Timothy speaking. I’m a very long way into a dark and confused something-or-other and I’m in the long process of real-izing vision. You’re here in this very dark and confused space with me. Let’s figure it out together.

It’s March 6th 2009, I’ve just come back from PowerShift 09, and am trying to launch this program called the Summer of Solutions while keeping track of all my classes and all the other things I have going on. The world is pretty hectic these days: the economy is tanking – another 4% drop in the Dow Jones today, the Obama administration is planning withdrawal from Iraq and a focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and with little notice, methane – a greenhouse gas 21 times stronger than carbon dioxide – is bubbling up from thawing Arctic permafrost. This sounds big and vague, but it’s also about where my friends and I can find a job, real people in Gaza picking up the pieces of their lives, and real leaders working across boundaries to build a green economy.

The global gets personal fast. Untangling the self means untangling the world. No more band-aids. Just solutions.

I grew up feeling that things weren’t working too well in a run-down community in the midst of startling economic growth – this was back in the 90s before the slump. I felt rather lost, unable to find a way out of a way of living that wasn’t very meaningful personally, directly attacked the communities I valued (human and non-human) both in my neighborhood and globally, and was ultimately deeply unsustainable. My journey has been one of finding a way that works. I have been trying to link solutions to poverty and economic injustice, the climate and energy crisis, widespread disempowerment, and community fragmentation. I’m only 22 years old, so the road is far from over – but its been an exciting, difficult, and awe-inspiring process, and I have met so many friends along the way seeking the same solutions – and I know the world is full of millions more.

This blog is meant to be a challenge to both the role of bystander and the attitude of complaint. I don’t think they do anything for us other than disempower. I am not suggesting that we should ignore or fail to call out very real problems, but that ultimately, we have to figure out how we’re going to deal with them. It’s when we start collaborating with others, creating solutions, and creating real benefits for ourselves and others in the process that change happens.

I’m an emerging social entrepreneur, a friend of many who practice social transformation. My art form plays with capitalism and organizing and participatory leadership to create transformative change. In this blog, you can here my stories and those of many others who seek to link their own personal journey to the global one. You can also become an author if you want – email sos@grandaspirations.org. Please also be aware of the principles set forth in the User Guide, which help direct how this works which guide readers and authors.

Through this blog, I am seeking to open a space; a community that has hope and vision, that builds power and collaboration, that expresses the solutions. In many ways, that’s what I have been trying to do for most of my life.

Let’s make it happen.