Transparency: tiny changes in my autoethnography, and future plans
In the past few days, my fellow humans reached out to me to ask why I deleted our channel in a popular video sharing platform and whether we will be sharing again. I am very grateful for all the love, care, support and encouragement. I deeply felt all of these in the wonderful, heartfelt messages that I have received. We deleted the channel for personal reasons. We are working through our personal issues and hope that in the future we will create together again. I could record videos by myself, but I believe that together my partner and I can bring the best of both worlds to our fellow humans, including my deep interest in individual (and collective) sustainability practices and humans' inner worlds, and his deep interest in systems, structures and policies. His expertise is very useful because so often fellow humans blame themselves for practising un-sustainability, while there are so many mechanisms at work that nudge, and at times even coerce and force, humans to (over)consume. It is certainly not so that my partner cannot discuss sustainability and inner practices in depth, and I have a lack of understanding of social systems. As researchers, we understand and contemplate all of these domains very often. Every day. Especially because they are intertwined. I think it's more about our personal interests and who we are as human beings. I have always gravitated towards the individual level and human agency (i.e., our capacity to act). And when it comes to what I create, I want it to come directly from my heart, in the most authentic way.
To share beyond academic audiences is one of our new year's resolutions. While I will keep sharing via my autoethnography, I have also decided to share very tiny videos on Instagram. One idea I have is to share what I invite into my life every month and why, as a human being practising extreme minimalism. This is to go beyond describing my practice, to dive into it exactly as it unfolds. I can try to answer my fellow humans' questions via these videos too. In my entry 555, I described our approach to filming videos. I will adopt the same approach to filming my own videos on Instagram. I want them to be raw and authentic, without overstimulation and excessive editing. As a person living with sensory processing sensitivity, I find some videos very difficult to watch due to rapidly changing pictures and special effects. Many of my fellow humans are not on Instagram, and this is absolutely ok. I will continue to write my autoethnography.
Some fellow humans mentioned to me that my autoethnography has been very difficult to navigate. I apologise for this, and I understand fully where this gentle criticism comes from. In the beginning, my autoethnography was simply my data. As a researcher using autoethnography (self-ethnography) as a research method, I rely on things like my personal notes, photographs, stories. Usually, these data are hidden from fellow humans, and the only thing a reader can see is an academic paper, the outcome. I understand that not everyone wants to share their data the way I do. So many insights that go into an autoethnographic study are incredibly personal. It makes one feel incredibly vulnerable. But I wanted all my data, and I mean all of it - there is absolutely nothing else - to be accessible equally to the reviewers and editors of journals and to everyone else. Free of charge. Because it was my data, my personal diary, I never thought about it as a blog. I don't have the right skills to make autoethnography look professional. I wanted it to look very simple and calming, without any extra elements apart from location (for context). Yet, recently I added the Archive to the bottom of the page so that everyone can reach the very beginning of my diary. It starts in 2022. This is because it was the year I started to formally study my practice, as a researcher. This is the very first academic article where I analyse my earlier data. It's called Being of deep transformations, just like this page. Between 2010 and 2022, I only took random notes and didn't keep them. As an extreme minimalist, perhaps I felt that I didn't need them as soon as my practices began to crystallise. I have also added a search function and hashtags in the bottom of the page. By clicking on the hashtags below each post, fellow humans can find all the posts where I mention a certain topic. I don't think they work perfectly: so many things intertwine in the realm of personal practice, making it difficult to attach labels to it.
At times, fellow humans ask me if there is a newsletter. So far, there isn't one. I have conflicting feelings about it. On one hand, I genuinely enjoy sharing, and it's heart-warming and humbling to learn that my practices inspire fellow humans in some ways on their own journeys. On the other hand, personally I'm not subscribed to newsletters. I try to avoid subscriptions as much as possible because they feel overwhelming and even forceful and intrusive. I try to keep my inbox as empty as possible. I appreciate it when I can approach some space whenever it feels right for me. Once a week, once in a few months or even once a year.
There are no adverts in my autoethnography because my whole autoethnography is about being in and relating with the world differently, which also includes stepping away from consumerism and consuming mindfully. This project is not resulting in any financial benefit for me. Every guest lecture and workshop that I have done, I have done free of charge. Some fellow humans ask me if there is an opportunity to support my writing and my work. I will make it available.
Apart from what I mentioned above, there are no concrete plans. I want this project to unfold organically. For example, I don't ever schedule my entries. In the future, when I have a little bit more free time (I'm currently working on a couple of academic articles), I hope to write more, perhaps even a book for my fellow humans who read my autoethnography. My existing books are academic.