Small Town Regeneration Plan

Step 1: Settle In
• Perfect my Portuguese, find a small town I vibe with, chat to locals and maybe the mayor.

Step 2: Bake my way in
• Open a little community bakery.
• Everyone’s welcome, if you’re struggling, the bread (or meals) are free.
• We cook together, share food, and yes, there will be puppies/kittens to lure people in.

Step 3: Figure out what’s broken
• Talk to residents, map issues (Streetlamp out? Playground needs fixing? Missing signs?).
• Do small, visible projects that make life better, i.e. a community garden, or a micro-grid to showcase energy sovereignty.

Step 4: Bring in skilled hands
• Use Helpx/WWOOF volunteers for a few weeks at a time
• They work, teach, and build in exchange for food and a place to stay (I’ve done this a dozen times)
• Locals pitch in to host/feed (or I do it), and everybody meets new people

Step 5: Keep the money sharks away
•Exchange skills for sustenance, not cash for property. Keep value circulating locally, and avoid falling into an unintentional gentrification trap.

Step 6: Let it snowball
• Each little win inspires more projects.
• Volunteers leave behind skills, tools, visible improvements, and a logbook/blueprint.
• Locals feel empowered to initiate their own projects.

Big picture: We can’t stop the self-cannibalising nature of capitalism hollowing out our existence, but we can outflank it by building something small, human, and worth living in.

The modern global system is a continuation of historical class structures, now masked by corporate, technological, and political complexity. The dynastic wealthy elite and the merchant class have engineered an environment that perpetuates their dominance, a self-reinforcing system designed to be unbeatable until it’s widely recognised and challenged.

I gotta go scroll through some goat parkour to balance out this feeling.

Gentrification is weird, man. I thought I’d be into it, you know, polished coffee shops, places that sell only cacti and vibes.

But I miss the old locally owned spots. They were rough around the edges, but real, like some auntie’s haberdashery that also sold chicken wraps…and unsolicited marriage advice. Wholesome stuff.

Private equity eating up high streets isn’t all it cracked out to be…who could’ve guessed?! That’s why we need to bring back community land trusts (protected small businesses). Actually, we should rebrand them to protect them… call them Community Land Investment Trusts. Or C.L.I.T. for short.

Because the hipsters wouldn’t be able to find it.

…tbh, neither would half the population

Overheard in a coffee shop, I’m paraphrasing:

“I think it’s more complicated than that.
Careers and friendships have narrow trajectories. They don’t break you open or challenge your reflexes and emotional range as much as a loving relationship does.
It’s the biggest blank canvas there is… they each have a paintbrush in hand, facing themselves and each other.”

Some comments I found:

  • Credentials and money are not antidotes to the lingering effects of childhood maltreatment.
  • Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death. Many turn their backs to the table and complain how hungry they are and that there is nothing they can eat. They will stand between you and the banquet for however long you let them. So relieve yourself of them by whatever means necessary.
  • One cannot satisfy a thirst by drinking sea water
  • I’m tired of paying taxes to a government that doesn’t represent me, and is actively working against me.
  • The word democracy makes people feel safe…but it doesn’t exist. People are a labor force, that need a kind, but firm hand. There are not nations. There’s Apple, Exxon, and Berkshire Hathaway. Corporations are the real superpower. [Victoria Neumann, The Boys tv series]
  • The entire world is run as an economic machine, constructed with no regard for the collective good of humanity.

Raise Your Standards, Not Your Walls

Dating often feels exhausting today, not because love has changed, but because many of us struggle with vulnerability. We live in a culture of guardedness, where self-protection often takes precedence over connection. And it’s not just happening in dating, it often reflects how uncomfortable many of us are with emotional discomfort and uncertainty.

When we avoid facing our insecurities, wounds, and expectations, we end up relating through fear… fear of rejection, fear of inadequacy, fear of being seen and not accepted. So we create masks, strategies, and roles to feel safer and more in control. But the more control that’s chased, the less intimacy it allows. Without intimacy, dating can start to feel more like performance than a path toward something healthy or lasting.

Emotional intelligence still matters in dating, but many people were never taught how to develop it. As a result, a lot of adult dating dynamics are shaped by coping patterns we learned much earlier in life.

Side note: It’s easy to blame the apps, but I’ve realised they tend to amplify what’s already there. Things like attachment styles, insecurity, and unmet emotional needs get magnified through gamification, comparison, and an emphasis on appearance over depth.

It’s why so many of us end up prioritising chemistry over compatibility, validation over values, and attention over authenticity.

If you want to date differently, it often requires living a little differently too. Be what you’re looking for. Don’t lower your standards to match a trend of emotional detachment, stay aligned with your values and allow that to naturally attract people who are looking for the same depth.

You may find fewer people, but at least they’ll be more aligned.

Dating with openness in a guarded culture feels naive but it takes real courage to stay open anyway.

When you feel more grounded in yourself, relationships stop being about filling a gap and start becoming a place for growth.

I have the soul of a poet and the mind of an engineer… a disastrous combo for my sanity.

Mirages of Modernity

I visited a city for the first time. I put some thoughts together:

It strikes me as an artificial monument to excess…where refrigerated interiors and arid exteriors reflect a deeper disconnection from nature and humanity. It thrives on spectacle and subjugation: imported labourers build the skyline while the elite applaud the illusion of “efficiency” and “luxury.”
Its environmental negligence isn’t born of necessity. It tries to come off as ambitious, but it’s basically greed dressed as aspiration. Rather than leading as a beacon of sustainable innovation, it becomes a playground for the wealthy, powered by exploited workers and extractive economics.

Notes:

  1. Instead of adapting to its geography with humility, it tries to dominate it…creating islands, mega-malls in defiance of ecological logic.
  2. It mimics Western consumerism and glosses over regional depth for aesthetic conformity.
  3. It postures religious values, but its soul is commodified. Symbols of faith dot the skyline, but ethical care for fellow humans is absent in labour conditions and social equity.
  4. Skyscrapers and imported foliage suggest advancement, but they mask a brittle system: socially and ecologically unsustainable, built on finite resources and infinite marketing.
  5. Most residents are expats on time-limited visas, leading to a city with little emotional or generational continuity. It feels rented, not lived in. It’s hard to belong here.
  6. Its culture isn’t built on art, music, or collective imagination…but on status, luxury cars, and controlled aesthetics. Depth is traded for surface sheen.
  7. A reputation for suppressing dissent, hyper-surveillance, and lack of free expression underscores the shiny surface with an undertone of quiet authoritarianism.

“And what is love, in the end?
…Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else’s journey through life?”

Gabrielle Zevin (2022) Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Knopf