who is this?
I'm Erik Kemp, a fellow human on this planet.
I currently live in Enschede, in Twente, in the Netherlands, in Europe, on planet earth. I usually summarise my interests with “privacy, plants & politics”. I enjoy learning about the world, mostly through reading and listening. I enjoy meeting new people, as everyone has a story worth listening to. I think we all share the goal of making the world a better place, step by step.
When I started studying at the University of Twente, I was encouraged to look around to see what could be improved. And then, if I really cared, to become involved in actually realising my ideas for improvement. I hope that is still what I am doing these days :–)
I look up to nerds (domain experts), human rights defenders, journalists, soldiers, first responders and some politicians who are contributing to making the world a better place. I would also like to express my gratitude to farmers for cultivating our food, construction workers for building our houses and all other people with practical jobs that actually do useful work for running our society.
Because I believe in the credo ‘be the change you want to see in the world’ I have altered my technology-diet drastically over the past years. In the process of this change of diet, I have discovered delicious dishes when I suddenly started setting requirements for what I did and did not want to eat.
I am a logophile (I don’t make time instead of I don’t have time, because time is ‘prioritime’), a long-distance runner (marathons, trail- and obstacle-runs), hiker (Pieterpad, GR20) and you can always wake him up for a dialogue on philosophy, culture or politics. I feel like an explorer in a world full of extraordinary humans, languages, cultures, with a special role for nature, which provides inspiration, slow living and a deep sense of connectedness.
Conversations with strangers and sincere feedback are for me the two most wonderful presents that life has to offer :–)
Furthermore, Erik is an eternal student (Cyber Security at the University of Twente), an active member of the political movement Volt Europa and since march 2022 an elected representative in the municipal council of Enschede.
If you want to know more about me, you can check my transparency page. Or feel free to contact me!
Why I write
I used to think I wrote because there was something I wanted to say. Then I thought, “I will continue to write because I have not yet said what I wanted to say”; but I know now I continue to write because I have not yet heard what I have been listening to.
And an addition from Mandy Brown:
You cannot know what you know until you’ve written it. As you write, you learn what you know—or, more likely, what you don’t know, which, let’s face it, is most everything. Ruefle’s distinction—“write because I have not yet heard what I have been listening to” gets at the crux of it: you can listen even without hearing. That is, you can pay attention to something without apprehending it; you can vibrate with a sound without recognizing what that sound is. The distance between the listening and the hearing is traversed by the words you haven’t yet written.
I write a lot, every day, in paper notebooks or in my digital brain, and the reasoning above is why.
Most of what I write, I write only for myself. Then I share things regularly with close friends and colleagues. I think there can be big value insharing and sense-making.
I sometimes publish something online, through this blog, Mastodon, PeerTube or LinkedIn. In that way, I hope I can also be of value to people outside of my personal network, who can follow me or find my posts in one way or another. I'm still looking for a balance on what to write about publicly, and how often. If you have an idea or a suggestion about that balance, please let me know! :–)