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--- michka:transiency_summary [2014-11-27 16:39] – michka
+++ michka:transiency_summary [2014-12-01 20:25] – michka
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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 ?"
-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====
+====Initial Conditions====
+I had met the FoAM team in 2012, as I was an intern at Greenloop. I was in the last year of my engineering studies, and except writing my thesis, I did not really knew what my future was made of. I was quite disappointed by the world of science and technology I was coming from, and trying to find a way to integrate other dimensions to make (bio)technologies more relevant to society. It was the right moment to enter the temple of Generalism.
+However, I was proposed two nice jobs in Paris. One at Sony Computer Science Laboratory, where I contributed to the development of the P2P Food Lab project, for which we developed a bio-sourced temperature sensor at a biohackerspace called la Paillasse.
+The other job was as a Biomimicry Promoter in a governmental agency fostering innovation, Paris Region Entreprises. I met wonderful entrepreneurs, (tried to) talk them into using biomimicry to solve their (eco)-issues, and developed the first version of an open-source exploration tool for professionals wanting to include Biomimicry in their strategy.
+After these two passionating working experiences, I was even more ready for a Transiency. Maybe the question I wanted to focus on was less my professional life than my whole lifestyle, including where, for who, and the way I would work, but also the space I would leave for the rest of my life.
+===The Self-Sufficiency Hypothesis===
+During one year working full time in Paris, I observed several phenomenon.
+   * Even though the work I was involved with was very interesting, too much of a good thing is no good. I felt I lacked diversity in my activities. I especially lacked outdoor and body-involving activities.
+   * Living at the core of a 10-million megapole made me even more conscious of the unsustainability of our (urban) lifestyles. At my individual scale, I found quite counter-productive to spend so much time & energy at work, to earn money, to buy stuff I could actually do myself instead of buying it from obscure and maybe unhealthy and socially-descructive industries.
+Based on these observations, I had the hypothesis that I would better live a bit out the monetary economy. By improving my self-sufficiency, I would spend more time doing outdoor and body-involving activities. I would increase my resilience, by learning many different know-hows which may be useful, especially in case some unsustainable industries would collapse. By using fine-tuned appropriate technologies, I would free some time to volunteer for the cause of moneyless groups, involved at local or global scale.
+I entered this Transiency with the idea to implement this hypothesis, or at least test it. It is not exactly what happened.
 ====Winter - Decelerating====
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    * 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.