Home Away From Home

Sometimes we just need to be happy about ourselves. We spend our lives trying to achieve something more (at least I do), one more task, one more event, one more dinner, one more friend, one more book, one more tv show, one more project, one more dream. It is hard to draw the line between dream and reality and say what you realistically are able to do and what you are just never going to get to. I have that with loads of different things - I keep thinking about all the friends I wish I spent more time with, about all the books I keep starting and not finishing (which never used to happen), about the business plans I want to start one day, about the places I want to visit for a weekend, about the things I should buy, about the plans I should be making, about the strategy focus I should have. Eventually, it gets to a point where all of these are conflicting and I do, as always everything last minute. Except when I accept that life is about choices and choices can actually help living your

Today was a long day and it is far from being over. Today, if all goes well we launch our first ever Advent Calendar. Rather than a chocolate, for each day you will be greeted with a daily story to make you smile - a young mum that can now read, a child that can now drink milk, a girl that does not have to walk 18 km to go to school anymore. In such a difficult year in Portugal, one of the members of the volunteer team had this idea - after the entire year fundraising, why don't we chose to give to the donors this month, give them back for all we were able to achieve. I thought that was a pretty cool idea. Really. I am not the creative one in the group, that is why years ago I thought I desperately needed someone to help on the fundraising side, so I am always wondered on seeing ideas bubble up. I definitely am a large contributor and still put the calendar together, with the help of many contributors - writing is my thing. But thinking of doing a calendar is not! So today i

Sometimes I get depressed with the things you would most expect to make me happy... I just came out of the MSIF trustees annual reception. With my love for social action, you would expect me to be happy. Moreover, MSIF did make significant grants to A Little Gesture this year, in recognition of my volunteer work and in recognition of my fundraising efforts for the Jp Morgan Challenge. The charities there were inspiring and it is always re-assuring to see how much the Firm and broader colleague population are always so involved and keen to do more. They went through money donated, lives touched, volunteer hours logged - 16000 hours in one month, the equivalent of 8 years of full time employment.  Magic breakfast focused on the importance of providing breakfast to children in primary school, as a means to an opportunity.  But we started with the wrong foot - they said one did not need to go far and give money to far away children because ours needed and 1 in 4 children did not have acces

Running a charity can be challenging. People think lack of funds are your biggest headache and truth is all I miss are hands. I miss hands to help me organize events, hands to help me ask money to corporates, hands to help me ask money to foundations, hands to write proposals, hands to help me think of creative advertising and campaigns, hands and brains that allow me to be less of a bottleneck and more of a CEO. I struggle, everyone knows that and it is hard to chose where to turn. I do have to check the accounts to see where funds need to go, where we still have them and who needs them now. But I also should be networking, reading about the industry, getting educated on all we could do. This week was my first week in tweeter, I did not even know how it worked and how powerful of an awareness tool it was. I should also be thinking of finally getting my hands around social return on investment and establish a framework for us to evaluate all our projects in measurable ways. I did a

Business plans always burn in my mind. I don't know why or who I got this from. I have certainly never thought to be risk prone. If anything, most my investment decisions have been towards more secure credit products (except in todays' world maybe, where the question is perhaps how do i convert the cash into little gold bits and will gold really reach $2k). No credit products for me today, unless perhaps I am short. It is funny. It took some years for me to understand the concept of the word short (other than referring to a person's height) and today I am actually able to use it in some mumbling by my brain. But off course I can use the word but with pure straightforward products that have some underlying clear thing that I can see. So I would be short credit because I think credit is bound to get worse because of liquidity problems - most people have not accumulated cash, they have accumulated debt, and they must hit a new bottom before they surface again. But that woul

Daydreamer. As Adele plays on my ipod and the large hat coverd my face in an unusual way, protecting my sun obsessed self from the heat of this sunday afternoon in the beach i lose the will of just laying down still tanning the way i always do. Nothing that usual about this afternoon really. First, I am hiding my head from the sun, which, on its own, is already unusual given I have the strong belief I am constructed as a solar panel and the more sun I receive the happier I am and the more and better I function. And it is not only about sun accumulation, and hence the importance of always having my face turned to the sun. As I know what I am going back to in 24 hours I also feel the need to see remains of sun for the next 30 days that I will be in the island of rain. This is always the most sun focussed weekend of the year given it is the last bank holiday of the year and the last real weekend in the summer (that is assuming you have a summer). So having some colour on my face that dis

Life has a way of reminding you happiness. Today, as I took my time to prepare the mass guide for the wedding, I suddenly became aware of the words I was reading and got to a still moment. I liked what I read. I liked that I will say them. And I wonder how I will feel at that point in time "for every day of my life". After reading it, you can't go on complaining about your day. It is just too good to be true!

I so into writing now that I even created a new blog. I am getting more and more frustrated about my "home" and it is looking a lot less like a home that I can come back to some time soon. And I do want to come back. Really soon! But it scares me to think that I will not find myself there. So I decided to do something about it from afar, even though I can not complain as most people, I don't suffer VAT, income tax and alikes in my skin as most people would say. I get my own taxes here, I can't say I don't, but it does hurt to see so many people close to me suffering, and most of all, in frustration. That can be the feeling that most brings you down and paralyses you. Social frustration...

I have been wanting to write but I do wonder what may come out of it. So much has happened since the last post that it gets hard to pick up on re-do function available. In any case, some days are so less good that indeed it gets easier to put words on paper.. Or ipad. It is not that my day was bad. It is weird that I am where I want to be and fought so much to achieve. And now I question if this is the right thing, if it fits me, if I will at all succeed on it. I am pretty entrepreneurial i would say. After all, i am running 3 business ventures in parallel with normal life. But now I need to find out how to be entrepreneurial in a highly unusual environment. And i struggle to feel that I am not one too many. I mean, we all fell that we are taking space that does not belong to us some times. Whether it is at a dinner with friends where we sudddenly feel wew are doing all the talking or not enough asking or at work, when you do not know whether to knock at the door of a meeting or walk i