End of the week, and I have nothing coherent to blog about.
I’ve been missing my family (who are vacay-ing in New Zealand at the moment for Chinese New Year… grrr). At 25, I should be less abnormally attached. Oh, well.
I’m questioning horoscopes. Do you believe in them? Or do you believe in them only when they’re whoa-freaky accurate?
I love this picture by workisnotajob.
And I’ve been feeling inspired by this.
ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
The train was stopped. It had just STOPPED.
The doors were locked. My phone had died. I could’ve walked to the station from where we were.
The conductor announced that we’d start moving “soon.”
Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Then another announcement where it became clear he had no idea what was going on.
ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
I was travelling from Cambridge to London, after a great afternoon of looking after an adorable baby girl. I had been in a great mood. Why was this suddenly bugging me so much?
Somehow, I think it was that feeling of being trapped and powerless, prevented from doing what I really wanted to do (in this case, I was meant to be on a Skype call about yMedia) because of something completely beyond my control.
Hmmm… some kind of sign from the universe/metaphor? I’ve been thinking about Seth Godin’s The Dip this week.
It talks about when to walk away:
The biggest mistake they taught us in school is being well rounded is the secret to success. That we should never quit for quitters never win.
As that blog post points out, “The truth, however, is that strategic quitting is the secret to success. Reactive quitting and serial quitting are the bane of those who strive to get what they want but most often fail because they quit when it’s painful and stick when they can’t be bothered to quit.”
Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.
But you should quit when:
1. You’re on a dead-end path;
2. Facing a cliff;
3. The reward at the end is not worth it;
4. You don’t have the time or the passion or the resources to be the best in the world.
Essentially, you have to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. Seth says: “Quit the wrong stuff. Stick with the right stuff. Have the guts to do one or the other.”
Fifteen minutes later, the train started moving.
Amazing pic by amazing Amanda. Not the last post of this nature.
Three-week countdown to NYC (for Social Media Week)! I almost forgot to get adequately excited, until a friend in NYC asked what we should do… and I remembered:
Ah-mazing. I can’t wait. In my dream world, there’d also be:
Aaannnd that’s just not gonna happen. But hey… someday.
(Photo credits below to my brother, who always tends to take the better pics on our trips.)
If you haven’t read the Cluetrain Manifesto yet… WHY? It was written in the 90s – shouldn’t everyone have read it by now?
Seriously, why are you still reading THIS when you could be reading that? (You’ll get wayyy more value from the latter. Fact.)
I’ve been thinking about this book so much today – it’s been like a song stuck in my head. Is it possible to have a crush on a book?
Okay, at least check out the summary here.
Nope? Can’t even be bothered with that? (… one of those days, is it? No? Wow.)
Fine, in three sentences – the below. Core concepts for anyone looking to start a business, grow a brand, launch a website – I subscribe heavily to these beliefs, but I’d love to debate them with anyone who disagrees:
Markets are conversations.
Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They’re really saying I love you.
I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world.
Today is the birthday of one of my best friends in the world, and even though I couldn’t be in Auckland to celebrate, I played this song and video (which always remind me of her) here in London. Sad guy? Nooo.
It seemed a little pointless just to describe that, so I tried thinking about some philosopher who summed up the awesomeness of friendship. I liked this summary about Aristotle’s ideas: he claimed that there are three types of friendship – those of pleasure, those of utility, and those based on pure goodness.
That third type is so rare and deep, that you’re lucky if you find even a handful over a lifetime – if you read Pam ‘s blog, you might remember her analogy about ‘hand friends.’ Amen to that.
Tonight, Sue and I got to be in the same room/breathe the same air as Amos Lee… SO, life feels pretty much complete right about now.
Sorry, but you can’t possibly listen to this guy without zenning out:
Well relationships change,
Though I think it’s kinda strange,
How money makes a man grow.
Some people they claim,
If you get enough fame,
You live over the rainbow.
Over the rainbow…
But the people on the street,
Out on buses or on feet,
We all got the same blood flow.
Oh, in society,
Every dollar got a deed,
We all need a place so we can go,
And feel over the rainbow.
It bugs me and inspires me that someone gets to marry this guy.
The first time I heard him, Pam and I were living in Wellington, but spending the weekend in Melbourne. We were driving along the highway and ‘What’s Been Going On’ started playing.
Maybe it was a combination of a bunch of things going on at the time (fresh confusion post-graduation), but I remember that the sun was setting, we’d just had a long conversation about religion, and it felt like everything was unfolding the way it was meant to.
Pam took these amazing photos (except the ones she’s in, obv). Even though I know her photography’s only gotten even more incredible over the years, I STILL love her ‘early work’:
Today, I was lucky enough to give a social media workshop to the New Entrepreneurs Foundation. The session gave me so much hope about what the world’s going to look like in 20 years. Here’s why:
1. Gary Vaynerchuck is right – the bullshit radar of our media-saturated generation IS way higher than most marketers realise. This means that businesses will find it increasingly harder to ‘market’ to us – they’ll have to include us in their processes, from product design to brand experience.
2. The shift to social media should force smart, responsive businesses to become more customer-centric, which should only improve the engagement a customer has with a business, theoretically leading to better product-market fit, which would hopefully lead to business growth and stronger markets.
3. The importance of CEO authenticity came up as such a strong theme. If our generation is going to engage with an organisation, we want to see the leaders walk their talk. Transparency is key. This hopefully means that tomorrow’s business leaders will be holistic and egalitarian – they will be well-rounded, honest, driven individuals, who combine a strong moral compass with strong commercial awareness. In an age where social media is only going to become more and more ubiquitous, authenticity is going to become impossible to fake (both within and outside of the organisation). Our generation wants to support organisations that improve the world, not damage it, and I feel like if organisations don’t go beyond glossy CSR initiatives and really demonstrate how they are making the world a better place – our generation’s not going to buy it.
It’s draining to wrap your head around stories like Jamey Rodomeyer’s – how is it that this innocent 14-year-old kid was driven to suicide? Suicide happens when someone sees no other way out of the pain they are enduring.
How we stop bullying is beyond me. But the more projects I work on, the more I hear Thatcher: ”There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.” When I saw this HuffPost Gay Voices piece, I got excited about the fact that there is an individual out there trying to change the ecosystem around gay bullying.
When I’ve talked to people close to me who are gay and have been made to feel BAD about themselves, I almost get angry at them. To me, documentaries like ‘Second Class Citizens’ preach a necessary message to the gay community: How dare you let someone else make you feel bad about yourself? Nobody can ever, ever make you feel inferior without your consent. Some idiot’s cowardice should never make you feel like the loser – bullies are the losers. Fact. Take it from Armie Hammer.
I feel like preventing suicide starts by strengthening the emotional and psychological immune system of those in pain; teaching teens to take control of their pain, instead of becoming overwhelmed by it. You can back the documentary here – even USD$5 counts – and follow it on Facebook here.
Update (22 Jan 2012): WOOOHOOOO! Faith in the world, restored.
This weekend, I watched Life in A Day (free! on YouTube). The film paints life as a series of random moments, sending the message that each day is a mosaic: people beat cancer, propose, give birth, die, fall in love, get rejected, argue, make up. If it’s July 24th, 2010 and they’re kooky, they film their life and send it in to Ridley Scott via YouTube.
What’s the film like? We all agreed on one word: “existential.”
An existential attitude involves a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world. The individual is solely responsible for giving his or her own life meaning and for living that life passionately and sincerely.
It got me thinking about how life is meaningless, unless we attach value to it. That exercise is so personal and unique, but without it, we can get crushed by despair, angst, boredom.
The film reminded me how crucial those stories we tell ourselves are – those narratives we construct. Without a coherent narrative, how do you make sense of anything?
The father of existentialism, Kierkegaard, says, ”The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.” However you find it, and whatever you find, is ultimately up to you.
I saw this on CNN today:
In colloquial Turkish, the word zenne means male belly dancer. It is also the title of a new film that explores sexual identity while also highlighting a deadly case of homophobia in modern-day Turkey.
“The starting point was a dear friend of ours who was murdered in 2008 for being gay by his own father,” said Mehmet Binay, producer and co-director of “Zenne,” which opens in theaters across Turkey on Friday.
Binay was referring to the 2008 killing of Ahmet Yildiz, a 26-year old physics student who was gunned down in Istanbul.
Court records identify Yildiz’s father, Yahya, as the primary suspect in the killing. The father’s motive, according to a copy of the indictment, was that he “did not accept the victim to be in a gay relationship.”
More than three years after the slaying, Yildiz’s father is a fugitive, still wanted by Turkish police.
The death has since been widely referred to as Turkey’s first gay honor killing.
I have a lot of opinions on gay issues, and I won’t get into them with this post. A lot of people close to me are gay and I only want to present my arguments when I can make them from a rational, not emotional, position.
When I read articles like this, I want to cry. I know that the solution isn’t shouting: “Hey, homophobic people! Be less homophobic.”
Change starts when we accept things as they are. As challenging as it is, I want to understand homophobia through approaching it with an open mindset – it’s only when I can empathise with someone else’s position that I can begin to engage with them in a meaningful way. Without truly understanding the other person’s point of view, your argument just comes across as patronising; the minute someone feels patronised, they stop listening.
Why does homophobia exist? Feel free to DM me directly through Twitter (@adelebarlow) if you want to comment privately.
One of my new favourite shows is Parks and Recreation. I’m not sure if this line will make sense out of context, but it was such an apt description of the kind of person everyone knows.
Leslie (the show’s main character) is dating a smooth-talking, charismatic lawyer called Justin. They meet through a mutual friend, Anne, who describes Justin as ‘just such an amazing person.’ But as the show goes on, Justin seems to lose any semblance of emotional depth. As another character puts it to Leslie: ”He’s a tourist. He vacations in people’s lives, takes pictures, puts them in his scrapbook, and moves on. All he’s interested in are stories. Basically, Leslie, he’s selfish. And you’re not. That’s why you don’t like him.”
Something about that line just resonated. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to be a tourist – it’s just dangerous to get close to one, mistaking them for something they’re not. Maybe all ‘tourist’ types just have to end up with others like them.
The show is hilarious, and this clip doesn’t really do it justice, but it was the best one I could find on YouTube:
In high school, the first thing I’d see when I pulled out of my driveway was Auckland Harbor. Each day, just before 8am, the water would greet me, shimmer, and make me feel stupidly lucky: this was my commute. Driving over the Harbor Bridge on a bright sunny day – I still remember that feeling so clearly. It sounds retarded, but I’d actually get a little happy ache in my chest. (It could have also just been that I was 16, finally had my own car, and was high on life due to that.)
New Zealand is so dream-like, nature-wise, that you get spoiled for life. Now that my commute involves a 30-minute sardine-squash on London’s Underground, this poster is a daily annoyance.
Yes, YOU STUPID AD. Thank you for reminding me that it’s summer somewhere, and instead, I’m choosing to be on this lame commute in cold, grey, expensive, grumpy London. For 3.5 seconds, this ad always makes me question why I’m not living in like, California. Or Byron Bay. Just somewhere more hippie-ish, with more ocean and sunshine.
London’s exciting, but it’s not necessarily the most pleasant place to be. I love it mainly by default, because of the people and projects that make it feel like home. Ambition and cosmopolitan curiosity are what draw people here; they’re future-oriented pioneers of what life could be. And part of me loves that. But I’m also aware that joy comes from being right here, right now, and when I think about the MOST (sober) FUN I’ve ever had, it usually involves nature.
I remember swimming in Maui, or hiking in the Marlborough Sounds, and feeling weirdly connected to everything around me. In that moment, life has been perfect. It’s this thrilling calm that puts life into technicolor. When floating in crystal-clear water, or staring at the stars, there’s almost a – how do I phrase this – spiritual crescendo (you know what I mean… hopefully). The thing is, you just can’t worry about bullshit when you’re trapped in moments like those.
Sometimes I feel like any stress that comes with living in London comes from big-city bullshit – materialism, status anxiety, etc. – stuff that honestly does not matter in the long run. Nature pulls you out of all that. I know you can’t spend your life on vacation, and right now, I wouldn’t trade London for anything – I just dislike those Tube ads. For some reason, they make me question whether I’m selling out by being here, as if I’ve forgotten to prioritise face-time with the universe, and instead have succumbed to whatever it is that fuels London.
Photos from dream-c-a-t-c-h-e-r.tumblr.com
Today, my parents have been married for 13,140 days.
Thirty. Six. Years.
AND they were together for a few years before that.
The longest (and only) serious relationship I’ve been in lasted two-ish years. I can’t even fathom dating one guy for, like, triple that (SIX-ish YEARS!) – but at the same time, I suspect that when you’re with the right person – warning – this is the probably the cheesiest line I have ever written in public – even a lifetime isn’t long enough.
I remember talking to my Mum about this when I was 21, before I met my ex. I was a little commitment-phobic at the time (I think I was going through my hippie phase) and apprehensive that I wouldn’t be able to go the distance with someone. What if I couldn’t give my future kids, what my parents had given me? Up until then, I’d only ever been in these six-week quasi-”relationships” (loose term) and I’d felt fine. What if I just never met someone who had lifetime appeal? I mean, how do you know? People change.
Mum told me, “Darling, you just have to marry your best friend.”
That advice shifted my whole perspective on marriage. It lost its death-sentence feel.
I mean, if for some reason, I HAD to hang out exclusively with one of my best friends for the next 20 (or 40) years, I wouldn’t have any problem with that. “A lifetime isn’t long enough” – definitely - I’ve known my best friend from high school for over a decade, and if I had to, I could easily marry her. We’ve often joked about it – we have the same values, we trust each other 1000%, we’d want to raise our kids the same way… seriously, it wouldn’t be that weird. We’ve shared a million conversations and car rides and overseas trips together, and there are way more left to come. Based on ten years’ experience, I know that it’s pretty impossible for me not to have fun with her; death til us part, because I can’t actually imagine life without her.
When you see marriage as just a permanent way to hang out with your best friend, I think you’re better placed to handle the inevitable ups and downs.
I totally believe in chemistry, in soul mates (I like to think you get more than one), in love at first sight – but I don’t believe in some mythical other half, I don’t think that being in a relationship is necessarily better than being single, and I’ve never bought the idea that there is one perfect person somewhere out there who is going to ‘complete’ you.
I think that those are dangerous traps to fall into, because it means you surrender responsibility for your emotional self. (Self-Reliance is one of my all-time favourite essays, so I’m definitely biased, but hey.) I’ve just always believed that if you’re searching for someone else to make your life feel whole, you treat life as if something’s ‘missing’… you waste precious time looking for something that never existed in the first place. Yes, life is better spent in partnership – but what I’ve seen from my parents is that being a good partner is about being a good giver – it’s about making life better for the other person, instead of thinking of how they can make life better for you.
Basically, massive congratulations to Mum and Dad – today is yet another reminder of why I feel so lucky to have them as my parents.
My ex joked that I was a psycho for doing this, but after we broke up, I deleted him off Facebook, blocked his email, and eventually (not just because of him) changed my phone number. Yes, it was extreme – maybe even a little psycho.
But I knew that if I didn’t do all those things, it would be that much harder to get over him. If I didn’t make it incredibly inconvenient or borderline impossible for us to get in contact, we would just keep on “catching up,” getting back together, fighting, breaking up, missing each other, “catching up,” getting back together, fighting, and, oh, look, breaking up…
Sue sent me this TED talk because we’re both battling with sugar addictions, but it actually got me thinking about breakups instead. Its main point: “To abstain from the enjoyment which is in our power, or to seek distant rather than immediate results, are among the most painful exertions of the human will.”
There are two selves when it comes to temptation: the present and the future self. When it comes to giving into temptation, the present self often wins, because the future self is not even around.
Resisting temptation is an ongoing battle of the two selves, but you can use ‘commitment devices’ to level this playing-field. A commitment device ties you to your future self and helps you resist an impulse (e.g. locking a credit card away with a key when you’re trying to save money, not bringing junk food into the house when you’re trying to lose weight).
As it turns out, my psycho behaviour was such a device. And it totally worked – as painful as it was at the time, it ultimately gave me the space to start imagining what life could look like without that other person – which was licence to start realising that maybe, this breakup was just part of a longer journey to an even better place.
The key point: “We might neglect our future selves because of some failure of belief or imagination.” Instead of girls relying on ice cream and tissues, and guys relying on strip clubs and alcohol, maybe the killer ingredient to healing post-breakup is imagination. When you can clearly visualise (and emotionally convince yourself) that both your lives are going to be better off apart – you start to acknowledge and actually listen to your future self.
This talk reminded me that your future self exists, whether you like it or not. Who they turn out to be, is what you’re deciding right now, perhaps unconsciously.
Everyone has their own definition of the perfect Saturday night. To me, last night was pretty much it.
It wasn’t just that the flat looked like someone was about to propose. Or that everyone seemed to have had promising first weeks back at work, and so came in a great mood. Or that I’d salivated over the Malaysian-Kiwi menu well in advance (roti canai, beef rendang, durian cake, L&P, Toffee Pops, chicken satay, lamb, roasted potatoes, Sue’s homemade pavlova… pretty much an ideal feast).
The best thing was just getting to physically be in the same room as close (and new) friends. Few things make me happier than preparing and sharing a beautiful meal with loved ones; hearing the buzzy chatter and laughter of a crowded dining room table; learning the stories of interesting new people; most importantly, seeing the smile on the birthday girl’s face – what that John Lewis ad campaign meant by, “Gifts you can’t wait to give.”
The energy in that room made me thrilled to be back here, even though it’s always hard leaving Asia. London is definitely one of those cities where you have to be mega-proactive about creating your own emotional and professional cocoon – but once you do, the whole city seems to take on a much warmer glow.
I was incredibly excited to hear that the Daily Show started streaming clips to the UK. Check out the details here.
For a reminder on why Jon Stewart rocks, check out his classic interview with Crossfire if you haven’t already (as far as I’ve heard, it’s pretty much the reason why Crossfire got taken of the air).
Why over-complicate it?
