On freedom & constraints

Who doesn't want to be free?....who doesn't want to have it all?....to be healthy, loved, prosperous...who doesn't want to live a life according to his or her personal dreams?....wouldn't it be great if we just dreamt of what we wished and then everything would be possible and become a reality just like with the touch of a magic wand?


Well it might take just a little bit more than that.(To be discussed soon) Let's stop for a while and think a little tiny bit....let's try to see life outside our comfort zones and our own personal perspectives. All people like you and me, living in such societies as the ones we do, where peace and food and clothes and medical care are taken for granted and those of us who have the luxury of having daily technology in our hands and therefore being connected via numerous ways, this blog being a small example, do we really believe that all it takes is for us to dream about what we wish?


Then we are all either too naive or too selfish. Cause I cannot imagine that world peace and elimination of hunger is not included in our prayers and dreams*. Then if we all wish for that, how come more than 1.000.000.000 people of the world's population suffer from severe hunger, most of them being children? How come there are so many wars, so many diseases, so many early deaths and so much unhappiness also in the very same world that you and I are living in?


{*Yes, of course, we all wish for the next more beautiful and more comfortable house, the next vacation, the next nice thing to wear or decorate our homes..... but this cannot be all that we wish for, right?}

We humans tend very often to be blinded by our ambitions and quite often can see as far as the end of our noses, when ourselves and our behaviour is involved. 
And to avoid taking this post very far and deal with the subject recently mentioned that I wished to talk about and communicate, let's talk a bit about online presence and behaviour, while baring with me sharing a few personal details.


I think it's quite amazing that people can connect thanks to this great tool called Internet. Concerning my online presence, I must have been one of the very, very few people that I was totally against it as a tools of communication, other than a means of getting informed and acquiring some extra knowledge. It's only three years ago that I had made an online account - then in myspace - moslty to manage to direct myself into learning more about design, which I had then started studying as a second degree and to connect me more with Europe as I was then living in Greece. 


I had no plan or specific intentions whatsoever, but let me tell you that the first person who I met and was then admiring my totally primary skills in photography and taste in design is now my current life partner and the reason for me having relocated in Germany.It seemed that life had other plans for me and I just dived into them with all my heart and no doubt whatsoever.


It is rather the right place to make a parenthesis and mention serendipity, a term I became familiar with during my studies in Psychology and which I recently came across here. The incident of finding something that brings extreme pleasure and happiness, while looking for something else.


And this brings me back to now, to these lines being written in order to be shared and to my general online presence in flickr and blog world since a year.
I can hardly remember how I ended up having a flickr account, not to mention a blog, and before I did, there was absolutely no time spent following or reading other blogs or anything similar. I was  just a books and magazines person.


And again, there was so much welcoming just from the very first days of my appearance, that I felt that something pleasing and powerful had been discovered accidentally, a whole , new, vast world was opening in front of me. And it is very true. I've been meeting, being approached by and enjoying the work of so, so many talented people thanks to the means of Internet.


But, as everything wonderful it has its tricky sides, too. At this point, let me say to you that I never meant to built a "commercial" blog, as much as my work quite often is widely welcomed among this of other very talented people. 
Writing occurs to me naturally, with no preplanning whatsoever and this is the only way that it makes sense to me. The only exception is having a fixed cooperation with a website or online decoration magazine, in the case of which I'm more than happy to produce work on a regular basis.


Concerning my fist personal blog, I had the feeling at some point this summer that it has come to a closure, but this in no case meant that it is "dead" as I read in a comment from an otherwise devoted reader and kind person. A blog is considered to me like keeping a journal or writing a book and it so happens that they reach their end at some point. 
I had the choice to totally change the flow of the blog, remaking its layout to fit my current taste and not risking loosing the already registered readers and followers. This would have been a preplanned - commercial choice and certainly one that wouldn't speak of who I am.


I would not like to be one of those I have ended up not really thinking so highly off. I've seen it happening and it only creates to me mixed emotions. Bloggers changing their style and content according to where the wind blows, with most probably one purpose in mind: "how to get more readers".


So, allow me to say that Busy Bee's Blog is not dead and will always be alive, whether I currently write there or not. It is part of me and there is lots and lots of personal experience shared there with no other purpose than offering my insight to life, to whomever had been reading.
And also allow me to say that I have every right to bring it to its closure and take my time into figuring out what is going on, meaning whether it has really reached its final chapter or just taking a break.


It appears that its final chapter has been written and so have its last pages. Ever since the decision was made to invest into a small home based business where prints are produced and are sold in my Etsy shop, I felt the need to create a place directly connected to it, this being Domestic Stories with Ivy. At the same time it is very closely connected to my everyday life, as work and home meet.


It brings me real pleasure to come here and post relating to what is happening both in our current living space - decoration & design speaking - and the shop, which mostly offers prints from my photography line.


In the end, it's not the blog that matters, but the person who is behind it. And I'm just the very same person, just moving on to the next chapter, one that is more clear about my online presence and my means of earning my living.


After a year, I have realised that not only I love design, decorating and photography - as I always have - but that I also really love to write and I'm quite happy if some inspiration and knowledge or views on life can be shared.
It's the way that all who I am and have been meet. Someone who majored in Psychology and minored in Philosophy, mostly for her personal needs and reasons. Someone who for years taught English at the language institute of her parents, someone who worked closely with children and teenagers carrying ADDS. Someone who adored interior design, architecture and decoration for as long as I can remember. Someone who dares to make her hobby a job, someone who has devoted herself to living a life of awareness, trying to see just a little tiny bit further than her - rather big and long indeed! - Greek nose.


So this is the official announcement that whoever might be interested in reading my writings while enjoying pictures, will be finding me here.
It'd be lovely if besides watching at nice pictures and talking about the loveliless of simple, domestic life, we could from time to time, touch and discuss about issues of life. I'd very much like that and be happily expecting you.


Love and best of wishes,
Ivy