Life breathes (a short story)

It is early in the morning. 

Even the sun has only just come up.

A man sits on the quay. 

To his left there is a cup of yoghurt, 

his breakfast.

To his right there is a bottle of water. 

A really big one. Behind him lies a green backpack.

A pipe dangles in the left corner of his mouth. 

The smoke makes circles over his head.

The Traveller (for that's who he is) 

clearly enjoys the fact that he is alive. 

That life breathes.

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Want to read (more of) my short stories? My author page: Terrence Weijnschenk at Amazon

A positive world: single use plastics

We all know Mother Nature is not too keen on plastics. It seemed a great (and cheap) material but when we started using the suff some decades ago, we ignored the long term effects. We now know there should be something we should do about the problem. Here's a possible solution:

This Biodegradable Plastic Will Actually Break Down in Your Compost

We're at the start of solving the problem and still a long way away from ridding the world of (single use) plastics but experiments are promising, although there are still some hurdles to take.

A very promising method is the 'Ocean Cleanup' project by Dutch researcher Boyan Slat:

All well and good but perhaps we should simply stop producing the stuff. From July 1st on, most European countries will take some measures under the name 'SUP Directives' in which SUP stands for 'Single Use Plastics'. 

We're not there yet but one has to start somewhere. The biggest problem is that the (oil) companies producing plastics are very powerful and sometimes seem to control entire governments.

Want to read (more of) my short stories? My author page: Terrence Weijnschenk at Amazon

Is there really that much difference between social media and real life?

Maybe you 've heard them too: people who complain about social media. That 'it's all so superficial! People don't share their true feelings. You can never tell by what they post what's really going on.' True. Not all the time people tweet or post what they really think or feel. They keep their personal information...well...personal. There are simply things you only want to share with your friends, your loved ones, your dog. or your therapist.

Facebook and Twitter superficial? Yeah, right. And before Internet people were completely honest when asked 'How are you?' -'Well, to be frank I'm still not over the divorce, miss my best friend who ran off with my wife; the only friend I have left in the world - my cat - has cancer and a few months to live at most. My 15 years old daughter is pregnant. Or so she texted me from the squat where she now lives with a 27 years old junkie. My car was impounded because I couldn't pay the fines my ex had left me with, but otherwise I'm perfectly fine. Thanks for asking. Oh, and I have three days to leave my house because I can't pay the rent after I got sacked because my ex told my boss about my drinking habit. But enough about me: how are you?'

Should people show more of themselves on social media? Would you like them to? Would you like them to share their private matters in real life? What if they would? 

What I don't understand - and perhaps you can enlighten me - why people would state something very personal on social media and later complain 'now everyone knows about my personal problem!'

On social media we tend to only talk to people we are familiar with, that we know, that exist in the same 'bubble' as we do. How different is that in real life, right? Outside social media we always talk to people who politically disagree with us, believe in a (different) deity, like different music, and so on, and so on. Right?

So, tell me: what do you think are the main differences between communicating on social media and communicating in real life?

Want to read (more of) my short stories? My author page: Terrence Weijnschenk at Amazon