saving ink

Yes, you read that correctly. I’m writing an entire blog post on the ancient Chinese game of Mahjong, or at least the digitalized, solitaire version of it. I first played this game as a teenager, probably in middle school or maybe the first year of high school, when a Chinese-American friend taught it to a bunch of us and we would play for hours on her dining room table. Right away it reminded me of Rummikub, which was unknown to most Americans but familiar to me, as I had played it in Germany with my uncle as a little kid.

Nostalgia aside, I had forgotten about Mahjong for over a decade when I found and downloaded a free solitaire version of the game for my laptop. Then I found a free phone version as well, and it quickly became my go-to procrastination tool during longer periods of work. But unlike taking Facebook breaks or catching up on my Reeder feed, Mahjong breaks felt refreshing, not draining, and after a game or two I was actually ready to get back to work.

Anyway, why is any of this important enough to write about (and what does it have to do with writing, for that matter)? By playing Mahjong only during prolonged stretches of work, I managed to condition myself to work longer. By allowing Mahjong to be my only acceptable form of rest, somehow the temptation to procrastinate in other ways was significantly reduced (though not completely eliminated yet, I am only an ADD-prone human).

Playing Mahjong is also an excellent gauge of current brain functioning for me, which is an important thing to be aware of when intoxication and sleep depravation are regular occupational hazards. If I can’t complete a game in a timely manner, if the tiles are starting to blend together, I know it’s either time for sleep or more coffee. It’s a fail-safe; if I can’t put two Chinese characters together, I have no business writing anything.

My point is, over the last year I’ve learned to develop these systems that allow me to work in spite of myself, even at times when I’d much rather be out riding bikes or occupying a bar stool or even watching cheesy TV shows. Mahjong breaks are part of the system. Another trick is listening to the Battlestar Galacta soundtracks while working - something about Bear McCreary’s gorgeous classical battle compositions puts my mind in a place where it needs to create, be productive, fight battles (“Prelude to War”, anyone?), aspire to greater heights, even if it’s just translating magazine copy or writing website articles.

I wish I could say that my job is always exactly what I want to be doing, that work always feels like play, but that’s bullshit. I love my lifestyle, and there are days when I love my work, but more often there are days when it feels like work and no amount of sugarcoating will make it otherwise. Deadlines leave no room for mood swings or deliriousness. So I put these systems in place so I can work through the work until there’s less of it and more of the type of work that I do love. And even then, I have no illusions that that work will always come easily, but if I can manage to ingrain these little mind tricks, even those days won’t be as hard anymore. At least, so I hope.

In the freelance writing biz in the U.S., there are two ways to get paid: by the word and by the hour, with the first being more common in my experience so far. The rates vary from the abysmal (half a cent/word) to the half-decent, but there’s something that has always struck me as wrong about getting paid by the word.

For some reason, in Poland (and probably other parts of Europe) the pay is per character instead. Perhaps that’s a bit more fair, as it’s hard to imagine the word “convoluted” costing the same as the word “the”. But it’s still a system that emphasizes quantity, not quality, which runs counter to every piece of advice seasoned writers have given: cut, cut, cut. Hack off every piece of unnecessary flesh down to the very bones of the thought.

Pay per hour is great for journalism, when the bulk of your time is spent on research or interviews. But if you want to charge for any creative writing, pay per hour is an absurd concept. Do you put the time in the shower when that idea hit you on the invoice? Do games of Words with Friends in between bouts of writing count too? How does one bill for creative procrastination? And once again, quantity of time doesn’t translate to quality of writing.

Granted, there’s quite a quality gap between Tolstoy and SEO copywriting; maybe a quality Mariana Trench is more accurate. But as a firm believer of doing everything to the best of your ability, whether it’s washing dishes or writing a paid blog post, I tend to dislike systems set up to encourage laziness, because despite my current pontificating my natural tendency is towards the easy road, and taking the hard way is, well, harder when the game is rigged against it.

So our systems of compensation are vastly inadequate, but they exist because writers need to eat (and drink) too, and quality alone is too subjective to remunerate. Maybe in the future machines will recognize quality by a mathematical formula and pay in accordance. Though at that point, those machines would probably be doing the writing anyway.

All that aside, I still find myself rubbing my eyes in disbelief at the fact that other people pay me any sum of money for the words that come trickling out of my fingers. What a world.

Note: I started writing this entry over six months ago and I somehow never finished it then. I stumbled onto it today and decided to finally finish and post it, because it still applies, perhaps even more so now.

Though this is a personal blog, typically I don’t get that personal on here. I love thinking about and sharing my experiences in journalism, freelancing, living in Poland, tech and life in general, but despite Facebook’s many claims on it, I still value my privacy. That said, I think this one personal view is worth sharing, because it took me 28 years to figure out, and as my 29th birthday is approaching and I was making a list of everything I’d learned and accomplished in the past year - which has definitely been the most pivotal of my adult life, to say the least - this realization came to mind: I sorted out the whole love thing.

Let me elaborate. Like many girls growing up surrounded by 90s American culture, I spent a good part of my teen years and early 20s under the delusion of Prince Charming disease (click that link and read it first, because Coquette really says it best). It took years of dating and reevaluation and some good old fashioned rational thinking to work my way out of that pit of destructive bullshit and come to the seemingly simple yet extremely significant conclusion that there is no “The One”. Given your personality, interests and expectations, on a planet of seven billion humans there are at least several hundred thousand if not millions of people you could not only fall head over heels in love with, but have a lasting, til-death-do-you-part relationship with. Narrow down those choices by age, language, geography (though not as relevant in the Internet age) and you’re still in the thousands at least. I’m surprised there’s no equivalent of the Drake Equation for love, because the principle is essentially the same.

So then it comes down to timing and circumstances. You go to one college instead of another, you take a job at one company instead of a similar one across the country. You break up with that jerk just in time. You just got dumped and you end up on holiday by yourself. You have a bit too much to drink at a friend’s birthday party and end up making a (memorable) fool out of yourself. Your Facebook profile is set to public.

These are the ways people meet each other, and ultimately where long-term relationships originate. But the damage that Prince Charming disease (or any male/non-heteronormative equivalent) does is it keeps you from realizing that even given the decent odds, this kind of love doesn’t always happen, and if it does, it’s damn hard work to make it last. Love, my dears, is not enough, no matter what the rom-coms tell you. It often takes a lot of compromise and sacrifice, and both of those are impossible to undertake if you’re constantly thinking there’s something better around the corner.

So what did it take me 28 years to figure out? Real love isn’t romance; it’s not strolls on the beach and spontaneous flower-giving (though both of those can certainly be part of it). Love is choosing a side and sticking to it; choosing one person with the full knowledge that there might be alternatives out there that could be marginally better, but choosing to ignore them because you’re too busy building something together, and the longer you keep at it, the better it will get. Real love is grit.

It’s ridiculously easy to get stuck in one place. Human nature dictates it. Think about it - if your hunter-gatherer ancestor found a cushy spot where she could raise her children without constant fear of them being eaten or starving to death, she wouldn’t budge from that location for the rest of her life as long as that remained the case. Why venture into the unknown when the known is comfortable, or at least safe?

That worked then, and it still works now, but often to our detriment. The easy strategy is to err on the side of safety, to remain in one place until outside conditions necessitate a move. That’s true in work, in relationships, and most obviously in physical location. And I think it’s absurd. 

Most often, the best (and sometimes worst but most educational) experiences happen when you’re far from home and completely out of your comfort zone; when there is no safety net and you have no previous experience to guide you in a situation. That’s how mental growth happens, and though it’s a frequent occurrence in childhood, modern adult life is geared towards preventing these situations.

Sign a work contract. Sign a lease. Take out a mortgage. Get married. But for the love of god, stay put and do nothing unpredictable.

No thanks.

Every couple of years or so, I like to fill out one of those stupid “where in the world have you been” maps on Facebook, partly for bragging rights, partly out of curiosity. Here’s my latest one:

Impressive, huh? I honestly don’t think so. Granted, compared to the average American, it might be on the right end of the bell curve (Though what’s average? Maybe for my age, and definitely for my income level, but it’s hardly exceptional). But if you look at the other 159 countries of the world (that’s 82%), the parts I haven’t seen, and then add in the huge swaths of land I haven’t stepped foot on in countries I’ve been to like Russia and China (or even the U.S.), it’s miniscule. Then there’s whole continents my toes haven’t touched (South America, Antarctica), and those I’ve only scratched the surface of (Africa, Australia). Really, the only places I can truly say I know with some confidence are Europe and the United States, but even they have parts still well worth exploring.

So where am I going with all of this? Given that for my age, income, and nationality, I have explored an above-average chunk of this planet and I’m nowhere near satisfied with my accomplishments, how do other people with far better means than I have manage to stay put? How is it possible to lack this natural, one would say human, curiosity for lands unknown?

An estimated two-thirds of Americans do not possess a passport (source). Travel stopped being prohibitively expensive several decades ago, so lack of money is no longer an excuse. Of course, if you can’t afford a roof over your head, your priority probably won’t be to book a cheap flight to a new location. But taking into account only those who meet at least the first few of Maslow’s requirements, that’s still a sizable chunk of the population that actively chooses to remain in one country (and often one state) for most of their lives. And I can’t wrap my head around that. It’s absurd.

That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of people choosing to make seeing the world a part of their lives. I’ve read countless blogs over the past year of people doing just that, usually while making a living on the Interwebs writing about their travels - though not always. One of my favorite blogs these days is Afford Anything, which is partly the story of one woman who made travel a priority, and worked her ass off to be able to spend two years exploring the world without needing a job. Oh, and she has a lot of good advice for anyone else who wants to do the same.

Perhaps my frustration lies with the fact that travel is an afterthought in American culture. A “vacation” is two weeks per year if you’re lucky, and even the first visual most people get when they hear the word “trip” is of a tropical beach where drinks have umbrellas and no assumptions are challenged, no world-views are tested. Changing your scenery but maintaining your cultural surroundings is not travel, not really. The kind of travel I crave and can’t live too long without involves staying with locals, avoiding other tourists, living out of a single carry-on for weeks or even months, getting kicked off Russian trains, smoking shisha and playing cards for hours with students in Fez, showing up with no plans and a single map and still learning more about a culture in a few days than any guided tours could teach you. It also means nearly getting arrested, bribing Russian doctors, getting harassed by “tour guides”, repeatedly getting lost, taking care of your own visa documents, going for a week without a shower, sleeping on floors, getting stuck at borders for hours, and sometimes missing flights. It’s not always pretty, but you learn a hell of a lot. 

All of the above happened to me, by the way, as I was working on adding more blue to my map, and I don’t regret a second of it, even the unpleasant ones. I just wish such experiences were looked upon as the necessary education they are, rather than as youthful folly or a waste of time that could be spent more “productively”. The sooner the illusion that real travel is just for the rich, the young or the nonconformists is shattered, the better off our society as a whole will be.

UPDATE:

Minutes after posting this, I ran across this incredible obit on the NYT: John Fairfax, Who Rowed Across Oceans, Dies at 74. How’s that for inspirational?

I hate that question. And I hate the way most writers answer it. “I was six years old and couldn’t stop writing stories about Superman in the red leather journal I had swiped off my father’s desk…” There’s always that level of detail that no actual six-year-old would have remembered. When I was six years old, I wanted to be wall ball champion during recess. When I was seven or eight, I could have probably said I wanted to be a professional reader, because between wall ball and riding my bike and playing in the dirt like every kid did, I was reading a hell of a lot. But the occupation “writer” never popped into my head - it was always “archaeologist” or “astronaut” or “FBI agent”.

I’m 29 years old and I still don’t know if I want to be a writer. I know that out of all of the things I’m decent at, that’s the thing I enjoy most, most of the time. I know that others have earned a living this way, and with a little luck I have a reasonable shot of joining their ranks. But I don’t know if I want to be a writer. I know that I would like some more coffee right now. I know that I want to go for a bike ride later today. I know that I want to find ways of working that are both enjoyable and keep me from starving or being stuck in one place. But I don’t know if I want to be a writer, all of the time.

There are days when I want to be a pilot. There are days when my inner 12-year-old comes out and I want to be a crime-fighter. There are days when I’m confident that if I get a little bit better at Wordpress, and if I could just get a good grasp of JavaScript, I could be a web designer. There are days when writing is the hardest thing in the world and I couldn’t get 500 words out at gunpoint. There are days when the words just spill out with little or no provocation.

The truth is, there is no when. Writing is something you do, in between eating and sleeping and just trying to get by in the world with as much freedom as you can wrangle from those who want to take it from you. No one becomes a writer because they want to write every waking hour of the day, just like no lawyer spends every minute practicing law and no doctor spends every minute saving lives. In a world with limited possibilities, it’s just one way to live, and it seems like a pretty decent option to me.

I can unequivocally say that 2011 was the most formidable and fulfilling year of my adult life. It was my first full year of just freelancing, which means it was the first year that I have been wholly in charge of my financial situation. It was also the first year I have kept a detailed budget since I had my first job at 16. It was the year I paid off my credit cards in full. It was the year I didn’t leave Central Europe all summer, and still had a blast. It was the year I stepped foot on the African continent for the first time (and did it cheap as hell). Most importantly, it was the year I broke even, despite working the least and having the most fun of my adult life.

But forget my words, let’s look at the numbers, because graphs are fun!

Here’s a breakdown of my total expenses for 2011, by category:

Fun fact: I spent 1/3 of my food budget on booze. Yay? The basics such as rent, electricity, and food ate up the biggest chunk of my budget, but paying off those credit cards (i.e. the sins of the past) really took a toll. 2012 goal: keep that number under 5%. Oh, and then there’s that pesky student loan…

Now that we’ve got money out, here’s money in:

As you can see, proofreading and translations paid the bills. Considering my savings took a hit, it’s no surprise I barely earned any interest. Other is generally selling stuff, band money (very rare), photography gigs (even more rare) or gifts from family, while writing only earned me a measly 6% of my income. My goal for 2012: 50% income from writing.

Perhaps the hardest part of freelancing was the month-to-month disparities in income. Feast or famine, as they say:

(Net income + savings - net expenses)

All in all, I scraped by. I earned exactly PLN 188.39 (about $50) more than I spent in 2011, and managed to end up with just under PLN 800 (about $230) more in my savings account than I started 2011 with.

The Important Part

Victory? Technically, yes. Really though, this was just a(n educational) start to the freelance lifestyle, and this year I need to earn a whole lot more, spend a bit less (especially on booze, ouch) to make this thing sustainable. There is some hope, though, because here’s another telling figure:

Pages translated or proofread in 2011: 1085.18
Estimated hours worked* in 2011: 813.89
Hours worked in a normal 9-5, 40hrs/wk job (assuming 50 weeks): 2,000

What this means: while the average joe was slaving away in a lightless office for 2,000 hours of 2011, I spent about half of that actually working, while the rest was spent reading, working on my websites, reading more, playing music, biking, enjoying the summer, going to festivals, traveling, and in general feeling better about life. That also means I can still work a bit more this year, earn a better income, while still having more free time than if I were traditionally employed.

Just to bring it all home, this was me working in November, on a sunny beach in Barcelona, sipping cappuccinos and enjoying the 19 degree t-shirt temperatures:

What this untimely means: the “free” in “freelancing” makes it absolutely worth it.

*This was my best guess, judging that it takes an average of 15-30 minutes for me to proofread one page and 40-60 minutes to translate one page, based on the breakdown of translation and proofreading pages… let’s just say there was some complicated math involved, but my best guess is that I spent between 800-1,100 hours working in 2011, whereas the average person would have spent 2,000.