Feast or Famine
Well, it seems like a really long time since I’ve been able to write anything – all the contracts I’ve been waiting for for seven months (and which left me almost broke while I waited) have finally come in, dropping crazy buckets of workload on my head, lap, computer, desk, and everywhere else :) I have so many projects going at once now that I desperately need to make a list of all the things I need to do for them all over the next six months – but I haven’t had time to make the list! Add to that the trial that is starting in a week in which I’m an expert witness, and things are a bit nuts around here.
Friends, send me calm, competent energy – I need it!
Funny how I miss blogging when I don’t have time to do it. It’s gotten to be a regular part of my life and a form of expression and communication with my network that I value. It gives me an emotional outlet when I need it, a place to post random interesting ponderings that others might have something to say about, and it makes me feel really great when people read and communicate back :)
It’s also interesting how blogging tends to open people up. My signature line on my e-mails now includes a link to this blog, and as a result many of my work colleagues know a lot more about me than they did before. Some of them have said really nice things about it – we all worry about revealing too much, but over the years I have learned that the result is usually more positive than not. It gives us all a human face, which when you’re an independent consultant, feels especially important – since networking and friendships are really what it’s all about. I’ve even had one person tell me it inspired him to open up about side ventures he was involved in in his “other” life, which in turn resulted in us receiving some wonderful and unexpected bakery creations :)
Now I’m just waiting for the day when my Mom gets broadband and actually starts reading this ^.^ We’ll see if I still have the courage to post everything!!
Meditations on water levels in a glass
I was at a lecture tonight about women and fatigue that was actually quite interesting. Being taught by a doctor, it was not at all what I expected, but rather about how we think about ourselves and our relationships with others affects what we do, which affects how tired we are. Gist for a later post – but at some point in the talk she used that old cliche about the glass being half empty or half full.
Immediately I could hear my mind objecting – no, it isn’t one or the other, it’s BOTH! I had to laugh – I’m so sick of that quote. A while back I did some internet dating, and you can’t imagine how often it comes up in profiles – guys describing themselves as a glass-half-full kinda guy, or wanting a glass-half-full woman. Why can’t they just say they’re looking for a woman who approaches the world with a consistently positive attitude? It got to be almost as bad as the “long romantic walks on the beach” – something that would make you cringe and quickly move on to the next profile :D
But on the drive home I was pondering why it is that I find this question impossible to answer. I truly can’t think of it one way or the other – it’s neither – or both. In actual fact, the water in the glass is at the exact midway point between the state of being empty and the state of being full. And, the two states aren’t different – they’re exactly the same.
Is this just me? Am I really so middle-of-the-road that I can’t see it one way or the other? Or is it the scientific side of me that insists on an accurate definition and the congruency of the two states? Or is the mediator side of me that can see it both ways simultaneously? Perhaps its that I know that anyone answering this question knows WHY they’re answering it, and I question anyone’s ability to be truly objective. I mean, who wants to be known as a glass-half-empty kind of gal?
What keeps popping into my head is that it’s really a matter of context. If someone’s pouring water into my glass, then it’s half full. If I’m drinking water out of it, it’s half empty. Context matters. Like my bank account these last six months – I’ve had a pretty scary run of contracts not starting up when they were supposed to, and having to deplete my savings well below the halfway point just to live. On the way down, my bank account was definitely half-empty. When I start earning back the money to replenish it again, it will be half-full.
It strikes me that being consistently one way or the other is really neither sensible nor normal. If you’re always optimistic (naively deluded, some might say) you may not protect yourself well enough by buying insurance, saving for retirement, wearing a seat-belt, etc. If you’re consistently pessimistic, you may be depressed enough to need counseling, and have low self-esteem and health problems.
I think I like being in the middle – prepare for the worst and hope for the best :) So I guess I’m a middle-of-the-glass kinda gal!
Small pleasantries
The things I am happy for this week –
This may sound funny, but the honking of geese :) We have a wetland behind our houses here, and the geese migrate back and forth in the morning and evening, quite low to the ground. The flock rather loudly and musically honks at each other as they fly over and it always makes me smile.
The incredibly gorgeous beautiful green that is bursting out all over in the forest behind my house. I may have to even take the screen off the upstairs window so I can take a picture of it. I love that time of year when the trees and shrubs are all finally filling in with their particular shades of new green, and it all sparkles in the alternating rain and sunlight.
The little zipping noise that lets me know that the brilliant red hummingbird is back and drinking out of my waterfall again. I’m not even going to try to take a picture of him (with my slow digital camera shutter speed). But he’s fun to watch :)
Sun south of the border
So I may have mentioned that when I was visiting recently in Puerto Vallarta, I was taken enough with the condo we were staying in to actually purchase a timeshare week (!). For those who know me, this is pretty much out of character. I like to be footloose and free to go anywhere on vacation, at least so I’ve loudly professed in the past as my friends and family bought timeshares :D
There are a lot of reasons why this time, it seemed to make sense. Foremost among them was the sense of incredible peace I had there. The temperature was perfect to open the sliding doors at night and let the waves lull me to sleep. It’s a rocky beach below the sand, so they’re actually quite loud. Sitting on the balcony and gazing out over the perfect view of the ocean, I could easily just sit, read a book, or take the time to write one. That was a nice thought – a writer’s retreat. This place has amazing sunsets…
And every winter/early spring I get fed up with the weather here in the Pacific Northwest, beautiful as it is, and wish I were somewhere south. Now, I’ll be able to almost literally just pick up the phone and go. This condo is very liberal in their booking policies – they save 20% of the rooms for last-minute visits by owners, and it was easy for us to get the best room on the 25th floor with less than a month to spare. Not to mention that Alaska Airlines (and a few others) has direct, daytime flights there several times a day for non-exorbitant prices.
I have 30-year contract – but you may have noticed that long before then I intend to be living somewhere south of the border anyway. As it happens, I am allowed not only to bank several years if I can’t use them, but accelerate up to three years worth from the end of my contract in any given year. This means I can spend up to a month there at a time if I want to. Not only that, my one condo is actually two rooms with a connecting door. I can split it and rent the other half – or get twice as many weeks. When it’s just me, or me and a friend, there’s no need for both rooms.
This is a nice place – tile floors, marble kitchen, large walk-in shower, large ocean-front balcony, amazing pools and jacuzzi area that’s like a little island surrounded by lush plantings. Yet, it’s pretty casual too. Across the street is the local soccer field and flea market, two blocks away is a huge grocery store where I can buy anything I need. It’s not in the upscale tourist enclave, nor the spring break party zone – just in a nice area with lots of services, great restaurants, art galleries, and beach. You can walk to almost anywhere in the city from there, and where you can’t walk, an almost-free bus will take you.
Puerto Vallarta turns out to be a birder’s paradise – just one more of its many attractions. Sailing by our condo balcony were flotillas of pelicans and frigatebirds, which I could pretty much watch all day. The jungles in the surrounding mountains are home to over 300 bird species, including several endemics. The people there seem very nice and there is not the separation between tourists, ex-pats and locals that you find in so many places – everyone’s hanging out together and there seems to be a relatively high standard of living.
The hotel itself has cleaning service every day (unlike most condos), yoga three times a week, a spa and exercise area, and those amazing pools. You can get a nice massage out on the pier, or go parasailing. Me – I’ll probably stick to the yoga and long walks around the city. It has wireless, though at the moment it’s not cheap (the concierge quietly directed me to the internet cafe across the street, where it is $0.50/2 hours).
I won’t go into the timeshare swaps, extra weeks at other condos around the world, and last-minute travel deals that came with the package (all of which I am likely to use). But to me, one of the big selling points was that this a place I can go and relax, enjoy the sun, and learn what it’s like to live south of the border. I can come alone and work on my Spanish, use the time to learn about real estate and medical care, talk to ex-pats, and just see what it’s like to be there a month at a time. I’ll use my timeshare swaps to check out other Central American countries and see what they’re like.
I hope some of you will join me south of the border!
Conferences and connections
Just spent the weekend at Fort Worden in Port Townsend – a vacation spot in early April it was not (frickin’ cold, actually), but rather the gathering place of our local chapter of the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. There’s something about working at home that makes these conferences and even project meetings a lot more fun than they would otherwise be – a chance to reconnect with my colleagues and be social, as well as the work benefits they provide.
I like our local chapter meetings – there’s something about them that’s very different from the national conferences. Aside from being small and knowing 2/3 of the people there, the work being reported on seems much more relevant to what I need to know and much more generally synergistic among presenters and researchers.
Then there’s the casual factor – people feel comfortable saying what they really think, even it if goes against the mainstream – and admitting they have no idea yet what their data mean but knowing that people at the conference are interested enough in it to work on it and think about it with them. Not to mention the barbecues on the beach, drinking wine someone’s making on the side, dancing to someone’s after-hours band, and the tipsy half-science, half-philosophy conversations late into the night. :)
This year I had the great honor of being dragged over to a group of students by a professor I’ve always admired and being introduced as the person who changed his way of teaching by the types of questions I was always asking :D And I found myself spending a lot more time talking to students this year than usual, which was quite enjoyable.
Lastly there’s the undeniable work benefits it provides – the networking among contractors and clients, the chance to do budget and project planning at odd moments, communicate with people that are usually in other states – and even once in a while, as happened this year, meet someone new and interesting – personally and professionally.
All in all, a good weekend. Now, back to work…
Making my body work
After almost six months of very little work due to contract delays beyond my control, I now find myself in the position of having to cram all that work into a much lesser period of time, and also being in dire need of the cash flow that doing that work quickly would provide. I know from past experience that I’ll be working 8-10 hr days, pretty much non-stop (feast or famine). I also know that I can handle this for about 3 months, at which point I start to fall apart, physically and mentally.
Now I’m facing something like 7-9 months of similarly intense work, and I know I need to do something to pace this, every day and on a periodic vacation basis, or I just won’t make it through without some kind of meltdown. I’ve gotten a little trapped in the working-at-home, broadband dilemma in which you’re just constantly plugged in, every few minutes bringing more for you to deal with.
Multi-tasking distractions ultimately leading to getting less done – not to mention that my body just doesn’t last the whole day. I think I’m going to work all day and night, and I just can’t. Afternoons are mostly shot and pretty worthless, and then later I wish I had spent the time outside. All of my housework, chores, and other ancillary tasks get completely ignored, and that’s something that just won’t work out over 9 months.
So – a plan is needed. Given that one of the main reasons I work at home is managing a chronic illness (migraines), it makes sense to try to organize things around physical cycles. Mine are stranger than most – I am productive mid-morning until about 2pm, then everything seems to shut down for a while. Often I take a nap in the late afternoon to early evening. I get up, and have the most energy I have all day – I can easily work until midnight or beyond, and it’s hard to force myself into bed before 1am. Waking up around 9 or 10am is perfect, though it doesn’t always fit with my clients’ ideas of how to organize a workday :D
Given this, my plan is to use the morning until about 2pm to deal with all the computer-related stuff – dealing with e-mails and phone calls, doing paperwork, teaching online classes, doing tarot readings, managing discussion lists, making purchases, and any short-term relatively simple tasks.
Then, at 2 pm and for at least 3 hrs (until just after an early dinner, basically) will be non-computer time. This will consist of relaxation, naps, exercise, housework, yardwork, walking, errands, anything not involving computers or other technology. The little sound that goes off when you get new e-mail will be TURNED OFF during this period.
I get so bad during these critical work periods that I don’t even have healthy food to eat, because I can’t seem to make time to go to the store. And my body hurts because I don’t get up from the computer and exercise. Much time is wasted by thinking I’m going to work in the afternoon and not actually being able to. So, this daily time out for myself should help with all of this.
Then – 6pm to midnight is serious work hours, reserved for the work that takes the most concentration and thought. During this time I won’t fritter away time on e-mails or other mindless tasks, but will focus on the job at hand. This has the added bonus of being Evening Jazz and All Blues hours on NPR – my favorite work music. Then, I will try to get to bed by 1am and sleep until 9am.
While it’s a little scary putting off the main portion of my work until so late in the day, I just have to face the fact that this is by far when I am most productive, and frankly it’s when most of the work gets done anyway. If I don’t have to pretend I’m going to do it in the afternoon I can do lots of other useful things then and preserve my health and sanity. I’ll have to add into this week-long vacations every few months or so, to make a change in scenery (most likely working vacations, but still).
I’m going to start the test of my new approach today – so being that it’s 2pm, it’s time for me to make a grocery list and go sweep my deck! :)
Living in another country – how?
In the post below I wrote about 43 Things - the website that allows you to record your goals and progress toward them. The very first goal I wrote down was “living in another country” – something I’ve always wanted to do, but my husband did not. Now I can – and I’m actively planning for how to get there. Here are the steps as I see them:
Get more of my income streams online – I’m looking for ways to increase my online income streams to the point that they could support some level of lifestyle in another country – preferably a much less expensive country. This would supplement whatever capital I would have from selling my house here in the US. Currently I have some income from writing books, doing online tarot readings, and teaching online classes. I have recently been doing piecework editing and writing on Guru.com, which pays quickly and efficiently through PayPal – another indispensible resource for international living.
I’m looking to supplement these with an online mediation business, and perhaps increasing the amount of editing work I do on Guru.com. I’ve been trying to get a job with SquareTrade, the company that does online mediation for eBay and PayPal – still in the works. I’m also looking into more far-out approaches, such as providing dispute resolution services within virtual worlds such as SecondLife – something I actually have experience doing. If I can maintain a US bank account, no-one will ever have to know where I’m really living or vacationing at the time.
Learn Spanish – The more I travel in Mexico, South America, and Central America, the more I like it. I’ve pretty much settled on this area as where I want to live. I don’t know where yet – but that’s another piece of the puzzle. First, I have to learn Spanish. I have several strategies for doing this. I’ve got one complete set of tapes for listening to and working with in the car, and some interactive CDs. I’ve just joined an online microlending organization that posts a lot of their journal entries in Spanish, so I plan to try to read those, since I’ll be interested in the material. Most effective will simply be to spend a lot of time in Spanish-speaking countries. To that end, I’ve just purchased a timeshare condo in Puerto Vallarta (!) and one of the reasons for that was to give myself more opportunities to learn Spanish and explore other facets of living south of the border.
Research the practicalities – The next step is to begin researching practical issues. How would I purchase health care and can I get the medicines I need? What kinds of climate can my body tolerate long-term? How much money do I need for living expenses and how what does the host country require in terms of assets? What kinds of visa and citizenship options are available? What about living options – purchasing real estate vs. renting? Again, I hope to look into some of these things through spending real time in the countries I’m interested in. Another source of information is International Living, a magazine and website devoted to living abroad. And, I can benefit from the experiences of others on networking sites like 43 Things.
Look for work – As noted above, I could do all my work online, or what I really hope to do is something meaningful locally, like conservation work in Costa Rica. This requires learning Spanish first, but once I’ve done that well enough to start, it might be a really good way to ease into living somewhere – maybe take a 6-month internship at one of the cloud forests or other natural areas that are always looking for researchers. If I could get room and board onsite, it wouldn’t even be that expensive if I had to do it as a volunteer. That would be a good test of living somewhere and I should come out of it with a much better command of the language and some good connections for the future.
I’m pretty dedicated to this goal, so wish me luck!
Making a difference
Recently I’ve found two web sites that seem especially helpful in making a real difference – in one’s own life and in other people’s lives. I just wanted to highlight these in case they can help you too, or you’d like to join in. The first has to do with microlending, and the second with personal goal-setting and achievement.
Microlending is a really cool practice that allows people in developing countries to obtain small loans to grow their farming or business, usually repaid within a year or two. Repayment rates are exceptionally high, typically above 95%. Kiva is a microlending website that allows you to personally view each candidate recipient and choose to whom and what kinds of projects you want to lend money. You can also see who else is lending to them, and combine your donations to fund larger loans. Then you get updates as the loan is repaid, and eventually get your money back to keep or loan to another person.
I’ve been wanting to be part of this for a while, so yesterday I contributed the money I made from tarot readings this week to four entrepreneurs at the site. Among my “portfolio” are:
- A woman farming and selling vegetables in Samoa
- A woman who has been working as a street vendor in Merida, Mexico, and is now working on setting up a little shop for food and household goods
- A woman selling vegetables in Kenya
- A man selling shoes in Kenya
All are supporting families and some are working to pay school fees for their children (a particularly worthy goal for girls in Africa). If we’re lucky we’ll get updates on the businesses from the aid organizations or the recipients, but either way we know people are getting the help they need at 0% overhead (Kiva requests additional voluntary donations to cover rent and overhead).
The second site is one that uses the power of the Internet to help people define and achieve personal goals. It’s very simply called 43 Things. On this site you can define up to 43 goals that you have for life, though most people start with many less and fill them in as they go along – I currently have 6.
Instantly, you are hooked up with others that share your goals, and you can read about their progress, their struggles, and their ideas for succeeding. You can also read journal entries from those who have done what you’re hoping to do, what it was like for them and how they did it. You can even use the geographic features to hook up with others and form local groups for whatever you want to do – go walking, practice Spanish, exercise more, whatever.
As you go along, you can create journal entries for your goals to keep track of how you’re doing. The site sends you reminders “from your past self to your future self” on intervals you pre-determine (or not, if you choose). For those who need or want it, you can even set up specific milestones with timetables and consequences :) Others can read your journal entries and cheer you on if they like what you’re doing. Once you’ve accomplished a goal, you can click on “I’ve Done It” and take it off your list – yay!
All in all, it seems more motivational than anything else I’ve seen. It combines the power of a blog with a networking site and tracking features to make it all work together – it can even link to your external blog if you want to – once I figure that out you may be seeing a new “Goals” category on this site :)
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