Andrew Hozier-Byrne (yes, the Hozier) said in an interview: “We are in a self-obsessed moment of mankind. Everything is marketed towards the idea of the self, but not the real self, rather what you want people to think you are. Social media is an advertisement for the superficial extroverted self. I’m uncomfortable with selfies and status updates documenting mundane pieces of my life which I don’t think should be of interest to anyone else. The idea that people would spend some of their own human experience discussing the most trivial everyday experiences of somebody else’s life, I find that strange, and very sad in many ways.”
I’m not uncomfortable with selfies, and only slightly uncomfortable with status updates – by which I mean that I do post them in the heat of the moment but always delete them once my head is cool again. Oh, and I shy away from Twitter because I’d lack the patience to go back 12,379 tweets and delete everything I thought about what the people on bus no 47 should have been reading instead. I, too, believe that spending too much of one’s life discussing other people’s lunch choices is strange and sad, and should only be done in moderation, mainly to prove that you fit in when you must. Oh, Hozier, we should talk… That said, this comment regarding how much we seem to want to voice our opinions answered one of my questions: why do I never seem to want to voice my opinion?
Here’s the thing: I love writing. I even love talking to some people, though not very many and not for very long. I have opinions and many of them, and I can put together a pretty good argument thanks to my years as a debater – and, of course, who I happen to be as a person, hey. But whenever it’s time to make my opinions known to the world, or to that one person whom I haven’t been close friends with since kindergarden/I don’t really want to impress to the point where I transform into loveliness personified, the strangest thing happens: my brain freezes and gives up on me. In other words, I become resistant. Because it’s easy. Because life is too short to please people you’re not all that pleased to be around. Because even when I can’t be bothered with entertaining people I still can’t escape them, but staying quiet is less hassle, it draws less attention and it lets me spend time in my head and come up with ideas for the stories I want to write.
I didn’t choose to be who I am the first time around, though if I had to I’d probably choose myself all over again – true story. I just happened to be an introvert who can also be an extrovert, but perhaps not around you. Sorry. Most of the time it’s not personal, and I probably really like you and I go tell my friends whom I can be an extrovert around about you. As in, the good stuff about you. But that doesn’t mean you can snap your fingers at me and I’ll open up like a delicate flower. Best case scenario – we go for a quiet drink, just the two of us, and we spend 4 to 5 hours making confessions to each other about childhood and our first kisses and our fears and what the future might look like. We become friends. There’s your chance on a silver platter. By the way, I’m a pretty good friend to have once we get there, so y’know…
And yet, I do not like that resisting my very own voice in most other situations has become an impulse, a pattern, a way of responding to things when I might have better responses in mind. Every once in a while it frustrates me that I find myself nodding along to things I don’t really want to nod along to, but it saves me the drama. I wonder how different my life would be if I acted differently. I stopped voicing my opinions when I was about 15 and life demanded coolness from me, or my douche-bag-friends from back then did–I can’t recall. Before that I didn’t take shit from anybody and I always let people know, loud and clear and often times inappropriate, when I disagreed. I wonder what life would have been like for me in the last 8 years if I had kept at it. Man, I miss that little girl. When I grow older and wiser I want to be her again.
But this is all material for a whole new post, and what I want to end this one with is the importance our voices play. A friend reminded me recently that the only power we have is our voice, and how we use it. Selfies and status updates out of the question here, her words shined a light on me.
In the last year and a half I’ve learnt that the surest way to start hating what you love is doing it for free. It’s all well and good that you are promised exposure, experience, God-knows-what-they-promise-in-other-industries, but really it’s all about getting paid eventually. Forget the bullshit they try to sell you. Don’t let them. Fight them. Because they’re wrong, and they probably know they’re wrong, but you look like easy prey. Fight that.
I remember how, right after I graduated, somebody asked me to provide website and social media content for their new start up for 3 months – all for a really good recommendation letter. I wish I could back in time and punch them in the face. I also remember being a serial intern for many months, family and friends all putting money together to help me out because I couldn’t even afford to go to the obscenely expensive offices I worked in and had to listen to middle managers talk about their obscenely expensive holidays. And I remember the girl I met during a work placement, who got kicked out on the same day because she wasn’t showing enough enthusiasm. I liked her immediately, probably because part of me knew there could be no genuine enthusiasm in waking up at 6:45 to write articles for nothing – not even bylines – and was happy to see a kindred spirit. We went for beers later and she told me that it was her fifth and she just couldn’t pretend to be enthusiastic about working for free anymore. It wasn’t my fifth yet. My fifth, and sixth, and seventh, were on the way.
I didn’t know then that I was going to turn bitter and cynical, that my spark was going to go out, that my creative entrepreneurship course taken while still fresh out of university would stay just a cute memory. I didn’t know that I would splash water on my face in the morning and stare at my reflection in the mirror, and feel trapped. I didn’t know what it’s like to commute for hours, cook cheap meals, and feel like a failure every day yet, but I was in the process of finding out, and how I wish I could go back in time and save myself.
Here’s how it goes: you’re young and smart and you’re told you’re progressing through life, but you don’t feel it. You’re at the age when the need to absorb and the need to create are fighting captivating battles after battles inside you, and you suppress it all because you have another report to prepare. You start out just like you promised on your CV – ambitious, self-motivated, the like – and then your inner flame leaves a sour taste of ashes in your mouth, much worse than all those cigarettes, and you can’t remember why you started, and you definitely couldn’t say where you see yourself in ten years.
Or you try freelancing, but nobody knows your name and that website you’ve spent hundreds of pounds and hours on – nobody sees. You keep a diary and note down all your ideas for when you’ll earn the money from commission and start your projects. In between tears and Skype calls you tear it to the last piece of paper and start looking for bar work, making a promise to yourself – that as soon as you’re big and strong and resourceful, you’ll get to it. You’ll never get to it. You’ve become that person.
I’ve seen and tasted bits of both, and I don’t want to be either today. I am not being neither conceited nor condescending when I say that I matter. I have dreams and desires, but more importantly I have myself to take care of. Listen to me and DO NOT WORK FOR FREE. Sure, allow for three months of unpaid work experience slash exploitation while you’re young and dumb and relatively inexperienced and they can laugh at your poor attempts of managing your money for lunch, but that’s it. Value yourself enough to walk away and they’ll be forced to value you too, or at least they won’t be able to take advantage of you.
Working for people who refuse to take into consideration your time and contribution will rain down on your parade and your inner fire quicker than you’d expect. Don’t let them take what you love away from you; keep it to yourself. Do it either for money or for yourself, because life after education will crush you anyway and it’s better to be crushed by lots of money than by thoughts about whether you can afford to live anymore, or whether you’re worth anything after all. Now you know, don’t test it. Save yourself for the better. Save yourself for the best.
And use your goddamn voice to refuse the things you don’t want to do. Know that it’s better to work in a coffee shop and part-time on the side, because it won’t tame you the same. Don’t let the big bad wolves show you that you’re worth nothing more than a kick up the arse, all the way to the next ones. Stand up for yourself, because it’s going to be a long bumpy way back up otherwise. I know, because I’m halfway up now.
Not halfway down.
Cocktail Recipe: Halve one small, ripe peach of a girl. In a blender, combine a sprinkle of naivety, muddled memories and bitters. Blend briefly. Pour over ice with a measure of shame and disappointment. Add the other half of the girl to the glass in slices.
Something on your mind?