Gratitude

Inspired by reading Thanksgiving posts and an exercise in Liz Miller’s Mood Mapping (more on that tomorrow) I’ve compiled a list of everything that I am grateful and thankful for:

· Being reminded of my only ‘Thanksgiving Dinner’ – a double cheeseburger at a McDonalds in Shanghai’s Old Town, which we settled on with relief after having been shouted at for asking if the baozi (dumplingey buns) at a booth were pork. My friend then bought what looked like a hotdog, only to find it was some form of candied fruit that tasted like a toffee apple which had been doing crystal meth in parking lots
· The opportunities I have to travel and work abroad, especially to work and travel freely around China
· Being born in a wealthy country, and one with free (at the point of use, anyway) schooling and health care
· Being born in a time and place where as I woman I can access education, health care, contraception and have the freedom to work, travel and choose my own path in life
· Living in the internet age
· The support and love of my family and friends
· The attention demanding antics of my felines
· Getting into the MA programme
· The three bars of Green and Black’s chocolate that are sitting by my computer
· A comfortable, warm bed to sleep in, sometimes with the addition of a ginger cat
· Being able to read and write
· Having levels of mental and physical health that allow me to look to the future with optimism
· Having some secure to live
· Knowing what I want out of life
· Having developed a robust sense of self worth

Photos are some less touristy views of the Old City area of Shanghai. I miss seeing people out on the streets or in the park playing badminton (although having to duck the occasional stray shuttlecock not so much).

For other views around the world, visit My World Tuesday.

Thank You

I got in! As of January 11th, I’m going to be an studying for an MA in Professional Writing at University College Falmouth. I am so excited to have this opportunity to learn, to meet new people, to develop myself, to become a better writer.

And I would like to thank all of you who visit my blog, follow me and leave such wonderful comments. Since I’ve started posting here, my confidence in my writing and photography have grown immeasurably – this time last year I would not have believed that people would be interested in my writing or photos. Without your interest, your support and the glimpses into different lives around the world, I wouldn’t have the confidence to follow what had become a long hidden dream.

Thank you.

Turning Off The Shoulds, And Other Lessons

Yesterday was my last day of working for the school. Although in some ways perhaps a bit of a disaster, I have learnt some lessons that, I think, made all the times I was sworn at and had things thrown at me worthwhile.

Teaching and leading v. controlling. This job wasn’t really about teaching or leading, but controlling. I don’t enjoy that. I don’t want to control people purely by fear. I don’t see having power over people as a desirable item in itself. I love teaching and I love leading. I can create environments where people know that if they step out of line there’ll be a whupping delivered, but also know that they can learn, flourish and even (whisper it) enjoy themselves. I want people in a team I’m leading to follow my directions because they respect me and know that I care about them and want them to succeed.

Relationship building. I love building relationships, and this job had little scope for that. I’d make a breakthrough with a student, but then it’d be weeks before I saw them again, meaning the whole process had to start again.

Ownership. Never being able to follow up properly on problems or questions was incredibly frustrating. I need to do something that allows me to take ownership of situations.

Ignore the ‘shoulds’. I kept thinking, I should think myself lucky to have a job at all. And then I realised: who thinks themselves lucky to do something that makes them miserable every day? It made me review what I think I deserve – do I really think that I deserve to do something I don’t really want to, do I deserve to be miserable? I realised that if I didn’t challenge the mindset that ‘I should be lucky to have a job, any job, no matter what it is and how unhappy it makes me’ that I’d probably spend most of my life stuck in similar situations. And, although it might sound harsh, it often seemed that the people shouting the message the loudest were the most miserable themselves.

In many ways finding myself in this situation has been the kick up the rear I needed to make myself reassess what it is that I want out of life and have the courage to say ‘I want and deserve better’.

I want to make a living doing what I enjoy, and I will. I want to live my life according to my own values, and I will.

Dreaming

These ethereal hues were gracing the November sky for a few fragile minutes, fortuitously I happened to steal a glance out the window at the same time. I had time to get my camera out, open the door and take two photographs before the pink and blues started fading to grey.

Skywatching.

Reasons Why I'd Rather Be A Cat In Winter

Most of the time I manage to restrain my desire to post endless pictures of my cats, demanding that you all recognize how exceptionally adorable they are. But, every time I have to leave the house and venture forth into the wind and rain, I think - 'How come I didn't decide to be a cat instead?'

Doorways: Into Qingdao

I still have so many China photos that I've never posted, including plenty of doorway photos from Qingdao, a city that was blessed with so many photogenic and inviting doorways that I'm surprised I didn't get into trouble for losing all self control and investigating what exactly was tucked away just out of view.

Here, I could only peer and imagine, but now I'm enjoying exploring doorways more metaphorical.

My World Tuesday.

Horizons Shrink To Fit Expectations

One of my ‘to dos’ on my Before 30 list is to write a book. For years now, I’ve had a nebulous idea for a novel and its central character floating around inside my head, but I’ve never started writing out any of my ideas. On Saturday night I sat in bed with an old school notebook and pen and finally began to turn the main character into a person, with a voice and a history. (Yeah, I’m not sure what happened to the twentysomething rock n roll lifestyle either.)

The title phrase was one that appeared about half way through my writing session, and whilst it perfectly describes the conundrum my character has found herself in, as soon as I wrote it I realised that is a problem I see every day, in myself and people around me.

Why has it taken me years to even start sketching out preliminary ideas about characters? Because my expectations, had, over the years been shrunk by the drip-drip effect of people saying that there was no point pursuing writing, as there was no way I’d ever be able to make a living out of it, or get published. It’s too hard, impossible, a fantasy. And I made the mistake of allowing other people to control my expectations, to fix my horizons.

Perhaps this haze of characters and ideas will never become a finished novel. Perhaps it will and it will never be published. Perhaps it will just be, well, rubbish. But at least I will have tried, overcome the most debilitating hurdle of thinking that you can’t do something and set my expectations of myself MYSELF.

I saw the same problem in most of my Chinese students. The real problem was not that they were incapable of decent spoken English, but that they had convinced themselves that it was too hard, that I would laugh at them, that it would excruciatingly embarrassing, that they JUST COULDN’T DO IT.

This wasn’t only the case with my high school students, where it took the entire first semester working on mainly overcoming the ‘I can’t do it’ block before we could really start working on their speaking itself, but even with the IELTS* classes I taught. These students had some of the best understanding of English I came across in Shijiazhuang, and were capable of formulating and expressing very sophisticated ideas in English, but stumbled because of their self-doubt and the ingrained belief that Chinese people are no good at oral English.

I could tell when a student, or even a class, had started to overcome their own externally imposed sense of limitations – suddenly there were smiles, an eagerness to talk to me outside of class, students volunteering to take part rather than having to be (almost literally in the first few weeks of class) dragged to their feet, a mischievousness and sense of fun in answers, even answers and opinions shouted out. To watch and to help this was one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done in my life, and has not only inspired me to overcome my own ‘I can’ts’ but made me aware that they exist in the first place.

What are your ‘I can’ts’, how have you overcome them, was it worth it?

*IELTS is an exam that non-English speakers need to take before being admitted to universities in English speaking countries. Most of my students were aiming for postgraduate study in Australia or the UK, where the requirement of gaining an average of 6.5 across writing, reading, speaking and listening requires skills beyond those developed at university, with speaking being the area that often dragged down the average mark.