The riches of youtube

With this cold and dark weather I rather not go outside, so here some ideas to get your daily dose of inspiration without having to leave your room; the riches of YouTube! And I am not talking about cat-video's or those super-cute video's of sloths eating bananas. I am talking about 'vloggers'.
At first I really had to get used to just watching people talk on a video, but there are some great people on there with very useful and inspiring things to say. Here some of my favourites;

* Leija Turunen! She is a bit crazy and super-enthousiastic, but absolutely in a good way.. Her view and ideas on life are so helpful and her videos make me smile every single time. She talks about everyday spirituality.
* GrowingYourGreens is of course about growing greens, having a vegetable garden or even an indoor garden. It isn't really outside-gardening time yet, but now is a good time to make plans and get some new gardening-ideas. John is a great online teacher and his enthusiasm is contagious too.
* Veronika Krestow is a 'transformational coach' and I think a very good one. Her short videos are nice to look at in between things.. Her voice is calm and nice to listen to and the things she talks about are very useful and smart.
* For those of you that do yoga; Yoga Today is a great channel. They upload short yoga session instructions, so you can practise your yoga at home and still have some guidance from a teacher. No need to go outside anymore! ;) Yogayak has some nice longer sessions..

Please share your YouTube riches with us!

Quick january update

Just a quick update to let you all know what I'm up to!

I am still working a part time telephone-job, filing complaints (and I still think it is fun). Believe it or not, but it is quite rewarding. A lot of people thank me for calling and are happy that I listen to their stories of busses being late.

I am also making plans for 2013.. There will be several projects I'm diving into this year. Of course there is The Greenman Project, I posted about this not too long ago. Our website will be up very soon.
For now you can find us over on facebook over here.
I'm volunteering at a large permaculture garden too. The season hasn't started yet, of course, so for now we are just planning, choosing seeds and thinking of exciting projects.. We have been thinking about what would happen if we would just give food away for free. Gardens give abundance.. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could share that and let people know that money doesn't need to be involved all the time? I think some people would actually be shocked to be given things like this for free. I hope we can inspire people to give things away more and not always expect something in return. Imagine what the world would look like..

And then, of course, there is all the visual work I want to create. I freed next week of most chores and appointments and will dive into the artwork for the book "Stories from a different world" by Ana Magdalena Zainea..
Exciting, exciting!!

What are your most exciting plans for this year? Building an eco-village? (I honestly have heard many people thinking about doing this..) Graduating? Learning and doing new things? Meeting new people? Or do you plan on a 2013 without any plans?

We do not talk about sex.

At least that is the unwritten rule. There will be a few shy or boastful words, some dirty jokes, but no more. It makes 'sex' and sexuality feel a bit dirty, even wrong or something that should be hidden. As a result, we keep our problems and insecurities to ourself and don't really fix them. It might feel like you are the only one with a particular problem, since no-one speaks about it.

I think this taboo on sex is a bigger problem than we think it is overall. There are many people with deep psychological wounds and insecurities when it comes to sexuality. We don't talk, so we don't know what is 'normal' in a relationship. (Now I normally don't advocate trying to aim for 'normal', but I do think you should guard your boundaries.. How should you treat yourself? And how do you allow others to treat yourself?)

Besides that, I think we should be learnt so much more about our bodies than we are now. What does being pregnant and having a baby actually feel like? We only hear the pretty stories; "it'll hurt, but when you hold your child everything will be forgotten and everything will be fairytale-fine". How do you actually take care of that down there, vagina or penis? How do you keep it healthy? How do you love it in a healthy way?
And then sexual intercourse… It is something that has a deep psychological and chemical impact, but we don't speak about the 'details'; the problems and just overall the topics we encounter there. Why don't we? I'm sure there are many (mostly cultural) reasons, but I think we should talk more.

I recommend snooping around on YouTube a bit too. (Yes, you heard it; youtube.) There is a lot of information to be found on there. For instance I can recommend the educational video's by Makeda Voletta. She researches and teaches on the feminine sexuality and gives information that should have been taught all young girls, in my opinion.

Now, let's talk about sex.

'Insert theme for 2013 here'

Hello everyone! I realised I have been writing along like nothing happened and I didn't even think of wishing you all a wonderfull new year! (Maybe because we have been sliding in time so smoothly..)
So here it goes; I wish you all together and individually a super amazing wonderful year with good times with friends and alone with yourself, with exciting new projects and succesful old projects. I hope our exciting ideas of last year will shape this year and become reality. I am sure we are going to create some fantastic things and memories.

I didn't make new years' resolutions or specific goals for one-year-long-projects, like I did last year (which I didn't stick to, of course). This year, I plan to go on like I have been going; living and creating out of the heart and taking on whatever exciting, fun and passion-filled thing comes to me. It seemed to work out rather fantastically.
Do you have plans for this year? Resolutions or goals?

I wish you lots of love..
Dorien

Observation

I noticed something funny.. My mood goes in cycles and my ups and downs have become more and more clear for me to see. I read back some of my posts and noticed that the ones written in an 'up' state of mind were much more fun and energetic and had more comments and pageviews as well. The ones written when I was down were less enthousiastic and thus less interesting.

So.. Should I just stop writing when I feel down? Or should I stop trying to write something fun when I don't feel fun and have my writing more honest like that? What do you think? Reading optimistic things feels better, but nothing is all optimistic and great, is it?