What's in a name

Carrots in the water, a photo by feneur on Flickr.

I've just started working in a Garden Center for the summer (or rather the season, summer it's definitely not yet in Sweden), and having customers asking me questions about this and that, some of which I can answer and some not, has got me thinking. It's not strange that they ask questions, after all it's part of my job to try my best and help them, but it's strange how just a title can provoke questions. I remember when I was studying gardening in high school and people I know started to ask me all kinds of questions, when to prune this or that or what-not. As if I suddenly just because I was studying gardening would know everything there's to know about the subject. It's even stranger when people who have been gardening for many years and ought to be experts in what they grow etc ask me. My education, and an interest both before and after high school, has of course given me some knowledge, but it doesn't automatically give me all precise knowledge needed to reply to the most detailed questions. To some extent it does of course make sense that people want to find out more and do so by asking someone who ought to know. And how to know whether someone knows something unless that person has got an education or title that's related to the subject. But when it comes to more serious subjects than gardening (not that I'm saying that gardening isn't important, just that few people have been hurt because an apple tree isn't perfectly pruned or a rose not properly fertilized), I feel it can be dangerous. Sometimes we might too readily give up our own judgement and common sense just because someone has got a couple of letters before their name or a fancy title. Of course we should listen to people who know more than ourselves, I just don't think we should abandon all our reason because of something they say. (Especially if they're quoted in media ;-) )

Thinking about boxes

An example of thinking outside the box: the city above is created from an image of an old motherboard in an old computer of mine

I'm thinking about the saying "thinking outside the box". I rarely think inside the box, in my world there are folders, and there are rooms, but there are no boxes. What I mean by that is: I might get lost in minute details, and I might see the overarching ideas, but can have trouble getting the concepts. That's a bad thing as it's easy to get distracted by things when you lack the correct boxes to put them in, folders might be useful for individual papers, but it's difficult to stuck a series of books in one. Hopefully, and I believe this is the case, this also means that I'm not always trapped in the same old ways of thinking but rather can be genuinely creative.

Introduction

I guess some people need rules, and I do to in the sense of moral rules and so, but what I'm talking about is how some people seems to need to have all their moments organized and decided beforehand. To me that doesn't seem to work at all (see http://oneruleaday.blogspot.com/ for an example, I might do something else with that blog later though, so if it seems like it's about something completely unrelated please check the date of this post and move on :) ), nor does it sound all that fun. Some more routine would probably be healthy, but apart from that I think I prefer to be able to live one day at a time.

That is what I mean by calling this blog "One rule: Today". I do think one shouldn't forget neither past nor future, but just that one shouldn't let neither have a bad impact on today. The past is good because of the experience and lessons it brings, but grieving all the things that could have been or regretting the things that were don't bring anything good to today. The future is good for all the opportunities it brings and the hope it promises, but worrying about all the things you should do or which could happen will not bring anything good to today.

Sometimes this means that I like to do spontaneous things, the image that's the main focus of the design of the blog (the image of the trees and the roads that is, not the twigs or the squares on the background) is actually the result of just that. Almost at least, I might have had the idea to go hiking for a couple of days before I did, but still. A couple of years ago, in December of all months, I had a similar idea, and then it was from one day to another. I got the idea one day, and then the next morning I got up early and took the bus to the place where the trail begun and started walking.

Sometimes this means that I don't do anything all that spontaneous or fancy, but just enjoy life here and now. I think that's a valuable skill that I need to hone further, but I'm glad that I at least have begun to understand the value of it.

Will this blog then just be me mentioning that I don't have any plans for tomorrow you ask? That's probably never going to be the case, especially since I most days know at least roughly what I'll be doing the next day. This blog will however be a place where I post some random thoughts I think may interest someone else (or which I just need to get written), an image now and then, and perhaps something else. In short, it will be a personal blog like so many other, with the huge difference that it's written by me. I'm not going to promise that I'll write a post a day, or a week, sometimes there will be many, sometimes there will be few, but hopefully all are going to be worth reading. (Almost at least, I do have a tendency to write nonsense at times as well ;-) )