Why should we do something we love as opposed to doing anything tolerable that pays the bills?
Because after a while you will resent the power that tolerable job has over you in terms of the hours it takes out of your life, the effort you put in where you don't get anything other than money back (a mere pittance at that).
Because there has got to be more to life than that.
Because there is too much misery in the world as it is.
Because people are too materialistic and status-oriented as it is.
Because not everyone was made to be perpetually busy in something that does not add anything to their lives because money in itself does not motivate them.
Because God or the universe made you specially to perform a vital role in the transformation of the universe from a hellish place of chaos and suffering to one of enlightenment.
I could go on and on with many reasons but the fact is, there are an infinite number of reasons for why we could and indeed should pursue our dream occupation.
In my case, I have tried my sincerest hardest to be the kind of person who is acceptable to others; mainly family and loved ones because life is too short to impress absolutely everyone.
Could it be possible that in my well-intentioned desire to please my family that I have denied my true self?
Life after university was a struggle between being myself and following my dreams and pleasing others and keeping up appearances. It is hard enough getting out of bed in the mornings as I am not a morning person but to do it with the intention of making others proud of you is a recipe for disaster!
This is the reason why I hopped from job to job in the three years since I graduated from university. I took on jobs that sounded good and supposedly had a good future only to find that I felt like a prisoner waiting for the day and the hour I would be released from my cell of lacklustre surroundings that desensitised me to the vibrance and life out there in the big wide world. I quit perfectly good jobs because they paid very little and did not offer opportunities for advancement when deep down all I want from life isn't to keep on moving and evolving and becoming something outside of me. No, I want to stay exactly where I am externally while the journey inside of me would take me to many different realisations.
I want to be the caterpillar who spins herself into a chrysalis cocoon and waits patiently. Developing, nurturing, incubating, transforming silently while mosquitoes and other flies fly frantically by, while busy bees buzz here and there creating honey. I want to be the caterpillar who does not care that others are economically active, proving themselves to each other all the time, I want to be outside of this race. I want to go through my journey at my own pace, doing my own thing until one day I am ready to break out of that chrysallis and emerge as a beautiful creature ready to fly and take its place in a world of winged creatures who must fly no matter what.
I don't want to be looked down on for having weak wings all my life when all I'm doing is trying to be just like everyone else and failing at it. I don't want to be looked down on for being a wingless caterpillar either but it is something I must accept if I have any chance in hell of ever becoming a butterfly.
Tuesday, 21 December 2010
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
My heart is beating so fast against the slow, calm indifference of the world
Since graduating from university, I have struggled to find a literary community that shares the same ideals as me and has the same tastes. In 2008 I founded a young writer's group, comprising of me, two other girls, a boy (who would later become my boyfriend) and a couple of other guys here and there. It started off promisingly, had good moments like this one time we went to a poetry event that had no poetry at all but just music (there was a band in particular that I liked where a girl was playing a musical saw!), there were bad times (when we met up with a girl who brought a sheet of verbal diarrhoea for us to read, but I had nothing to say other than 'err, that was good'). It lasted a maximum of eight months - it ended at the Notting Hill carnival due to a mixture of my inability to relate to the new members of the group. And I do tend to lose my focus and interest pretty quickly, oops.
I started writing a play about a Richard and Judy show in a parallel universe where Judy elopes to Minnesota with Bob Dylan and Richard becomes a travelling guru with his wolf-man, chimpanzee-voiced genius hermaphrodite lover Ezekiel Methuselah. So, I naturally thought to myself, 'I have potential to be a playwright'. So I enrolled onto a script-writing course in Stratford and guess what? The teacher was a deeply insecure middle-aged woman who basically rubbished my ideas and told another girl (who was really confident and ambitious) to stop being so insecure. She was like a witch. And I couldn't bear to be criticised without the constructive part.
In July of this year, I attended a local writer's meeting at a library, it was okay at first, I enjoyed narrating from the point of view of a potato and a pea (one of our writing tasks). But when it came to writing a story there and then about a row between a bus conductor and an Elvis impersonator, I thought to myself 'this is so shit'. Needless to say, I didn't go back.
Next, I enrolled myself onto a short story writing course at the Mary Ward centre. After one class I was bored stiff. Our first homework was to read a story by a writer called Flannery O'Connor. Who?? I know! I mean, here I was trying to be experimental by writing surreal stories about hermaphrodites, rockstar dogs named Herbert and an alternative version of a fairytale, trying to put myself in the same league as people like Kurt Vonnegut, Chuck Palahniuk, J.D Salinger and Haruki Murakami and there was the teacher, trying to turn us into painfully-bland, middle-england writers like Flannery effing O'Connor - the kind of writers who have a trendy picture on their book cover of a fashionable, generic-looking scene rather than a striking and bold painting by a painter from the 1890s or something equally beautiful.
I don't want people to put me in boxes dammit! I'm a person, trying to get to grips with my desire to write and as if I didn't already have enough demons within me separating my mind into different streams, I then have to deal with the market out there putting labels on people like me.
I'm a woman, I'm poor, I'm an ethnic. The bookshops out there, the bestseller lists and newspaper reviews all seem to shout at me the same thing Albert said to Celie in the Colour Purple; "You're black, you're poor, you're ugly, you're a woman, you're nothing at all!" Screw him (on Celie's behalf) and screw them (on my behalf)
My problem isn't just that I'm a ethnic, working-class woman trying to write as good (if not, better) than the men and to be respected by a white audience, but that my identity isn't very solid and I can't write with conviction and can't market myself with confidence.
Despite all these obstacles in my way, I'm not going to give up. I'll write and strive till the day I die.
And on a mildly related note - don't ever (ever!) enter into a relationship with a fellow writer, if you're a woman. For the man, it's fine, he'll find a way to come out the stronger one of the two, he'll even suck you dry and treat you as his muse (by the way, in the old days a muse was usually a prostitute or working class) under the pretence of loving you, and perhaps he does love you genuinely, but not in the way that you need. Being a female writer and sharing your life with a male writer is just about the worst thing you could do to your writing career. He'll find you ever so fascinating, wild and crazy, he'll suck all the blood out of you like a vampire, feed his own lifeless, pale, bourgeois art with your authentic, exotic nature and turn his art into something quite exquisite. But don't let him do that!
He may have stolen my artistic identity, but I have the power to innovate and create a new one out of near-nothing. If it wasn't for him, I'd be standing on the shoulders of giants instead of starting out right at the bottom.
And once again, I have succeeded in generalising the whole of menfolk by the actions of one man, apologies. But the fact is, women like me need a practical, worldly man like a policeman or engineer or something - someone who will find me fascinating but can't steal from me because he is secure in his own identity to never steal from a partner. I still believe in love, just not with a writer. I really feel for Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath and Zelda Fitzgerald who have been overshadowed by Jean-Paul Sartre, Ted Hughes and F.Scott Fitzgerald respectively. I wouldn't want to be on the dark side of the moon when I deserved to be on the lit side just as much as him.
Oh the politics of it all!
I started writing a play about a Richard and Judy show in a parallel universe where Judy elopes to Minnesota with Bob Dylan and Richard becomes a travelling guru with his wolf-man, chimpanzee-voiced genius hermaphrodite lover Ezekiel Methuselah. So, I naturally thought to myself, 'I have potential to be a playwright'. So I enrolled onto a script-writing course in Stratford and guess what? The teacher was a deeply insecure middle-aged woman who basically rubbished my ideas and told another girl (who was really confident and ambitious) to stop being so insecure. She was like a witch. And I couldn't bear to be criticised without the constructive part.
In July of this year, I attended a local writer's meeting at a library, it was okay at first, I enjoyed narrating from the point of view of a potato and a pea (one of our writing tasks). But when it came to writing a story there and then about a row between a bus conductor and an Elvis impersonator, I thought to myself 'this is so shit'. Needless to say, I didn't go back.
Next, I enrolled myself onto a short story writing course at the Mary Ward centre. After one class I was bored stiff. Our first homework was to read a story by a writer called Flannery O'Connor. Who?? I know! I mean, here I was trying to be experimental by writing surreal stories about hermaphrodites, rockstar dogs named Herbert and an alternative version of a fairytale, trying to put myself in the same league as people like Kurt Vonnegut, Chuck Palahniuk, J.D Salinger and Haruki Murakami and there was the teacher, trying to turn us into painfully-bland, middle-england writers like Flannery effing O'Connor - the kind of writers who have a trendy picture on their book cover of a fashionable, generic-looking scene rather than a striking and bold painting by a painter from the 1890s or something equally beautiful.
I don't want people to put me in boxes dammit! I'm a person, trying to get to grips with my desire to write and as if I didn't already have enough demons within me separating my mind into different streams, I then have to deal with the market out there putting labels on people like me.
I'm a woman, I'm poor, I'm an ethnic. The bookshops out there, the bestseller lists and newspaper reviews all seem to shout at me the same thing Albert said to Celie in the Colour Purple; "You're black, you're poor, you're ugly, you're a woman, you're nothing at all!" Screw him (on Celie's behalf) and screw them (on my behalf)
My problem isn't just that I'm a ethnic, working-class woman trying to write as good (if not, better) than the men and to be respected by a white audience, but that my identity isn't very solid and I can't write with conviction and can't market myself with confidence.
Despite all these obstacles in my way, I'm not going to give up. I'll write and strive till the day I die.
And on a mildly related note - don't ever (ever!) enter into a relationship with a fellow writer, if you're a woman. For the man, it's fine, he'll find a way to come out the stronger one of the two, he'll even suck you dry and treat you as his muse (by the way, in the old days a muse was usually a prostitute or working class) under the pretence of loving you, and perhaps he does love you genuinely, but not in the way that you need. Being a female writer and sharing your life with a male writer is just about the worst thing you could do to your writing career. He'll find you ever so fascinating, wild and crazy, he'll suck all the blood out of you like a vampire, feed his own lifeless, pale, bourgeois art with your authentic, exotic nature and turn his art into something quite exquisite. But don't let him do that!
He may have stolen my artistic identity, but I have the power to innovate and create a new one out of near-nothing. If it wasn't for him, I'd be standing on the shoulders of giants instead of starting out right at the bottom.
And once again, I have succeeded in generalising the whole of menfolk by the actions of one man, apologies. But the fact is, women like me need a practical, worldly man like a policeman or engineer or something - someone who will find me fascinating but can't steal from me because he is secure in his own identity to never steal from a partner. I still believe in love, just not with a writer. I really feel for Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath and Zelda Fitzgerald who have been overshadowed by Jean-Paul Sartre, Ted Hughes and F.Scott Fitzgerald respectively. I wouldn't want to be on the dark side of the moon when I deserved to be on the lit side just as much as him.
Oh the politics of it all!
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Who wants to be a writer/ artist anyway?
These past few months I have been pondering on my inability to make a go of being a writer or an artist. Yes, it's true I do get regular visions of creativity that are the basic requirements of being a writer or an artist of some sort. Every month I used to have the demons of restlessness pestering my soul until I produced a poem, an extra couple of scenes in my play or a short story or two. Nowadays those demons are of a more angelic nature and are focused more on visual art. Every month I paint a picture of two of an abstract expressionist nature, I draw a picture or two of indeterminate subject matter. I produce the art and the literature but there's always something stopping me from exposing myself to the world or promoting myself.
I used to be of the belief that creativity is dirt common and that only the very privileged of those creative souls were able to make something of themselves. To an extent I still believe this. But I am now of the belief that there is more to life and the world around us than art and literature. I would much rather establish myself in the solid world, as an individual whose purpose is to help alleviate the suffering of others or to nurture people and in turn help feel more human.
I used to dream of being a glamorous and famous writer like Doris Lessing in her youth, a well-dressed hostess of sophisticated and intellectual parties like Virginia Woolf's sister. It doesn't exist. Not for me anyway. I am ground in place by my circumstances, by my background, by the people I know, by my contacts, by my ethnicity, economic condition, introversion. I am not like those people, nor will I ever be. Do I even want to?
Whats important is for me is to be authentic to my personal circumstances, to experience life to its fullest, to mature, to develop myself further. And most importantly, to stop thinking of fame and fortune, not because I'm talentless and deluded or that I'm lowly and humble and don't deserve any of it. But because fame and fortune don't equate with enlightenment, or the happily ever after, and most soberingly of all, it doesn't mean I'll live forever. One day I will too die, just like billions of people before me. I cannot take fame and fortune with me to the other side.
So my answer is, no, I do not want to be a famous artist or writer. I much prefer my own life to be a work of art than works of art to be my whole life. I don't want to be a slave. I just want to live a simple life and do an honest job. And Joyce Carol Oates, I would much rather be Alice than Lewis Carroll.
I'm only 23 years old and I think I'm entitled to live life before writing about it.
I used to be of the belief that creativity is dirt common and that only the very privileged of those creative souls were able to make something of themselves. To an extent I still believe this. But I am now of the belief that there is more to life and the world around us than art and literature. I would much rather establish myself in the solid world, as an individual whose purpose is to help alleviate the suffering of others or to nurture people and in turn help feel more human.
I used to dream of being a glamorous and famous writer like Doris Lessing in her youth, a well-dressed hostess of sophisticated and intellectual parties like Virginia Woolf's sister. It doesn't exist. Not for me anyway. I am ground in place by my circumstances, by my background, by the people I know, by my contacts, by my ethnicity, economic condition, introversion. I am not like those people, nor will I ever be. Do I even want to?
Whats important is for me is to be authentic to my personal circumstances, to experience life to its fullest, to mature, to develop myself further. And most importantly, to stop thinking of fame and fortune, not because I'm talentless and deluded or that I'm lowly and humble and don't deserve any of it. But because fame and fortune don't equate with enlightenment, or the happily ever after, and most soberingly of all, it doesn't mean I'll live forever. One day I will too die, just like billions of people before me. I cannot take fame and fortune with me to the other side.
So my answer is, no, I do not want to be a famous artist or writer. I much prefer my own life to be a work of art than works of art to be my whole life. I don't want to be a slave. I just want to live a simple life and do an honest job. And Joyce Carol Oates, I would much rather be Alice than Lewis Carroll.
I'm only 23 years old and I think I'm entitled to live life before writing about it.
Saturday, 7 February 2009
We've come a long long way
We have come a long, long way this year, haven't we? And without making sweeping generalisations, I will focus this little post on someone I know very well - myself. Last year I was a sad little graduate of a girl, all my self-esteem and aspirations stolen from me by the culture-shock of the real world. Gradually, time healed me. My quarterlife-crisis ended at some point in late November 2008 (it had started in December 2007 and reached its ugly peak in July 2008) and I'm happy to say I'm a lot happier nowadays just living in the moment, working in a satisfying, ethical and human job (albeit paying merely pocket-money). As such, my creativity is happy too. It's no longer fighting for my attention in a mind controlled by job-hunting and desperation and confusion. I'm no longer trying to work out my role and place in society because I've found it at last. I'm also not feeling nearly as nostalgic about university as last year - who wants to be uprooted from society, be spoonfed a stimulating and amazing mixture of social life, intellectual musings and fake notions of grandeur when you can be a salt-of-the earth type person who works during the week for something worthwhile and satisfying and builds a lasting base out in the real world?
Work is good for the creative soul. You don't have to be a young heiress living in Madagascar to write works of Literature. You don't have to be a lottery winner doing a year abroad in a university studying the craft of writing under an accomplished and famous teacher. Hell, you don't even have to be a young middle-class graduate travelling around the world, having the time of your life, all the while being funded by your hard-working oxen of a parental unit, no. You can be poor like me, living with your parents and siblings for the time being, while working towards moving out and doing a meaningful and well-paid job like a primary school teacher or a domestic violence worker.
Screw privilege and the type of opportunities that are handed to you on a silver plate. Forget being a member of the gentry or nobility, what's truly noble is working for a living and creating your own opportunities, making the good life happen with your own two hands. If there's anything Obama has taught me is that it's never too late - the guy paid off the last of his student debt only a few years ago and is now the president of the USA and providing very well for his adorable little family unit. In fact, he's a bundle of hope for everyone out there. And without going into the politics of it, I can safely say this brilliant, beautiful, charming brown man has shifted the way we think. Even if he turns out to be an incompetent politician (which I highly doubt), at least he has been a mentor to us all.
Work is good for the creative soul. You don't have to be a young heiress living in Madagascar to write works of Literature. You don't have to be a lottery winner doing a year abroad in a university studying the craft of writing under an accomplished and famous teacher. Hell, you don't even have to be a young middle-class graduate travelling around the world, having the time of your life, all the while being funded by your hard-working oxen of a parental unit, no. You can be poor like me, living with your parents and siblings for the time being, while working towards moving out and doing a meaningful and well-paid job like a primary school teacher or a domestic violence worker.
Screw privilege and the type of opportunities that are handed to you on a silver plate. Forget being a member of the gentry or nobility, what's truly noble is working for a living and creating your own opportunities, making the good life happen with your own two hands. If there's anything Obama has taught me is that it's never too late - the guy paid off the last of his student debt only a few years ago and is now the president of the USA and providing very well for his adorable little family unit. In fact, he's a bundle of hope for everyone out there. And without going into the politics of it, I can safely say this brilliant, beautiful, charming brown man has shifted the way we think. Even if he turns out to be an incompetent politician (which I highly doubt), at least he has been a mentor to us all.
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
good intentions and all
I may be full of good ideas and good intentions, and be super-motivated to the point of being hyper (and I don't drink coffee), but it all cools down after a night's sleep.
I wanted to create a magazine named after the Dutch tulip mania of the 17th century whereby tulips were so valuable that they were sold individually, I wanted to write features and stories, get my brother to handle the technical side of things and be my illustrator.
Then I thought about marketing my brother's photography and his psychedelic illustrations to the hip Londoners out there roaming the vintage markets of Spitalfields, Camden and Portobello.
Then I thought, 'well, actually, I need to get a full-time well-paid job so I can move out of my parents' house' and then I started job-hunting seriously and guess what? My creativity stopped.
Today I thought about Poirot and the Orient Express, and how I'd love to go on such an adventure someday, probably. And that's how my day passed. By evening, I was eating the tortellini we'd made, wondering what happened to all my plans and my ambition. Gone to bed, most probably.
I wanted to create a magazine named after the Dutch tulip mania of the 17th century whereby tulips were so valuable that they were sold individually, I wanted to write features and stories, get my brother to handle the technical side of things and be my illustrator.
Then I thought about marketing my brother's photography and his psychedelic illustrations to the hip Londoners out there roaming the vintage markets of Spitalfields, Camden and Portobello.
Then I thought, 'well, actually, I need to get a full-time well-paid job so I can move out of my parents' house' and then I started job-hunting seriously and guess what? My creativity stopped.
Today I thought about Poirot and the Orient Express, and how I'd love to go on such an adventure someday, probably. And that's how my day passed. By evening, I was eating the tortellini we'd made, wondering what happened to all my plans and my ambition. Gone to bed, most probably.
Monday, 24 March 2008
Forgive me, for I am a novice, and a naive one at that
I can't believe I'm here at last. I've done it - I've overcome all the obstacles, the fog, the tornadoes, the landslides, the steep mountains of delicious snow that makes you forget your goals, the lotus-tree leaves of oblivion, I've created a blog!
Admittedly, the blog itself wasn't the difficult part. The real challenge was how to go about realising my dream of creating a magazine full of ripe, raw, hip and hopefully non-pretentious stories, features and images. Let me tell you, I haven't even touched the tip of the iceberg, oh no! To even get work experience on many of the respectable alternative/lifestyle/music/fashion magazines like Amelia's, Hint or Kudos I need to have built a portfolio of journalistic work to prove myself. Oh dear. Not only do I not have any of that under my belt, but I don't know much about the business of magazine production having been put off from it at the age of 17 when I volunteered at a small-time youth magazine called Exposure. I then proceeded to ignore all the opportunities at university in things like the newspaper.
So now, several months after graduation, with no passion or motivation for sensible career directions, I'm going to turn my hands to magazine journalism, wish me luck! So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen (and anyone in-between or non-gendered), I announce the inauguration of a project that means a lot to me and will hopefully bear fruit eventually, ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to tulip-mania!
Admittedly, the blog itself wasn't the difficult part. The real challenge was how to go about realising my dream of creating a magazine full of ripe, raw, hip and hopefully non-pretentious stories, features and images. Let me tell you, I haven't even touched the tip of the iceberg, oh no! To even get work experience on many of the respectable alternative/lifestyle/music/fashion magazines like Amelia's, Hint or Kudos I need to have built a portfolio of journalistic work to prove myself. Oh dear. Not only do I not have any of that under my belt, but I don't know much about the business of magazine production having been put off from it at the age of 17 when I volunteered at a small-time youth magazine called Exposure. I then proceeded to ignore all the opportunities at university in things like the newspaper.
So now, several months after graduation, with no passion or motivation for sensible career directions, I'm going to turn my hands to magazine journalism, wish me luck! So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen (and anyone in-between or non-gendered), I announce the inauguration of a project that means a lot to me and will hopefully bear fruit eventually, ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to tulip-mania!
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