Game of Thrones, or playing whichever video game is cool at the moment. We are very much sinusoidal in our approach to time, and their generation was more linear.

And I did find my ”spirit animal” writer in Clarice Lispector, a millennial before her time when she wrote in The Stream of Life: 

“Oh, living is so uncomfortable. Everything presses in: the body demands, the spirit never ceases, living is like being weary but being unable to sleep–living is upsetting.” 

Reading her, a part of my parents generation, felt like all this dichotomy of us versus them, my generation versus theirs is fake. They did not write blogs, but journals, they are fearing getting old and frail and missing out on things as much as we do. But we have a stranger kind of resilience, and we should take to heart more their resilience. There are millennials of all ages...

How do all these things fit into the story of a burnout? Maybe they don't. I guess I am just rambling because birthdays are hard when one still has imposter syndrome when called an adult. But there is a burnout creeping in, and perhaps that is a sign of a much-needed change in my approach to time and the activities which fill it. And I am not alone in this... I have an entire generation with me.

Beach Reads

Mid-life crisis continues. Inspiration to write is elusive so when a friend asked for a recommendation for something to read during the summer holidays, I jumped right on the topic. I am, by no means a literary critic, nor am I very up to date with the current listings on the book market, so here I made a short list of the books that have been in my beach bag for the past years. Some in Romanian, some in English, they range from thrillers to historic, from biographies to essays. About 20 of them, with Links from Amazon, because Kindle and Carturesti for Romanian.

• Every list I make shall always start with Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. I am preaching about this book over and over. Because it is something that I keep on coming back to whenever I need to understand what I am and why I am. To say it is a book about a Jewish psychologist during WW2 is to say nothing about it. It is not really long, so give it some time. Here, the version in Romanian.
• If I don’t start a list with Frankl, then I start it with Ion Baiesu – Balanta. Because I can quote pages of it by heart. Communism in Romania in the 80s. And “the stupidest people in the world is the Americans” and “if we make a kid together, we don’t stop, we make the second one, because an old beauraucrat once told me everything you make in life, make in duplicates, because you may never know”. Only in Romanian.
• David Sedaris – anything from. All from. Because laughter and sarcasm and joy and sadness. Me Talk Pretty One Day is a good first read, but I cannot chose only one. Here in Ro.
• Mihail Sebastian – For 2000 years. Eye-opening quasi-biography from a Holocaust that was waiting nearby in a very racist Romania. Here in Ro.
• Javier Marias - Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me. A rather noir, rather mystery book about secrets and infidelity. His The Infatuations reminded me of The Girl on the Train a bit.
• Elena Ferrante – Neapolitan Novels (Tetralogy). The most intellectual of easy reads, stories about women.  Here in Ro.  
• E. O. Chirovici – The Book of Mirrors. A mystery, thriller, noir about secrets, easy to read. Here in Ro.
• Clarice Lispector – Near to the Wild Heart – a book about growing up and marriage and missing out. Strangely a book about FOMO written in 1943.
• Bora Cosic – My Family’s Role in the World Revolution. A gem of a satire  that I could not put down. It talks of war and survival and communism and family and the Balkans.  Here in Ro.
• Mihai Radu  - Extraconjugal – Only in Romanian, about family and sexuality and boredom and tiny towns and Romania as it is. Provincial. But all novels are about provincials, aren’t they?
• Richard Flanagan – The Narrow Road to the Deep North – a story of war, relationships and survival. The Japanese POW camps, the Burma Death Railway, and books. “He believed books had an aura that protected him, that without one beside him he would die. He happily slept without women. He never slept without a book.” 
• Jean Teule – The Suicide Shop. If suicide was a commodity and people could become entrepreneurs from it and everyone should be miserable, except the main character? Here in Ro.
• Muriel Barbery – The Elegance of the Hedgehog. A funny one about neighbours and blocks of flats.   Here in Ro.
• Matei Visniec – Negustorul de inceputuri de roman.  A fantasy about dying and living and love of life and starting a novel and how everyone is a writer, but mostly how everyone is a dreamer. Here in French – Le Marchand des premieres phrases.
• Junot Diaz – This is how you lose her. About relationships and love and losing . And I must give a shout-out to Black Button Books, for the Romanian version. All their books are simply wonderful. Here in Ro.
• Andrei Kurkov – Penguin Lost. AKA The Snail’s Law. A funny one about life and survival and corruption and surrealism in post-communist Ukraine.  Here in Ro.
• Susan Sontag – On Photography. But literally, any sort of book by Sontag I tend to devour. Here in Ro.
•  Marius Chivu – Sfarsit de sezon. Only in Romanian. A collection of short stories about current urban Romania.
• Telespan – Cimitirul. Only in Romanian. Being gay in a provincial town in Romania is no fun. Moving to London to work in a cemetery is.
• Oliver Sacks – On the Move: A Life. Full circle to Frankl’s joy. This list wraps up with another psychologist who wonders about what and how and why in a sort of a biography. Here in Ro.

The list could be longer, and perhaps I may add to it. But the beach calls and I’d rather read than write J

Photo from Pixabay

On Identity and Mid-Life Crises

Image via Pixabay. Unfiltered. 

Going through a mid-life crisis when you are 37 is uncommon in modern day and age, but I am. Hence not writing anything here for the entire month of February.

I struggle to find spots of balance, so I turned to my usual: research. No place better than the book near my bed. I am not the first one to write about Hume helping someone out of a midlife crisis, and I probably won’t be the last. What resonates is not that we have both walked the streets of Edinburgh, albeit two centuries apart, but that feeling that he was going through the same. Written when he was 27 (basically at his mid-life), A Treatise of Human Nature asks questions about what and who we are, what makes and breaks us. Issues of identity, utility, and meaning have been to the forefront of my mind for the past months, ever more present and overwhelming to some extent. But Hume comes and says

“I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.” 

He talks about reflection and the fact that we are not at any moment away from our perceptions. We filter reality through biases and lenses. We are a plethora of Instagram worthy images we build inside ourselves, often skewed by the Lo-Fi or the Kelvin or the Valencia of hurts and joys.

Is this sudden awareness of the passing of time more rapidly, of lack of impact, of loss of utility and meaning as a person the reality or just the Maven filter of a distorted perception? The Maven is the one that darkens the shadows and increases the gloom. But even the Maven enhances the right image, it fits with derelict buildings and empty branches. So perhaps this filter of sadness just supports the embrace of unexpected beauty in things that are useless and just take out space that could be used more efficiently… Hume answers this one as well:

 “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them, and each mind perceives a different beauty.”

Perception again. Biases. Lenses. Filters we apply to ourselves and to others. I am testing a different filter now: empathy. There is this book that brings the latest thoughts in my soul to page, because it talks about clinging to banality while thirsting for significant barometers, it deals with pain translated via metaphors to communicate, it brings the need of an effort to travel to the pain of oneself and to the pain of other like to a new country, expecting disaster, but also encountering beauty. The Empathy Exams.

Do I fail these exams now? Probably. Not about others. Jamison says that empathy is listening. I still listen, I still inquire, I still let myself be immersed in the metaphor of other people. But somewhere along the way, I lost the metaphor of me. Viewed through the lens of Hume, I perceive external elements, but the internal is empty and numb. This is perception as well. I perceive that I do not perceive anything there. I am inquiring, so I gather this is the first step of the effort that Leslie Jamison talks about in the next quote. I just need to find the energy and the curiosity to take the following steps as well…

“Empathy isn't just something that happens to us - a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain - it's also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It's made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. Sometimes we care for another because we know we should, or because it's asked for, but this doesn't make our caring hollow. This confession of effort chafes against the notion that empathy should always rise unbidden, that genuine means the same thing as unwilled, that intentionality is the enemy of love. But I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones.” 

On Organization

 I  find I am most creative when the ordinary things do not take much of my time and my mind. This usually involves some sort of order or routine, which may be done automatically almost. I am not, however, one for minimalism, so no Marie Kondo for me (does this object bring you joy? Yeah! That’s why I have it. Otherwise, it would be thrown out).

I am also not one for uniforms. I seldom wear the same style during a week, not to mention my entire life. I vacillate between sporty, casual to straight up glam. But the common thread here is easy, simple, straight-lined.

I found some things, call them hacks if you wish, that work for me.

1. Have a drawer with all the chargers, batteries, cables for all your electronics. Don’t leave them in the box the gadget usually came with: you will forget where you put the box. Have the drawer section for each type of device. I have one part for cameras, another for phone cables. When I leave for a trip, I just gather from the drawer what I need and when I return, it goes straight back there.


2. Have a binder (like this one or this one) for all the bills for a year. The trick is to organize it like this:

a. Write on the back of the cover the frequency of the bill: for instance: phone: monthly, water: quarterly. 

b. Have separators for each type of utility. 

c. In each separated section have the exact number of plastic sheets needed: e,g,, 12 for phone and 4 for water. 

d. Write on each plastic sheet the month in which it is supposed to come. 

e. When a bill is paid, it is put inside the corresponding plastic sheet, alongside the receipt. 

f. At the end of the year, all the contents of the folder go into a large envelope, and the binder is good to go for another year. 

3. Scan all your relevant documents and email them to you, save them in the cloud, have them on your computer. I have all my diplomas, insurance policies, car documents, house documents, etc.


4. Have copies of all your necessary documents. I went to a print shop and spent an hour or so making 2 copies of each document. Have more copies of the stuff that you know will need more (for instance, in Romania, they ask for a copy of your ID card, so I had more of these done).


5. Have all your essential documents in an easily reachable, preferably resistant to fire and waterproof, bag. Here you have some other valuable tips about what to do in case of emergency.


6. Put down in your agenda (I use Google calendar) the dates of expiration for essential things (insurance policies, car documents, etc.).


7. Buy neutral cards in bulk (like this or this). I bought a pack of 50 (including the envelopes) from Jysk (They don’t seem to have them on the website) and had used them for all events. It saves a lot of time trying to find a proper card, and I don’t have to run to the bookstore/supermarket every time I need to go to a birthday party or wedding.


8. If you are on medication (including vitamins) make a note of the dates until you have the pills (how long the current batch will last); for instance, my vitamin D batch will last until February 5. Keep the list somewhere visible ((it may be in your task list, on your phone – I keep it in my vitamin pack, so I can check it daily, see what I’m running out of)


9. If you are on medication or your significant other, parents, kids, etc., learn from hospitals, and make a list of medicine, dosage, and frequency, placed in an easily reachable spot, that everyone knows. Like this, in case of emergency, everyone, including the first responders, has an idea about what to do. I have my lists on the back of a drawer door.


10. Invest in sous-vide bags or vacuum sealer bags (like these or these) to use with your vacuum. I store all the things I don’t wear throughout the year in them, as well as my comforter, which takes a lot of place during the summer.

There it goes. The first ten things that keep me organized that I could think of for now. There are some others, but where is the fun in listing more than 10?

What are yours? Any good hacks to share?

Photo source: Pixabay (Karolyn83)

On Inaction

Collage by RoVoDo from photos on Pixabay

I have always been a person of action, the first who jumps to do stuff, solve stuff, make stuff, the troubleshooter. This is not necessarily bad, while it is not necessarily good. It leads to burnout and fatigue, and one becomes tired of people and this constant asking.

Some years ago, in a HuffPost article, I read for the very first time a saying that has turned into a mantra these past months. 

Not my circus, not my monkeys. 

This does not concern me. Why should  I care? Why is this my responsibility? What is my opportunity cost?

Questions that may be easy to write here, but sometimes there are easy to say as well. And I feel calmer now, with this mantra. I do care from time to time, I imagine what I would have done better, how I would have had more impact. But in the end, there are no statues under construction for yours truly and kindness is a life path, but sacrifice should not be.

The world asks and asks and asks, and I am the ringleader of my team (may that be in my profession or my personal life). It is enough.

The rest is not my circus.

Photos from here (Free-Photos) and here (The Digital Artist)