By Jove, I've got it!

   So last night I met the guy responsible for this little gem.

   Regardless of how you feel about the ad, the representation of women, the sincerity of Dove's actions etc. You can't deny that this is a pretty effective piece of marketing. Therefore the person who came up with this concept was very successful at it. And he's no older than 30, pushing it.

  At the ripe age of 22 I found myself really excited that young people are being recognized in large scales, and then I got down on myself for never even having come close to achieving anything noteworthy. I then went on over all the arguments in my head about not comparing myself to other people etc etc.

   Today I woke up with a spring in my step and the attitude to take on whatever the world threw at me. And by jove, I've got it. My next project! It is going to be a series of odd end jobs, mostly freelance, to help me pay for grad school and the trips I wanna make. But also to build some more than necessary life-experience, and open my eyes a little bit.

  I'm excited about it, and can now stop moping about not knowing where my life is going or not knowing what I want to do for a career.


  How about you, my darlings, what do you want to achieve with a little extra spring in your step?

M.

11 questions every 20 something needs to ask, and my answers.

   One of my favorite blogs, All Groan Up, has these 11 fantastic questions that every 20 something needs to ask themselves, and having woken up with the nagging "what now?" in my head for the last two years I thought it was about time I started asking different questions, since I obviously don't have the answers to that one yet.

Do the people I'm surrounded by bring me life?

   I'm not certain how to answer this. I feel like I surround myself with such a mixture of people that I can't make any generalisation about any of them. But I often find myself giving advice and pushing my friends through rough times, to get them motivated to do things and chase their dreams. So in a way yes, they do bring me life, but I feel like it comes from me when I try to breathe some into them.

Who inspires me the most?

   I guess the people I want to emulate the most are young professionals/entrepreneurs who made a career out of blogging or youtube or something of the sort. Not that I myself want to become a professional blogger, but I admire people who have stuck with things that aren't conventional careers, or the ones that the older generation look at and say "why don't you get a real job?" and I admire them for sticking to it and following their passion.

What are my favorite stories?

   I like crazy stories of things that happen to absolutely ordinary people. If I had to find a common thread between my top favorite movies, it would be that the main plot device is something interesting, or life changing that happens to normal people. The sort of thing that I walk around the street thinking, it could happen to me too.

Would I want to live with me?

   Absolutely. I pride myself in being fun loving and thrill seeking and those are the characteristics I'd look for somebody to live with. It ties back with the previous answer, perfectly normal people who want to live extraordinary lives.

Do I love from my insecurities or do I love from my strengths?

   A little bit of both I'd say, but mostly out of my insecurities.

Where am I ripe with talent and where do I quickly deflate?

   I am argumentative, I am a good listener. I am very empathic and can relate well to other people's feelings. I am spontaneous and courageous when it comes to new things. None of them are real talents though.

What are my favorite hobbies/things I do for fun, and is there something there I can leverage into a career or product?

   No. I like to read, but I'm a terrible writer. I like to listen to music, but I don't sing or dance. I like to be on tumblr but mainly just reblogging things and never creating them. I'm too much of a consumer and not enough of a creator.

What is the main thing that is holding me back?

   Lack of patience. I don't have enough patience to let things develop into what they need to be, I don't wait until things are ripe for the picking so I often either pick them too soon or forget about the completely.

What are my negotiables and non-negotiables?

   I am willing to live anywhere, and I refuse to take a job that will pin me down to just one place. I want to have a job that I can do from anywhere in the world, when a whim strikes to travel and see new things I can do that without having to schedule it months in advance, or wait until I have my days off, etc.

What breaks my heart?

   Being stuck in one place. 

At 29 years and 364 days, if I accomplished just one thing, what do I want it to be?

   To have been to every continent at least once.

What about you guys? Anybody out there struggling with the quarter-life crisis of your twenties? What would be your answers to some of these questions?

M.

On slowing down

   I think I suffer from this generational disorder of speed. Everything has to be done immediately, and if I have to wait for more than a few seconds for something I find myself getting angry. Things, particularly information, can be, and often are, at my disposal the instant I demand them.

   So I have a hard time slowing down. I don’t mean the kind of slow down to appreciate life and walk in the park. I do just fin on those occasions. But I mean the slowing down of dedicating time to doing something. Focusing my attention to a single task that although can be done very quickly through a series of computerized shortcuts should most likely be done slower and more precisely by human hands.

   Even as I write this post, I am compiling a massive amount of data to be sent over to a client, so he can look and approve it before we can produce it. And that is fine, it is better and more efficient to send the files to him digitally, but what my mind is incompetent of doing is just relaxing for a bit while that task finishes. At no point did I think I should just sit here and stare at the screen for the little download bar to fill up. My immediate thought was “I know! I can use this time to blog! I’ve neglected it for a while.” The curse of the multi-tasker. 

   So here I am. Unable to stop, unable to be still. Not doing a thing.

   How about you? Can you take the time to wait for a task to finish before you star another?

M.

Short Term Projects

   I am bad at waiting. If there is something I am looking forward to I can't help but obsess over every single detail paying an indecent amount of attention to it, and some times changing plans entirely just because I had too much time to mull it over. I find myself in one of those situations. I have big big plans that are to come to fruition in about a years time, and now we play the waiting game. Which is torture.

   The solution I came up for this problem is the distraction tactic. While I wait for my long term projet to come about I need to make several short term ones (STPs). Learn a skill, give myself a reading challenge, volunteer, create something, travel. They tend to vary based on the amount of time I need to fill up, otherwise I'll just find myself wasting my life by crossing off days on the calendar, days I could have been using for something else.

   So now its the drawing board for me, I have no idea what this STP will be, but just the prospect of it makes me excited. Any ideas are welcome.

How do you deal with long term anticipation?

M.

p.s. seemingly unrelated song, but I love it and have been listening to it non-stop.