It's April Next Week...

I was looking at my year planner earlier and April is looking exciting.  I will be joining an art group; going to New York; starting a Yoga class (attending, not running one!) and learning a new craft.  "you have a year planner?"  Oh yes.  Month by month, 2 metres by 2 metres, covering the walls of the basement.  It is a takeaway, one of many, from the cool online course I took in January and wrote about in my blog back then.  You could say it sounds nerdy to have such a plan, and I used to see planning as nerdy (outside work that is - at work it's what I do and who would knowingly have a career as a nerd?  that would be dreadful) but I have found in the last few years that:

Talking about stuff and planning in that stuff got us to Canada; a car; a house; a trip to ski mountain; a less crazy work day.  Without planning I believe some personality types just "do", mine being one of them.  I am like a clockwork toy, wind me up and off I go until the ticking stops.  It's not a receipe for a fulfilling life although bosses like it.

In my first and second jobs we were paid hourly, so the more you worked the more money you had, and the less time to spend it, so you got richer.  In those days money for buying stuff was what mattered.  We worked from 8 til 5 and most weekends. Then when I moved up to work as a manager for a huge retail firm the same shift patterns applied - work for 13 days then get 2 days off.  The store opened at 8am and closed at 8pm with an hour each side for setting up and shutting down all of the bits and pieces.  It was expected that you started early and you never ever left before 5.  Often times you stayed til close.  We weren't hourly paid, but salaried, so what drove us to do that? (and all the managers did do it). We believed that it was expected of us (we were all in our 20's) and those in charge liked that we believed that it was expected of us. It served the firms purpose to have managers working, in real terms, for much less than the hourly paid staff.  To this day I say that retail management is one of the toughest jobs you can have. 

So the pattern that work was about "work, work, work, work, sleep - spend weekend vegged out, then doing some pre work" was set in my head from my late teens.  So, back to planning, I conciously plan my work and life balance these days.  Interestingly folks now in their 20's have completely different wiring to my generation, and are less slaves to the implied man.  I hope that is true as it will take a mass movement of people confidently saying "going home now, bye" before businesses actual structure themselves with the true cost of staff rather than running on the fumes of free labour.

The New York trip is a work thing that sees me flying in close to midnight on the Wednesday and leaving for La Guardia around 6am that Friday and being in a 2 day meeting in between.  There are worse jobs to have for sure, and I have had a few of them.  I am looking forward to two days off being mum although I do have my orders to go to Toys R Us to get Beyblade WarriorZ.  The yoga class is partly about chilling out and significantly about stretching as my desk huddle pose is leading to some nasty back pains.

Another take away from that cool online course was making a list of 30 things that I will do this year so...Learning a new craft? - on the list, because I can.  Joining an Art group?...Scary, and scary is good.  Introvert in foreign land seeks art community who may look at her stuff and sneer.  They won't, well not to my face, but if we let fear stop us trying we'll never do half of the fun stuff. 

Oh, and recently someone told me I was "too clever" - not in a smart-arse way (that's a given with me) but in a "it's a form of handicap, as you are different to others" kind of way.  I'm still processing that.  A blog may come from that seed, or I might just go paint a picture.  Lifes too short and if I am that smart, I have no time for morons ;-)

Namaste!