When I started this blog a year and a half ago, I really did intend to be at least vaguely useful in my writings about Shanghai. I think I mentioned one blind massage place (still excellent, by the way), a few Lanzhou la mian joints (also fabulous) and one half decent cafe. After a while, however, it all started degenerating into a mishmash of mops, grim skylines, long convoluted rants, expat interviews and longer and longer pieces of writing about increasingly complex and personal topics.
It got to the point where I found posting to be a very daunting and exhausting process. So I kind of stopped writing. Once every fortnight or so, an idea would pop into my head and I’d write about it in a burst of energy that would leave me feeling utterly depleted for another week or two.
However, in spite of the annoying mental blocks it has caused, I like the tack my writing has taken here and I don’t really want to go back to writing short pieces about where to find a decent espresso or what those old ladies are doing in the park. What I don’t like though, is feeling overwhelmed by the idea of writing something long and thoughtful and resonant every single time. I don’t like the self-inflicted writer’s block.
Backstory: half of a chalkboard in a classroom that had been partitioned…
About four months ago, I found out that my job was being pulled out from under me, just one year into a two year teaching contract. At the time, I was floored. I couldn’t fathom being unemployed. I’d never done it before.
I’d been working since I was 16, with breaks of no more than a few months at a time. I now had a great big gaping maw of a year before me.
Even though my job was exhausting and I was totally burnt out and had been really quite unhappy and lonely for most of my two years at that university, I was unexpectedly afraid of change that seemed to be beyond my control.
…and on the other side of the new wall, the other half of the chalk board
I’m over that now. Being unemployed is marvellous.
I should have done it earlier.
I still have work but I don’t have a day job. No more 5:30am starts. No more sitting on my ass in my empty office, killing time between classes, staring at a heavily firewalled computer, feeling drained and numb. The work I do now (the super secret exam stuff) comes in mad bursts and I’m inundated for a day or two with insanely long hours and intense focus and then, magically, it’s done for another week.
I can indulge in my awkwardly impractical circadian rhythms and pad around the flat at 3am, my head full of all those thoughts that kept me up all night for years. I used to have to label it insomnia but now it’s back to just me being a night owl.
I now have my days free. I am like a lady who lunches or a trailing spouse. With so much free time on my hands, I need a hobby, a project, a cunning plan. So far, in the weeks since we got back from Sri Lanka, I’ve spent my days drinking coffee, marking essays, brainstorming, making pancakes, going to the gym, napping and writing. And I’m really enjoying the writing. But I’m not writing here, as you may have noticed.
I’m writing here (click on the picture for the link):
It’s actually practical!
Yes, I’ve started a food blog. Like every other person on the planet who didn’t start a travel blog, a mommy blog or a lifestyle design blog. I’m one of them now.
I wanted a place where I could write about totally impersonal things, where I could throw myself into a puzzle and talk about what I figured out. It’s strangely cathartic, writing about making cheese under Chinese circumstances. I find myself getting sleeplessly excited about, say, garam masala or home made tortillas at 2 o’clock in the morning, researching how on earth they could be replicated in a wok with just a duck neck, corn starch and tofu skins.
In addition to giddily deconstructing food riddles at midnight and documenting my perhaps futile efforts to solve them, I am also plotting a handful of other writerly projects for the coming year which I never had any energy for until now. Did you know that being a writing instructor for a living is actually bad for your own writing? I was so busy teaching and marking other people’s work that I couldn’t find room in my brain for my own.
Not working full time as a teacher has given my brain the space and time it needs to actually formulate complete thoughts, moving from just coping into, hopefully, thriving. I feel saner. I feel a lot less disembodied. I’m a lot less pissed off in general. Shanghai has been grey, humid, rainy and frequently as grim as ever recently, but you know what? I don’t care any more. It doesn’t bother me.
I think I’m going to be okay this year. Wish me luck. I may need it.
15 Responses
And yet again, I am convinced we are twinsies. I also have self-imposed writer’s block when it comes to my blog. While my blog originally started out as quick posts about my lunch or my day or random stuff I saw along the side of the road in Japan, it has now become the place I write long, thinky pieces about long, thinky things. And, well, that takes a lot of time… and thinky-ness. There are days when I know I should be writing a post, but I think, “Sheez, that will take a lot of effort. And I’d much rather just sit in front of my computer and watch The Bachelor.” So I do…
Good luck with your unemployment. I think you will do a better job at it than I did… (I hope!).
Sally recently posted..The Solo Travel Girl’s Guide to Dealing with Unwanted Attention in Asia
I’m hoping that my inertia will ease up with time. I mean, we just got back from a long summer away and I was flung straight into a big week of exam work… I deserve a break, right? I’m really hoping that my desire to stay in bed doing pretty much nothing is just a temporary thing and that I’ll feel a bit more motivated, given time. The writing just doesn’t feel flowy these days. And since I’ve agreed to do the nanowrimo in November, now I need to start thinking about that too. I gave my last-year’s manuscript to Amber to look over (she has an MA in creative Writing) and she said it had a lot of salvageable bits but…where was the plot? Um. Right. So my goal for November is to do a first draft (as opposed to that Zero Draft) and to introduce an actual story line. Wish me luck.
Good luck! I’m enjoying the new blog. Do you see yourself moving back to Turkey?
Renee — ramblecrunch recently posted..Exploring Istanbul — Our First Turkish Baths
I’d love to, in theory– I miss it like crazy and my heart pangs when I see my friends’ photos– but really, it was really hard and exhausting to live and work there, on so many levels. Doug really didn’t like it there (too macho/nationalistic) and definitely doesn’t want to move back so… dunno. I actually just got an email from a friend who took over my old flat in Istanbul in 2008, asking me what she should do as all the utility bills are still in my name and she’s moving out next month and can’t cancel them as they aren’t in her name (so complicated!) and I had two thoughts: 1. oh, god, I miss that lovely sunny old flat and I miss Istanbul! and 2. oh god the impossible bureaucracy and unfathomable rules and the crap I had to deal with… gaaaah!
So, in a nutshell, dunno. Life gets so complicated when you live in many places…
Like the new food site. Just ask if you need any advice on being unemployed. I haven’t had a real job since 1989 so I guess if I have an area of expertise this is it. Now, please excuse me while I get back to the irony of posting new jobs to my employment website.
Shane recently posted..The Travel Class System: Location Independents, Backpackers & Cubicle Workers
Haha! 🙂 I’ve not really ever had ‘real’ jobs (as in long term 9-5 desk jobs) but teaching has come closest to it, mostly because I had to go to work at specific times… The problem with living in China is that their strict visa system makes it really hard to be freelance/autonomous in your work. I kind of got lucky in my ‘unemployment’ because my mediocre-paying day job didn’t have enough students to keep me on for the new term, but they needed to keep me legal with a visa just in case the numbers increased at the last minute. Which they haven’t. So, since I’m still under contract, my job title has shifted to…something else… but I don’t really have to do anything and I’m free to do other things. I really like it! Not having to go to work every morning (or in my previous case, 3 mornings a week and one afternoon) is great. If it wasn’t for the whole visa thing, I’d have done this sooner (and unfortunately, I doubt I’d be able to do it again next year after my visa expires).
Dude, I hear ya on the whole overwhelming yourself with long and thoughtful posts.
I seriously have no idea how people write under 1000-word posts. Where’s the exaggeration?! Where`s the rambling run-on sentences?!
ANYWAYS, formulating complete thoughts (and the whole pancaking and napping thing) sounds AWESOME. And the new blog looks tasty!
(I started a similar blog back in South Korea about trying to make vegan food in a land of chicken and SPAM. It didn’t last long, though. I got too hungry.)
But uh, good luck all the same! 🙂
Sarah recently posted..The Time in Ayutthaya with the Ruins: A Photo Essay on How to Get Lost
I think a blog is nothing without hyperbole and long, drawn out, poorly-considered analogies. Succinct and useful blogs are a dime a dozen out there. I think we (and Unbravegirl over there) ought to form a union of Hyperbolic Blatherers (Local 326) and defend ourselves against the onslaught of voices telling us to edit and get to the point.
I think a vegan blog here in China would be totally doable… but totally fattening as it’d be mostly bread/cake based… eeek.
Hooray for joblessness, otherwise known as being free to create anything you like all the time! Fun. I totally hear you on this whole labored blog post business. It’s like giving birth once a week. You painfully squeeze something from your brain, but then you get less “oohh-ahh” happy moments afterwards. I love your new blog, it’s retro chic! I rarely read food blogs because they make me hungry and I’m too busy squeezing babies out of my head to eat.
Torre – Fearful Adventurer recently posted..When People Don’t Support Your Dreams
Oh, god, yes- the word baby! After each post here, I think, well, now I have nothing more to say about anything ever again. And I genuinely feel spent and depleted and remain firmly convinced that I’ve said all that can be said and that the blog will never be updated again. And then I get an idea a week or two later and the process repeats itself.
At least now I can keep my writing skills sharpened over on the other blog…
I cannot WAIT to join you – I feel like I’m just biding time here in Cusco at the moment, watching my life run into the ground in slow motion until the hostel sells…. inspiration-free, motivation-free, meh. Unemployment will be blissful, and I hope mine’s accompanied by a similar wave of inspiration.
Camden Luxford recently posted..Adjusting to Life as an Expat: Interviews and Resources
I’m looking forward to November so we can do Nano together! I’m going to try to salvage last year’s water monster book and actually give it a plot this time! Can’t wait to see what you do…
Sounds like this is a great new start for you despite it being forced on you from outside. I’m bringing something similar upon myself — I finally got fed up enough with my own stressful/exhausting/burn-out-prone newspaper editing job to quit — and am hoping not spending my days detangling other people’s words will make it easier for my own to flow. (I’ll still probably do freelance editing work, but in moderation.)
I love your new blog idea! It’s probably way harder to do such culinary experiments in China but I’ve certainly found it plenty interesting and fun trying to make tamales and paella and lasagna and Thanksgiving dinner and such things in Turkey as well as some weirdo fusions like Thai chicken börek (that was yummy, actually!).
By the way, where’s the old apartment that your friend is moving out of? I’m looking for a new place in Istanbul 🙂
Ah, unemployment- it’s a grand thing once it’s thrust upon you! I’m hoping to break through my inertia toward greater things as my current set of freelance jobs are spaced a bit too far apart. The money is fine but the free time is more than I’m used to…
It’s funny about the food experiments- I used to do them in Istanbul (and Kayseri, but less successfully!) and so a lot of that cookbook of mine (the hand written one) was written specifically with Turkish markets in mind. It’s not really transferable to China…
Oh, and the flat is a lovely one, 5 min from Osmanbey metro. No idea what it costs these days. It was 800 3 years ago, and I think it wasn’t immediately bumped up for my friend who took over in Sept 2008. My old landlady is Aysegul Ekinek (aysegulekinek@hotmail.com) and she’s nice and hands-off. The flat is sunny, has a balcony, lovely old wooden double doors, blah blah blah BUT no heating. None. No kombi, no central heating, nothing. I don’t know if Hayley added anything but when I lived there it was freaking COLD in winter. I ended up buying a space heater from Koctas. Loved the flat though. Still have pangs 🙁
Employment is seriously over-rated, unless of course, it happens to be something you really, really love. Or pays super well. Or gets you good freebies. And I might be wrong, but I think your last job scored poorly on all three fronts! (no, free dried fish snacks do NOT count).
Look how much you’ve achieved in the last two weeks! A new blog, cheese, buckwheat pancakes and booked a trip away…..imagine what a year can bring!
Fiona at Life on Nanchang Lu recently posted..Sweet Almond Jelly