I was at home waiting for a delivery this morning and I was amazed at my own agitation. Rather than enjoying sitting in the sun, reading stuff for Flow on my swing seat, I just kept looking outside, miffed, waiting for that truck to show up.

I just couldn’t stop fretting because it’s just plain silly that they can’t simply deliver things at night. And thet they can’t simply give a clear delivery time, rather than an entire part of the day. Slowly but surely irritation about the truck started changing into frustration with myself: I tried to think all those things, such as ‘Let it go, there are things you cannot change’ and ‘Enjoy the moment, be in the now, you are sitting in the sun, doing something useful, what are you worrying about?’ I tried every useful tip from Flow and yes, it seemed to be working. That is until I saw the truck driving by. I quickly gathered all my stuff, opened the door for my delivery and drove to the editorial room. And that’s where I am now, slightly jealously regarding all those people who are outside… Posted by: Irene

Hot off the press: the Flow Mindfulness Do Book. Filled with info on mindfulness, how it can help you in your life and what you will get from it. (less fretting, fewer have-to’s, more letting go and much more). Personally I am on my second refresher course and I really notice the difference. I don’t worry as much any more and I really have more energy. Would you like to know what mindfulness can do for you, or do you simply feel like getting yourself a new Flow book, filled with posters, note pads and stickers? As of tomorrow it will be on sale at the usual shops and you can already order it via this link. Posted by: Irene

Making Flow costs money. It’s not the first time we’ve rushed into buying something because it was featured in an article. In this case a typewriter. Dorien, one of our journalists, submitted the article Ode to the typewriter last Thursday and the accompanying email ended with “Err, I ended up buying one myself” (will be in Flow 1 – 2012). This type of maddening sentences incites immediate action, because suddenly I know what I didn’t know just a minute ago: I must have one of these things and it couldn’t possibly be that there isn’t a single typewriter for sale in all of The Netherlands? Dorien mails a link from Marktplaats (Dutch eBay). (Thanks again!) I make an offer (25 euros) and a day later the postman rings my doorbell. Long live the gentleman who carefully wrapped this machine in a box filled with wads of paper. Long live the mail! And mothers, fyi: it’s highly educational, one of these machines, and you can use it very well to type your letters to Sinterklaas! (Dutch saint who brings gifts for children on December 6th). Posted by: Astrid

People who throw stuff away, we are very impressed with them, but we really aren’t equipped ourselves. Things we love most: old books and pictures (magazines), a constant source of inspiration. Spotted a nice wall in the

 

Historisch Museum in Haarlem, (History Museum) where there’s a small exhibition on press photography, with lots of old covers. Beautiful! Posted by: Astrid

I received a great email from one of our freelancers, Caroline Buijs, earlier today. She did an article for us on fat lava vases a while back. She wrote: “I went on holiday to Germany and what did I find in this big barn filled with junk? Fat lava vases! (see pic) Immediately bought seven of them for next to nothing. I love that: whenever I write about something I’ve never heard of for Flow, I always keep enjoying it afterwards.” Always good to hear from freelancers who get inspired by their own stories! Caroline is jetting off to Japan where she’’ be writing about paper art, among other things. She wrote to tell us she’s already signed up for a crafting night in Tokyo via http://hellosandwich.blogspot.com/2011/10/blog-post_20.html.

We can’t wait to hear what happens next! Posted by: Irene

In the flash mob category: this super sweet Danish one. It’s the bus driver’s birthday and he is overwhelmed when he is surprised on his special day. Posted by: Astrid

I read an article last week about how much fun it used to be: racking your brain for half an hour over dinner on the pressing question: what was the singer in that band called again. Going back and forth, being sure, then back to some more thinking. These days there is always someone who whips out their smart phone and says: “I’ll just look it up.” My five year-old recently wanted to know what an orca looks like, so he could draw one. Easy enough to fix of course, press-press-swipe-swipe and hey presto: a picture of an orca on the iPad. But we did miss out on a bike trip down to the local library, rummaging through the bookcase with sea creatures, and crouching down, then and there, with a huge stack of library books, to find ourselves the very, very best picture of an orca. Oh well, these are amazing times, and I wouldn’t ever want to do without my smart phone, but I did come to the conclusion that I don’t need to know everything on the spot. Knowing everything takes a lot of the fun out of things. Posted by: Astrid

We are keeping very busy here with the Flow mindfulness do-book. Among other things, it has stories on what mindfulness really is, and what it can do for you (but it also contains stories on collecting, art journaling, attention, and more). We ourselves really learned a lot from our eight-week course in mindfulness. For instance, I have learned not to take all my thoughts so seriously. If you can free yourself from those thoughts, and look at them from a distance, then you’ll notice that whatever you are fretting about comes again and again, but it also goes again. Letting go helps, visualizing that you let a thought drift away on a cloud. Don’t get stuck worrying, that is something that mindfulness can teach you. There are also some cute mini booklets in the Do-Book: we started cutting and folding them today (thank you Gulika!) to see whether they were correct and whether the descriptions would be easy to follow for everybody. One week to go before they can go to the printer’s. In shops as of the third week of November! Posted by: Irene