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.

My big leap.

   These are my thoughts to Carrie Fletcher's video about taking chances and big risks.

   But I am currently in the midst of preparing to make the biggest leap of my life, so far. I am moving to a different country by myself. I think I've been taking this into baby steps, and this was the next rational action. I have moved around before, I have moved countries with my family, I have moved by myself to a new town. I have traveled abroad by myself before. All in preparation for this.

   Ok, so it's not as immediate as I'm making it out to be, but I know for certain it is the thing I most want to do right now. I have a pretty good job that I've grown to love, I have reconnected with friends I haven't seen in over 8 years and I'm getting closer to my family. But at the same time I am willing to trade that for this move.

  I applied and been accepted to a very prestigious school in England for a master's program and I have no hesitation whatsoever about accepting it. I am going to work as hard as I can to save up some money to pay for it myself without being a strain on my parents, so that is also another sacrifice I am willing to make since I could be using this money for more immediate pleasures. And I know this will be so very worth it.

   I'd love to know what are some big leaps you might have taken, wanted to take, plan on taking. And whatever they are I wish you good luck.

Best,

M.

   p.s. no this blog has not become a "I respond to YT videos" thing, it's just I really wanted to write more than the comment section would let me.

My happy list.

   It is often pointed out to me how much I complain about things. I like to think that I have been getting better in that sense from a few years ago, although I have a lot of progress yet to make. 

   Inspired by Ze Frank, I decided to make a list of  of the small things that make me happy. I'm not gonna lie, it was one of the hardest things I've had to do in a while. I don't stop to think about these things often enough, and could not come up with a list from the top of my head. I started this post on Saturday (23/03) and could only post it today, after making a conscious effort of noticing what small things in my daily life make me happy.

• going out of my way to step into puddles when I'm wearing rain boots.
• warming up my feet under my computer when I'm cold.
• particularly well worded sentences.
• hearing that pop of air when you open a vacuum sealed container.
• smell of new books.
• Grandma's "bolinhos de chuva"
• puns
• being right when you guess the end of a movie/book/tv show
• being wrong when you guess the end of a movie/book/tv show
• a new page on a notebook

   It was a fun exercise and I recommend it to anybody who would like to try. What about you, what's on yours list?

M. 

p.s. for an explanation about the little blood bag next to the video. Check out the Red Cross' Facebook Page

Follow your dreams... to where?

   I consider myself to be a very motivated person.  I am not shy about wanting something and going after it with all my might, even if it doesn’t seem logical or healthy at first. A good percentage of my life online is spent reading/watching/following people who are passionate about things and aren’t afraid of pursuing what they love, some of them at a dubiously young age.  When I see those people I think “wow, great! I’m like that! So if I don’t give up I too can be successful!”

   Problem is, I don’t know what I’m passionate about. Or what I want to do. Feels like I’m drawing a bow and aiming really hard, at a target that doesn’t exist. I’m not scared of hard work, I thrive on it in fact, I just don’t know towards what or where to direct that hard work. 

   A few posts ago, I responded to Bryarly Bishop’s post about this sort of thing; what dogoal oriented people do when there is no clear defined goal? And here I am struggling with it over and over again. I have just landed a shiny new job, which on the second day I’ve grown to hate. I don’t make enough money, I don’t feel stimulated intellectually or creatively and yet there’s nothing better on the horizon so I’m gonna stay.

It would be easy for me to leave, look for another job, start my own thing. Pursue the career I’ve always wanted. Except for knowing what that is. If I go back as far as I can remember I’ve wanted to be a writer, a scientist, a lawyer, a producer, a diplomat amongst many other things. Now at the ripe age of 22 with the world ahead of me, wind beneath my wings and the power of the internet to keep me cruising, I don’t know where I want to go.

It is a little frustrating to see 19 year old YouTubers with defined careers and a growing empire, because they had the guts to do what they wanted and are good enough to make money out of it. Do I want to be a YouTuber then? Not really.

What should be an easy thing becomes so complicated. I should know this. Its a test about me and I don’t have the answers. It's like when people want to give advice about your life and they say "just be yourself", well newsflash if I knew who "myself"was I wouldn't need to ask for your advice! So for now I’ll stick with being an executive assistant and I’ll hate waking up every morning. At some point I’ll figure it out what it is I love to do, right?

M.