On the other hand, I’m not exactly flush with inspiration at 9pm after a full day (ah, side hustles…).
For me, I think it’s about being fresh. Being relaxed. To get in that state of mind where everything flows, fed, watered, not overtired. My prime time is probably anywhere between late morning and early evening.
Inspiration strikes at the strangest times, usually when my mind is relaxed and free to wander. In bed, in those dulcet moment before sleep’s arms steal around you. In the shower, when I’m safely cocooned in a hot waterfall. When I’m power-walking home, disengaging from “work mode” and slowly winding down.
I firmly believe that you can’t force creativity – the best ideas, for me, at least, have always arrived unbidden. Whether you’re ready to accept them, whether you’ve set yourself up to give them the reception they deserve, is up to you.
When are you at your peak, and how do you harness it?
Why yes, my busking fund is coming along swimmingly, thanks!
(Background: last month I withdrew cash to stash in my wallet to give to worthy buskers when I come across them, because whenever I walked past a good one I would bemoan the fact that I had nothing to give.)
I have now donated to a grand total of two buskers. Not many, no. They don’t tend to play at the times when I arrive/leave town, and work is such lately that I don’t really get breaks. Not the kind that entail leaving the office, at least.
Yet….I feel almost embarrassed, or secretive about the whole process. I don’t exactly carry change in my pocket. So that leaves me to hang around at a distance while I fumble in my wallet, extract some coins, then creep up, drop them into the guitar case, and escape. Or alternatively, stride up furiously without making eye contact, clang em down like a bomb and continue on my way without hardly missing a beat.
Compare this to the guilt I always used to feel when accosted by street collectors. I just can’t win!
Which got me thinking (well, that and reading Atlas Shrugged): How do you reconcile altruism in a capitalist world? How do you balance making a living and all that jazz, and making a difference?
I can’t say I’ve never contemplated trying to move into PR/marketing to make more and have better hours. Yes, I’m playing the game – that game – buying into the dream of working hard, buying a house, starting a family.
But on the flip side, I often think that I should go and work for a charity. Put my skills to some real good. Sometimes, I think “I have so much. Shouldn’t I go live in Africa and devote my life to my fellow human beings? Who am I to be eating out and dreaming of buying a house when elsewhere women are raped and children go hungry and uneducated?”
My measly $10 or $20 or $30 – whatever I give away in a given month – seems like such a paltry amount. A selfish, token donation. Of course I could afford to give more. Most of us can. Of course I could give enough to hurt. But I choose not to. I choose to put my personal wellbeing, enjoyment and goals ahead of selflessness.
Gah. Please tell me I’m not the only one who ever feels like this.
When you’re a teenager, all you want to do is figure out who you are and to fit in. I could never understand how I could be one person in a certain situation, and act like someone entirely different around another group of people. I felt like I was in a constant state of personality crisis.
I can’t for the life of me remember what it was called, but there was once a website devoted entirely to personality tests and quizzes, and it quickly became one of my favourite time-wasters. I took and retook almost every quiz on that damn website, hoping for a result that would, I don’t know, change my life? Eventually I realised I was far from the only girl on earth who adjusts herself depending on social situations, and, more importantly, that I was who I was.
That said, the Myers-Briggs personality test is generally a good indicator of a person’s traits. Four letters – that’s all it takes. As an ISFJ, I’m part of a group that Wikipedia reckons makes up 9-14 per cent of the population.
Like the ISFJ description suggests, I learn best by visual reinforcement (diagrams, writing things down) or better, by doing.While I was always a pretty good student, tertiary presented more of a challenge for me, and I knew I was never going to be a candidate for grad school (not that it’s really very useful in my field). Conceptual theories and theoretical discussions tire me like nothing else can.
I’ve always thought that the world rewarded extroverts. In the working world, introverts get trampled, passed over. ISFJs hate conflict and confrontation, and don’t do well with criticism – two traits I’ve always, always struggled with (especially the first one, and I don’t think I’ll ever get over it. I know nobody likes fighting, really, but it’s like I regress to childhood and clam up completely in the face of argument).
Obviously, each personality type also comes with its own strengths (hurrah!).
The ISFJ feels a strong sense of responsibility and duty. They take their responsibilities very seriously, and can be counted on to follow through
Usually good (albeit conservative) at handling money
Take their commitments seriously, and seek lifelong relationships (and here I thought that was called “maturity”!)
Likely to put others’ needs above their own
Excellent memory for details which are important to them
Value security, tradition, and peaceful living
What’s your Myers-Briggs personality? I’d especially love to hear from other I-types (at 83%, it’s my strongest tendency of the four preferences); I so rarely encounter other like minds…
The things I love about working in the online space also make it terrible for work-life balance. The immediacy, the connectivity, the multimedia – it all makes it difficult to disengage and switch off. Like me, some of you have a bit of an internet addiction personally; add to that at least 40 hours a week for work and it quickly gets exhausting.
I’m still holding out. I don’t have a smartphone myself (I drop my phones a lot and I refuse to pay the exorbitant data prices we’re charged in NZ), nor do I have one for work (I’ve always figured once that happens, you’re always expected to be reachable).
Yes, working in online, the hours can be awful, and like many other fields, longer for those higher up the chain. Even those lucky enough to have something close to a 9-5, Monday to Friday schedule, know they can be called in anytime.
None of the women in my department have kids. I don’t think this is a coincidence. I’m still years upon years away from even thinking about babies, but it is certainly food for thought.
Balance is something that’s really important to me. Or at least striving for it. This is a “passion” job, although like I’ve said, I certainly don’t wake up rearing to go. I wouldn’t want to be in any other industry at this stage, but money aside, I’d rather work less and spend more time pursuing my other interests. I happily put in overtime as needed, but I refuse to let work be my life. Or my life be work. It’s something that’s easy to get sucked into, and something I see in others in this industry.
Or is work-life balance increasingly a remnant of the past? I occasionally check in on the #u30pro Twitter chat; it’s aimed at young professionals, and most of the participants seem to work in media-related roles. I find all the talk of “authenticity” a bit tiring, but one of the things I’ve observed is that not many think balance is realistic – or even desirable. Which I think is most commendable, but there have got to be limits.
Where do you fall on the spectrum? Are you expected to be available outside hours? Is switching off easy/feasible/desirable?
Sometimes the most interesting conversations are born while doing the most mundane of tasks, like putting away the groceries. Case in point: T recently asked, “Why is it that we never fight, and everyone else seemingly has such major problems?”
Well, a lot of the people he knows are just prone to drama. That’s how they live. That aside…
I can honestly say I got a lot out of my first (and only other) real relationship. I got a lot of my immature and destructive behaviours out of my system. Today, I’m a lot more adjusted. More stable, emotionally. More secure. It helps when your partner (oops, fiance!) is happy to show affection and loves freely and unabashedly.
And just generally, age has put paid to some of those tendencies anyway. I do recall a few incidents in the early days of our relationship that I’d rather forget; I’ll just plead teenagerism, thanks. That, and maybe drinking – I rarely do that anymore, but certainly a few cringeworthy, diva moments on my part back then were alcohol-fuelled.
Not that we haven’t had our ups and downs. We broke up once, for a few days, in that first year. But thankfully, I was not too proud to go around and say that maybe I was too hasty in calling it quits. And we certainly argued about money after moving in together. And again, nearly gave up on it all during the dark days of 2009, aka, the long employment drought (I think I’ll avoid looking for a post to link back to in this case…). We were going around in circles, having the same arguments, stuck in an expensive lease for a damp house in a bad area.
Compatibility
I don’t believe any relationship is infallible. We have committed to getting married, but as strong as we are together, I can’t say for sure that there’s nothing that could split us up.
But the thing we have going for us is that we essentially share the same morals and priorities. We say, and show, that we care – every day.
Communication
Sometimes we snap at each other, but we’re big enough to know we don’t mean it. It’s just fatigue, or hunger, or another external factor talking. Sometimes this takes some lip-biting and silent huffing and a lot of patience, but it beats silly arguments for the sake of it. Mostly.
Over the years, we’ve gotten used to each other’s ways, where some of our friends are only just beginning to discover how many things a couple can clash about. Credit is due here to him; he’s really good at smoothing things over, and hates having the air hang heavy over us for long. And we are insanely comfortable with each other: No topic is off-limits for us.
Compromise
Also, he knows to defer to me, because I usually know best 😛
Latest case in point? I brought up the name changing thing last week, and he didn’t even argue (it’s been a point of debate in the past). Trust me, I hate my surname, but it’s mine, and it’s my byline. Changing was never an option; his name after mine sounds ridiculous, and it’s not any less unusual, either.
Thoughts? Are the three Cs – communicate, compromise, compatibility – what matter?
On Tuesday, I thought I was dying. I was maybe a third of the way through my run when I started to feel faint and started to lose my vision. I literally could not see, and that scared the shit out of me. Everything went super photo-sensitive – bright, white and spotty. I could only make out the world around me, vaguely, through this haze of light. Luckily, I know those roads well, and I managed to continue walking along more or less blind until I reached the shade and my eyesight began to return.
Lesson learned: Do not run at midday in the height of summer. And wear sunglasses, maybe. Dehydration isn’t fun, kids.
Then I got a call from work. Another quake in Christchurch. A big one. My issues kind of paled in comparison.
Between my faint spell and finishing off a freelance project, I hadn’t had time to get online all day. Which is very rare for me. But before I went to bed, I checked my email. What do you know…some of my bloggy friends were worried about me and wanted to know I was okay! (Who says Americans are self-centred?) And they’re smart too; as my blog title suggests, I’m in Auckland. And a quick Google will show you that Christchurch is in the South Island, down the other end of the country.
NZ has been through a tough year. It’s been an eventful year, a good year, I guess, to work in news. It’s also been a depressing year – all the stories about the ever-rising cost of living – rent, petrol food, national debt, car crashes, drownings, baby deaths, and now, on the heels of Pike River, a second massive Christchurch quake – this time a deadly one. People from all walks of life. Including, to date, at least one journalist, killed when the newsroom collapsed.
I’m sad that I never got to see Christchurch before all this happened. I don’t know what it will look like by the time we get to do our road trip, but it will never be the same. I wonder, in one or two or five years, how many people will still live there; I think it’s safe to say nobody will want to insure any Cantabrian houses after this.
Hug your loved ones. Get insurance. And donate whatever you can – it’s going to be a slow and expensive process to rebuild the Garden City.
And I harboured a little dream of first love being the only love.
My first love was often a tumultuous one. It was inevitable really, a couple of insecure, introspective teenagers. At times, it was beautiful. At times, we soared. But I often tried to imagine us together, with a family, in 10 or 20 years. And I never could.
I don’t doubt that there are couples who meet the one and marry their first, true love. But that was never going to happen for us. I – we – had so much to learn. I did not have very good role models, relationship-wise, growing up. I felt…yes, I felt…that was never the problem…but I could not express. Words backed up, trapped somewhere in my brain, unable to make it through to my vocal cords and escape into the atmosphere. Words that needed to be spoken and heard, were never uttered.
I had to reconcile what I’d learned of love through books with the reality of a living, breathing relationship. To add to these internal issues, there were external, familial conflicts.
How does one learn to love? How does one learn the art of romance?
I grew up with parents who did not touch each other or call each other by name.
Of the things I learned at home, I do not feel nurturing a healthy relationship was one of them.
First love for me was a practice run. To get my first taste of arguing (occasionally in a healthy way, but mostly not), of reconciliation, of compromise, of loyalty, of demonstrativeness.
Today, many things come naturally. Saying “I love you” multiple times a day. A goodbye kiss in the morning. I will not judge my parents’ relationship – particularly as I no longer observe them on an everyday basis – but I know I want to continue to be the couple who go on date nights. Who always sleep in the same bed. Who respect each other. Who takes the time to cut his love’s steak into manageable chunks. Who knows her love, like a puppy, likes nothing better than belly-rubs, and obliges. Who wipe food from each other’s faces. Who playfight in the supermarket. Who do the hip bump while walking along the footpath, just because.
Without that first taste, I would be a completely different person today. I would still be struggling to relate to others in the most basic of ways. I would still retreat into silence at the first sign of conflict, my throat and mind closing up, sealing my thoughts away. I would not have the confidence that rests in the knowledge that once, someone else loved me. And that one day, others could, too. Bigger, better, bolder.
Second love does not have the same fairytale ring to it, but life is rarely so kind.
Hands up those with a partner saddled with debt. Do you ever resent him/her for it? Do you feel like it’s holding you back?
It’s okay. Our feelings are ours and they are legitimate. And sometimes you just need to let them out and acknowledge them.
Sometimes I wish I were the indebted person. I make more. I could pay off more, faster. What’s more, I’m not naturally a spender. (Maybe you snort at that having followed my blog for awhile. But my personal spending tends to fall along the lines of concerts, travel and eating good food. I don’t have a latte factor. I agonise over purchases. I don’t have or need a personal allowance. I would rather save my money than fritter it away on milkshakes and burgers or CDs or shoes.) In short, I would throw everything I had at debt until it was gone. But T is not like that.
Don’t get me wrong. The debt is not massive, it’s only in the four figures. And about half of it is to me. The rest isn’t even incurring interest. Not from ongoing living costs when I supported him (I chose to do that myself) but the other things – money lent after a long-ago car accident, car repairs, car insurance. Okay, mostly car related things. And a few other bits and pieces.
You know how I like to browse real estate listings for fun/self-torture? He likes to browse listings for motorbikes. That’s the next thing he wants to buy. The big thing. And of course he’s always finding amazing deals that if only he had the money he would buy right now. To which I can only say, you just spent hundreds of dollars on car audio! Obviously having doof doof sounds on your commute was more important than anything else to you, so you’ll just have to wait. The right bike will come along when you’re ready.
Of course, he could save for it faster if we directed all his spare into savings and none toward repaying me. And that’s a decision he leaves to me. That’s kind of a crap choice. Basically, it’s a battle of selfless vs selfish.
Sometimes I think maybe I should just write it off and we can start with a clean slate. But that’s not fair to me. That’s money I’ve worked hard for. Money that I chose to lend knowing it would be returned eventually. (And yes, money I could afford to give in the worst instance.) Maybe I should forget my random notion of insisting he maintain a $2k EF, because realistically, I would not drain it. As a first step, I would front the money, because dipping below that number is such a psychological blow. (I KNOW. IT’S NOT EVEN MY MONEY. WTF IS WRONG WITH ME?)
Even if it’s not yours, debt sucks. It hinders individual goals and joint goals. For him, it means no bike – for now. And for me, it means travel can’t happen as soon as I’d like.
I veer between wondering WHY AREN’T WE FURTHER ALONG YET??!! – after all, he’s been out of school for five years (didn’t go to uni) and sometimes it feels he has nothing to show for it. Meanwhile, I often feel similarly. But I have to remember I’ve only been working FT for a year, and I just paid for a car in cash. He’s sustained stints of unemployment, and yes, paid off other debts in that time. (The most frustrating thing is that very, very little of it was actually incurred by him. But let’s not get into that.) It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Yeah, I veer between that and trying to reassure myself that we have years and years ahead of us. But do we? In 10 years I would like to have bought a house and started a family and done my two big trips: the US and Europe. Blarrrrrgh.
I don’t want it to sound like we are clashing financially. In fact, it’s all going pretty swimmingly, albeit slower than I’d like. Joint pots with a separate allowance for him is working great and while initially that made me nervous, he’s been really good about communicating on money matters. But every so often, when progress feels nonexistent, you need to have a verbal retch. Ya know what I mean?
I’m a little pissed off and a little embarrassed. I’ve lost a bit of my mojo, musically and financially. The latter is fine; I just need to check in on my accounts more like every day, rather than once a week. The first is harder to deal with. There’s a lack of direction, because there are so many songs I want to learn and, let’s be honest, I almost always put in just enough time to pick up the sloppy basics before I’m off on another tangent. And then there’s pure frustration, because therefore I can’t seem to play anything cleanly and beautifully.
Via Wikipedia
I got to thinking about it, and the paths to getting pro at either actually have a lot in common.
It takes time. Like any other habit, they both take time and practice. You won’t train your hands to work in unison overnight, or build toughness the first day you learn barre chords. This is the hardest part for me – putting in enough regular, raw time to maintain strength.
No matter how much I save or how little I spend, I still tend to put off checking up on my bank accounts – and of course, the longer I procrastinate, the scarier the whole prospect gets. T can’t fathom how I can spend so many hours dealing to finances every month, but if I don’t, everything starts to spin funny, or at least that’s how it feels.
It’s painful. If you play (any stringed instrument, probably), you know what I mean. Cramping hands and raw fingertips. Similarly, especially at first, it can be painful to see how much you waste on crap. It was only a few years ago that we could easily blow $50 in a weekend on nothing but milkshakes and sushi without thinking twice.
It’s frustrating. Let the gat gather dust for a few days and start to lose your calluses and dexterity – and the worse it gets the longer you go without playing. (Course, the deeper your calluses, the more leeway you get – but you’re also less likely to take breaks in that case). Fall off the financial wagon and lose track of what you spend, and you’ll come back to a hot mess. Case in point: disorganisation was recently my downfall. I got $70 cash, and planned to spend it while putting $70 from my cheque account into savings instead. Of course, I didn’t do any banking for a week, and totally forgot about it; that $70 disappeared into the ether. Epic fail.
It’s about finding tricks and methods that work for you. On the guitar, are many ways to play the same sequence – the same note can be found across different strings and frets. Find a new tab with a different pattern that’s easier for you, or improvise your own. Financially, the cash envelope system might be your saving grace…or it could be your worst enemy. Maybe you like having separate sub-accounts for various purposes. Find a software or spreadsheet that works for you. Not everyone is an Excel fan, and not everyone is comfortable having financial info online.
But when you nail it? Finishing a week, fortnight or month in the black, or letting rip a blistering, pitch-perfect solo is so worth it.
Do you ever feel like you’re always holding out for something? Hanging on, swinging from point to point – jungle gym style – and merely existing in between?
Waiting til your partner finds a job.
Waiting til you save $100, or $1000, or $10,000.
Waiting for a job offer.
Waiting for the end of a project, so you can move on.
Waiting for a trip, a concert, a big event.
Waiting for the next big milestone. The next big high.
I’m know I’m guilty of it. I feel like I’m in limbo. The thing I’m waiting on may not even happen. But it wields a strange power over me. It propels to me put things off, to think twice, to say “what if?”
It’s like traversing the rocks down at any rugged beach – leaping, clambering, shuffling – anyway you can, ungainly or graceful, just making your way from one to another, trying our best not to slip and fall in between. The end point, the next cove, is always just around the corner. But those moments of flux shouldn’t be forgotten. I certainly don’t think it’s realistic to live every day like it’s your last, but I don’t want days and weeks and, who knows, even months to slip away. The older I get, the quicker those sands pass through the hourglass. It feels like I’m wheeling out the rubbish bin every other day and buying tampons every other week.
I want to be more present. This means I need to compartmentalise, to not constantly stress about the interviewee I can’t seem to reach for love nor money, to stop wasting time wondering Niue? Rarotonga? Some other island?, to shake up my routine more often with a date night like last night, where dishes, work and to-do lists were put aside entirely for one evening. To enjoy, to savour, to live.
Sometimes the most interesting conversations are born while doing the most mundane of tasks, like putting away the groceries. Case in point: T recently asked, “Why is it that we never fight, and everyone else seemingly has such major problems?”
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