Category: I Like To Be Inspired

Cloud formations

forever stretched by paper

cloudy

imprecise

care without a blank space

is neither supreme nor wise

Text and photographs: Alicja Pyszka-Franceschini, 2026

Welcome back after holiday, Darlings. How was your Summer?

What are photographs for?

Do you remember the song by Ed Sheeran called Photograph? The official music video consists of photographs and video cuts. These are from his early childhood and his early music career. I love the simplicity of it all and the sheer joy of watching a growing child, his first steps, his running around and the shrieks of a toddler finding his voice. It is so moving. The decor of his family’s house that is sealed in time. The hands of the family members that carefully assist him in making his first steps, in music or drawing, busking and then all the Happy Birthday’s sung together to celebrate the child. Call me sentimental, but that song makes me cry. It is all moving and all beautiful. I am very inspired by the song and the video. It inspires me to rediscover my own family archive. These are the good times.

Photos taken in Derby (UK), in Poland and in Derby Museum and Art Gallery.

Link to Ed Sheeran’s Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSDgHBxUbVQ

All images: Alicja Pyszka-Franceschini. All rights reserved.

A freely chosen task

Postcards without stamps_blog_Alicja PF

“I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium… a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.”

~ Viktor E. Frankl

What we fear

light and darkon a cherry hunt_bw“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.” | Marianne Williamson, Return to Love

Be good to yourself. Learn.

kind_unkind learning

“Be good to yourself when you are learning new things.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

The longer I study and research, the more I am convinced that developing an inner voice that is kind makes learning less painful and more satisfying.

Kind learning is reassuring, encouraging and full of small and sweet inspirations that help us move forward. It’s this voice which formulates convincing answers to discouraging questions. This kind and eager learning voice which encourages us to enter because the water is just the right depth for us.

The voice of kind learning seeks bigger pictures and deeper meanings. It wants us to answer questions beyond the formulaic: ‘Where do you see yourself in five years time?’. It wants to know: ‘What are your values?’ ‘What do you really care about?’.  It wants us to find the authentic self and for this we ought to learn self-compassion, to learn how to be reassuring and openly honest with ourselves – seeing all of our life journey as crucial to the making of who we are. When we work and learn with our values in mind, it all starts to take shape, it starts to feel right.

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ― Howard Thurman