flyingblogspot.com (tales from urban dilettantia)

I’ve been playing for a while with the idea of mixing up a couple of the things I love – genealogy and the concept of family-of-choice.

My first attempt to represent this is pretty light in terms of the individuals it encompasses and some of the links and visualisations have been simplified more than I would like, but it’s the genesis for constructing a family-tree-of-choice.  That said, while the number of individuals is not large, the vast majority of you spiral out from the people in the people in the drawing, or from the social hubs there.  (At some point I may have the time and ambition to construct a much bigger and more detailed version, but my relationships with others are something of a moving target since they seem to be stuck in a state of expansion.)

The blue boxes are active social hubs filled with people I care about.  The green boxes are individuals who have connected me to hubs, tending to result in me meeting a whole lot of new people at once.  And the purple boxes are my big damn hero connectors who have individually linked me to three or more other individuals in the chart.

I discovered a few interesting things from this exercise.   Firstly, all of my most active social networks and best loved people spin out from beginning architecture school in 1997.   Secondly,  Siobhan and Sky are unusual in having connected me to both individuals and social hubs.  Thirdly, my brother Dave is a unique and special snowflake (sorry Dave, you are not a unique and special snowflake; you know what you are) and is the only person here that doesn’t have links in or out, although he knows many of the people in the picture.

Most amusingly though, is that The Man With The Hashtag is sitting in equal first place when it comes to connecting me to individuals.  In the face of this evidence, I must humbly concede that he has indirectly been responsible for so much love, support and happiness in my life.  Bless.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted one of my maps.  And now there are two!

The first is a picture of something I’ve been working on since January; namely, the idea of sovereignty.  The idea is a work in progress, and the map is one of many spanning that progress.  I am posting it for Nathalie and Jaunita, who are right there with me when I need them.

The second is a picture of change.  Once upon a time I was the girl who could not walk across campus without tensing every muscle for fear people were looking at her.  The girl who would blush and stammer rather than hold a conversation.  The very queen of awkwardness, the non-phone-answerer, the one who declined every invitation.  Twenty years on, I am the woman who will pounce upon a friendly looking stranger with a ‘hi, I’m an enormous introvert; pleased to meet you!’  How did this happen you ask?  Still trying to work that one out, and I am posting this map for a dear friend who is on the journey too.

Pictures make me feel less mopey about the ten half-finished blog posts in my notebook. Let’s all forget about those posts and enjoy the shiny.  Or else.

I’ve been interested in many new things / people / places / concepts / ideas / projects at the moment and haven’t written about any of them in detail. Or indeed at all.

So, in lieu of detail, here’s a picture:

Further, I have a table full of oranges from my mother’s house.  They will become something, but as of yet, I’m not sure what.