Godzone.

By now, some of you may be aware that I have another blog that features NZ-made clothing labels (and hopefully soon, stores that sell mostly NZ-made clothing labels).  So it can be correctly surmised that I am fairly patriotic.  And I do love this country & started the blog, in part, because of concerns about employment, small businesses, and how community and economy affect each other.

I think we have a very special deal in this little country of ours.  It could use a lot of work though & we could stand to be a bit more protective and appreciative of it.  I think this country lends itself to more boutique-style enterprises, as far as customer demand is concerned, but unfortunately the government seems uninterested in helping small business.

But mine is not an unquestioning, wholesale love.  Growing up all over, I considered myself a citizen of the world.  Because I moved around so much & because my mother's Indonesian, it felt weird to align myself so completely to one country.  Of course, it didn't help that I was never really interested in sport.  It is easier to critique something from the outside, and patriotism seemed to me to be rife with faulty thinking and dangerous antagonism.  (After all, wars have been fought over nothing less / more.)  What I do think is important is a sense of community, of valuing each other.  Appreciating what we've got.  And preserving it for future generations.

There seems to be a fair amount of capitalising on national pride and nostalgia at the moment in NZ.  Sometimes I get an uneasy feeling that I am just being manipulated.  Like "Kiwiana" is being used like some kind of artificial flavouring in ads to sell us to us; or in movies and TV shows to tug on our heartstrings & as some kind of substitute for actual substance.

There are numerous T-shirts and hoodies with strong patriotic messages, cashing in on warm fuzzies, that are in fact made by "our friends" in China.  (Most of the NZ Music Month gear is not NZ-made; though to be fair, they are trying to do more than sell clothing.)  Like the truly obnoxious T-shirt emblazoned with the image of NZ & the words BORN HERE, that was of course not made here.

I wasn't born or made here.  But I live here.  And I love here.  I know how special it is.  And I don't need the message constantly fed to me.  Especially by those happy to sell NZ out.

On Our Own.

It used to be that we were told what to think and how to behave by religion, the class system and social etiquette, but these are all struggling to stay relevant and respected.  We can pick and choose traditions now and create our own.  There is a much greater sense of individual freedom, as illusory as it may be.  The majority still rules but what it agrees on, or decrees, is in constant flux and can be more easily ignored or circumvented.  We often don't even know our neighbours.  And can pick and choose our own social networks.  We still have the law to guide us (which is slower to change & the enforcement of which tends to uphold the prevailing socioeconomic hierarchy) but the emphasis has maybe moved, from what we should and shouldn't do, to what we can get away with.

So are we thinking for ourselves now?  About what we want our lives to mean?  About the world we live in?  How we are all connected?  Or have we just stopped thinking about anything but ourselves?  Religion cannot be replaced by science for a number of reasons.  For one, the message needs to be repetitive and completely self-assured.  Science needs to always be happy to be proven wrong & to let new light shine on old subject matter.  Also, by its very nature, it is not as accessible to the masses as religion.  Its focus and scope is often too small or too infinitely large to give us any answers we require in our daily life.  And it tells us time and time again how inconsequential we are.

Might we turn instead then to the arts to fill the void?  (The very thing our education system tends to place very little value on.)  The arts tell us that what our hearts and minds contemplate does matter.  That, whether or not it continues to exist after our bodies expire, in this life, our soul does exist.  Our expressions of love, anger, sorrow, humour and fear live on after us in these mediums.  Which is why it is so important to tell your truth & not temper it in the name of commercial viability.  Art and entertainment have always had a tenuous relationship; and while it may not be possible to accurately gauge whether the balance has shifted, it is always safe to say that we could certainly do with less processed junk food.  The arts remind us, rather importantly, there is no one reality; that viewpoints are just that; and of our interconnectedness and the commonalities of the human experience.

I have read countless online remarks about how undeserving an artist (whether it be an actor or a couture designer) is of reverence or appreciation, even when they have just recently died, because they did not discover a cure for cancer, etc.  How infinitely more noble it is to be a scientist.  Despite the fact that many scientists are merely whores of capitalism, pushing the frontiers of production and exploitation, rather than healing the world's woes.  Much of what ails us has been caused by us.  And the cruelest blows can be those inflicted by the loss of love, of kindness, of hope.  Anyone who seeks to restore these and celebrate beauty and joy is worthy of our esteem.  Anyone who strives to remind us to take our blinkers off, and to think of others, is deserving of our respect.

I believe there is no big plan, no invisible puppeteer.  Bad things happen to good people & good to bad.  Everything can be taken away from you in an instant.  There is no inherent justice in the world, except that which we actively uphold.  It is now that matters.  How you represent yourself.  What you do more than what you say.  What you bring to the equation.  And what you learn from others.  We are heaven and hell on earth.  And there is no-one else to blame.

Resolved.

To...

Stop saying "awesome" until 2012.  I don't say it more than most but struggle to come up with alternatives.  Which is ridiculous in the Age Of The Superlative.

Blog more often.  Sometimes I feel like I am out of opinions but it's more the case that I haven't really been engaging my brain lately.  I need to read more and socialise more.  I will still refuse to stress myself out about this blog.  It will still be something I do only when I am inspired.

Write a web series.  And maybe short stories.  I have problems with story lining.  And getting started.  But not with coming up with a hundred reasons why something won't work or why it'll be crap.  Have to stop fantasising about getting on a writing team for a TV series (and learning on the job) because I'm pretty sure you have to have written something other than a blog to get hooked up with that kind of sweet deal.

Fix my lower back pain with yoga and professional massages.

Halve my debt.  No concrete ideas on how I am going to do this just yet but will work harder on not having gaps in between employment, bringing lunch from home, supermarket shopping more, stuff like that.

Fight for a better world.  A more conscious, meaningful and understanding one.  Not let the bastards get me down.  Fuck the naysayers!  Stand up for the underdogs.  To still be me, just a better version of me.  To make sure that I am spreading love more than anger.  To suffer fools (marginally) more.

That's me for 2010.  Off to Ocean Beach tomorrow where there is no internet or cellphone coverage.  Thank you to those who actually read my blog.  To those who bother to comment, subscribe or are visibly following - it means more to me than I can say.

But enough about me...

When I was a kid, my mum was always harping on at me to at least be honest with myself.  It was a pretty see-through attempt to get me to tell her the truth when she thought I was trying one on, but nevertheless it really stuck with me.  I don't have to always like myself but I do make a constant effort to know myself.

"Do unto others..." is another edict that I lived by that made me feel that I was still Christian in nature, if no longer in beliefs.  I have since had to revise that commandment as I came to realise that people have different comfort zones and sensitivities & that it was important to respect that. When I was younger, I assumed that if I would be comfortable with something then other people would be too.  And that it wasn't my problem if people were more uptight than I was.  I was generous by nature so share and share alike, right?  Which is bullshit.  Not least because I never seemed to have much to share, at least in the material sense.

Over the years I learned not to be offended when someone seemed a lot more stingy than I or less accessible.  I used to hate the saying, "Variety is the spice of life" because people would invariably incant it when I was bitching about what a dick someone was.  But I learned to try to respect everyone's individuality, if increasingly from a distance.

The truth is that as I have gotten older, I have well and truly gotten grumpier, despite all my (minimal) attempts to exercise tolerance. (Though I did get a tattoo of the Japanese/Chinese symbol of love to remind me not to be such a bitch; and to remind myself that since I believed that the average person is an idiot, if people were getting on my nerves more than usual then the issue lay with me.)  In theory, I honestly believe to each their own; in reality, I am more than happy to live and let live, as long as I don't have to suffer their company.

I am a snob.  Well, that's not all I am but, thanks to my mum, I believe you should call yourself on your own bullshit.  While I'm at it, I'm also a bitch, lazy, shallow, thoughtless, insensitive, unsociable, obnoxious, critical, angry and self-centered.  I am also the exact opposite of all those things.  I can be very dual in nature.  Something I attribute in part to my dual ethnicity and the two worlds I have occupied.  That and I'm a bit mental.  While I can sometimes come off as reluctant to mingle and socialise, it is in part a consequence of my need to have true and honest communication and debate.  I guess, deep and meaningfuls but not always.  (Trust me.)  I find it hard to build up to it.  I find it hard to put in the apparently requisite hours of small talk.  It is of little consequence to me how long we have known each other.

So to some degree, I am a snob because I can be a little too intense for people to handle & they withdraw or react badly.  But I am also a snob because I find a lot of people unimaginative, unintelligent, unconscious and uninspired a lot of the time.  Sometimes all at once.  I have tried to accommodate my own issues by avoiding people and situations that annoy me.  Suffice it to say, my world has gotten a lot smaller.  It may have also been my mum who told me that only boring people get bored, which was something that I dismissed as pat and untrue.  But it might actually be the case that my aversion to boring people has made me bored and my life boring.

More questions than answers.

There have been an abundance of tragic stories in the news recently, bringing home what can go horribly wrong in an instant.  In a moment of neglect, recklessness or irresponsibility.  Lives lost and lives destroyed.  My heart has ached both for the families of the deceased and for the defendant in some of these cases.  It's hard for me to imagine which would be worse - the idea of losing a loved one in such a way or the idea of causing someone's death through circumstances under my control.  I hope to never experience the latter and to never experience the former ever again.

When it is obvious that the guilty are truly remorseful and devastated, it can be hard to see the point of sending them to jail when it seems clear that this will never happen again & that they will be forever punished and haunted by their actions.  I have never studied law and so am not remotely knowledgeable about the definition(s?) of manslaughter, what sentences are usually imposed, and how much remorse is taken into consideration by the judge.  (Please feel free to enlighten me, and of course to express your opinion even if you didn't go to law school.)  If someone pleads guilty & expresses remorse, should it even be up to the family to decide whether the defendant goes to jail?  How close would the family members have to be to be allowed to make that kind of decision? Would they have to prove that or indeed if they are emotionally or psychologically stable enough to make that kind of judgement?  What if the deceased had no family?  What if they were pregnant?  This is all highly emotional and variable & it seems to me that the law must be logical and apply the facts of the matter to each case?

Is jail even the right place for these people?  I am not arguing that their lives should be allowed to resume as normal & as soon as possible.  A life was lost.  And some wounds will never heal.  But what is the logic in sending them to be confined with people who meant to commit their crimes & who are not sorry?  Would home detention and/or community service not be more beneficial?

Actually, what is the point of jail in general?  Punishment?  Rehabilitation?  Constraint?  Deterrence?  Vengeance?  Criminal instruction?  Because by and large, unless the last two are the correct answers, it seems that jails do not work.  Not to mention that we just can't build them fast enough.  Jail certainly punishes but often dehumanises in a way that certainly seems counterproductive if parole is likely to be granted.  Jail can't promise to make anyone sorry - except maybe that they were caught.  It seems to be incredibly hard to ever become an upstanding and productive citizen upon release.  And perhaps in cases that are successful, it is despite the prison system and despite the society the reformed is released into?

Size Matters.

In primary school, a teacher once called my mother to school & after a few warm-up questions, asked if she was feeding me properly.  I still marvel at her audacity/courage/cluelessness/ignorance.  Luckily for her, Mum chose to laugh it off.

I grew up skinny and with having it commented on for about the first 30 years of my life.  Most people refrain on commenting on how overweight someone is to their face but for some reason the gloves come off for the underweight.  Of course, these comments would often try to disguise themselves as concern that I might suffer from some kind of eating disorder but without ever really managing to pull it off.  I would reply that I am half-Asian and might sometimes casually but spitefully add that we can't all be built like farm girls.  This all made me extremely self-conscious and insecure about my body.  In a particularly ironic twist, considering the damage she is said to have inflicted on the body image of so many young women at the time, things changed in a dramatic way for me when I turned a magazine page & feasted my eyes on a Calvin Klein ad featuring a young naked Kate Moss.  I was transfixed.  Not just at that face, but at every part of her.  I sat there, comparing, feeling relief and delight wash over me.  Her breasts were smaller than mine!  Yet she was undoubtedly a vision.  And that's when I realised there was nothing wrong with me.  That I was healthy and proportional.  That I didn't have to measure up to some agreed upon ideal of being blond, white with big tits.  That there are many different kinds of beauty and none so powerful as the beauty in deciding not to hate the vessel that carries your big beautiful brain around.  

Skinny models have been a big bone of contention in the media in the last few years.  And I have to say that I frequently gasp in shock, not pleasure, at the state of some of these young women.  I feel like I would know, better than most, the difference between someone who couldn't put weight on if they tried and someone who is starving themselves.  But the issue is two-fold:  the systemic abuse of these coat-hangers and the effect of this persistent message on "real" women and particularly impressionable young girls.  Fashion is an industry that has the tendency to focus these models solely on their external appearance, often making them feel like they have nothing else to offer.  And then endlessly criticising the 'one' thing they have going for them, so much so that apparently most models are unhappy with their appearance but certainly not because they feel they look like they could use a sandwich.  And while I think that whatever standard of beauty is in vogue will inevitably alienate some, we have definitely gone too far;  as is evidenced by how dumpy the sight of a beautiful woman, who has not been almost photoshopped out of existence, looks to us now in a magazine.  And the fact that despite the three waves of feminism, women hate ourselves more than ever & many of our young ones are starving, slowly killing, themselves.

Actually the issue of skinny models is three-fold.  No-one protests against the protests more than designers.  (Though not all feel that way.)  Protesting that these girls are naturally skinny & avoiding the question of why they are deeming it necessary to use younger and younger girls (some of whom haven't even finished growing yet) to sell clothing to adult women.  Protesting that their clothes won't look good walking down the runway on anything other than the abnormally skinny.  Which is hardly a ringing endorsement of the skills of the designers themselves.  Essentially they are saying that if you have an inch of fat, their clothes will show up your every flaw.  Which, for the most part, can't really be true.  And no-one's really suggesting that the current crop of models all be replaced by the plus-size variety.  (Though some in the pro-emaciated camp seem to have a somewhat skewed view of what plus-size means exactly.)  So the answer to me is for us to throw down the gauntlet and challenge the fashion world to embrace variety being the spice of life and to show us that they can design clothes that we want to wear because they make us look and feel good.
 

Money Matters.

Sometimes it feels like all I do is make money and spend it.  Not exactly making my mark on the world, or saving it.  But spending your money can be one of the most socially conscious and political acts you perform.  A bit sad, perhaps, but not if you really think about it.  As an individual, your ability to improve the world you live in can seem laughably limited.  Voting is a case in point that everyone will understand.  And most of us are too busy or lazy to engage in any extra-curricular altruistic or charitable activities.  But what we all do, all the time, is spend money on ourselves and our loved ones.  And unlike voting, what we spend our money on is not inconsequential.  (Calm down, I vote - thereby apparently earning my right to complain about the state of the nation.  Every election, I throw away both my votes on the Green Party; only to watch them get passed over yet again like a homely wallflower.)

In a democratic capitalist society, most significant change or progress is actually brought about by businesses seeing a demand in the market place or a threat to their all-important brand.  No point in decrying that or getting all cynical about it - better to think of it as an opportunity for you to have a say.  Obviously it costs more money to make a more responsible product & in order to make a profit, that extra cost gets passed on to the consumer.  So in order to be a responsible consumer, you will have to fork out more cash.  But the good news is that the more people that choose to pay for products and services that more reflect their values, the more likely that the demand will be noted and rewarded with competition.  And hopefully as a consequence of that, the businesses themselves will have their production needs better met as there will be more of a demand.  Of course, there is always the issue of legitimacy and less than ethical businesses jumping on the bandwagon but those can be dealt with through the usual avenues that questionable business practices are investigated. If you are concerned, then do some research.

It's so much easier now to find free-range chicken, eggs, bacon and pork.  Easier to find environmentally-friendlier cleaning products.  Easier to find organic, vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free foods.  (Ugh, just threw up in my mouth a little.)  Easier to find Fair Trade products.  (What's not easier to find are clothes made in NZ but I am working on that.)  But that didn't just happen because businesses decided to do the right thing, screw profit.  Not to say that their motives are all questionable; just that the market has to be there for it to be worth it, for them to succeed.  With big businesses, there has to be enough of a pay-off, kudos-wise.  It happened because consumers decided that some things were more important than getting bargain bin prices.  More important than living in the Now with easily disposable products and toxic by-products.  So decide what you think is more important and make yourselves "heard".  Put your money where your mouth is.    

PC or not PC?

As soon as I even see the letters P and C together in a non-computing context, I completely lose interest in whatever I am reading.  (Yeah OK, in a computing context too.)  This goes double if they are preceded by "un-" or "anti-".   I say, the sooner we do away with these terms, the better.  Let's say what we really think and be prepared to suffer the consequences.  Let's stop hiding behind ridiculous terminology.  If you don't really care about something enough to actually do something about it, don't pay it lip service.  If you're going to be a cunt, then be one and don't try and flip it by accusing others of being too sensitive or not having a sense of humor.  I don't agree that everything we say outside the privacy of our homes should be sterilised so as to stay in line with what has been deemed appropriate.  But I also disagree with those who shoot their mouths off and then don't stand behind their own words.  When I lived in London, people (strangely enough, white male people) would constantly make the most ignorant, bigoted remarks/jokes then would tell me that they were just winding me up?!  I would then make it clear that I was now wound the fuck up and they should be prepared to deal with that.

Quite clearly I don't exactly have the most PG sensibility.  My language and sense of humor is not always for the faint of heart.  Sometimes I am just straight-up bitchy and shallow.  But I am always ready to back myself up or to apologise for being a dick.  I do try and gauge my audience and adjust my content so as to not offend the people I am directing my hilarious comments to, as well as those in my immediate vicinity.  Apparently that is what's known as being politically correct.  And I thought it was just not being a jerk.  What the hell is wrong with thinking before you speak?  Or just taking a look around?  I don't think that's being hypocritical.  You wouldn't tell your grandmother a dirty joke or your boss a drug-fueled exploit. (Actually get a few drinks in me and I lose all ability to be situation-specific content-appropriate.) It's just unspeakably arrogant to decide, without really thinking about it, that everyone within earshot should not be so sensitive.  I am constantly having conversations inflicted on me (usually at one of my temp jobs) that I am offended or irritated by but can't really respond to because they are not actually talking to me.  Doesn't always stop me but would my silence be considered acquiescence?
 
I have had an issue with political correctness for as long as I have been aware of the term.  It has always seemed to me that the wrong people get upset about it.  Because it is just a trick.  It's just lip service.  It's just using words to rename things, people and concepts without really challenging the establishment or making any real changes to the power structure.  It is alarmingly easy to appease those much lower in the totem pole by just giving their jobs more official-sounding names or magnanimously "outlawing" certain hurtful taunts.  A rose by any other name should still stand up for their rights.  Don't fall for that shit.  Just because they are no longer saying it, doesn't mean they're not thinking it.  I would rather know who stands against me.  I respect honesty above all else.

Of course, the worst thing about PC has been the backlash against PC.  Nothing annoys me more because somehow people have been given (or rather given themselves) permission to be more thoughtless, insensitive and obnoxious than ever.  Perhaps not ever but more racist, sexist and homophobic than has been deemed seemly in quite some time.  And while it may seem that this is the honesty I ask for, it is not.  Because it is underhanded, trying to deny the right to respond. A sphincter says what?    

Buy now. Pay later.

Other than learning how to deal with social adversity and being different, it's hard to recall what the point of high school was.  Obviously there must be a great deal of knowledge that I have retained and allegedly it was there that I learned how to acquire information and how to think for myself.  As the years have progressed though I have to say that I think that the main reason to finish secondary and tertiary education is that people discriminate against you if you don't.  Predominantly I consider high school to be a place where young adults are subjected to last-ditch attempts at brainwashing, socialisation, labelling and peer pressure.  By and large, I think that actual education and free-thinking are pretty low on the priorities of many of these great institutions, deferring to discipline and conformity.  I think that for most young adults, high school is mostly a holding pen that we are obligated to be babysat in until we are slightly less repellent to our elders & that the quality of education at most high schools is not simply not high enough to make willing scholars out of any but the most predestined.

It seems to me that if we all have to be in high school then there should be a stronger emphasis on learning life skills that will help you from making some pretty big mistakes;  information we could all actually benefit from and that would actually relate to our lives.  One of the biggest misnomers is that common sense is actually common.  Of course, it is common for parents to complain that life skills, sex education, etc are their domain and that schools should just stick to the 3Rs.  But if they were indeed doing their jobs properly then they wouldn't be so concerned that these kind of classes will rush their kids into having sex or other experiences they are not yet ready for.  Or that putting an emphasis on something other than higher education will lead their kids to abandon it altogether.  If high schools have classes that teach you how to cook and sew, then why can't they teach you other basics such as how to budget and avoid/manage debt.  (Of course, they may well do now - I wouldn't have a clue.)  I just wish I had learned a lot earlier certain lessons about money and those determined to separate you from your hard-earned cash, about their tricks and strategies.  No-one ever taught me about debt.  All I really knew is that there were two types of people in the world - people who saved their pennies and people like me.  And as long as I paid rent and as long as I had a job, I never really saw the harm in my lack of impulse control and forethought.  That was before I discovered the world of credit.

It took me ages to realise what a hole I had dug for myself.  And even longer to realise that my previous choices mean that I have far fewer now.  Debt means that people stay in undesirable situations, jobs, relationships because they can't afford to leave.  Debt means that people have to put off things they long to do.  Debt means having to spend money on... debt.  Having money saves you money.  Once you're in a significant amount of debt, the future looks grim or at least pretty joyless.  It feels like two steps forward, one step back.  Interest rates on credit cards and hire purchase loans are so high that it can be hard to do more than just tread water.  I pay a lot of money every payday to my credit cards and yet the day when I can pay them all off is so far in the future that I can't bear to think about it.

But I have no-one to blame but myself, though I certainly had a lot of help from banks and other businesses.  I am naturally impulsive and I have somewhat of an addictive personality.  Ten years in hospitality means that I have discerning tastes way beyond my means.  Also I would often spend money generously just to counter the stinginess I often saw in customers.  I was trying to live a life that I felt befitted me.  I definitely made this bed.  (And I enjoyed doing it.)  And my life now isn't so bad!  It is comfortable and it has a lot of love in it.  I have a lot to be grateful for.  I just wish I could have avoided this whole mess.  It comes pretty close to an actual regret.  Especially since it was so avoidable.  If only I had been warned.    

Me, Myself & I.

Towards the end of my hospitality career, I became aware of how much NZers appear to enjoy complaining.  I was serving some of the best food and wine in NZ and increasingly had to resist the urge to make my customers wear it.  Taxes, rates, immigrants, Maoris, Asians, all undesirable and apparently suitable dinner table conversation.  And in public at that.  In the end, I couldn't take it.  And I quit.

I grew up all around the world and most NZers have it pretty sweet as far as I am concerned.  Life has its ups and downs wherever you live but just living in this country protects most of us from many hardships that we can't really imagine enduring.  But we are so fucking ungrateful and we are always complaining.  We have become all about what the world owes us and who is trying to take it all away from us.  Our self-entitlement, our right to be happy has become of paramount importance and our gauging, of just how happy we are, constant.  Like weighing ourselves daily or watching the proverbial kettle boil.

The pursuit of happiness is certainly nothing new but the emphasis on it above all other things certainly is.  In the past, the emphasis was less on happiness and its definitions as it was on satisfaction and its relationship with how one handled one's responsibilities.  Women and men both had their roles and were both burdened and freed by them.  There wasn't a lot of wriggle room but there also wasn't a lot of uncertainty.  Your life was pretty much mapped out for you by the circumstances of your gender, race and class.  Our expectations of life were much lower then as were the expectations life had of us.  Our prescribed circumstances are no longer as restrictive as they were before; the boundaries slowly corroding away, putting the reins of our existence more in our hands than those of society.  The Man is still in charge, make no mistake, but he's no longer micro-managing as much.  More and more, we have choices.  We can opt in and opt out of more than ever before.  We witnessed the obligations that bound previous generations and we have no wish to be similarly trapped.

Quitting is more than just acceptable now; like debt, it is simply a part of modern life.  Quitting is a natural part of the process of finding ourselves.  And now that we can do it by remote control, it's not only easier but it's positively addictive.  We can commit to more things now because we know we are really only committing on a trial basis.  And the relief of texting or emailing that apology or excuse is made even more glorious by the simple fact that we don't have to disappoint in person.  It's practically worth starting something just to experience the delirious joy of getting out of it.

And it really seems so harmless, except the damage is three-fold: the ripples of disappointment that emanate from all our actions (or rather inaction); the corrosion of our ability to see anything thru; and the focus being on what we are running from rather than where we are headed.  I can't help but feel that this plays a large part in the delayed adolescence so many of us experience.  Our increasingly insular existence (strangely coinciding with, and for some of us perhaps enabled by, being more connected than ever before thru social networking technology) makes us so much more focused on our needs than we would have previously been allowed to.  Our conviction that we have the absolute right to be happy often appears to overrule the validity of other emotions that result from our actions.  Guilt and shame are like the modern day appendix or wisdom tooth.  They are what we experience as a result of our inadequacies but we no longer have any real use for them.  We know that it's not healthy to beat ourselves up too much over things we cannot undo so we encourage ourselves and others to all but skip that stage altogether.

Our selfishness is constantly validated by the media and advertising (who can really tell the difference anymore?) bombarding us with messages that we are worth it, that we should indulge ourselves, that we should stop living for other people, and that if we don't love ourselves...  But here's the rub: the unending focus on ourselves and how happy we are and what makes us happy is making us miserable.  Happiness is something you can only really experience if you are truly in the moment; the second you hold it up to the microscope for closer inspection, you taint it.  And if you aren't happy, is the hashing and rehashing of why you're not happy really that helpful?  Is that why many people spend years in therapy with little success?  Venting is finding relief through expression and often from validation.  There is a massive difference between venting and whinging.  Whinging is circular and feeds back into itself.  It's counter-productive.

So get out of your own head.  Get the hell out of your own way.  Focus on the things that make you happy, not the state itself.  Focus on the people that make you happy.  Focus on making other people happy.  Better yet, people you don't even know.  Fuck altruism - nothing makes you feel better faster than stoking someone else out.  Stop being a self-centered, self-indulgent, narcissistic malcontent and everyone wins!          
    

All in favour...

I have been temping for over 2 years now so I've been immersed in a number of different workplaces.  And what I have really come to notice is how much peer pressure plays a part in everyday adult life.  How fitting in is just as important as it was in high school.  How difficult it seems for a lot of people to just let people be.  As far as I am concerned, all my workmates and workplace have the right to expect of me is that I am a hard worker, team player, polite and pleasant.  I also happen to be very obliging, friendly and have an excellent sense of humor.  But as it turns out that is often not enough.  There are numerous morning teas that I am expected to contribute towards (financially, because I sure as fuck am not about to start baking).  I even had to take a half-day off to avoid the baby shower that all the women in the office were invited to but unfairly none of the men.  Every year, there is St Patrick's Day regardless of how many people actually are Irish or are of Irish descent.  (Of course, there are no celebrations of special calendar dates in any other cultures.)  There is general enforced socialising and hilarity in the guise of staff drinks and team building, often not even paid for by work.

What's the big deal, some of you may ask.  Granted, for a lot of people this not only sounds fine but desirable.  And if you are a social person who enjoys socialising with the people you work with, then I can understand that.  And the argument could be made that if you don't fit in then maybe you should find somewhere that you do.  Except if you love/like/don't mind your job, why should you have to, just so people can stop bugging you?

I'm perhaps (definitely) more sensitive to railroading than most.  I have great difficulty just rolling over, even when no-one else knows there is an issue for me to lose face over.  And almost no issue is too small if someone is trying to force my hand.  It's something that seems to be in the very fibre of my being & it is actually a huge nuisance.  I do really like being me but sometimes wistfully long to somehow just be less discerning, less complicated.  My other major obstacle is that I am allergic to small talk.  And I hate conversations about the weather, cooking and rugby rivalry.  Without headphones, I would have gone postal years ago.

Variety is not only the spice of life but actually a major asset in the workplace if it is allowed to be.  People have different strengths and weaknesses and any good manager knows to not treat everyone the same.  How social someone is is not a workplace issue unless it affects how you work with them.  And if someone is not inclined a certain way then backing them in a corner is hardly going to have the desired outcome.  Unless what is actually wanted is conformity not cohesion or harmony.  Not everyone wants to have a drink at the end of the week, at least not with co-workers.  Not everyone wants to play stupid games at monthly meetings.  Not everyone wants to pose for crazy photos at team building.  And there is no positive correlation between people who want to do those things and a strong work ethic.  I myself am quite suspicious of people who seem to delight in any activity at work that isn't actually work.  I have a couple of suspicions actually & one of them is that these people need to get out more.  Or at least, get out of my face.

We will have all learned from school the relationship between peer pressure and bullying.  But what I have learned since then is the relationship between peer pressure and majority rules AKA democracy.  I've also learned the relationship between democracy and apathy.  But the revelation all my own that came to me recently was that workplace conformity could be a major contributor to our general apathy as adults.  Those of us in full-time employment spend more time at work than any one place, at least conscious.  And I would posit that a large number of us assent thru silence quite a lot of the time.  Letting that comment slide.  Putting our headphones on.  Smiling thru our teeth.  Picking our battles.  Letting the so-called majority decide what we think is acceptable, funny, fun.  Longing to get back to our "real" lives.

But that's just it.  Can you just switch on being an individual responsible for your own decisions, your own happiness, the world you live in, when you walk out that door at the end of the day?  Is that when you suddenly find your voice?
        

Who goes there?

Almost nothing in this world winds me up more than the vicious cowards that abound anonymously in the netherworld of Internet comments.  And they lurk in the most unlikely places unless you understand their true nature.  There are some articles, blogs, forums, etc that you would anticipate dissenting points of view.  But the thing that really makes me wild is when people seem to go out of their way to ambush you with their nastiness.  (They hit the jackpot when someone, that meant a lot to a lot of people, dies.)  It's amazing how effective these comments can be; how quickly they sting, how long the irritation lingers.  Even when I berate myself for letting them get to me (reminding myself the comment is ignorant, petty, malicious, misspelt or all of the above) I still seethe and sometimes genuinely despair.  Speaking for myself, the anonymity that gives the power to say such things is also the thing that enrages me so.  If anyone's dumb or naive enough to actually to say it to my face - or more often than not, in my general vicinity - it's on like Kong.   For awhile I tried to combat the faceless masses, responding to them under my full name.  Showing them the courage they did not possess as well as the logic, articulateness and the wittiness they invariably also lacked.  But now I just avoid sites that make it hard for you to avoid the comment section.  I was never dignifying them with a response but I was letting them know they had been heard.  And that they had bugged me.

To be fair, most of us may have been guilty of posting an anonymous comment that was critical and verged on being scathing or a personal attack.  It's easy to go there, to sink to that level, to give that knife a twist, to teach someone a lesson.  It may not have been what you started typing but then something took over you.  Either a deliciousness wickedness or extreme irritation.  Might have been a tit-for-tat situation.  And you said something that you might not have said, had you not been obscured in the shadows.  There's an accompanying thrill, akin to saying a profanity or racial slur for the first time.  And you might have just aimlessly wandered on that web page, mostly likely bored, browsing the internet like a women's weekly.  We've all read articles about people or viewpoints we don't respect.  And we clicked on that link despite knowing it would annoy us, or maybe because we knew it would.  Then the sheer idiocy/triviality of the article content or ensuing comments might easily drive one to express our superiority.  I understand how it can happen.  But might I suggest, you desist?  I imagine that it's just a slippery slope from genuinely expressing anonymous emotions and enjoying the power of knowing that you have bummed someone out to bumming people out just for kicks.   If the Internet has shown us anything, there is nothing more viral than vitriol.

There is something on the Internet for everyone.  (Unfortunately.)  Each to their own has to be the general rule.  But if you must say something, I suggest YOU say it.  It's funny how the burning desire to say something is often doused by signing your name to it.          

You right there?

I worked in hospitality for about 10 years.  While I never really chose it as a career path, I was also never using it to finance my other burgeoning career as an up-and-coming whatever.  Maybe because I wasn't just biding my time, I took being hospitable seriously.  And I enjoyed it.  I never considered it degrading or beneath me.  There were moments where I felt uncomfortable in front of an old acquaintance/adversary but I reminded myself that if I wanted their job, I would have it.  There were moments where I was more Miss Spoken than Little Miss Sunshine but I always regretted it and, more often than not, had made amends by the time the customer had left.  I enjoyed serving people, making them laugh, making them feel valued.  I enjoyed winning them over and sometimes I just loved not letting an obnoxious customer get to me.

So where's the love?  Why am I shat on by hospo, shop assistants, bus drivers, flight attendants, medical professionals, WCC staff, you name it?  I was good (often great) at customer service and as a consequence I am a good customer.  I am polite, friendly, appreciative, understanding and accommodating.  I am as clear as possible in my communications.  I always try to organise my fellow diners quickly so the waiter can take their order.  I often let my fellow customers be dealt with first.  And I am forever finding myself wanting to just stop and say, "I'm sorry.  Have I done something to offend you?"

If you don't enjoy customer service then don't fucking serve customers.  I know how tiring and frustrating it can be but don't take it out on me.  And if you are taking money from me, you are not too cool to serve me. Everyone has their off days but when your job sucks, you have three options - suck it up, quit or try to improve the situation.  And the rule with off days in customer service is 'fake it till you make it'.  It doesn't usually take long.  But unless you really are a nasty piece of work, being snotty to customers is unlikely to improve your mood.  Being nice to other people makes you feel good and makes them feel good and might make them nice to others.  Isn't the world a miserable enough place as it is without you deliberately bumming people out (and paying customers at that)?!

I did my time, man.  I enjoyed it.  And now I'd like just a little respect in return.
  

Hating on the haters.

My husband once accused me of being a hater which totally threw me.  Especially as he was interrupting a rant on how much I hate haters.  He was of course referring to my constant need to analyze and critique just about everything and everyone.  It's just how my brain is wired.  But I still never thought of myself as a hater.  To me a hater is someone that cannot stand to see someone else succeed, shine, or enjoy life.  And who feels the need to tear them down, often over quite a trivial matter & usually from a distance.  And without admitting why they are doing it, often not even to themselves.

When I use the word hater, I am not referring to the original term, "player-hater".  (If you hate the game, of course you are going to hate anyone who plays it?!)  But that term began to extend to anyone who was just jealous of someone else's success, and the fruits it bore them.  Of course, haters will protest that they are not jealous.  That the object of their scorn is asking for it because of their stupidity, flashiness, pretentiousness, ostentatiousness, arrogance, etc.  Of course, it is understandable to dislike people who we deem as having those traits.  Except of course, disliking someone is not the same as hating on them.  When I dislike someone, I just avoid/ignore them then forget about them.  More often than not, people hate on people with whom they do not come into direct contact often, if ever.  Hating on someone is usually not the same as hating them.  And you don't hate on people who aren't more successful than you in some way, right?

NZers, I believe, have a special affinity towards hating on people.  Possibly because we were colonized by the English (nobody hates like the English), we have always had it in for those Tall Poppies.  We can handle people succeeding as long as they are and continue to be identifiable as down-to-earth and humble and not from Auckland.  You don't even need to be more successful to be hated on in this country, you just have to be different.  And if you are, and don't appear to be miserable about it, then people treat you like you are just being difficult.  We even hate on people for trying to do the right thing now.  We are so much harder on those who are trying to make the world a better place then we are on those who are clearly out only for themselves & even appear to have it in for us. 

And what's so great about being humble anyway?  One of my biggest pet peeves is false modesty.  I'm not that fond of arrogance either but I don't automatically equate it with confidence.  To be successful, you have to believe in yourself completely and ignore all the people who have a million reasons why you will fail.  The truly talented often just don't have the time to be worrying about whether they are coming off as likable and just a regular person.  I am all for taking other people's feelings into consideration but not to the extent of censoring how you really feel and what you really want to do.  I say, we all just live our lives and let other people live theirs.

Charity Case.

Yesterday I was in the lunchroom at work when I heard people discussing The Billionaires Club's pledge to donate at least 50% of their wealth.  I bit my tongue when one of them said knowingly "Yeah, but who are they going to give it to?". But when someone else said "It's probably a tax write-off.", I had to retort "Who cares?!"

What are you doing to make the world a better place?  The way I see it, you have four options - most of them not mutually exclusive - action, donation, conscription and shutting the fuck up.

I personally respect the first option the most but am way too lazy to volunteer my free time.  At this point in my life, I prefer donation by automatic payment.  It requires no effort, is easy to budget for & the government will refund a third of it if you tell them to.  The third option (which I guess is what I'm exercising right now) definitely has its merits but should really be done sparingly and you better be exercising the first and/or second option as well.

As I said in a previous post, I prefer people who just do & don't harp on about it.  But the point that I am trying to make is that if you aren't doing anything to help then don't go hating on people who are and questioning their motives.  And spare us all the reasons you justify not doing anything.  That's your choice, your decision, so own it.  I'm always hearing people rationalise their selfishness.  Forever harping on about how ineffective a lot of charity organizations are.  How dodgy some of them are.  How your donation just goes to administration.  How just throwing money at a problem won't fix it.  

Of course mere charity is not the answer to the world's problems.  But effective solutions require funding.  (And they require organisation which requires admin.)

I know that it can all seem hopeless.  But the answer is not to stick your head in the sand, or up your ass.  One step at a time is the answer to most things.  And if your resources are limited, then by all means carefully plan that next step.  Prioritize.  It's not all or nothing.  No-one who is reading this cannot afford one $25 monthly AP.  What issue is the most burning to you?  A disturbing number of my friends seem to only give a shit about animals but that is their right.  You can't save the world but you can be a small part of the solution.  Write a letter.  Collect for a charity once a year.  Donate shit you don't need to a refugee organisation.  Donate in your will.  Volunteer for the SPCA.  Sign email petitions.  Recycle and plant a fucking tree.  Whatever.  Anything.


If you care only about yourself and your loved ones, that is also your right.  If you honestly hold the belief that we are all where we are on our own merits & that others are worse off because they are just not trying hard enough, then obviously you are an ignorant self-entitled jackass.  But you are only following your convictions and I respect that a whole lot more than those who have a whole arsenal of reasons why they have chosen a fifth option.  Who have convinced themselves they do care despite all evidence to the contrary.

Celebrity Circus.

Celebrity has morphed into a many-headed, fanged, deranged beast foaming at its many mouths.  The spectacle rules supreme.  Famous for being famous feels like the norm though it's merely the case that infamy has become a currency of choice; and celebrity now has a much more tenuous link with achievement.  Who cares what they are saying as long as they are talking about you, right?

Don't get me wrong.  There's nothing I like more than a comeback.  An actress brought back from the dead, made relevant again and cooler than ever by Tarantino.  Robert Downey Jnr picking himself up & dusting himself off and doing his best shit in years.  But I glimpse the beginning of the end when people appear to be leaking their own sex tapes and news of a rehab stint.  What was once an tantilising glimpse of thigh has become mind-numbing fully-fledged porn.

What is the answer to the question that I have been asking myself for awhile?  Why do we hate our stars so much now?  Is it a carry-over effect of the reality TV phenomenon?  Are we just jealous?  Of their looks and their money?  That their lives look so shiny and fun?  That their jobs aren't robbing them of their will to live?  Or are we just repulsed by their plastic surgeries, their 30-day marriages, their very own (torturous) sitcoms, their infomercials, the pretentious names they give their kids, their tell-all exclusives?

Because we do hate them.  And not in that would-you-just-shut-the-fuck-up way (well, maybe a little).  We are OBSESSED.  We hate them the way a stalker turns on their prey.  They are too fat.  They are too thin.  They have aged.  They haven't aged.  They tell us too much.  They give boring interviews.  The venom in some of the women's weeklies repulses me & frankly scares me.  We want them to fall.  We want them to relapse.  We want their problem areas to be marked in a red pen.  We want their marriages to fail.  We want bad things to happen to their kids.  We want to wallow in their guts, be they spilled or ripped.

Why?  I think it's a mixture of schadenfreude and desensitisation.  Not only have we become a culture of haters but the pornification of the media has us needing more - more intense highs, or rather, lows.  We objectify them, finding it harder to view them as human beings.  Merely the source of our gratification.

Culture is fluid.  Culture is merely a collection of individuals agreeing to a common reality.

The beast feeds on attention, cannot distinguish between positive and negative publicity & cannot grasp irony.  It grows stronger with every tabloid you buy, every reality program you watch, every salacious link you click on & every sex tape you watch.  We are not its slack-jawed captives.  We are its master.

The C Word.

I think it's interesting how things have changed and how they haven't, in regards to celebrity opinion.

Back in the 60s, no-one would have really thought to ask actors how they felt about a topical issue but they hammered away at someone like Bob Dylan.  They asked him questions about being the voice of a generation.  They asked him why he was so popular.  These were not questions he could have had the
answers to, only guesses.  He didn't understand why they were being asked of him.  Because he was a talented poet and songwriter, they treated him like an oracle and a guru; instead of just a man who wrote songs because he had to, not necessarily even knowing what they meant.  And they didn't really care about the answer, they just wanted it.  And it pissed them off that he wouldn't just rattle off something glib, pat or simple - a soundbite.  Now that's all we trade in, no-one's got the attention span for anything more, anything deeper.

And now performers are often all too keen to sound off on any number of topics, none too big or too insignificant.  And they don't think it's weird they are being asked.  And indeed they often don't wait to be.  Because they are the chosen ones & it is their duty to tell us all how to live.

Of course I am completely overstating the case. Celebrities are people too. They have the right to be part of the solution. And why not use their influence? Does it matter even why they are doing it? Doesn't the end justifies the means? I don't know that it does really - at least overall. There are the obvious exceptions - Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Robyn Malcolm among numerous others - but mostly I feel that there is a disproportionate amount of noise for the amount of change that is actually inspired. I personally prefer the quiet class of someone like Sandra Bullock who dropped a cool million on New Orleans and on Haiti. And didn't want to talk about it.

The time is now.

It is easy to feel like you should have been born in a different era. Times whose stories seem so much more exciting, simpler, noble, easy to understand. Times that you would have an obvious path, place, destiny. I cannot say with complete certainty, as to my knowledge I have only lived in this time, but it seems to me that such a perception is looking back not necessarily thru rose-tinted glasses but definitely thru a lens that sees only what is now deemed relevant.

It seems to me that had you lived in different times, you may not have actually prioritised these things or tuned everything else out.  There are fights to be fought, now more than ever.  There is beauty to behold, more precious for being under threat.  There is great music now just as there have always been copycat clones.  The next generation has always been sampling the last & certainly not always to good effect.  The next generation will always repel and disappoint the last to some degree.  The next generation will undoubtedly wish it had born at a
different time.

But there has never been a time that felt simple and safe.  And the answer is always obvious in retrospect.  It is easier to feel outraged about yesteryear's genocide than to do anything about today's.  Today has too many important trivialities getting in the way of the way of you doing the right thing, of fighting the good fight.  And so did yesterday.  And so did yesteryear.  Yeah, things are worse now.  But they're also a lot better.  This is your time.  Take ownership of who you are and what you do.  You don't have to be a good person.  But own the choices you have made.  And cherish the choices there are to be made.