Sven's life in Oz

I’ve had a month or so off for one reason or another, but I thought it was about time I pulled my finger out and got back into the business of churning out my ill-formed thoughts for you all to digest with incredulity and horror. No need to thank me.

I’ve not been blogging or reading blogs for two reasons. First, I have been busy. Not just “ooh, it’s been a hard day, I can’t be bothered” busy, but “I’ve got thirty minutes to have four hours sleep, how the fuck am I going to fit that in” busy. It’s like all of Sydney suddenly realised that summer was coming to an end and decided to try and fit a summer’s worth of parties in five weeks. It’s not a bad thing, but it does rather get in the way of writing. I’ve got plenty to talk about and now that I’m taking the weekend to write it all down, hopefully over the coming weeks you will be entertained/reviled on a regular basis. Secondly, and perhaps more influentially, I got rather put off writing for a while and questioned whether I was really any good, and if it was just wasting my time trying to do it. The story goes like this:

A couple of months ago I went on a writing course – just a one-day thing where we all take along two pages of our dearest project and pretend to be interested in each other’s work. Really we’re all there to be told how fabulous we are and how it’s a travesty we haven’t been published yet, but no one wants to say that out loud. Sitting in pairs we discuss our partner’s work through gritted teeth and get back to talking about our own as fast as we can. Don’t judge me: every writer does it. We’re a narcissistic bunch.

At lunch I was talking to the tutor about what I wanted from my writing and whether publication was my dream. It is, but I’m realistic about what it will bring. I don’t really want to be famous; I think I would make an awful celebrity. I just want to be able to write and make a living out of it. I told her so, and we agreed it was a healthy way to think. The conversation moved on to what we both did for jobs and when I explained I was a copywriter, she told me not to be too hard on myself: I had already achieved my goal. I know this meant to be a reassuring, confidence-building statement, but right then a little piece of me shrivelled up and died.

Realising your dreams is an aim, and the thought I might be there was crushing: I write for a living, but not for myself. I went back to work and sat in front of my fabulous new iMac in my lovely new office and tried to write about the smoke-free campus policy, or the changed traffic conditions on the main road, or the winter concert series; and I just couldn’t do it. I looked at the pile of novels I had read over the past year and felt as though I would never compete. I will never write an Anna Karenina or an In Cold Blood or a Maurice. I’m a writer like the graphic designer next door is artist, and it depressed me. I began to wonder what I was really doing this for. The money is mediocre, the benefits are lousy and you feel like a fraud every time you say what’s in your heart: “I’m a writer, unknown, unpublished and begging to be taken seriously despite my total lack of a creative career.”

For the past few weeks I have thrown myself at everything that could be used to keep me away from writing. If I’m busy then it’s not like I’m just ‘not writing’, but more like ‘life is just in the way right now’. That’s not to say that I haven’t had a great few weeks – I’ve done some fantastic things with some super people – but I’ve said yes to a few events that I should have turned down so I could do my exercises and stretch my fingers and generally do some fucking work. It’s easier to run away from something than it is to face it, and when you feel defeated it seems like a good idea, too.

All this came to an end last week, when my friend Nick came to stay from Atlanta. Being aircrew he paid a measly $70 to fly all the way to Sydney – a benefit I will never enjoy in my chosen field – and he brought with him a litany of reading material that I would never have picked up in a million years. I had just finished Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair on the day of his arrival and was beginning to realise the error of my ways, when Nick suggested My Horizontal Life, telling me that I would finish it in a matter of hours. It was atrocious literature, but hilarious. It’s a history of one-night stands thrown into a loose narrative about how sleeping around is fun until the novelty wears off. I felt like a prize fool. Here was Chelsea Handler selling her shag tales for $15 a copy, and I was giving mine away online for free! Next up, David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day; another collection of memories bolted together in no apparent order solely to entertain and amuse. A national bestseller, no less, with one chapter telling the tale of his finding a turd in the toilet and breaking it up with a plunger. Is there some deep allegorical meaning in there? I hope not. Does it relate to the rest of the book? Not in any sense whatsoever, and yet here it is, on my table, in print.

We can’t all be Tolstoy or Flaubert or Capote, and they weren’t born that way either. Maybe the graphic designer next door will never be Van Gogh, but he probably doesn’t spend all day looking at post-impressionist artworks and then beating himself up for not having cut his ear off in passion. The Ffordes and Handlers and Sedarises of the world aren’t concerned about being judged next to the greats – they’re just getting on with their lives, and I’m at least as good as them.

Time to stop being such a whiney bitch. Daylight’s wasting.

Lately I’ve been going through something of a blogger’s block – it happens from time to time – so I’m trying a new, adult way of dealing with it: writing through it. Normally I just make a guttural kind of “gahhhhh” sound, throw my hands in the air and give up till it goes away, but I figure I’m old enough and talented enough to be able to bluff my way through 500 words three times a week (and lately one of those has become a regular audio ramble, making it even easier) so I’ll just truck on and hope for the best. What do you know, 100 words down already!

A little while ago I went for the longest run of my life and rather enjoyed it, which is odd because normally I hate running. I’m not sure what it is about it that turns me off. I much prefer swimming, and when I say that to my friends they look at me like I have two heads. I’ve had numerous conversations to try to determine why I hold this freaky point of view, but to no avail. Why do I hate running and yet love swimming? Three reasons, all logically circular, and all utterly inane.

Running bores me

I’ve said it before and I shall say it again: running is dull. It’s just like walking, but faster. What is achieved? It feels like a total waste of my time. “Why not run on the treadmill,” one friend  suggested. “You could watch the television then.” I’ll tell you why: I’d go out of my mind. I never watch the television: I watch the clock. The minute I’m on the treadmill I’m watching the seconds tick by till I can get off it again. I’m looking around the gym at the guy on the swiss ball or the girl doing circuit training thinking “Oh, I’d much rather be doing that.” That’s not normal, is it? I should be enjoying the thing. I have no idea how far I’ve run in 20 minutes and I never remember how I did last time to be able to compare. Am I getting faster? I doubt it. At least when I’m swimming I know that I did 40 lengths in half an hour last time, and next time I’ll do 50. And that’s the other thing about swimming – the results are immediate. You can build on your performance week on week and those are the kind of results I like.

The distractions

Josh said in a comment that forgets all his worries and daydreams he’s famous, whilst Dr Lego said that he switches off totally, even going so far as to listen to the same song on repeat for hours. Kristie, my friend, said she actually enjoyed the distractions, looking around her the entire time and making up lives and histories for the people she passes. (It turns out, by the way, that I know a lot of runners. They’re everywhere, like lice.) For me, the prospect of a long run is offputting precisely because of the distractions. My earphones fall out all the time, there are people in the way, and at any given point I know that I could just stop running. Just stop. I could walk back to the bus stop and go home. Nothing would happen to me. In the swimming pool at least there’s the prospect of drowning to keep me going until I finish a length. I choose my times wisely and when I get to the pool there’s barely a soul there, so no one to swim in front of me. I can get in, get a nice rhythm going and let my mind wander. I think about work, about family and friends, relationships, happy memories, sad times, story ideas and shopping lists. It’s like the ten minutes before you fall asleep where your brain goes safely off the rails. The number of problems I have solved after an hour in the pool is phenomenal. It’s like therapy. I just don’t get that with running, because there’s always something new around the corner and the temptation to simply slow down, slow down, and stop.

The abstract distance

I ran 8kms the other weekend. Big whoop! How far is that? I have no idea. Can I see 8kms? No. Can I count 8kms? Not really. As I approach the pool I can say to myself “I will swim that fifty times”, and I do. I can see the entire length, I know what I’m in for, and I commit to it. I know I could approach a field from a hill and say a similar thing, but once I got into the field I would lose all sense of what I was doing and the whole thing would seem absurd. I know this makes no sense whatsoever, but it’s the truth. As a child I preferred the beep test to cross-country runs – I could see the finish line the entire time, even if was just a con to keep me going. Short term objectives: they’re the only way to keep me moving.

So there it is. It turns out I’m simply the wrong personality type for running: I’m too easily distracted, it requires personal willpower over survival instinct, and the investment in the long run is greater than my fantastically myopic vision of success will permit me to conceive.

Amazing what you can find out about yourself when you just write, isn’t it?

I’m back! I decided that connecting up my internet was daft since I was leaving the country for three weeks, so upon my return I set about getting myself back online.  This week I finally received my new modem and got back online, meaning I can blog, tweet and browse from the comfort of my sofa again! (I could do all that with my iPhone, in truth, but the keypad is RSI waiting to happen if I tried serious browsing on that tiny device.)  More importantly, I can get back onto feedly and catch up with everyone else’s blogs…

…erm, maybe not.  I might just have to scrap the lot and start again.  If you read me maybe you could leave a brief summary of your past couple of months in the comments, or pick one or two posts that could bring me up to speed? Thanks so much.

So, my sojourn in the UK is over and there isn’t time to write up everything that happened – it was non-stop from the moment I arrived to the time I left.  Much fun was had and the photos are up on flickr (several of me looking trashed and disheveled, you’ll be delighted to know), but more than that, I learned a few lessons about myself which I think I needed my friends to remind me I already knew.

1. I must write. The number of friends who gave me a serve for not having moved my novel on at all can’t be counted on my fingers.  Having a job where I get to write is good, but it’s not enough for my friends who, for some crazy reason, have faith in me and get disappointed when I’m not fulfilling my potential.  I know, unreasonable, right?  However, it’s not all bad news – this month I am researching my MA options properly, so hopefully I can start study in February.  I need someone to beat me into completion, so I figure an MA is a good way to do that whilst also networking for a future career.  I’ll keep you posted.

2. Being single is nothing to fear. I haven’t really been alone before in my life. Obviously I’ve been on my own, but I’ve never been properly on my own – I’ve always had my family, flatmates or a partner to keep me company. When I visited Liccy and Robin in London and they headed off to work on Monday morning, I think it was the first time I have ever been truly left to my own devices. Nothing depended on my achieving anything that day: I had only myself to please and the whole world to do it in. I went around St Paul’s Cathedral, and walked to Hyde Park Corner, Buckingham Palace and St James’s Park before heading back to meet my hosts for dinner. Some of that was new, some was well-trod, but all of it was my choice – no stopping to eat when someone else was hungry, no going somewhere or missing somewhere else as a compromise.  At the start of the day I was almost paralysed with the prospect; by the end I was pleased with what I had done.  Being alone is no big deal, and certainly nothing to fear.

3. I am a catch. When I discussed with my good friend CaroMel how I was a bit intimidated by dating someone who was older and more successful than I was, she practically jumped down my throat.  “You are brilliant and anyone would be lucky to have you,” she roared vehemently, “don’t let anyone make you feel like you aren’t.”  This is exactly what I say to others in my position but sometimes you need to hear it from someone else to remember that it also applies to you.  (I remember telling my self-deprecating friend Al: “Oh, I’m not having any of that” when he tried to suggest his now wife might be out of his league.  “You’re fantastic. Now get over there and talk to her.”  I’m nothing if not direct.)  No one should intimidate you: we’re all just muddling along as best we can, hoping people see that we dressed for the party and don’t notice our fly is open.  Confidence is sexy: if you’re intimidated by your date, he’s not going to be your date for very long.

4. Friends are food for the soul. No matter what, there is always someone who would be thrilled to hear from you. Good friends give so much, even if you feel like you have so little to give in return.  Even though my holiday wasn’t restful in the traditional sense, being with people with whom you “need be neither brave nor reticent” is a rest in itself.  Starting a new life in another country takes stamina and perseverance, so going home to familiar faces and being able to share the bad stuff as well as the good without seeming to whinge is a relief.  Listening to friends fills up your soul; their stories, their care, their advice all help you to grow.  So long as you have friends, you can do anything.

Leaving England was harder this time, perhaps because it was not the big adventure it was last time, but more likely because I better appreciated what I was leaving behind.  The flight itself was uneventful and I slept most of the way so my jetlag only lasted a couple of days.  Within a week things were back to normal and it was like I had never been away.  My Australian friends were as thrilled to have me back as my English friends had been to see me, and they were keen to fill my diary with all manner of parties and events.  Of course I took them up on the offers, such as tonight’s Sleaze Ball.  I’m still a big bag of insecurity and overconfidence and arrogance and doubt, but I’m damned if that’s going to stop me having a good time.  I am who I am, and life is too short.

Generally I’m a pretty laid back guy (insert guffaws here) but every now and then I get my knickers in a knot about something, climb on a very high horse and ride it till the legs fall off. Lately I’ve been reserving this panty-twisting tension for work; there’s plenty to get excited about every day. I should write a post on how communication should be thought about at the very start of your project rather than something you can dump on my desk when you are 90% of the way to completion and expect me to work miracles, but I’ll save it for another time. (By the way, I can work miracles, I just choose not to because, well, you don’t deserve it).

The problem about working in Communications is that you have to objectively assess everything that comes across your desk so you can decide what to highlight and what should be buried deeper than Tom Cruise’s sexuality¹. Generally, this means you can see all the cock ups, fudges, missed opportunities and unrealised potential which, for a control freak like me is agonising. If I’ve said “I could have done a better job than these fuckwits” once today, I’ve said it one hundred times. (My other favourite phrase is “If he thinks he can do a better job, he can come and sit at my desk. I’m more than happy to go home”. Why do people think that writing is just a case of typing out the letters in order? Perhaps I should start interviewing monkeys with RSA II skills for internships.)

To deal with this myriad of crushing disappointments I have adopted a new mantra². It’s not actually ‘new’, but it’s new to me. I’ve learned that there are limits to my responsibility and sometimes you just have to say “That’s not my job. Just let it go”, where ‘sometimes’ means ‘three times a day’. I’m not paid to fix your turd of a project; I’m paid to polish it up, throw glitter on it and present it like a new brand of wonder-doodie, crimped to perfection. That’s a big enough job³ in some cases, without having to point out exactly how you turned a great idea into a total waste of time and money.

I know the ‘it’s not my role’ defence is used by the worst kind of jobsworthy, shoulder-shrugging pedants, but for every person who hears this from me there are two more I offer to help with something that is my job. I am forever e-mailing, phoning and chasing people down in the street waving wildly because I can do something for them. By managing people’s expectations about what I won’t be doing for them, I am freeing up my time to help with the things I can do for you, and to do them well. In short, I’m doing it for your own good. Now get out.

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1. If I turn up in a ditch somewhere, you all know who did it.
2. Just to reiterate, I LOVE my job, but even the best jobs have bad parts.
3. Yes, I saw the pun. No, I don’t care.

Exciting News 1
My latest article is in 3sixty.  I’m on page 58, or you can click below.  Isn’t the internet wonderful?

Exciting News 2
Greg’s company web site went live this week.  If you recall, I did some freelancing for him before I started my new job, and you can read all about The Interaction Consortium online.

Exciting News 3
The Convicts will be on The Footy Show tomorrow night (Channel 9, 9:30pm AEDT) and I will be in the audience to watch the filming. Last week they aired a skit that made fun of gay men and generated a slew of complaints, a media furore and a potential criminal investigation. This week they’re having us on to try to even up the balance. What comes out of it remains to be seen, but it should be good fun. Catch it if you can!