Been lurking on these forums since the summer of 2004, finally decided to register and have go
First, I must say thanks to you all - as reaching this forum a long way back was a revelatory experience. I got introduced to PO through a friend, who I thought was a loonie at first, since I never even had heard of such of thing. But it sank in, after some heavy reading it got to me - for the next couple of days I had some serious trouble eating and sleeping, hehe. Kind of funny to look back at it now. Luckily, my parents have finally managed to grasp what PO means and we manage quite well, since my folks live in the country, have a nice big garden and like to care of it. I myself happen to work in the IT-business, been doing it as a commercial thing for about 10 years now, mind you I'm only 23 so I'm really bored, to be honest
However, the point of this post is the fact that for the last couple of weeks, my somewhat crumbling trust in humanity has been reassured. Perhaps you have heard that we had some serious political trouble here in Estonia about a month back, regarding our dear old Bronze Soldier. I thought that social reprecussions would run deep and long, but it's not the case it seems. The big crossroad that lies right next to my rental here in Tallinn is being fixed, hence all the automobiles and busses do not drive, only electrical trollies (which are totally awesome things by themselves, we have lines running all through the capital, including trams)turn around at the edge of the construction area. Now, this is usually a very heavy traffic area, but due to the construction, its dead quiet. Only renovated old buildings, big trees and a nice park and oh my god, how many people. The entire area is full of folk, seems that everybody who lives around comes out in the evening instead of watching some soap opera - people play guitar, sing, even a large grill is going. All this was like a typical ant colony 1 month ago, noone said "Hi!" or did anything - work and home, work and home. Now there are total strangers having fun and doing stuff together, we even cleaned the park and surrounding areas just because we felt like it. Best of all, there are no racial conflicts: estonians, russians etc all enjoying the incredible summer weather and the peace& quietness - superb. If only we could somehow make it to live like this, it would be worth the effort.
Ofcourse, with PO looming somewhere on the horizon, things like these probably won't last but they are a nice diversion. I find it amazing, how knowing of PO changes people - I myself would not reckognize an older Me from, let us say the year 2004. Money is not an issue anymore, as I dont pursue the meaningless trinkets that are offered everywhere. I have started working the land and our forest in the weekends and my family has gotten a lot closer than before. I took up reading again, never had the time for that after school, started to write myself, slowly learning how to play the acoustic guitar (don't even know why, just something I always wanted to try
) etc. Little things like these make the life worth trying, although most of my colleagues do not understand me... "why is an proffesional IT-admin cuttings trees and digging ditches and planting so much food and not playing World of Warcraft and buying new stuff every week."
Actually I play wow, it's my small escape
In the end, if we as a world must go - very well then. Just make sure not to waste the time we have on useless gimmicks, there is so much stuff yet to do and learn. And btw, this comes from a pessimist.
