Oh, hello. I hope things are well in your corner of the earth.
When last we spoke, I looked a little something like this:
Right now, I look more like this:
You would not believe the influence that a ten-dollar box of hair dye can have. This one simple change, from red to almost-black, has been received with shock, indignation, disappointment, excitement and cries of “How could you?” Granted, most of these responses have come from people I have never met — people who make themselves known via YouTube comments and Facebook replies. But the reaction from my real-life friends has been similarly pronounced.
My hair had been red since high school. I originally dyed it because I was an X-Files fiend, and flame-haired Scully was my smart-is-sexy, power-suited, judgey homegirl. At the time I was in search of an identity. I was fading, both physically and emotionally, and changing my hair to a vibrant shade seemed a simple way to say “Hey, I’m here! Notice me!”
The red stayed for 11 years. It became an intrinsic part of my personality. I would tell people that I was meant to be a redhead, that there had been some genetic mistake. I liked the fact that red was less common than brown or blonde or black.
At the same time, I felt a bit trapped by it. Defining myself by my hair color — for example, calling my blog “Sprinkle of Ginger” — made me feel like I had to stay that way forever. It began to feel like a caricature.
It’s a well-known trope that women make drastic hair changes in response to upheaval in their lives. Midway through this year, things got chaotic. My employment situation became unstable and scary, things got weird in the realm of romance, and I became eager to shake things up. The obvious answer was a Bettie Page hairdo.
After a brief identity crisis — every time I passed a mirror I would do a double-take — I am happy to be free of the red. This does bring up a vexing matter, though: what to do with Sprinkle of Ginger? Convert it to Sprinkle of Pepper, perhaps? It’s not like I’ve been updating it lately, but I hate the idea of it vanishing into the digital ether. I may just leave it up in archival mode. Still pondering that one.
So, now that you have an essay on why I changed my hair, here are some of the other things I’ve been up to since my last post.
I was in a music video for a delightful Australian band called Boy & Bear. I got to dress up all steampunky and run through the forest toward my astronomer sweetheart. Here’s the video:
I left Rocketboom. In the two years I was there I had some incredible experiences — interviewing Cookie Monster, learning trapeze, swordfighting, re-enacting scenes from Ghostbusters outdoors when it was below freezing — and met some kick-ass people, many of whom I continue to collaborate with. There were a lot of changes going on behind the scenes, though, and it was time to say toodle-pipski and seek out something new.
So you know how I like writing, yeah? I mean, it’s a thing I do from time to time. Well, it’s kind of my main thing now. It began when I co-wrote The RecordSetter Book of World Records, a process that took almost a year and forced me to strangle the demon in my head that yells “Your writing sucks! You’ll be the laughing stock of the universe if you submit this awful manuscript!”
Thankfully I was working with an amazing project manager who was all smiles but didn’t let me get away with missing deadlines or falling into a spiral of self-hate. He also brought these little sugar-free berry-flavored candies to the office, and I ate so many that I finally learned the meaning of the phrase “Excessive consumption may have a laxative effect.” Thank you, Marc Haeringer.
The book is available now and you can find out more about it — and buy it, if you want to make me really happy – here.
For the last year I’ve been volunteering at 826NYC, a non-profit dedicated to helping kids with their creative writing skills. I mainly help out at the storytelling field trips, which involve getting a class of whippersnappers to write a story and have it published within the two-hour session. We get them to brainstorm characters, settings and conflicts, emphasizing that there are no limits beyond being original.
The ideas these kids come up with are brilliant. It’s been inspiring to watch them excitedly propose a new plot point without restraint or any sense of self-censorship. Their stories are funny, adventurous and a delight to read, and the joy they find in the creative process is something I think about when angsting over the way to word a sentence. Here’s the first page of a story by a class of first-graders:
At the moment I am writing the Atlas Obscura book. It’s a big project that will take me well into 2012, and I am beyond delighted to be working on it. Atlas Obscura is a compendium of the world’s most wondrous places, and I’ve been spending my days reading about lost explorers, looking at photos of ossuaries and having long conversations about Tesla with the other adventure-loving nerdlings in the office. As someone who used to pore over encyclopedias as bedtime reading, this is my dream job. And I get to work with Marc the Compassionate Taskmaster again.
Lastly, I just started a project that I am most excited about. I launched a podcast. It’s called Ellipsis, and it’s pretty much the audio continuation of my Sprinkle of Ginger posts. I talk about creativity, inspiration, going nuts, living in New York, embarrassing childhood memories and many other things. There is a different guest every week. Press play to hear the first episode, featuring Mememolly:
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If you like it, I’d love it if you subscribed in iTunes. Here is the link. There is more info about the podcast at its own site, ellipsispodcast.com.
So that’s about it. What have you been up to lately?
I’m currently working on a book of personal essays. This is an example of what I’ve been writing.
“Welcome home (if you still call it that)”. That was the subject of a friend’s email that arrived in my inbox when I landed in Sydney for a recent trip. The echo of his words, and the perennially bewildering experience of long-haul travel, made me feel a little out of sorts as I walked in my flip-flops on summer-stained streets, my pale feet free and warm after months of New York winter.
It’s disorienting to wander around a city that is no longer yours. A city that you grew up in, that you could once navigate automatically. It had been just over a year since my last visit to Sydney, but even in that scant amount of time, so much had changed. They were small differences–new shops, new bus tickets, higher prices–all of which would seem trivial if you lived there. But to me they were dispiriting signs that the place I used to call home was becoming less familiar.
I’m a little ashamed to say that I boarded the plane in New York with a sense of resentment about going to Australia. I felt too busy to be trifling with a frivolous trip across the world, and annoyed at the interruption that such a jaunt would have on my work life. Freelancers tend to exist in a paradoxical state of “lazy panic,” in which the majority of our time is spent worrying that we are not working hard enough. (Ironically, such thoughts tend to take up most of our brain space and preclude us from concentrating on our actual work.) It was in this mindset that I arrived at the airport, having debated and finally acquiesced to the idea of paying for a car to take me there.
As I got in line to board the first leg of the flight, I noticed there was an Australian family in front of me. They had thick accents and were asking each other questions about flying and airports and baggage. Listening to them, I felt this surge of irrational anger and embarrassment. I was irritated by their nasal voices and inane chatter. I resented the idea that people might consider me similar to them on account of our mutual home country. I wanted to dissociate myself from them, and from Australians in general. Basically, my thinking was mean-spirited and nasty. And I know now that it’s because I was scared about going back to Sydney. I worried that I’d feel like an outsider. I worried, as I have tended to worry over the years, that nowhere will ever feel like home again because parts of me are scattered across the world and it’s no longer possible to gather them all up and put them in one place.
This feeling started when I was about 14. That year, I decided I wanted to spend a few months in another country. I was restless and uneasy. I had this feeling that my real life was waiting for me somewhere else, and all I had to do was go find it. I badgered my mother about it, and she finally agreed to let me go to the USA for 12 weeks–as long as I stayed with my aunt in Texas for the first two months. I became very excited by the idea of immersing myself in the American school system and having An Experience that none of my peers in Sydney could claim. So off I went to Dallas, where I discovered to my chagrin that my real life was not, in fact, waiting for me in the crowded halls of Duncanville High School.
My school in Sydney was single-sex, academically selective and required its students to wear brown tunics, white blouses and sensible brown lace-up shoes. We had blazers and prefects and weekly assemblies in which we sang the school song and clapped respectfully for the guests who came to speak to us about the importance of discipline and academic rigour. There were 150 girls in my grade, and we competed against one another in that smiling, underhanded way that girls are so good at. At lunch time we formed an orderly queue at the canteen, purchased sandwiches and orange juice–soft drinks had no place at Sydney Girls High–and ventured down to the grassy field we called “The Lowers” to sit in a circle and talk about our upcoming exams.
Duncanville High, by extreme contrast, was a co-educational school with 1000 kids in ninth grade. There was no uniform. Instead of eight lessons per day, there were four long classes in which students frequently fell asleep. Lunch was taken in the cafeteria, and often consisted of Oreos, greasy pizza and Coke. Kids fell into those American high school stereotypes that I had assumed were the exclusive domain of TV shows like Beverly Hills 90210. After a failed attempt at befriending some popular kids, I fell in with the goth misfits who sat with hunched shoulders, pulling up the sleeves of their hoodies to hide the self-inflicted scars on their arms. Noone, least of all the teachers, seemed to exhibit a genuine enthusiasm for education. I scored 110 per cent in Advanced Placement Geography, having demonstrated my ability to label Madagascar on a world map.
Those months in Texas were a real shock to me. I don’t know what I was expecting–I guess I had assumed I would be an exotic novelty that the students and teachers would regard with delight and wonder. That was not the case. I did manage to befriend some non-goth kids eventually, and they even had a farewell party for me at one of their houses. There was a cake inscribed with “Goodbye Ella, see you ‘Down Under’!” Before it was unveiled, though, we drank whiskey from a communal thermos–parents were in the house, so we had to be discreet. The host, whose name I can’t quite remember, took me into his bedroom, opened his closet door and retrieved a pistol, clocking it and pointing it at my head. It was the first time I had ever seen a gun. He laughed at my look of terror and told me they did things differently in Texas.
When I returned to Sydney I had developed a mysterious disregard for school. I did poorly in my 10th grade exams, but started caring again the next year and ultimately became obsessive to the point that I scored 99.40 (from a possible 100) in my uni entrance exams. But that feeling that my real life was waiting for me somewhere else hadn’t quite disappeared. It was re-invigorated when my mother and sister moved to New York a few months into my first year at university.
Here I must pause and explain the international nature of our family. My mother is American. She grew up in Michigan and California, and eventually found her way to New Zealand, where she met and married my father. I arrived a little later, and my sister was born almost two years after that. Then, when I was three, we all moved from Wellington to Sydney, where I would stay for the next 22 years. This means that I am a citizen of three countries.
My American mother and New Zealand-born, Australian-raised sister both moved to New York in May 2001. I stayed behind in Sydney because, though I had entertained fantasies of attending Columbia or NYU, tertiary education in Australia is vastly cheaper.
I had mixed feelings about their departure. Part of me was excited about being independent at 17, but this sense of freedom was overshadowed by a more sinister element. I was still in the psychological grip of anorexia, and the idea of not having people around to spy on what I was eating or check up on me was enticing. My mother had concerns about leaving me behind, but we both chose to pretend that it was a great idea that would benefit us all.
Not one minute after I watched her and my sister walk to the departure gates at the airport, the feeling of restless unease returned. It persisted, to varying degrees, for the next seven years, as I tried to understand why I felt abandoned when I had willingly bidden my family farewell with a smile on my face.
Though I tried to block out the low hum of constant worry–of being not okay–with odd, ritualistic eating behaviours, various legal and illegal drugs and academic self-sabotage, the spectre of anxiety always lingered at the edges, occasionally clawing at me and sending me into frightened episodes of questioning my sanity. It seemed there was so much to be dealt with, but I didn’t know where to begin. So I returned to the comforting notion that this was all just a waiting room. I once more began to think that my real life was elsewhere, and that soon I would be called into it by a nice secretary with a soothing voice.
New York seemed to be the answer. I visited my mother and sister and we would go over plans for me to move there. But I still harboured such resentment toward them for moving there without me. Then I visited some friends in London, met a glorious man and started thinking about moving there instead. I would return home from these trips, head swirling with visions of packing up everything I owned and moving it across the world, where everyone would greet me at the airport and say “Welcome! Welcome to your REAL life!” I booked one-way tickets to New York and London, then changed them to return flights at the last minute because I was afraid of being disappointed. Or, more accurately, I was afraid of being disappointing.
Finally, at the end of 2008, I decided it was time. I left my job in Sydney, booked that one-way ticket and moved to New York. I knew that, even though my family was there, I might not feel a sense of home or belonging immediately. And I was right. It took over a year to feel comfortable calling this city my home. But now I do.
So, where does that leave Sydney? Is it my “home,” too? In a way. When I was back there on my recent trip, I felt out of place for the first few days. But then, slowly, the balmy evenings brought back smells and sights that are so much a part of me that I could never disown them. The warm mix of wine and seafood wafting from outdoor bars. Sidewalks–footpaths, I should say–covered in a dusting of frangipani flowers. Flying foxes streaming across the sky at dusk toward their trees in the Botanic Gardens. The salty tang in the air by the beach.
I will always feel an emotional connection to Australia. Every time I’m on a flight that has just begun its descent into Sydney, the sight of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House and the frothy waves of Bondi is enough to render me silent and awed. I love that place. I always will. Whether it’s because of its inherent beauty or because it is the setting for so many memories and defining experiences, it doesn’t matter. I love it.
Walking around the city was like taking a tour of my own history. I caught the same bus that I caught to get to high school for seven years. Which is the same bus I caught to get to uni. It’s still there. And when I was on it, I remembered the weight of my school bag on my shoulders, or the feeling of my law textbook in my arms, or dozing with my head against the window after rehearsing a play late into the night. I walked past the State Library and instantly remembered studying fervently for my year 12 exams. I strolled through Martin Place and thought of watching the 2000 Olympics on a giant screen during that magical time when the whole city came alive.
So much of what we call home is about the nature of memory. Even in the space of a year, my memories of Sydney have taken on a romanticized sheen that doesn’t reflect reality. Some things are better than I recall. Some aren’t as good. But the distortion of memory–willful or otherwise–is a fascinating thing. Recollections that seem so seminal and important to you are nothing to others, and vice versa. We reconstruct them in our minds, garnishing them in ways that paint us as the heroes of our own stories.
A few days after I flew back from Sydney to New York, I went to Los Angeles for three days. It was an intense work trip that involved a 200-person team and two 10-hour days of live shoots with hardly any time to sit and think. The flight back to New York left LA at 1pm and landed at JFK after 10pm. We took off into the sunny, cloudless skies and within a few hours, darkness had swallowed us whole. All that light and warmth vanished so quickly. But soon, in its place, came the bright lights of New York City. The energy and the vitality and the comfort of knowing that this is a place that never goes to bed. I put my headphones on, cued up Empire State of Mind, and gazed out the window in silent awe as I landed in my second home.
Know what really, really sucks? Feeling absolutely nothing for anyone or anything.
Emotional disengagement is an understandable strategy when faced with an overwhelming world. But when numbness goes beyond being a temporary coping mechanism and becomes your default state, something needs to be done. You need to bring yourself back.
So, what’s this numbness of which I speak? I’ll explain it according to my experience. It’s a sense of disconnection from the world. Things people say don’t register. You feel nothing. You have a lack of empathy for — or even like of — people. You judge them, criticise them and can’t get excited about their achievements. Your attention span is affected, too — you may read an entire page of a book, magazine or newspaper and have absolutely no recollection of what it was about.
Sometimes numbness is a reaction to something painful. Heartbreak tends to come first — it’s horrible, but it’s usually acute. It’s temporary, ripping through your world and displacing everything before moving on and giving you the opportunity to rebuild. But numbness is pervasive. It creeps in and settles. It gradually dulls your senses and seeps into the world around you, flooding it with white noise and blurring its outlines. Everything becomes hazy. Experiences wash over you and you stop noticing the details.
Numbness is also often the result of too much input and not enough output. Every day we are confronted with a barrage of information: RSS feeds, emails, advertising, TV, inane chatter, work demands — all of this swirls around in our heads and ends up getting stuck. It’s too much to process at once, and as a result our minds go “See ya!” and shut down.
Another cause is lack of human contact, especially if you tend to supplant real-life encounters with virtual ones. I went through a stage a few years back where I’d go entire weekends without talking to another human being. And because I was spending so much time alone, I began to feel embarrassed. Which made me more self-conscious, and less inclined to go out and talk to people. Hello, darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again!
When you don’t interact with other humans, you have no frames of reference. You lose context. You start to think that eating a dinner of cold spaghetti straight out of the can and wiping your mouth on your sleeve is normal. (I wish I could chalk up that example to a creative imagination, but I was actually that schlubby.)
So, how do you shake off the haze and reconnect with these human emotions that other people seem so capable of expressing? Here are a few strategies that can help:
Express yourself. You know those repressed feelings that are rattling around your body? Lay ‘em out on the table. I’ve often been fond of encasing mine within a core of concentric spheres and burying the resulting Megaball of Emotions deep in the backyard. But that’s a really dumb idea. Just be straight-up with people and tell them how you feel. It’s scary, but ultimately incredibly rewarding.
Bring on the music. Play a song that makes you giddily happy or desperately sad. Sing, scream, dance or cry along. Oh hi there, feelings. It’s been a while.
Be with people. And don’t put any pressure on yourself to be funny or entertaining or smart. Pick a few friends and do something low-key. Have a picnic. Or make dinner together. If you all suck at cooking it’ll make it more hilarious. Just have a local take-out joint on speed-dial.
Get naked and let someone touch you. Not like that. I’m talking massage, especially of the hardcore Tui Na variety. If your Tui Na practitioner is anything like mine, you will feel pain, then relief, in muscles you never knew you had. And he/she will likely be sitting on your butt at the time. Which is, you know, confronting. But in a strange way, the casual intimacy of this makes you feel like you must be okay. There’s a sense of self-acceptance that comes with having a small Chinese lady digging her elbows into your cervical vertebrae while sitting on your naked ass.
Add a degree of difficulty to your day. Throwing an obstacle or challenge into your own path is a quick way to jolt yourself into a better frame of mind. Go harder at the gym or force yourself to make an unpleasant but necessary phone call. When it’s done you’ll feel pretty heroic.
Take a break from technology. Yes, yes, I know — you are receiving this anti-technology advice from Internerd McHypocrite. I am a poor role model. But it makes such a difference, I cannot even tell you. Try having a tech-free day once a week, or make your home an internet-free zone after, say, 6pm.
Find something to care about. It could be an artistic project, or an adorable kitty. Whatever it is, just make it something that requires your energy and attention. That way you feel needed and involved in nurturing something important.
I try to do these things often. But sometimes emotional disengagement still happens. (It’s inevitable when you live in crazypants New York.) I continue to have periods of numbness. Quite frequently, actually. But within that I get these extraordinary moments where a deep-seated feeling will lurch to the surface. Sometimes it feels like grief; other times it is closer to exhilaration. The strength and suddenness takes me by surprise. But instead of being unnerved by it, I try to be comforted. It’s wonderful to have such feelings. They prove that I’m a warm-blooded human who is affected by the world around me.
I went through an irresponsible phase when I was around 19. My mother and sister had moved to New York and I was still in Sydney, trudging through a law degree and working as a retail pleb at an electronics store.
I had been a bit of a zombie since finishing high school, but over the course of the next year, things gradually ceased to matter to me. The competitive spirit that had seen me do so well at school suddenly vanished. I stopped caring about everything. I didn’t turn up to classes. I didn’t pay my bills. I didn’t even open the envelopes when they arrived in the mail. My electricity got turned off, so I showered by candlelight. I maxed out my credit card, earning me five years on the banks’ blacklist. Debt collection agencies called me regularly on behalf of the phone company whose letters I had ignored. I was, in Perez Hilton parlance, a hot mess.
None of this fazed me, because I was so numbed that it didn’t feel real. It was almost an experiment: how bad could it get — and would anyone notice?
This is the hallmark of martyrdom. The ol’ “suffering in silence” trick. Perhaps you’ve done it. Maybe you have a friend who makes it a central part of his or her behavioural repertoire.
Going back to my collegiate absolution-of-responsibility schtick, the key was the “Will people notice?” part. That right there is a sneaky test administered to friends and family. If people don’t rush in to save you and comfort you and ask if you’re okay, they fail. And so do you. It means that no-one cares about you. Obviously.
Chop logic indeed, but a lot of people — women especially — are not so good at speaking up when shit gets real. So they resort to silent ways of letting people know that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Passive aggression is a popular choice. You know the drill: subtext-laden assurances of “I’m fine”; thinly-veiled malice thrown into Facebook status updates; demonstrative self-destructiveness.
I used to pull this kind of crap all the time. But over the years I’ve come to realise that it’s no good for anyone. Most importantly, it’s very disempowering for us passive aggressors, who place ourselves at the mercy of other people while simultaneously projecting this fragile, unhinged vibe that tends to drive people away. D’oh.
So, how do you speak up? How do you let people know that they’ve hurt you, or that you are not coping, or that you have to bail on a relationship? I’m still a bit rubbish at most of this, but I think one important thing is not to be so concerned with being liked. An obsession with being universally admired can really mess you up, because it prevents you from saying things that people need to hear.
Sometimes you’ll have to admit that you screwed up. Sometimes you’ll have to deliver unwelcome news. Sometimes you’ll have to disappoint someone or hurt them or break their heart. But that’s what life is: the ups and the downs.
Being a martyr and letting a bad situation fester in the hope of someone reading your mind and fixing it? Bzzzt. Wrong answer. Speak up. Risk being disliked. Care enough for yourself and others to talk about what’s really going on.
At the age of about nine, three friends and I formed the Friends-4-Ever Club. Heavily influenced by The Baby-Sitters Club, we would collect “dues” of one or two dollars each every week and produce newsletters photocopied at the office of someone’s dad. The content of these newsletters was always slight, consisting mostly of drawings of balloons and flowers and cats. Our club had no definitive purpose other than the promotion of friendship and general do-gooding. During lunch time we would stand at the school fence and ask passers-by to donate money to the club, reaching our hands between the bars of the gate like little urchins. Most people laughed. A few people gave us some change. Soon we lost interest.
In an attempt to save money at high school we’d buy a buttered roll and a flavoured ice block called a Lickstick for lunch. The buttered roll was 50 cents and the Lickstick cost 30 cents. We would get into heated debates about whether the black Lickstick was black or purple. It was blackcurrant flavoured. I always considered it to be purple.
In year 10 a substitute history teacher gave me detention. She called me antagonistic. I have never been so offended. It was the exact opposite of everything I wanted to be.
When I was 16 and anorexic I brought a small plastic container of tomato soup and two rice cakes for lunch. Juvena was going to the canteen, so I asked her to heat my soup. When she came back she showed me that the rubber seal on the container had melted into the plastic, fusing the edges and trapping the soup inside. I threw it against a brick wall in frustration. I felt powerless and angry and imprisoned by my own skin.
When I got really thin I had to gather my school skirt into folds and pin it in the back. I used a safety pin that mum had saved from when she used it to fasten my nappies as a baby.
I remember always being cold. I wore long-sleeved thermals to school. And when I sat down it hurt because the bones of my spine scraped against the plastic chair.
During the school holidays in year 11 a freak hailstorm damaged all the classrooms on the top floor. For months we had to have lessons in creaking portable rooms that had been installed on the grass field near the bear pit. (Our school was built on the site of the old Sydney Zoo, which closed in 1916.) The rooms were stifling in summer and desperately cold in winter, and the carpets were always ripped and frayed.
Our all-girl school was next to an all-boy school. It used to be separated by a fence, but that was gone by the time we were there. The boys’ school had Coke and vanilla slices in their canteen, but we had to make do with flavoured sparkling mineral water and chocolate chip muffins.
There was nothing as stressful as watching the wheels of a cassette tape slowly spin as you sat facing the stereo during a Japanese speaking exam. A piece of paper with English sentences sat on the desk, and you had to speak them in Japanese, remembering all of the tricky grammatical structures and particles that would be ticked off when the teacher heard the tape. You had five minutes to read the paper before pressing the record button. I used to rock back and forth, squeezing my hands together and reciting the phrases to myself in a frenzied whisper.
All the cool girls used to wear eight-hole Doc Martens instead of the brown leather shoes we were supposed to have. Once there was a uniform check during English, and Juvena was wearing white socks with little ladybugs on them. As the teacher made her way to the back of the classroom where we were sitting, Juvena painted the bugs away with Wite-Out. She didn’t get into trouble.
Being at school after dark always felt like an adventure.
Recently I made my fourth visit to London, this time courtesy of the good folk at CheapOair. (I won a competition that relied on chance and required absolutely no skill. Ego boost activate!)
The trip was of the whirlwind variety — five days — but I still managed to pack in a metric Thames-load of museums, sightseeing and unbridled but culturally contextual binge-drinking. Herewith, some highlights, recommendations, and general jetlag-addled blather.
Museums and galleries
There are some brilliant museums in London, and the vast majority are free. Yep, you don’t have to pay anything to browse the Greek sculptures that Lord Elgin stolecarefully and lawfully acquired from the ruins of the Parthenon. Being accustomed to NYC museums like the Met, which makes a very, very strong suggestion that you pay the “donation” of $20, I found this policy rather jarring.
The clump o’ museums along Cromwell Road in Kensington (Natural History Museum; Science Museum; V&A) is well worth a visit. The Darwin Room at the NHM has a bunch of creepy specimens floating in formaldehyde, which you can examine during a private tour. In the Science Museum there are creepy life-size dioramas of 19th century medical procedures. But the best of the bunch is the V&A. Its smartly curated collection features an extraordinary cast court, which has plaster versions of European sculptures, tombs and architectural details. The most impressive is Trajan’s column, built in Rome in AD 113. They had to split it in two to fit it in the room. I mean, come on. Amazing.
Trajan’s column at the V&A Cast Court. Unwashed nerd in foreground for scale.
As for other museums worth a look-in, The British Museum is your one-stop mummy shop. In addition to having an array of ancient Egyptian sarcophagi, desiccated body bits and decorative scarabs, it hosts the Rosetta Stone. The Tate Modern has the stuff that makes you say “I don’t get this; I hate it”, or “I don’t get this; I love it”. The Imperial War Museum in Lambeth is affecting — the Blitz and Holocaust exhibits will silence you into solemnity and bring home the meaning of holidays like ANZAC Day and Memorial Day.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea. The works within its walls are frequently anarchic and witty and it makes for a great palate cleanser if you’ve been traipsing around museums all day. The best artwork at the moment is by Richard Wilson: an entire room filled to waist-deep height with sump oil. You observe it from a platform, and for the first few minutes you have no idea what you’re looking at. The surface looks solid but reflective. Then you start to see ripples and realise the entire thing is liquid. Reader, it blew my mind.
Hug a Londoner today!
Nature and all that
London, your parks are impressive. Well done. There are also a lot of them. And they are huge. Regent’s Park, Hyde Park and Hampstead Heath are all so very English. The deck chairs, the rowboats, the manicured rose gardens, the ponds that people bathe in when it reaches a balmy 15 degrees Celcius: this is the Britain I came to see. Though the grit of New York has its charms, the sheer prettiness of these verdant enclaves is sigh-worthy.
But even when I’m on vacation, I like to remind myself regularly that I am going to die. It’s just part of the ol’ routine, you know? So I took a stroll through Brompton Cemetery. It’s peaceful and mossy and overgrown but not at all eerie. People ride their bikes along the paths. There was even a girl playing catch with her dad when I was there. I’m sure the residents didn’t mind.
This concludes your daily memento mori. Thank you for visiting Brompton Cemetery.
Social graces
There are a few things about London that you can appreciate no matter where you venture to within the city. The first is the prevailing civility. This is different to what I’m used to, both in my adopted home and my original one. New York is brash and wild and get-outta-my-way-already. Similarly, one of Australia’s hallmarks — many would call it a virtue — is the very casual manner in which people converse with one another. This can be seen in fleeting encounters (bus drivers, waitstaff) as well as with friends, and even between different levels of the workplace hierarchy. There is a lot of fast-tracked familiarity when it comes to addressing people, as evidenced in the fact that anyone whose name cannot be recalled is referred to as “mate”.
By contrast, your average London encounter is shrouded in social decency. People on the street, cashiers and train announcers get all Jane Austen on you, politely offering phrases like “I’m terribly sorry” and “Do bear with me for a spell while I extract this bandsaw from the gaping wound in my torso”. Such considerate language denotes respect and a certain reserved approach that I find most alluring. It reminds me of that scene between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth near the end of Pride and Prejudice where they are confessing their mutual desire to hook up, couched in such beautifully restrained lines as “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” Oh YES, YOU MUST. Hot.
Call when you want, but there’s no one home, and you’re not gonna reach my telephone.
Supermarket food
However undeserved, England has a reputation for awful cuisine. But there is one ares in which it excels: decent lazy-single-person food. Oh, my word. Just drop into an M&S Simply Food or check out the organic readimeals from Sainsbury’s and Waitrose. Unlike New York supermarkets, where high-fructose corn syrup reigns supreme, you will find delicious, fresh things that your lazy ass can eat straight out of the box. If you are like me (non house-trained, more inclined to spend time dancing to Lady Gaga in your living room than bother whipping up a quick paella), London is your lazebot mecca. I was enraptured by the array of gastronomic offerings that require little to no effort expenditure before being transported from fork to mouth.
Thus ends my meandering trip report. Thank you, people of London, for showing me a good time. I will be back.
My life is ridiculous. In a good way, mostly. And it has been that way for the last year and a half. To illustrate, here are some of the activities I engaged in over the span of a recent week:
Dressed as a taco and sang murdered David Bowie’s Space Oddity at Joe’s Pub, while being pelted with 144 sticks of chalk. This silliness was all in pursuit of a URDB world record.
Did an interview on the flight deck of the USS Intrepid, then had a few chats with serving members of the US Navy.
Attended a six-hour burlesque workshop, during which I learned seductive glove removal techniques and discovered that my personal goddess is the Hindu Sarasvati, patron of intelligence, cosmic knowledge, creativity and the arts.
All of this was “work”. This is the life of a freelancer. And it is all very charming and whimsical — until you visit a medical practitioner and get told that your ultrasound will cost $5,600 because you have no health insurance.
Becoming a freelancer is one of the biggest shake-ups I’ve ever experienced. It’s fun yet stressful, lazy but tiring, and the wild variation in income from month to month is a rollercoaster of budgeting angst. But all up, I love it. And I don’t think I could ever work nine-to-five in an office again.
If you’ve considered ditching your job and seeing what the freelance thing is all about, here are a few things to roll around in your head. Let’s start with the positives.
No set routine, aka, who cares if you wake up at 11am and eat cake for breakfast? For many people, being able to set your own hours is the main appeal of freelancing. I can’t deny that it feels rather delicious to spend most mornings sleeping in. But lack of routine can also be a downer. I actually like being told what to do. I like having a place to go to and a time limit in which to get things accomplished. When you are the master of your own destiny, work hours tend to bleed into leisure hours.
Creative and intellectual fulfillment. Every one of my jobs — I have five at the moment, ranging from copyediting to video presenting to writing about burlesque — is something I believe in and enjoy doing. This has a major effect on my enthusiasm for life.
Being able to work wherever you like. I’ve worked on projects while sitting under a tree in Central Park; in the reading room of the New York Public Library; in other countries; and, frequently, from a supine state in my own bed.
Crowd avoidance. This is a small thing, but it’s a pretty swell feeling to be able to go clothes shopping at 2pm on a weekday or get a seat on an 11am train that would have been packed at 8:45. Avoiding the rush-hour crowds makes you feel like the rat race does not apply to you. (‘Cause it doesn’t! Yeah!)
Idleness. Compared to full-timers, I don’t work that many hours per week. But here’s the rub: when I’m lolling about in a semi-conscious stupor of a morning, or idly cruising the same batch of 10 websites over and over, part of my brain is freaking out about how lazy I am. “Do something!” it screams. “You’re falling behind! It’s embarrassing! DO THINGS!”
This is, ironically, the stress of idleness. It’s especially pronounced in New York, where everyone is a Type A young gun overachiever who is constantly trying to prove how busy and important they are. Comparing yourself to such people flings you into a spiral of self-criticism, where you become so preoccupied with chastising yourself for your laziness that you don’t have time to do the work you are punishing yourself for avoiding. (Like most human behaviour, this makes no sense.)
Social isolation. Sometimes I really miss working at CBSi, because every day there was such an interesting, funny bunch of people within a ten-metre radius of my desk. When you freelance, you need to make a concerted effort to connect with people in your industry, or you can feel out of touch and socially maladjusted. If you’re prone to introspection, the long periods of solitude can make you a bit loopy.
The need to sell yourself. For some people this is easy, but I struggle with it, big time. I’m from the land of self-deprecation. The idea of emailing a stranger and telling them they should hire me because I’m fabulous is anathema to my culturally mandated modesty. But you have to do stuff like that when you are self-employed. A hefty dose of self-belief is crucial, but if you are doing something you are really passionate about, it’s easier to frame it in the terms of your work, rather than your personality or ego. Think about a problem someone has that you can solve. That approach is always more effective than “check me out, I think we both know you want me in your life”.
No employee benefits. I have no health insurance. If I get hit by a rogue moped, need a root canal or come down with appendicitis, I am totally screwed: the resulting medical bills would total way more than five years worth of tertiary student debt. And it’s not just the emergency-type stuff that’s pricey. Things like new glasses or the Pill or even basic check-ups are similarly exorbitant. In many cases it would be cheaper — and faster — to fly home to Australia, go to a doctor and fly back. So, that sucks. If you’re in a country where the cost of healthcare is not tied to your employment status (wow, what a concept!), you may have it easier. But here in the USA, being a freelancer means either paying a heap of cash for personal insurance or taking a gamble and staying uninsured.
The financial rollercoaster. A batch of cheques will come in, you’ll think you’re rich and will go spend all the money on cocktails and monocles. Then a few weeks later you’ll go to pay your rent and realise there’s nothing in your bank account. Whoops.
Taxes. Nightmare.
So, should you become a freelancer? If you can handle all of the above, sure. It’s a lifestyle that comes with creative freedom, a lot of sleeping in and the satisfaction of charting your own course.
Got questions to ask or experiences to share about being self-employed? Get commenting, tiger!
Welcome to Sprinkle Of Ginger. It's a blog about creativity, motivation and mischief by Ella Morton. (Yeah, hi. that's me.)
If you are a creative type prone to procrastination, fear of failure and timidness, I invite you to read along so that we might sucker-punch our inner critics together.
My posts also reflect what it's like to live in New York, a city custom-built to over-stimulate people to the point of insanity. Please, join my online self as I amble along this brightly lit path towards the nuthouse.
