My wife and I have a new project. We are renovating a new home in the Black Forest. A truly lovely place to be. The woods around produce a lot of good air, oxygen and positive energy. Hiking trails are nearby. We instantly perceived a kind of ‘revitalization’ on the spot. And it is an area where other people go for vacation. OK, in all honesty, there is also a lot of work to be done as we are factually fundamentally renovating the house. On some days this might be more a challenge (esp. when it is about bureaucratic paper chase). On others it is absolutely fun planning how we are going to live and making it happen hands-on. And a great opportunity to get the brain freed from mental load and a more intellectual day-to-day…

During the boring COVID-19 lock-downs I rediscovered one of my childhoods hobbies, fishkeeping. I wanted to fight a bit the personal lows with my department, all being stuck at home alone for a few months already and likely a few more. So, I gave ourselves a summer-at-home challenge to do something creative. Something fun also bringing back positive energy. Something where we could remotely but jointly enjoy well invested quality time. I myself had the urgent need to do something with my hands, something creative and something real. Not just colorful slides on the screen but being perceptible by all senses. And with exploring opportunities, I realized that since I had been involved years ago my previous hobby fishkeeping had actually developed into an art. Inspired and driven by the (meanwhile) legendary Japanese designer, photographer and aquarist Takashi Amano, who had factually reinvented field. At the time I had to retire my last tank ~20 years ago, fishkeeping had been a more frumpy activity, honestly spoken. This didn’t stop me from enjoying it. But it it was mostly about discussing best ways to keep the water clean, who has the largest tank, and who keeps the most fancy fish species. Back to it in 2020, I learned that today it is about creatively designing a piece of nature, a realistic landscape, in any tank size (with smaller ones actually leading the movement), and sometimes even without any fish. Amano’s work had completely transformed the whole space. An amazing example how something hackneyed, insipid, stuck has been turned into something completely new and amazing. By a single individual who had a vision and made it happen. By combining tradition, (local) culture & philosophy, implementation capability, and creativity. And not to be forgotten, Amano grew a huge and global business out of it. Which also enabled professional opportunities many other people who became professional aquascape designers, influencers and vendors. My personal aquascaping ambitions are way less professional. I enjoy designing underwater nature sceneries as a creative & hands-on counterbalance to my more intellectual & hands-off day-to-day job. By the way, the COVID-lock-down team activity had been an awesome success. We had lot of fun with sharing individual artwork and results. Some people (like me) rediscovered buried interests and talents … others discovered new ones. It helped us all to keep a good mental health and staying close at challenging…