“Be well, and do good work.”

Not sure what kind of Good Work?

Fine, so you no longer want to sit in an office from nine to five, watch­ing the clock and won­der­ing why time pass­es so slow­ly. You want to be free from the stress and chaos of your present job, and wouldn’t mind a week­end off now and again. You want to lose the feel­ing that you’re work­ing your­self to death for a com­pa­ny that makes no real con­tri­bu­tion to soci­ety. The big ques­tion is: what are you going to do about it? Here are 15 suggestions.

The arti­cle is from a newish mag­a­zine, Ode. We’re expect­ing our first issue to arrive at the Cas­tle fair­ly soon, and I’m real­ly look­ing for­ward to it.

Ode is an inde­pen­dent mag­a­zine about the peo­ple and ideas that are chang­ing the world.

Some­times it’s dif­fi­cult to see beyond the war, pover­ty, exploita­tion, and pol­lu­tion that the main­stream media use to fill our view of the world. But there is more to life. There are oth­er sto­ries to report. Sto­ries of count­less ini­tia­tives being launched around the globe by peo­ple devot­ed to jus­tice, respect, and equal­i­ty. Sto­ries that bridge the gap between think­ing and doing, between rage and hope, and the painful gap between the rich and poor—and thus build peace and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. That is the news that Ode promis­es to deliv­er. By read­ing Ode you con­nect to a net­work of pos­i­tive change and inspi­ra­tion. Ode points the way to know­ing bet­ter, doing bet­ter, and feel­ing better.

Ode pub­lish­es ‘the sto­ries that are dif­fer­ent from the ones we are brain­washed to believe’ (Arund­hati Roy). Ode chal­lenges us and invites us to change. We realise that change starts with infor­ma­tion. We can only make a choice to change things for the bet­ter when we learn how it can be done. Sim­i­lar­ly, we can only change our behav­iour when we under­stand the harm­ful effects of what we do. Ode teach­es and inspires us, helps us see how every one of us can con­tribute to a more just and sus­tain­able world.

Ode is pub­lished month­ly in Eng­lish, Dutch, and Portuguese.

I find myself more and more inter­est­ed in find­ing the sto­ries of what IS right in the world, of peo­ple who are mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty, activism, and build­ing com­mu­ni­ty are more and more cen­tral to my life.