It all started with me making a very difficult decision. I decided to take a step back and make myself and my mental health my top priority. I’m moving at an insane speed in my trauma recovery with EMDR therapy. All that work I’ve done myself is really paying off. And I’m so incredibly proud that I did ask for help when I got stuck on a couple of topics. This is all too important to me to have anything block that progress. They do tell you to put on your own oxygen mask first before helping others on airplanes for a reason. This is me putting my own mask on first.
World Water Run
I wrote about the importance of water, why water is not a renewable source of energy and my experience of walking 50k for the World Water Run last year. Since this year it wasn’t possible for me to walk along those beautiful Swiss rivers like last year – here’s what I wrote about it then.
I also pledged 50k this year, but I have to admit that I only made it by counting lunch time walks where I wasn’t intentionally walking for World Water Run. My work week was just a tad too busy. I still think it’s a great initiative and the importance of water cannot be highlighted enough.
Earth Hour – March 23
Sitting in the dark with only candlelight for one hour might seem a bit silly, but it is a reminder of how much energy we use and how lost we are if we don’t have the lights on and don’t use any electronics for just one hour. It would be much easier to do during the day, but that would defeat the purpose. 8.30 to 9.30 PM is late enough for shops to be closed in Switzerland and also late enough for people to have finished their dinner. What people who observe Earth Day have to give up for just one hour is electronics and having lights on in their houses. Seems like a small thing to do.
Earth Hour is organized by the WWF, and it’s meant to encourage sustainable living and raise awareness about critical environmental issues. Very much needed I feel.
Rewiring the brain
Do me a favor and watch just one minute of this. Start at 4’25. Powerful! And speaking from experience, I really felt when she said (at 5’15) “what if a whole childhood was like that last 30 seconds?”. Hell yeah, that would be immensely difficult.
It’s encouraging that rewiring the brain is possible even if it does take a lot of time and effort. Think about your house and all those wires that are hidden in the walls. Think about how much work it would be to rip it all out and rewire it. Think about the chaos. Think about if you’d even put them all back in the same place. Think about if just new wires would be enough or if you now had the chance to change the entire layout. And now picture the wires working against you. I mean they are so used to the way things were, they don’t want to change. They like things the way they are. That’s next level rewiring right there. And I’m totally doing it.
Student debt – this is ridiculous!
I will never understand how student debt is even a thing. I would not have been able to even continue with school after nine years had it not been for government grants. They basically paid for my books and the train ticket to get to school (this was High School). When I got to university it was similar. I got about 200 Swiss Francs a month for the first couple of years to cover books etc. Not a lot of money but it helped me out. I did get a job as well. It might have taken me about a year longer to get my master’s degree than it would have otherwise - worth it. There were loans available too, but the interest free kind.
Quick side note – since Switzerland is not very big a lot of students live with their parents while they study. And your parents’ financial situation is taken into account when you’re given government money. Parents are meant to be paying for your education. Then there are tuition fees which are INSANE in the US. Are you ready to hear what they are at one of our top universities? The University of Zurich charges Swiss students CHF 720 per semester. That’s less than $800. That’s about the same if not less of what I paid almost 30 years ago. So, nope – crippling student debt is not an issue here at all. And even if your situation is such that you need a loan. It comes with excellent conditions and you won’t be paying interest.
The idea behind our system is that limited financial resources should not prevent anybody from getting a university degree. It remains true though that the children of university graduates are more likely to follow in their footsteps. Also, the percentage of people who do an apprenticeship is about 70%. You start after the obligatory nine years of school. You learn a trade – on the job; and you go to school up to two days a week. It’s a system that has worked really well for us. Not everybody enjoyes the theoretical approach of a university and that’s okay. Your job prospects might even be better.
How to expose Germans in a crowd of German speakers at a conference in Switzerland
Here’s what you do: you have one of the speakers give their presentation in French and provide headphones for the German translation. I know, it’s not nice to make fun of Germans, but … come on! This was just too funny. Having all of them jump up and grab a set of headphones. I’m still laughing. All the speakers had interesting things to say but the presentation in French offered a completely different perspective and I loved that.
J’aime vivre dans un pays où on parle plus qu’une seule langue. Je ai pas encore suffisamment profité de ce fait. C’est comme un échange linguistique gratuit. D’accord, je paie pour le billet de train mais comme j’ai un abonnement général – ça ne coûte rien de plus.
Oh sorry, I forgot that my readers don’t know French. At least most of you don’t. Anyway, where was I? Conference … well, I learned that we don’t give primary school children enough credit. I saw a young student being very critical about how useful he found an AI math tutor. He had learned how to give prompts so the AI would give him what he needed. I already found that pretty impressive. He then went on to say that he now understood fractions better, but that AI mispronounced the fractions as 28 instead of 2/8 so there was room for improvement. We need to give our kids the right tools and just have them run with it.
The conference was on AI in education, and I have a lot of notes. A lot of notes. I’ll worry about those at work tomorrow. One of the pictures I included in my montage of pictures from this week, was taken from the conference room. It was way above the tracks of Zurich main station, and you can see ETH and Zurich University up on the hill and the Alps in the background. It was pretty stunning.
Unhelpful advice? – Here you go.
You’re struggling financially? Well, that’s easy - you just need to spend less and earn more. Not helpful? Well, now you know how I feel about “Trying to lose weight? – Just eat less and move more!” I spent early Saturday morning reading research papers or things that were masquerading as research papers and there is still surprisingly little research on weight loss in perimenopausal women out there.
Looks like the medical field continues to be scared of hormones and doing proper i.e. helpful research. Gaslighting women into thinking it’s all their fault and if they just moved more and ate less, they’d stop gaining weight during this phase of hormones going nuts – that’s so much easier of course.
I know I’ve said this before, but I did like that financial analogy I heard this week. Makes perfect sense. It’s a bit like telling somebody who wants to learn a new language to just learn the vocabulary and the grammar. Not helpful at all.
Anyway, don’t want to go on a full-on rant or I might have to mention menstrual products that were tested on - water.
Köftes anyone?
Yesterday, I also went back to that food truck. I mean I had to go check if it was still as good as I remembered. I think it was even better the second time around. I went for the vegetarian Köfte box and got the “Evelyne special”. Yes, I’m extra special, we all know that. In this case it meant that I got a different sauce on each of the Köftes. It was soooo good. And the fries? With that special seasoning – yes, please! I realize that some of you will read this in the morning possibly over breakfast, but just look how delicious.
Unfortunately, since winter had made a comeback and the cold wind (we call it “Bise”) was a bit too intense to stand out in the cold, I hopped back on the bus after a good thirty minutes. Still - well worth the 90-minute train/bus ride to get there.
It's only 9.30 as I type this, and I’ve already had a super busy morning. I also started on a 2000-piece jigsaw puzzle. I’m hoping to have it finished by next week.
Rewiring my brain also involves going back to basics and being offline more. Or being more intentional about being online. It’s also a great way to listen to podcasts. I love what Mel Robbins does. I might have unconsciously modeled my other newsletter -where I talk about trauma recovery and try to explain things with simple pictures - on her approach. I realized that last night during Earth Hour.
Have a lovely Sunday everyone.
I like that you made a decision to be offline & more deliberate about your SM usage. Smart. Twitter in particular I feel has become a garbage dump & continues to roll in it.
Got a new phone after dropping mine on my Spanish tiles. Shows me a complete -- with pics -- breakdown of my online usage. Eye opener.
Surely I can do better for me with this one beautiful life.
Very busy, informative day already. I’m limiting on line activity as well before my brain fries. So much to learn, opinions to hear. But TMI gets the circuits overloaded and then memory doesn’t work as well……so there is that. Happy Sunday! 😘