Every Time I Refuse to Say a Mean Thing About Myself, ........

 

I re-watched The Illusionists yesterday. (If you haven't seen it: brilliant documentary by Elena Rossini (you can read an interview with her here) about body image and about how advertisers create insecurity to get you to buy more stuff.)

What's interesting is how I really felt like I needed to re-watch it. Maybe I had been feeling shitty due to too much time spent online, on my phone, on Instagram, with ads getting beamed at me all the time. I was definitely starting to get the body image panic, and also a feeling of 'I need to get the fuck off my smartphone, which I will definitely do after I've read and reread just one more favourite post on Captain Awkward........' (*lifts dazed and tired eyes away from screen five hours later). 

Anyway. So I revisited the amazing documentary (which by the way is so beautifully shot and so GOOD that I kind of just want to watch it AGAIN, TODAY) and I made a note to self in a notebook, which goes as follows:

'Every time I refuse to say mean things or think mean thoughts about my body, I'm sending a giant silent UP YOURS to the companies who make loads of money from making me feel insecure.'

And now for your benefit - here is a link to director Elena Rossini's blog posts about productivity in the digital age (there are lots more useful links in this one on 'How to become a successful digital minimalist', and I highly recommend getting lost down a rabbit-hole for a while, because this stuff is USEFUL.)

(FYI: I haven't turned my smartphone on all day. I'd call that a massive success.) 

https://www.therealists.org/2019/11/3-key-habits-to-become-a-successful-digital-minimalist/

Love, CN x

ps. I've decided that every woman I'm friends with who hasn't already seen it is getting The Illusionists gifted for her birthday this year.

Quick post... to say nothing in particular

So now I have a job. I haven't posted anything in a while, but I will. Ideas for things I badly want to write are flitting through my head now and again. I'll be in touch soon.

Now that I have a JOB, the bit of brain space that was clogged up with job application deadlines, occasional little bouts of what-do-I-do-with-my-life anxiety, the do-I-apply-fpr-this-job-or-not, etc etc etc, is now free. I find myself having the space, in my brain, to actually think: I have the time to do something good in the world.

Remember that blog post I wrote about how, when you have a job, the job wants your soul?... My job does not yet take all of my soul (part-time gigs are the BEST) but people have started dangling offers of 'more hours' in front of me, with the shiny prizes of possible promotion, sometime in the future, attached to them. Not always the most decisive of people, I find myself in the occasional dilemma.

Ideally people would not dangle these exciting things in front of me, though, because I have important things I want to do with my free days. I want to change a little bit of the world.

I remember reading in a book about 'what to do with your life' that you should consider taking the thing that everyone says is impossible, and set about making it happen.

... Big goals, yes?... More on that soon.

All the best

Cloud Nine

Cloud Nine has Got a Job... A Happy Ending

I feel this post is long overdue. There is no perfect way to write it, so I'm just going to say it:

... I HAVE A JOB! Woohoo!.....

After years of applying for jobs and trying to be confident in interviews, and trying the academic and the non-academic jobs, and facing the rejections and the blank stares ('You're an academic. Why do you want a job HERE?', and 'You were SO personable and friendly and you could clearly have done the job. Someone else had more office experience...') - I've got a job.

It was around January-February when the Lover said to me,

'Hey, you've been (at your institution) for four years now, doing casual work for them. Why don't you ask for a permanent job?'

And I was like - oh, OK then, I will!...

And we drafted the email together, and I summed up my four-years-experience, and I requested a meeting with my head of department. I asked for a permanent part-time post.

And now it's several months later, and I've got it. I had to apply, and interview, and jump the usual hoops for it, and live through the stress; but I've got it, and it's mine.

It was the afternoon of the interview day. I went outside, walked to the city centre, and just as I was reaching the good shops, my mobile rang. It was the head of department, offering me my job.

And as I hung up the phone, a cheesy reminder flashed up on my screen (because, you see, over the years I've set up various reminders in my phone, reminding me that I have a nice life and to be 'positive) - and the reminder happened to be the one that says 'Today is the best day of my life.'

And then I walked into a wine bar - because I needed somewhere nice to sit so I could bask in the glow of Having a Job, and also so I could message all my friends - and I just got so drunk. It was the sweet drunkenness of relief.

And now I have a job.

Lots of love to you all, and thanks for reading the blog - and good luck everyone who is working on their PhDs today

Cloud Nine x

(Got A Job Only Four Years After the PhD! Woohoo!)

(And She Lived Happily Ever After...)

Blogger isn't letting me write the blog post I want, so here is a picture instead: 'Work, Interrupted.' (I know how she feels. Procrastination strikes again?...)

19th May

... Somewhere in the world, there is a wedding dress, waiting to be worn.

(And I don't just mean the 'royal wedding' wedding dress. I could also mean lots of other dresses; but in particular one very nice dress which has just been made and which has just been tried on - yesterday, actually - and which in a few weeks' time will be worn, and danced in, and possibly a bit destroyed, depending on how much red wine is drunk, and spilled.  Somewhere in the world there is a wedding dress, and in a few weeks' time, someone gets to wear it...)

(A note on commitment: committing to a man - no problem. Committing to a DRESS, however: oh my God. There are SO MANY NICE ONES, and you are only supposed to pick the one (OK; maximum two...). How are you supposed to know which beautiful thing out of all the beautiful things you should definitely go for?...)

(And then you try it on, and as beautiful as it is, toucan't help but notice that there is one hanging just off to the side, behind you, which wasn't there last year, and which looks soul-crushingly lovely, but it would probably be weird if you now said 'Ooh, can I try it on?')

Committing to a PhD, when you don't really want to do your PhD, and want to play instead: annoyingly difficult.

Committing to a job: awful. How are you supposed to know if you are going for the right job, as you seek that permanent position and close off the other options?...

Somewhere in the world, a wedding dress waiting for the finishing touches. Somewhere else in the world (not too far from here), a job application (for a summer job this summer) waiting to be started. Deadline tomorrow.

Wish me LUCK!...


CN xx

Creativity Again: Insights from Days Gone By

This is one of those 'When I was Young' posts...

When I was a child, I was effortlessly creative. I would come home from school, sit down, and, if I felt like it, would make things. Or I would find a time at the weekend when no one needed my presence (not dinner time, not family TV time) and I would simply sit down on the floor, pull out all the materials I needed, and get creative. I used to make whatever toys I wanted (not that I lacked toys!). If I fancied a dolls' house with Victorian dolls in it, I would MAKE IT, using a shoebox for the room, some gift wrap with a fine pattern on it as wallpaper, and the dolls would be made out of white clay, and I would paint their faces a blush pink, and hand-stitch their clothes and make their hair out of wisps of thread. If I wanted, say, an enchanted forest full of unicorns and baby centaurs and weird creatures, I would MAKE IT out of Fimo (top tip: PVC glue mixed with a bit of pale blue paint produces a really nice 'clear-water-in-a-lake' effect when it dries). I ran across some of those toys in an old box during a house move and was amazed. I showed them to my partner. We found ourselves wondering whether archaeologists have in fact been wrong about a lot of things. You know when they show you tiny clay figurines of animals or people in museums, with captions like 'Animal Figurine, BC [whatever faraway date]', or 'Primitive goddess figure, BC [loooong ago]'? What if those weren't actually made by adults, but by children?... Has anyone considered the fact that these may just have been simple toys that enterprising kids had made, so they had something to play with?

I run across those 'Victorian' dolls recently (the 'family' is still there, including a lady in a pink dress and even a frickin' matching PARASOL that I actually MADE out of a lollipop stick and some fabric and  some ribbon bits and beads)  and I marvel at the determination of a young child to sit there and make these things, just because she decided that she would like them to exist and she would simply like to play with them. Mostly, I think about her unflappable concentration, and wonder how I might go back in time and bottle some of it, and transport it back again to today. I sure could use it.

I mean, at the time, I was a conscientious student with plenty of pressure to do well in school, and I had homework to do and stuff, but... whenever I decided I wanted to make stuff, I just made stuff. When I needed to write a story, I wrote it. When I was reading a good book, I stayed with that book until the end, and more often than not I found time to reread it, again and again. 

Stark contrast between that and, say, my PhD days, when I used to wonder how to capture that feeling of reeeeeally just wanting to work on your PhD, and how to feel the excitement of creating something that you wanted to simply bring into existence, and how to awaken the joy of rereading something you just wrote and thinking how much you love it and how you JUST want to read it one more time before you put it away... 

Today?... I just spent from about 9:12 til about 12.25 (now) procrastinating on the creative project for which I had saved this whole beautiful morning. (In my defence: this is the morning when the washing machine chose to break, mid-wash, and I obvs felt compelled to sort that out, although what I was doing putting the washing machine on in the first place, just before I was due to start my Creative Time, is beyond me.)  So far, I have sorted out the washing machine mess, used that as an excuse to mop all the floors, and generally, I have been trying to get around to the creative project, with no success. Unless you count procrastination as the essential part of creativity which it would increasingly appear to be, in which case - I am doing great this morning. 

I wonder if this is just generally the curse of being an adult - bills need paying, rooms need tidying (and no one will get around to it if not YOU), shit needs doing, grown-up jobs need finishing, and there is just generally less time to feel like your mind is empty and you can fill it with thoughts and visions of your choice. At the same time, I do seem to bring a lot of this on myself (I sit down to work, I decide I need coffee; I get up. On the way to coffee, I discover several other things to tidy or play with. I come back. I still haven't made coffee. I get out my work materials. I decide I need my glasses. On the way to get the glasses, I forget I was ever looking for them, and I find myself some other procrastinatey job to do.) (As I write this, my brain is thinking: office. You need an office. You need a studio space to escape to. You cannot do creativity at home. You like your home a lot, but it is not a creative space. It is a space of housewifery and drudgery and flower arranging and endlessly putting things away,  and cooking, and all the joyful and seductive but unpaid labour that the likes of Simone de Beauvoir warned you about. It actually saps your creativity and only lets you exercise it if you engage in its own forms of acceptable play. You need to take your creativity elsewhere.)

Maybe that's what I need. A playroom of my very own, where I can sit on the floor, and where no grown-up things like housework can possibly be conceived of, and nothing can distract me.

Creativity

Creativity is a scary horse. Twitter is full of those comments like 'I want nothing better than to be a [writer/ artist/ insert creative calling HERE] but I'd literally rather do ANYTHING OTHER than [sit down and write/ actually make some art/ insert any favourite creative activity HERE].'

Recently, I was asked if I fancied doing a creative 'commission'. (I am a fully-fledged creative these days, with, alas, still a bit of Grotty Jobbing and some academic teaching thrown in to keep me afloat. I am also trying a new thing called 'living within my means'. It's HARD. Like, you can't just hop on the train and visit Paris whenever you feel like it.)

But anyway, back to my 'commission' (which is a commission in inverted commas, because I am not actually being paid for it; I'm doing it as a favour for a friend. I'm not really supposed to be doing work for free much anymore; I'm doing this new thing where I 'value myself' much more than that. But I agreed to do it because a) I want the work to exist, and I want to be the person who created it, and b) you probably guessed it - if I don't take the job, then I'll only spend that time cleaning under the oven or staring at my phone. At least if I take the job and do the work, even for free, at the end of it there will be a CREATION).

So I was offered the job about a month ago. Since then, each and every week and weekend has been filled with hope: maybe today I'll start on it. Maybe. Each and every weekend passed with the hope becoming a little bit more crushed: damn, I didn't make it this weekend. Maybe... soon?... Something else always takes precedence. It doesn't help if one of your day jobs is a teaching job. That shit ALWAYS takes more preparation than you think it will, and there's ALWAYS something more you could do to make it even better - always.

So basically, I procrastinated on it for a month. I finally told myself: right, this Sunday, I am doing it. I had a ton of planning to do for Monday (which I am still catching up on now) and I had to run to town to collect a thing of mine that had been on display and hadn't sold... I pushed all those things to the second half of the day and made a serious effort to make a start on the creative project. Result:

8-9 am (got up, breakfast, procrastination)
9-10 am (clean sink, do washing up)
10-11 (procrastination. Better put my washing on)
11-12 (shit. shit. Where are materials and tools for creativity? Wander round house ineffectually, looking for materials. Put some of them in one place. Keep forgetting what am doing. Open emails with project spec in them. Stare at project spec. Google things.)
12-1 (start making first draft of thing. It is shit. Make another seven shitty quick drafts. They are all shit. Panic and think, oh no, my 'gift' has deserted me. The creation has defeated me. have another go.)
1-2 (realise I have to run to town and get the thing, because if I don't go today they will charge me storage. Do a bit more half-arsed creating. Creation still resolutely shit. Gather things, get dressed, run to town.)
2-3 - town. (Look at all the people who do not have to create. They just consume happily. Half-compose an email in my head to explain why I won't be able to 'do the project justice', although only yesterday I told them that I've made a start and I'm on it, so it's a bit weird to say no now...)
3-4 I come home at some point. Rest. Come back to the making and the creating. Inexplicably, the draft I make now is GOOD. It definitely started off shit but is now good. I make a few more drafts. They are all, as far as I can tell, acceptable. One of them I am a little bit in love with.
4-5 I email the person a snapshot of my first attempts (half expecting person to say 'Yeah don't worry, we can still find someone else'.) Person comes back to me with words like 'MASTERPIECES' and 'the best I've seen' and 'love them' and 'how long do these take you to do?' (I wanna say: oh, one month procrastinating, and then just a couple of hours to get started and then a few minutes each, that's all.)
5-6 I'm on a roll, so I make a few more things. (I'll get tomorrow's prep done, somehow. Sometime...)

Wow. And I stare at the things I've created, really pleased, thinking: wow, I must be quite good at this, actually.

So here we have it. How to create a thing (this goes for writing a bit of your PhD, too) : procrastinate for a month, whilst thinking about thing with dread. Feel awful about procrastinating. Ignore requests for updates until the delay becomes ridiculous. Have a go. Produce rubbish thing. Have another go. Have a go again. Produce thing. Surpass own (and someone else's) expectations. Realise this was always how it was going to be. Realise that every part of this process was just right. I am doing everything just as it should be done.

I wish the process were more seamless and less procrastinatey, but there we go.

If this is creativity, then I guess I'll take it.

Love,

Cn 

Xxx