Author: Alicja Pyszka-Franceschini

More than a line. But I guess there is an improvement.

My daughter is seven now. She makes us laugh with her honest observations.

”Mum, when I run at the highest speed at the treadmill, my socks come off.”

My son is nearly 14. His school is on strike tomorrow and after tomorrow so we’ll have some time together organizing the garden.

I came to some very honest realisations today which kind of scared me somewhat but perhaps my life is meant to be a cautionary tale and maybe at times we ought to be those. So in the spirit of care for us all, I thought I will point it out the glitch in internal software that we all might carry.

My self-realisations are as follows:

I resolve the problem of having a career by not having it.

I resolve the problem of writing a book by not writing it.

I resolve the problem of ………. by not doing it.

This attitude is of course not visible in all my life choices and developmental areas but I do have it in some areas and where I have it, it shows.

That said..

I think that good mental health starts from first principle: ‘Deny nothing.’ As soon as we start denying knowing or feeling something (be it our need, our experience, our want, our achivements, our loves, our strengths), our psyche misaligns. I think it’s good to hear oneself.

Hear yourself.

Lots of love, A.

One line. One life improvement. On insomnia.

I resolved my problem of falling to sleep by reading books written with a dense and super small font.

Could this help you too?

An image that helps me breathe

It might be a bit counter-intuitive to share a photo of a frosty landscape here in the middle of Spring in the northern hemisphere, but I have been wanting to write about it for a while now primarily because it is in my opinion one of the images that allows the viewers to breathe. I took it near Repton, in South Derbyshire on a frosty morning during a week when the local river flooded and the fields were glistening with water reflections. The bended trees are interesting features of the landscape and it appeals to me how they are strongly supported by the ground and its unshakable structure. My support towards these kind of images come from the fact that they repeat the relief experience whenever one looks at the image and associate it with a welcome break. Being brought up in Poland, I find frost refreshing and altering and seeing this image again and again helps me refresh and also regain alertness. Is it the same for you?

Image and text: Alicja Pyszka-Franceschini

Do you have any photographs in your surroundings that do the same to you? That help you breathe?

Whitby Landscape in Photographs

Photographing landscape is not always easy. To take some of the shots above I was slipping on the rocks, sliding on the seaweed. I was terrified about my backbone as these rocks are pretty solid, I can assure you. But then I giggled with the kids too. I was as wobbly on those rocks as the kids’ teeth that they had lost a few days before our stay. The seagulls were not pestering us as much as they normally would in the Summer. The town was quiet. We bought some thermal clothing (the underlayers) for the kids so that they could enjoy outdoor in colder weather. They did. And our holiday improved from that point onwards and opportunities for photographic adventures too. I hope you are finding time to rest. Have a good and warm Sunday, Alicja x

Unreal

We’ve been living a strange life recently.  

That of escapism to some extent. 

Where everything is real but in fact unreal for me. 

The online world is amazing but only as far as it actually sees you. But it rarely does. It sees the outputs of our work, perhaps, our ingenuities, but it doesn’t look one in the eye or take our child from our hands when the arms are exhausted from holding them.  I have been a bit grumpy lately, as you probably sense from this post, I feel that to some extent I embody my own grandmother who at times would talk to herself while going to the cellar to fetch some jars and would complain about the state of the world or about all the wrong decisions that according to her one of us had taken.  She would complain about the jars too, that they stand too high and she cannot reach them. Or that we move too quickly or eat too quickly and she cannot keep up.  She wanted to keep up but she couldn’t.  I cannot keep up either. I wonder what she complains about nowadays? Wherever she is now. Maybe she doesn’t complain at all. Maybe up there she rides a bike.  :)

I wonder though at times what would enable us to keep up, or perhaps it is really insane at times to demand from people that they would be enabled. Feels wrong at times, doesn’t it?

Or are we just resisting change?