Future Investing: Creating What We Want
Happy end-of-Gregorian-calendar-year holidays to everyone!
Here, the gifts came early when Turkey's top-selling novelist and all-around goddess Elif Shafak named Tales from the Expat Harem among the 5 best books on Turkey, calling it "colorful, humanistic and sincere." Read an excerpt of Elif's foreword to the 2005 anthology.
But what we love most about this time of year is the view ahead...and our chance to own it. As Nancy Duarte says: "The future isn't where you're going to go, it's what you invent.”
The best forward-looking news we've heard in a while: the economic crisis has a silver lining. This month we're pleased to introduce futurists who see the worldwide recession as a larger transformation -- where we all play an important role in deepening our relationship with wealth. And there's something we can do about it *right now*.
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AT expat+HAREM
We've been taking ownership of our motivations this month: facing the ironic post-Communist response to Lady Gaga's anything-goes identity adventure. Copping to the lengths we'll go to become an insider. And learning how *not* to write about our 'happening prone' life.
We've also increased our stake in the Girl Effect campaign, blogging about the crucial role 12-year-old girls play in changing impoverished communities -- and ways we can make this precarious crossroads a safer place to launch a life.
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AROUND THE WORLD & AROUND THE WEB
I'm psyched to be on the advisory board of Turkish Women's International Network, a brand new community of Turkophile pros revolving around the TED-like talks its members give. Consider applying if you have family, cultural or professional ties to Turks.
If you're a digital nomad, lifestyle designer or location independent (or wanna be!) this logistical community for the work-at-home-while-abroad lifestyle wants you: NuNomad.
Meanwhile Symbionomics invites people around the world to contribute video to their online forum about the making of our next economy: driven by creative entrepreneurs, leveraging mobile and social media, crowd-sourcing. Deadline to pledge financial support for their Kickstarter campaign is new year's eve. Talk about investing in the future...
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Private equity adviser Hollis Wagenstein first crossed our path in New York during the Expat Harem book tour of 2006. Now the self-described "Turkaholic and Ottomaniac" has fun answering our question "What terms do you use to describe your cross-border life?" As the 'Pre-turk' awaits her new Turkish citizenship and speaks 'Turklish' with her husband, she says "If anyone else ever heard us using it, we'd probably wind up in strait-jackets!" Since her stepdaughter married a Puerto Rican that branch of the family calls themselves 'the Turkoricans'.
What are your neoculture predictions for the new year? Winners? Losers?
Jet Set: How Do You Pack For The Life You Lead?
Who even remembers September? We don't. In fact, seems we're rocketing past autumn like time itself is going out of style. We're refueling with a month of inspirational video bursts, automatic intel on the Istanbul scene, plus a new poll on the obstacles of global citizenship and a virtual conference about the future of storytelling.
Speaking of the jet set: how do you pack for the life you lead? Are hybrid types better attuned to our own personal style or do we experience even more fashion flux?
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It's all a blur now: "Harem girls for sale" is a blow-by-blow from the archive. Expat writing duo bringing our idea to world -- 2 speedy years from critique workshop to little-bestseller-that-could.
For anyone who hasn't actually read the anthology (a show of hands!), how about making it a party with our book club study guide...sample question: "What's more suprising, Turkish social norms or how they were suspended for a lone Western woman?"
city+INTELLIGENCE is the final entry in our year-long Culture Capital webcarnival. From uppercrust opinions to hipster red ropes, this round up of local Istanbul intel can prep a savvy visitor 24/7/365.
Sometimes we sleep. Ever had that nightmare where everyone is staring at you -- because you're dressed like an American? (Insert any nationality.) Tackling the style idiosyncracies of Israel, Sarah Melamed wonders if fashion assimilation is a measure of cultural assimilation.
Spirit of the season(ing): With the holidays coming and citizens of my native state California calling for the legalization of marijuana in the midterm elections this month, we'd be remiss not to point out this spacey recipe for family harmony.
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Every day in November She's Next digital media series will feature one minute videos from inspirational women like Mediabistro founder Laurel Touby, moment-of-truth diva Danielle LaPorte -- and me, shown below -- talking to the 21st-century woman about cultivating happiness and leadership.
Discarding the superpower-centric model: We love the premise of Cultural Dimensions Press. This ebook publisher is committed to showing what North Americans "need to know about their own cultural values, beliefs and perspectives" in dealing with the rest of the world.
And among the trends under virtual discussion at this month's superfresh Reinvention Summit (affiliate): how storytelling is reinventing identity and how culture is reinventing culture. Any wonder host Michael Margolis is a Third Culture Kid? We identity adventurers are all about reinvention!
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Way to extrapolate an experience, woman: In 2008 Texan Jessica W. visited Turkey reading the Expat Harem anthology "at night, while experiencing the areas, the sights, the sounds, the smells your writers described" during the day. Now she's chucking "a good job, a townhouse, a car" for soul-enrichment in Istanbul. "I will look to [expat+HAREM] for information, for encouragement, for inspiration. At a time where so many people are angry and looking in I want to use the site to make my world larger and richer."
What's the biggest frustration in seeking your global niche?
Making The Psychic Limbo Of Global Citizens A Productive State
The expat+HAREM COMMUNITY AIMS TO HELP YOU: 1) DISCOVER your psychic peers + global community 2) CREATE a hybrid identity from your many worlds
Why do you need our help? The short answer: Because liminal life is a bittersweet limbo -- coming, going, never quite arriving -- and here at expat+HAREM the community embraces this unmoored and central reality of our globetrotting, multicultural, hybrid times.
A PLACE WHERE DIGITAL NOMADS, EXPATS, IMMIGRANTS, FUTURISTS AND WORLD CULTURALISTS ARE UNIQUELY SUITED TO SUCCEED
The psychic limbo and identity adventure global citizens experience today is expat+HAREM's sweet spot. Our neoculture.
This neoculture is our situation in life and our world view. What we work to make sense of, and to capitalize on.
Here at expat+HAREM we've defined the problem, and provide the solution.
Glo· bal· niche, n.
a psychic solution to your global identity crisis
[More about Anastasia Ashman, the founder of this global niche.]
MAKING LIMBO A PRODUCTIVE STATE Limbo is usually considered a place in-between. A state of suspended animation. Paralysis, a spinning of the wheels. Nowheresville. But it can also be an unconstrained place where anything is possible. That's how expat+HAREM choses to see it. Multifaceted people like us have strength and flexibility and experience and access to multiple perspectives. These are all assets.
WE'RE IN THE VANGUARD AND NEED EACH OTHER Globalization has had an unfortunate disenfranchising effect. (Perhaps like many in our community you've been there personally!) However, despite the resistance and misunderstanding and worrying 'purity' movements we're witnessing in populations large and small, at expat+HAREM we believe fostering our particular dialogue of culture and identity is a way forward. A chance to find new and meaningful connection to the world while making sense of conflicting situations.
IT'S NOT ALL BIG PICTURE Sure, we like to talk about the big picture -- whole hemispheres and societies! -- but at our heart we're concerned with the smallest details of the individual. Navigating relationships with people in your life. Achieving psychic location independence. Negotiating our personal connection with the many worlds we love to belong to. That's how we'll find our global niche.
HERE'S WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY "WE'LL HELP YOU FIND YOUR GLOBAL NICHE": a psychic solution to your global identity crisis.
COMMON INTEREST AND EXPERIENCE DEFINES US
Our most important bonds are no longer solely decided by geography, nationality or even blood. When we find where we uniquely belong in the world we've found our global niche.
expat+HAREM, the global niche embodies the Expat Harem concept* -- localized foreigner, outsider on the inside -- while speaking to intentional travelers, identity adventurers and global citizens of all kinds.
This 2-year archive of neoculture discussions delves into perspective on the crossroads and dichotomies of our hybrid lives:
- modern existences in historic places
- deep-rooted traditions translated in mobile times
- limiting stereotypes revisited for wider meaning
- the expat mindset as it evolves from nationalism to globalism
More.
THOUGHTS ON HYBRID LIFE WRITING Combining outsider-view-from-the-inside and journey of self-realization, we think expat/emigree/immigrant literature deserves a shelf of its own.
+++ OUR ROOTS +++ Based on the original Expat Harem concept by Anastasia M. Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gokmen
expat+HAREM, the global niche is the archive of a group blog and community site launched in 2009 by Anastasia Ashman, coeditor with Jennifer Eaton Gökmen of Tales from the Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey.
* The site is inspired by the cultural embrace and self-exploration of that best-selling and critically acclaimed 2005 expatriate literature collection.
+ DETAILS: media coverage, academic uses, and awards for the anthology created and edited with Jennifer Eaton Gökmen, compiling the work of 32 international Expat Harem writers.
+ BEST 5 BOOKS ON TURKEY: Turkey’s most-read author Elif Shafak picks Expat Harem among the best 5 books on Turkey (Five Books, November 2010)
+ THE ACCIDENTAL ANTHOLOGIST: expat+HAREM founder's personal story behind the book.
+ HAREM GIRLS FOR SALE: 2 years from workshop to bestseller list -- the story of two expat editors.
Editors interviewed on The Crossroads satellite TV, July 2009
+++++ Take the next step with us --> into GlobalNiche.net's creative self enterprise for the global soul. Another good place to explore: Anastasia Ashman's producer page at Facebook.
Psychic Solution To Your Global Identity Crisis
Glo· bal· niche, n. psychic solution to your global identity crisis
Don't coin too many terms, warn the smart search engine optimizers. "No one will know what you're talking about plus they won't be able to find you!" At expat+HAREM we like to talk about unconventional, unbounded and unmapped life as we experience it, and if we could find the lingo we need in common usage, we'd certainly use it.
On Twitter someone asked, “is ‘hybrid life’ kinda like what a salamander leads?” Uh, sure...you could call us cultural amphibians. Water, air, land, we (try to) do it all.
If you've arrived in the expat+HAREM community, perhaps you do know what I'm talking about. Or maybe you want to see what's next in neoculture (another coined term to-be-explained).
Here’s the deal.
WE'RE ALL BORN GLOBAL CITIZENS even if that knowledge gets trained out of us. A global identity seems nebulous, and ungrounded. Better to bond with the more concrete: family, culture, nation.
Problem with concrete though: it cracks over time, in quickly changing conditions, and sometimes even under its own weight.
Globalization means we’re entering a permanent state of psychic limbo about who we are and where we belong in the world.
Mixed blood. Crossculture. Third Culture. International work, study, travel. Fusion faiths, dual nationalities. Many of us know the bittersweet liminality of living between multiple worlds, and the soul-sprung righteousness of refusing to settle on just one.
The more we move around the less home is one place -- not to mention the mirage home becomes as soon as we leave it -- so our associations spread and bifurcate and split again. Our capacity for inclusion grows, and our sense of self expands along with it.
Coming, going, never quite arriving. This is where we live today. We’re searching for our place in the world, our people, the hybrid lifestyle that will make it all cohese. We know this:
Our concrete center will not hold.
OUR PEOPLE ARE NOT WHO THEY USED TO BE We also recognize we’re unbounded by the communities in our physical midst and traditional markers like geography, nationality or even blood.
Now we find inspiring new kinship in interest and outlook.
Virtual technologies like social media and mobile devices help identity adventurers, global nomads and digital citizens integrate even faster across out-moded boundaries.
- We’re segregating along the lines of our true selves. Joining tribes. Ning networks. Realtime Twitter chats.
- Finding ways not to be limited by where we are, and methods to be who we are, doing what we love, regardless of location.
- In the exquisite pull of online social networking -- as opposed to the usual blunt force push of actual social circumstance -- we demand more value and relevance from our connections. They demand the same of us, filling our interactions with dynamism and serendipity.
To become the global citizens we truly are, we need to find our place in the world.
This has always been the case. But the 21st century offers new ways to find where we uniquely belong, and a new urgency to actualize our global citizenship.
Here at expat+HAREM we believe you can create a psychic solution to your global identity crisis.
Call it psychic location independence.
She'sNext interview: Here I'm talking about how multifaceted, 21st century women can find their global niche.
TAPPING INTO OUR OWN GLOBAL BEING When we discover our psychic peers and foster a global community with them -- fashioning a hybrid identity and a 'salamander' life that intersects and honors the many worlds we belong to -- we've found our global niche. It's good to be home.