Does a blogging Utopia exist?

A few days ago a friend asked me if there was a blogging etiquette.  I stumbled on my answer.  I don’t think I had given it enough thought to produce a coherent response (which is clearly a sign that I’m inept at thinking on my toes or really producing any impromptu information that could make me sound well informed! I made a mental note to work on this quality).

So now that I’ve taken my time to think about blogging etiquette I’ve come up with the following answer: there is no etiquette or code of practice.  There doesn’t need to be.  Here’s my reasoning:

Bloggers share a passion for thinking and writing.  No matter how different bloggers can be in style, personality and outlooks they have one thing in common: effort.

It takes actual effort to blog.  Most bloggers are not career writers so that basically means they have a day job (which chances are they are passionate about also) then go home to think and string their thoughts into sentences which they then edit and publish.  I think there is a lot of respect amongst bloggers who put the effort into writing and publishing their thoughts.  Blogging is a practice of people that are driven by the same interest in having a say and listening as others have their say.  It works becasue participants make it work.  Once inside you may think that the blogging world is huge, that every man and his dog has a blog, but blogging is a relatively small online alcove.  Not everyone blogs and not everyone understands what and why blogs exist.  For those that do I think that it’s a comforting support netowork.

I think that bloggers also share one or more of the following qualities:

- Curiousness
- Emotional intelligence
- Drive
- Motivation
- A desire to engage with other motivated people
- A general idea of what they want to do with life or at least a notion of how to discover it
- Analysis
- Engagement

So while there are hundreds of bloggers out there that have very distinct personalities they share many of the same positive qualities.  Cases of people using a blog as a forum to disparage others, or do anything other than offer up relevant advice, opinions or research are definitely the exception rather than the rule.

I don’t think there exists any rules of behaviour around blogging because in my experience and definitely in the experiences of the bloggers I follow, bloggers are generally happy to being sharing what they are doing with other equally as interested people.

There does exist terms and conditions for belonging to blogging communities but this isn’t the same as etiquette.  Even the terms of use of Brazen Careerist are very basic: don’t spam people, don’t write abuse and don’t impersonate anyone.  That’s it.  So from what I can tell as long as you’re not a neo-Nazi using your blogging community to propagate hate of any one person or group you pretty much have free range to express your ideas in whichever style you want.

I guess the only requirement then is to stay originally, feel excited about what you do and keep learning from others.

Do you agree or am I describing some Utopian blogging world that doesn’t exist? Is there a set of rules that govern bloggers?

 

Obama, love and porridge

I know I should be thinking about Obama and the new inspiring state of the world but instead I’m going to write about porridge and love.

Last Saturday Morning BF and I sat in a cafe  as the breakfasts we had ordered had just been brought to the table.  I had ordered porridge with berries and he got poached eggs.   After one mouthful I asked him if he wanted any of my porridge.  Without thinking and without even waiting for my answer I had spooned a generous bit of porridge with all the best berries out and was moving it towards him.  Then I realised what I had done: I had automatically spooned the best bit of my breakfast out for him to eat.

This was such a small gesture but it instantly made me angry with myself.  I was angry because despite it being my porridge I had spooned out the best mouthful, with the best berries on it, to give to him.  I was angry because it wasn’t a matter of not putting myself first.  We both had breakfast, it’s not like we were sharing.  I was angry that I somehow naturally or without thinking gave him the best part of my breakfast.

What makes me do this?  So many people have written about this being a natural instinct of women.  That when you’re in love you can’t help but want to be giving and whatnot.  I refuse to believe that it’s something ‘females do.’  I hate thinking about the fact that females are supposed to be more nurturing, more giving or more bloody self sacrificing than men.  I’m not convinced that we’re genetically predisposed to that sort of behavioral distinction.  I’ll even go so far to say that it’s crap.  There are as many men as women that would share their porridge.  I believe it’s more of a personality trait than indicative of my biology.

But can’t you see? That stupid spoonful of porridge represented so many of my fears and brought to a head so many of the things I’m confused about.  I’m worried that I’m orbiting around his world too much, I’m losing too much of my lifestyle, or at least what my lifestyle used to look like.  I’m giving him the best parts instead of keeping them for myself.

The thing is, when you’re in a serious relationship you mould your worlds around each other.  You give and take and compromise small parts of your lifestyle so you can share a small little world for two that you both love living in.  Unfortunately this meshing of worlds is not always equal and one person’s world always ends up looking more like the other person’s originally did.  There are so many reasons for this.  It can be because one person moves to be with the other, one person has a stronger personality or more of an uncompromising, solid as a rock lifestyle which you know you either work with or not at all or, to take a really depressing view of things, it’s because one person decides that the others world is simply more appealing so they willingly fit themselves into it.

BF is a strong guy with a big world and with that silly spoonful of porridge I realised that I was afraid for myself.

Don’t get me wrong.  I haven’t abandoned everything I once stood for.  It’s not as extreme as that.  I still have my Thursday nights with my girlfriends watching our favourite TV show and see my friends at least one night of the weekend.  But the fact that I’ve started measuring these times, keeping count to make sure that I still have a fair semblance of my old life displayed on my imaginary scoreboard, is what tipped me off to the fact that I’m secretly worried that I’m sacrificing too much of the things I used to do, things I would do entirely for myself when I was single.

As I was thinking about this I realised that it’s incredibly hard to measure this because I’m growing so much at the moment anyway.  Who’s to say that I’m growing into him just because my scoreboard for the things I used to do is starting to change.  What if it’s transforming to reflect the individual I’m changing into rather than a warning that I’m losing myself.  How do I tell the difference?

I could laugh it off and claim that the porridge incident just means that I’m becoming a nicer person rather than a porridge hogging little porkchop.  More importantly I’m probably just learning to share which is what relationships are essentially supposed to teach you.

For the moment I’m going to be comfortable that I’m not completely orienting my world around his.  I’m rapidly learning and that means I’m not going to stay exactly the same but I guess my real worries, the reasons I need to spell everything out in this entry, is that I’m afraid I won’t know where the line is.  I’m worried I won’t recognise it if I really do start to lose myself in my relationship.

 

From now on this blog will be RELAXED

I want to be relaxed about publishing things here.  I don’t want to be a famous blogger known for my precise language, impeccable grammar and perfect structure.  This is my new resolution.

I want to be a writer and  I’m using my blog to practice.  I want to practice padding out my ideas, writing passages, scenes or descriptions that come to mind and really see if I have what it takes to write a book.  I realised that in order to achieve my goal for this blog I need to be much more relaxed about it.  I want to spend my time practicing my writing and developing my own ideas rather than freaking out about the fact that my technical language skills are crap.

When I thought about it I realised that I  always write a blog entry as soon as the feeling hits me but I’ll wait weeks to post.  I’m great once I get a feeling and need to write it down.  I tend to type fast as I scramble to ensure all of my thoughts are pouring onto the page.  During this time I’m less worried about my grammar or the way something sounds and more focused on getting things off my chest or making sure I record the idea I just had in its entirety.  But then it takes weeks for me to post.  This is ridiculous!  By the time I’m actually ready to post I lose my enthusiasm because the feeling has passed.

Today Penelope Trunk published a post in which she made some interesting points about flow.  I guess you could call this me wholeheartedly satisfying my passion for writing, with everything else following suite.  I’m trying to encourage flow.  I’m thinking if I do it my way, if I’m more relaxed about my blog and ignore the structure I think I should be following, then it will come together itself.  I guess I’ll write a follow up post in 3 months and assess my findings.

So here’s what I’m doing: I’m writing this post stright into wordpress instead of doing it in my MacJournal, checking it a million times, copying it into my blog, checking it a million more times before finally posting.  Instead I’m just writing my thoughts and posting them up.

So I’m sorry if bad grammar offends you.  This isn’t for you.  It’s for me.  And hey, one day if I manage to write enough for a book I’ll have a diligent editor that will help me out with the rest.

 

All this talk of where to invest but what about investing in myself?

There seems to be so much chatter about where we should be investing our money.  What will be safe? Which choices do I make that will mean a return on my investment?

The idea of a longer term investment in which my returns are limited to a future accumulation of interest or profit from a stock exchange doesn’t really appeal to me at the moment.  I want to be investing in myself, in my current learning and development.  I guess I don’t want to see the money right now.   I want to see the experience, to see the education.  At this stage a return on investment for me means being aware of the new perspectives I’ve gained and knowing that the money I’ve spent will make me a better writer, employee and generally a better person.

That said, this is a convenient set of goals to be wearing as a badge of honour for this post.

Over the weekend I was trying to review of my finances and have a serious think about whether to book a ticket to this year’s South by South West Interactive Conference.  I really really want to go.  I’m like a child begging the mature me to go while the mature me sits and quietly thinks about the practicalities of rising airline prices, the exchange rate and the amount of leave I have accumulated at work.  Puh-leeze, I promise I’ll learn so000 much and I’ll make so many connections.  All of my blogger friends are going.  All the cool kids are doing it! Then I try revese psychology on myself: Fine.  Be like that.  Don’t invest in your own learning.  Even if this is what you want to do in life.  It’s just your career.  I’m sure you’ll find something else to be excited and passionate about.  Hey I hear there’s an opening at the Trigonometry conference and that’s in Sydney.  You don’t even have to travel for that one.

Should I be spending a couple of thousand dollars flying to this conference in Texas?  Even the mature me has to concede to immature whingy me.  It will be an amazing experience.  Bloggers whom I read and learn from will be there.  People who inspire my own passions will be giving lectures and will participate in question and answer sessions.  People’s whose keynote speeches I watch on YouTube will be speaking live on topics I thirst for, topics I want to build a career on.  When put like that how can I not make the investment? What should I be spending my money on if not that?

At this stage in my life it’s not like I have a lot of money to be investing in the financial market.  I don’t earn a huge amount and I try not to limit my social spending too much so lets face it, my savings account is more like a little depository that money goes in and out of when I travel rather than a nest egg.  But hey, I figure I have the rest of my life to have things like mortgages and other restrictions on my finances.  At a time when I’m focused on building my career rather than my nest egg, shouldn’t my investments reflect this also?  Shouldn’t I be investing even the small savings I have in myself?

See the thing is investing in my own non-traditional learning is new to me.  I didn’t blink an eyelid when I funded my university degree then an honours year on top of that.  But I’m new to funding newer learning experiences, even though I think that conferences like SXSW are my biggest and most effective opportunity to learn right now.

I made the decision not to go back to uni (at least for a few years) because I’m getting a lot out of the things I’m doing right now.  I’ve discovered a passion for blogging that wasn’t built into any of my university courses and I don’t think that studying through further, formal education will cut it.  If I want to learn more and become better I need to keep reading blogs, attend conferences and keep participating in a community of brilliant bloggers that could teach me so much.  I think if I want to learn it needs to be on me.  It needs to be because of my own initiative and participation.  I just need to decide if I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is.

 

A guest post

Today Holly Hoffman published a post that I wrote titled ‘Gen Y needs a new definition of success.’

It’s extremely exciting for me for two reasons:

1. Holly has a kick ass blog which lots of people read so I saw it as an opportunity to put something I had written in front of such a big audience and;

2. Writing about the different ways that Generation Y people struggle with success is something that really interests me at the moment.

Check it out at http://www.worklovelife.com/2008/11/gen-y-needs-new-definition-for-success.html

 

Goals

Yesterday, after a pretty dodgy day at work where there were too many things that I didn’t understand about my job and I wasn’t feeling the best, these goals sprouted from somewhere inside of me.

I surprised myself as I wrote them because I’ve never really had concrete goals.  I’ve always been driven but I’ve been driven towards abstractions like ‘Always be happy’, ‘Aim to be successful’ and ‘Always do what I love.’  To me the aspirations that I’ve written below are the most specific goals I’ve ever had and I’m pretty proud of them.

You’ll notice that I’ve even developed a relationship goal which is included at the bottom of the list.  When the idea of a relationship goal was first suggested to me it seemed like a pretty strange concept to think about (“What the hell is a relationship goal?”). but I’ve spent a while considering it and if you have read my previous posts regarding my fears over having children and the ways I use writing in my relationship when I should perhaps be talking, you’ll understand where my goal came from.

General life goals:

1. To write a kids book that adults will fall in love with also.

2. To write an adults book.

3. To keep learning and writing about myself through blogs, books, articles (really any medium I can get my hands on).

4. To take my parents out to many many dinners now that we’re all grown ups.

5. To remain confident that imagination is valuable and can always remain part of my career (no matter how many times I’m told that that it doesn’t contribute to or change anything tangible in the world).  Always hold onto my belief in the power of perspectives when offered up to others.

Career goals:

1. Never be a manager.  I don’t think I’m very good at managing people (their expectations or their actions).

2. To define my success by my capacity to teach people.

3. To become an engaging public speaker.

Relationship goals:

1. Free myself of any preconceived notions (both mine and other people’s) of where I thought I’d be in a relationship.  Let go and completely trust my experiences.

 

The connections I didn’t quite make in my last post

There is a connection that I didn’t quite make in my last post.  It’s the connection between my fears about having children and why I feel that way.  The thing is I really do like kids.  I nannied throughout uni and loved it because I enjoyed the company of the children I was minding.  But that gave me the confidence to know that I understand the reality of having kids and I’m sure I don’t want that any time soon.

Here’s the scary part: my boyfriend is 10 years older than I am.  Im fine with that.  It has never ever felt like a gaping hole in our relationship in which we can’t relate to each other on certain levels.  We have always agreed that the different perspectives brought about by our age difference has enriched us, just like any differences in a relationship.  I think that we could’ve come from different countries, different family situations, different socio-economic circumstances and we would still be bringing differences to the table.

A little while ago I was at work (in a meeting for christ sake!) and everyone in the meeting was asked what their material goals are.  I said “ummm, I wouldn’t mind an Audi A3…” but the boy across from me who is a couple of years older than I am said, “I guess I’d like to be in a financial position to have kids.”  People jumped at this comment exclaiming “Really?” and “Wow, I would never have thought to plan for sending my kids to a good school” but BF said “I think that’s a reasonable goal.  I’d like to have kids within the next 5 years.” HE SAID IT IN A MEETING AND IT WASN’T EVEN HIS TURN TO COMMENT!

I stayed quiet (frozen and in shock but at least I gave the exterior impression of having barely noticed the comment).  I went downstairs after the meeting, back to my desk, and formulated a plan.  I was just going to come right out and ask him to clarify exactly how much he meant what he said.  So I emailed him with this request:

‘Shall we go to dinner tonight.  We need to get in all of ‘us time’ we can before I apparently start popping out children.’

Not my most mature moment but the effect I was going for was to let him know that I was thinking about this issue and would like to discuss it at dinner. He replied “Sure.”

At dinner that night I decided to have half a bottle of wine (I’m small so that’s actually quite a bit of alcohol for me) while asking him about his comment.  This is how our conversation went:

I blurted “I don’t want to have kids in 5 years!”

“You don’t know how you’ll feel in the future plus I didn’t mean 5 years, it could be 2 years or it could be 5.”

“Ummm I know you can’t judge how you’ll feel in the future but I can say with a fair amount of confidence that I WONT BE HAVING KIDS IN 2 YEARS.”

Another glass of wine.

I explained to him that he can’t bank on me changing my mind and suddenly feeling like I want kids in two years.  I asked him if he wants to spend those two years finding and building a relationship with someone who has the same plan as he does.  He said no.  I asked him if he’s happy staying with me with this knowledge? And he said yes, he is.  I didn’t know what to say after that so I cried and then had a bit more wine.

At that time it felt like the knowledge that we’re at different places on the baby issue would always be the elephant in the room.  I cried because I believed that things were ruined between us.  I felt that although we had both laid our feelings on the table and thought we could push past it, it would stay with us and make us both feel that anything that came after that conversation would be fruitless.  It would make me feel like every experience we had after that conversation would be numbered and I would be very aware of that.

The knowledge that he wants to have kids sooner than I do actually was an elephant in the room for a few days afterwards.  I was a bit on edge and I found a way to work the baby issue into every conversation we had (both jokingly and in seriousness). Then we got over it.  We couldn’t help but focus on how great things were between us and we seemed to have forgotten our make or break conversation.  The most important thing was, and still is, to be together for a long, long time and not to focus on things that have the potential to break us up.

That was about two months ago and I thought it had stopped affecting me.  Things had returned to normal and I had stopped thinking about that incident.  I had thought about it briefly when I was writing my last post but I really did think that the post was more about the different ways my friends see childbearing.  What I have now realised is the point I was trying to make in my last post, the connection I didn’t quite understand at the time, was that my baby fears are hugely connected to my fears about being with BF.

Things are amazing between us.  They really are.  But lately I’ve learned that my greatest fear, even greater than the ‘baby fears’ I described in my last post, is having to end this relationship because I don’t want to have babies and he does.  It is something that you absolutely can’t compromise on and that’s one of the most serious things about having children.  You and your partner need to be in exactly the same place.  I believe you need to both be at the same level of readiness and have the same expectations and ideas of raising children.  Otherwise things will fall apart.  I can’t have kids before I’m 100% ready and he can’t really keep waiting for that.

So I guess my real fear about babies is about losing someone I care very much about.  We both now believe we want to and will stay with each other for a long, long time and have no intention of breaking up.  So our conversation about children that was so out of alignment with what we both want, really shook me and maybe I’m taking that out on my hypothetical children.

 

5 baby years

I think I have this idea that when you have kids you completely give up your life.  I feel like I’ll never be clean or sexy, Ill never not feel tired, I won’t have time for friends and I most certainly wont have time for myself, to learn or think.  I think my biggest fear is that once I have kids my life as I know it will end.  I’ll never be anything more than a mum.  My life will be isolated and my existence will be reduced to a base level without conversations and without relationships outside of my children.

This is the most contentious thing I have ever said in this blog. I deliberated before I published this but I’ve spent 2 weeks deliberating and having conversations with my friends, emailing other bloggers and asking them for advice about whether I’ll offend people, and finally tonight I just got irritated with myself and posted it.  I chose to say this because I wanted to be honest about the fears I have.  And it’s something I feel strongly about now because this topic seems to come up in so many of the conversations I have with women my age (23-24) who are either making their baby plans for the next few years or are speaking out against “having kids so young.”

Starting this entry off by lamenting motherhood as the loss of my life is extremely offensive to mum’s everywhere.  There is NO WAY I believe that this is what motherhood is about for everyone.  It’s an extreme portrait of a situation that I fear being in (which is how fears normally manifest for me, as extreme scenarios in a my head).  Motherhood is rewarding.  Of course it’s rewarding and it does not stop people from doing anything that they want.  God, I have an amazing mother and I appreciate everything she has done for our family. She’s raised 4 kids, worked for periods when we were at school and in the 25 years that she has had kids I can’t remember a time in which my parents haven’t stopped as they pass each other in the kitchen or living room and given each other a kiss.

So don’t get me wrong.  I’m not disparaging motherhood as being an underlife, a shell of human existence.  I understand that I could still develop myself and my career if I had kids.  But I do have fears.  They’re confined to a very narrow conception of motherhood but I can’t deny that they’re very strong doubts in me.

I have this plan for myself for if I ever have kids.  I want to discover if I have a book in me and continue studying online.  I will have learned to be flexible by that time and writing is something I want to have a full-time crack at so the plan is to write from home.  But even this great plan is marred by doubt.  What if in reality I’m too tired to write when I have kids? What if I take absolutely every opportunity that my kids are asleep to either have a shower or try and sleep myself.  I’m not a person who can survive on less than about 6 hours per night.  What if I’m a walking zombie and my brain can’t remember to turn off the TV let alone generate enough creative output for a book? What if I’m too tired to care about the news or read anything and my intellect evaporates?

I have friends who have a huge desire to have kids but want to be smart about it.  Some of my girlfriends have really thought about when the best time to have kids is and they have decided that the best time for them is within the next few years.

Some of my girlfriends are realistic about having kids and share my views that you can’t ‘have it all’ without making sacrifices.  We can all agree that the biggest sacrifices come in the first 5 years of our kids’ lives.  I’ll call these the 5 baby years.  I think this is the time when kids are at their most demanding.  They’re developing rapidly and intensely and there is no reason why they shouldn’t capture your time and energy the most.  They’re not at school.  They’re at home and someone needs to be at home with them.  Don’t get me wrong, if I have kids it will be a 100% joint effort with my partner and I.  But the reality is I think my kids will dominate most of my life in their first 5 years on the planet.

So while I’m taking this knowledge and feeling like I may never want to have kids some of my friends are making plans that are smart, logical and that manage their genuine desire to have children with their determination to have great careers.  They want to have kids in their mid to late twenties rather than their early thirties so that they’re in the best position to be both a successful mother and have a successful career.

The general logic of their plans is this: after graduation from uni work for around 5 years to make a name for yourself, learn as much as you can and collect as much experience as humanly possible. Then you take your 5 baby years.  Have your children, dedicate your time and energy to your kids’ lives.  Make those big compromises but after 5 years, when kids go off to school, make sure you have the option of returning to work.  When I asked one of my friends about her timeframe she explained that she wants to work for long enough to establish herself in her chosen industry but she want to be young enough to return to work when her kids go to school. She’s thinking about her options and trying to give herself the opportunity to return to her career as well as be a mother with school-aged kids.

I can understand that but I still harbor my fears and cannot see myself having kids any time soon.  For me there’s a big hollow space where that desire to be a mum is.  Maybe it will come later, I’ll never know how I’ll feel in the future.  So here is my own plan: until I can understand myself more, understand what it will mean for me to have kids rather than drowning myself in my unfairly held representations of motherhood, then I won’t be ready.  I’ll always see those 5 years as a confinement rather than something beautiful.

 

Learning to live with unequal pay

A common term for a boyfriend, girlfriend or partner is ‘other half.’  I don’t even like this term but I wonder if that can still apply when my BF earns much more than I do and can thus contribute a lot more money to our lifestyle? Would I have to call him my other six eighths? These are the absurd thoughts I have pondered in my continuous struggle to become comfortable with a BF who is not just sitting in the pay grade above mine, but earns a significant amount more than I do.

Sometimes my way of feeling comfortable and in control of this borders on the crazy.  For example I have imposed all of these rules about what he can pay for and what he can’t.  I’ve divided our lives up into categories:
1. Core living
2. Luxury items and;
3. Personal expenses.
The informal names for these categories are:
1. Things I Go Halves In
2. Things In Which My Contribution Can Only Ever Cover About 20% of the Total Amount and;
3. Things That I Will Not Let Him Pay For Because Even Though He Pays for 80% of Our Dinners Out If He Buys Me Even a Bottle of Shampoo I’ll Feel Like a Whore.

So those are the lines that I have drawn in my own mind and although they are completely arbitrary they keep me feeling like I’m in control, I can still be a feminist who just happened to fall in love with a boy with a disposable income.

I believe that there are things in life you say, maybe naively, that you’ll never do.  Everyone has a version of this personal code.  For me I know I don’t ever want to be financially dependent on another person.  I don’t want to be in a position where I have to ask my partner for money.  That will always be important to me.  But how far am I willing to go to uphold these principles? Will I always insist on being equal in absolutely everything?  I’m not sure that’s even possible.  Already I’ve sacrificed pure equality because reality hit and I didn’t fall in love with a fellow graduate doing the exact same job as me and earning more or less what I earn.  I have to accept that and try and readjust if I want to live with him and make our relationship work.

When we eat out and the bill has been brought to the table 3 out of 4 times I know it’s more than I have in my spending account.  We both also know and are comfortable with the fact that he will be paying it.  So I carry on with our conversation knowing that he will get the bill.  This is done in a completely relaxed way.  It’s not like he makes a big deal of it.  It’s not a grand gesture or something to be held over me.  He has more money than me that he likes to spend it on eating out so he pays more often. This is the situation that we’re in.  I tried paying for half at the start, I tried to keep up but I just reached a point where I didn’t have the money.

I never thought I would be comfortable not paying for my share of dinner, even if it’s a ‘you get it this time and I’ll get it next time’ situation.  I always remembered and got the bill the next time.  It was important to me.  But the thing is we eat out 3-4 times per week and my income simply does not cover this expense.  I have talked to BF about this numerous times and he says this: “I work hard for the money I earn, we both love food and I love eating out with you. What’s the big deal if I pay?”  I don’t believe this is a rationale, it’s stupidly logical and I struggle every time we talk about it to mediate this logic with the things ‘I thought I would never do.’

How do I deal with those thoughts and still feel like we have an equal relationship?

I think about this most when we eat out or buy everyday things for the apartment.  Yesterday we needed to buy a clock for the bedroom.  I was just going to buy a small digital clock that shows the time in the dark.  I imagined the small one I would buy would cost no more than $50-80.  But BF loves technology and I can’t hold that against him.  For him electronics are more than just tech toys, good technology is one of the highest markers of human potential.  Devices mean that people can visualise better, smarter ways of doing things and that’s how his faith in the world manifests.  He likes to have devices in the apartment because he finds them personally inspiring and I can only respect that.  Needless to say that this afternoon what we came home with was not a small digital clock, it was a Bose Wave Radio worth upwards of $500.  While I love his appreciation of technological innovation I’ve long since accepted that the ‘really expensive tech stuff’ in our apartment will need to be paid for mostly by him (they fall into the 20% category).  I don’t make nearly enough in a week to go halves in this ode to technology that our apartment has become.

Is the Bose device his or is it ours? Should I be worried about what’s going to happen to the dynamic of our relationship because he has paid for more of the cooking utensils in our drawer? My answer is I think it’s different for everyone.  If I were in another relationship and it were a different guy maybe I would have to be concerned, but the thing with BF is that his approach to spending money doesn’t make me feel like the pot we use to boil our pasta represents a massive inequality in our relationship.  I know that he sees money as something to be spent in the present, just a means of exchange, and he doesn’t like the idea of placing any more importance on it beyond that.  He simply has more so he spends more.

Even now I hate the way this looks on paper. I look like a picture of a person I never thought I would be.  My friends worry about what this financial imbalance will do to the dynamic of our relationship but I guess I have started to understand that our dynamic is based on the conversations we have, the opinions we challenge each other with and the fact that we make decisions equally.  BF has made sure that money never affects that and I’m learning to do the same.

 

Taking time out to think doesn’t work for me

I’ve spent the past 5 days indoors recuperating after a small eye operation and, because my boyfriend had his wisdom teeth out at the same time, all I’ve been eating is soups and mushed up food.  It’s the saddest sight!  My friends think this is hilarious, they spent the weekend calling me up making pirate noises because of the unfortunate eye patch I had to wear.  For 5 days I’ve been surfing the net, clicking on interesting links, reading blogs and listening to The Fountainhead on my iPod (I’m not usually a fan of audio books but I challenge you to try and read past the first chapter of this book without blinding your supposedly good eye!).  My thinking was that I could use this time to learn as much as I could and do some good brainstorming.  I’m usually active and busy so I thought I could use this time well.  I was wrong.

I’ve come to the end of my line after reaching new heights of restlessness! After day two I began climbing the walls of my mind as well as my apartment.  Now at day 5, I can safely say that too much thinking time is not a good thing.  I’ve realised that ideas and thoughts strike me when I’m moving about, interacting with my work, friends, boyfriend, family and all of the other things that fill my life.  Staying still seems to have made my mind just as motionless.

I’ve spent the past 5 days having small ideas for blog posts, things I would love to write about, but being unable to expand on them beyond a few basic ideas.  I couldn’t figure out why this was.  During the past 24 hours I have felt myself starting to listen to the little voice inside my head which started whispering, “You’re one of those bloggers who think they have plenty of great ideas but when it comes down to actually writing you don’t have as many as you thought!”  Finally this afternoon I’ve come to realise that it’s the stimulation of the outside world, the conversations I have, the things I see and learn and most importantly the perspectives I get through actually doing things rather than just reading about them that fuel my thoughts.

This may seem like a basic principle to some people but my experience being a hermit over the past 5 days has really hit home for me that activity spawns more activity.  I think I can confidently say that if I cut all of the activities from my life and lived like I have for 5 days now, eating cereal for lunch and only looking at the sunshine through the window, I would stop having ideas and being able to write about them.  For me it’s not about stopping to give myself time to think, if I want to keep my mind active I need to keep my life active also.  So tomorrow it’s back to work.