Singular Scene

So Singular in Each Particular

Itchy Feet

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I have quite a time line. If I look back on the last 25 or so years I can see a recurring pattern that manifests as a regular need to make some kind of fundamental change to my world; just to keep things, well… interesting I guess…

Let me show you what I mean…

1985 – Age 17 – Leave school to embark on an adventure working for ‘the bank’ – the BNZ. Yeah, I was yet to learn about REAL adventure…

1988 – Leave New Zealand for the wilds of the American East Coast… epic. epic adventure including near miss with a very, very dubious church (read cult), the worst job I’ve ever had… exploitation and eventually crossing the Atlantic to the UK and Europe… but this period of 3 years living independently abroad was pretty incredible… the great far outweighed the dreadful.

1991 – Leave Europe and return to New Zealand… and leave small town family home to move to Auckland.

1995 – Leave working in childcare environments and move into the marvellous adventure that is Customer Service which included a move from Auckland to Whangarei.

1999 – Leave New Zealand again this time just to cross the ditch for Sydney and a 3 year course in performance vocals.

2001 – Finish my course and start full time work again, this time as an assistant to a music director.

2004 – World shifted significantly as the MD left suddenly and I was left in limbo until I got rescued with a job as Web Princess in the IT department (cue finding my niche.. woah.. only took 20 years). During this period I took on further study and got my Bachelors Degree.

2009 – Leave my full time job and embark on full time study – which coincided with surviving on full time freelancing as well.

2012 – So, now what?

Yeah, that’s the tricky part… that’s the place I’m in right now… I’m so,so itchy for something new, I can barely sit still. But what? What new thing?

I’m completely happy with the work I’m doing, and the prospect of more study is unappealing, really… and for what? I’m not ruling it out in the future… but for now, I don’t see it. What I CAN see is geographic reorganisation… I could move house… that’s incredibly appealing… leaving the flat after 5 years would be a headache… but I’d be leaving the Naked neighbour – THAT would have to be a good thing.

The zone I’m starting to find myself in is the prospect of leaving Sydney. And this is all at once terrifying and exhilarating… so the questions become… what’s to keep me here? and where could I go?

The ties to Sydney are strong, and all about wonderful friends and people I’ve connected with over the years. But these are all that’s left, really. Once upon a time I’d have never considered leaving my church but discovering God as something/someone way bigger than a building means where I go He goes. The fact that the work I do can be done anywhere is incredibly liberating and makes me feel like, right now, the sky’s the limit. Sydney is gorgeous, I absolutely love it, but I’m starting to think about the fact that there are so many other possibilities… and if I had to outline my top 5… these are them.





Am I actually making plans? No, not yet, but I’m entertaining the idea, and truth to tell, living in one of these places has been a recurring thought for at least the last year – probably longer … so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility for things to change before too long.

However, for now, I’ve a number of projects on the go that will preclude anything happening immediately, but I have to say… flirting with the idea of this kind of change is thrilling… feels like the sky’s the limit…

But, for now… to entertain me while I’m entertaining these thoughts.. tell me.. where would YOU go?

 

Two Stones

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Black & White Rocks

A Jewish Rabbi once said
A person should carry two stones in a pocket at all times,
On one should be inscribed
“i am but dust and ashes” and on the other
“for my sake the world and all that is in it was created”
and each one should be used as needed.

I have been pretty much captivated by this thought for most of the week because it seems as though everywhere I look, people are holding on to the wrong stone, listening to the wrong internal voices.  They’re not the only ones… I do it too.

I wasn’t a popular kid. I had a circle of friends – mostly other good kids from youth group. I wasn’t a rebel (though I did experiment with tobacco in the school grounds one time),  I was never much good at breaking rules and the popular kids seemed better at that than me (short skirts, anyone?).

Yeah, not popular.

When you live in that zone you blossom at every bit of attention from someone in the popular crowd even though deep down you know it’s stupid to care that much about it.  When you live in that zone you tell yourself that the reason you’re not popular is that you actually aren’t that special and you don’t deserve it…

Then you leave the school yard, and you find yourself in a much bigger social circle, and while the challenges of navigating a new social scene remain similar it’s a little easier to find your niche in a different crowd.  It takes a while, because the underlying self talk still gets in the way, still sabotages you from time to time…  But as you get older you realise that everything is meaningless… particularly where it relates to what people think and you just put your head down and do your thing, you’re much more comfortable being exactly who you are and the people who don’t get that can go get jumped on, because really… who cares?  Maybe you’ve started to figure out just which stone to apply when.

I feel like I have.

So fast forward to now, and here I am standing up in front of a crowd, they’re enjoying what I have to say, and they approach tentatively afterwards to talk about what they’ve heard… and it’s then that I hold the stone that calls me dust and ashes. Because this distance between a speaker and a crowd is bullshit. This ‘famous’ thing is meaningless and it isn’t fame… or popularity, or being in demand that’s any kind of important… and while it’s nice to be in demand let’s be real, it is here today and gone tomorrow. It is meaningless*.

But then there are times, when I’m standing on the precipice of something awesome, when there are new possibilities opening and new  friendships, a change, a challenge, an opportunity and if, while I stand there I’m holding the ‘dust and ashes’ stone I’ll be quite likely to shrink back… thinking that there could be no possible reason something this good, this scary, this massive could be being laid out for me.

Which is also bullshit… because, ‘the world and all that is in it was created for me’ – and why, on earth, should I consider that I am undeserving?  I’m no less deserving than you… or the person next to you. I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and so are you. You deserve EVERYTHING, love, laughter, passion, adventure and joy.  I deserve it. We all do.

And yet we still tell ourselves that we are but dust and ashes and we sabotage such things before they even begin.

Which stone are you holding right now?

And Is it the right one?

 

 

 

 

 

* I am at risk here of going off on a whole tear about this stupid media fuelled obsession with fame – and all these people who are no more important than we are that we look up to, that we freak out if we see them in the street and we clam up if they talk to us.  How we react in the company of such people says way more about us than them… and those of them who hold the ‘i am but dust and ashes’ stone who are the ones we should aspire to mimicking… not those who wear fame thinking that the world and all that it contains was created for them…

What you Don’t see – but What you Get.

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How many times have you had your personality tested? Or completed some kind of questionnaire that promised to give you more insight into who you really are and how you best interact with the general populace?

I’ve lost count. There have been many tests, and many results over the years. Of the ones that I remember Myers Briggs calls me ISTJ, Personality Plus calls me Choleric, I have an ID (Instinctive Drive) of 7453 and my highest scoring traits on Strengths Finder are… Intellection, Learner, Relator, Achiever and Maximiser.

So what does that mean?

It means that as someone who is Choleric, I am at my most satisfied when life, the universe is everything is in control (recipe for a stress free existence, no?), and it means that when someone uses manipulation to exert control over me I do.not react well (even if my reactions occur out of the earshot of the person pulling the strings).

As an ISTJ I have a strong sense of duty leaving me seriously motivated to finish what I start, and to do it well, without letting anything get in my way. It also means when something I start gets finished by someone else it’s a really tough gig to shake it off and move on.

The ID (High Verify for those in the know) calls me a thinker, and troubleshooter, with a natural talent for problem solving who needs to be clearly understood and listened to (and who has no problem going around things again, and asking the tough questions so that we’re clear, are we clear?)

The Strengths finder ‘strengths’ are all like they sound… Intellection… a thinker, spending significant time inside my own head… couple that with Learner and you have a thinker who’s relentlessly curious, add Achiever, and I will work at a problem until I see a result – extending that further with Maximiser means the result is nothing short of excellent – and as a Relator I prefer to be well known and to know well a select few, a trusted circle…

Handful much?

In all, these traits, for their good and ill mean that when I’m given a job to do, particularly one that captures my imagination, I will slog it out and the results will be good. Really good. It may take time but the deliverables will be worth it.

I have been working on one such piece of work, and on Monday it will be shown to the world. Frankly, this is a signature project for me, it will feature in a showcase next to work done by people I admire and I have been relentless about everything in it being as neat, clean and GOOD as possible so it will withstand scrutiny by my peers and by those above me. And frankly, when two of my code headed colleagues saw it and responded let’s say, appreciatively, about how good it was, it felt awesome to be the chick who turned the boys heads… with her code.

I can’t wait to show it you…

It will be worth the wait.

Virtual Friends and Relations

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Lettres de LouI got mail today. You know, the real kind. It was a lovely letter hand written by Debra, and sent from Chicago because at some point early in the year I said I’d love to be on her list of people she wanted to connect with in 2012.

Debra’s word of the year is connect… so it may surprise you that she actually shut down her twitter and facebook accounts and is connecting [OMG] In.Real.Life.

I applaud her. So much of my connection has been done online lately. Not all of it, I’m not yet reduced to spending all day in my jammies, ordering pizza to be delivered and shuffling to the door in my slippers to collect it. But, as I spend all day at the computer, there are any number of conversations happening on Skype, group chats on the forums I work on and occasional ‘pop ups’ from friends who are working, much the same way as me, in their home offices, or in cafes and co-working spaces. I live in a seriously connected world.

But I’ll be honest, it’s easy to mistake those connections for real life relationships and to be brought up short when they’re gone. The loss of them feels every bit as real as if a friend had slapped you in the face, turned her back and walked way saying she never wants to see you again.

Every bit as real.

How do I know? I’ve been there, and have spent a good part of the last couple of months completely bemused (read sad and disappointed) that the person I’d been chatting to daily, sometimes for hours, apparently found it a lot easier to switch off our connection than I did to be the one who was being switched off from! Frankly, I’m still surprised at how deep it cut.

I appreciate that life changes, you fall in love, become a step mum, start your own business and all of a sudden all those things you used to find taking up your time become quickly relegated to bottom of the priority heap in the face of all of these exciting, challenging new responsibilities. I get it. I really do and I don’t begrudge these wonderful things happening, I applaud and celebrate them all.

What I’m most disturbed by is not that I no longer have that connection, what I’m challenged by is that it meant so much to me, and that someone could have walked away without even an explanation or a ‘see you round’. It ended on a note of ‘I’m heading out of town for a week’ catch you when I get back – and I basically never heard from her again, at least not in my Skype window, and certainly for no more than a ‘Hi’ nice of you to contact me.

So it left me asking myself, how do I know that actually, any of it was real? She could have used a pseudonym, she could have been a 60 yr old man, sitting behind a computer playing with me for all I know. And why the hell do I care?

I don’t think there are any answers. I think there are lessons. The lessons are straightforward.

Guard your heart.

Don’t assume they feel the same.

And for goodness sake, don’t call it a relationship (or a friendship) until you’ve actually met, until you know more than their handle and avatar, and until you have looked them in their eye and gauged just how genuine they are.**

Lesson learned.

** Or, have read their handwriting on a beautiful card – as I did today – thanks Debra for that and for the inspiration to blog* this!!!

*Don’t hold your breath though for much more… unless you want to head over to http://thewebprincess.com and read technical mumbo jumbo!!