The point of making submissions?

I posted something like this on my greenpress blog but it has got lost and I found myself talking to someone about it the other day so thought I'd write it here.

Sometimes the whole business of writing and presenting submissions is depressing and feels like a waste of time. Once a plan is in draft, it seems to me that very little is likely to change. However despite our best efforts, this process is still all that we mostly have at least in our little corner of the world.

However I was talking with a local councillor who gets to hear all these submissions and she noted that unless people like me DO write and present submissions, people like her (who are in the minority on Council in terms of being a little Green and slightly left wing) cannot defend that perspective. So my writing to suggest safer measures for cyclists or pedestrians does have a purpose even though actually very little comes of it through the process.

So now I write fewer submissions, but when I write them, I think of them as placeholders rather than necessarily as instruments of change. I guess I"ll just have to cast around for the latter (if such things are possible in our current political climate here in Christchurch).

Designing services to get people meeting

Now here is an interesting idea! When a courier calls, what if they left the package with a neighbour rather than taking it back to the post shop. Then people have a reason to knock at the neighbour's door and so to meet their neighbours. I like this idea because I must admit that I find it difficult to knock for no reason!

Reflecting on the Good things of the last year

Its holiday time again, and it also a new year and a good time to reflect on all the things that have happened over the last year. For many of us in Christchurch, it's easiest to remember the earthquake (and for me to remember having a car accident and breaking a few ribs about a month later) and to forget that a lot happened last year. It is for this reason that I keep a note in my diary of what happens each day and what I get up to.

I started doing this because I found it was too easy to get to the end of a week and wonder what I"d actually filled it with. I also found that I would somehow forget the enjoyment I'd had as part of my 'everyday' life. About half way through last year I also did an a community education course called the Science of Happiness and from that time on I've pretty much kept as part of that diary, a note about the things I am grateful for - good things both big and small that happen to me on a daily basis. Again it has taught me how easy it is to take these good things for granted. Keeping a note of them at the end of each day keeps them more at the front of my mind.

So as well has having an earthquake and a car accident (as a result of which I discovered what a lovely supportive group of people I know), going back through my diary has helped me remember that I've set up a new business, I had some wonderful work experiences of which the best was probably at Easter handing out questionnaires to people in Deep Cove, a magical place in Southwestland (New Zealand). I met some great people (too many to list here) and have developed some new friendships, and started a community newsletter which I think people do appreciate and which has certainly helped me get a handle on what happens in my own community. I am grateful for the people that I meet and work with in various ways and grateful that I"m able to contribute into a range of activities and spaces and to the lives of others and that they do the same for me. One of the most wonderful things that happened for example was a group of people turning up one Saturday morning and helping me recover an area of my garden that was lost under weeds.

So while there have been some things about the last year that made it challenging, quite a lot of good stuff has actually happened too and its fantastic to be able to reflect on that.