2 Questions Every Girl is Asking Herself

Chapter 29

I made a new friend. Her name is Catherine. We met at the glamorous spot of the Ubud bus depot. Catherine just entered her forties and was here in Bali because she needed some "me" time. After twenty years of pleasing others, pleasing her children and her ex-husband, she wanted to move somewhere far away from it all, but also safe enough for a single woman. So she chose Taiwan. She's been working there as an English teacher for the past ten months and absolutely loved it. Now school was out for the summer and she had a few months of freedom, she brought herself to Bali.

It was Catherine's first time traveling alone. She seemed a little uneasy about it. She went on a trip to Italy with her best friend a few years back, while it was great fun, it was a completely different experience. It didn't allow for the same level of introspection that traveling solo provides. Frankly, I could not agree with her more.

I told her I was here because I'm going through quarter-life crisis.

"Already?" She said with a look of surprise.

She gazed at me with her beautiful blue eyes for a long moment, and in a sort of a daze, she said,

"That's great you're trying to figure it out now. I'm forty and I'm still trying to figure it out..."

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This business of "figuring it out", is very dreamy business. On the front porch, gazing out at the little mossy fountain adorned with fern; where every day is a sunny day; where all I have to do is drink tea and write.

One of my favourite things about writing is creating beauty on paper. I can't sing, I can't draw, I'm no good at photography, and at the tender age of 4, I failed the accordion entrance exam because my pinky's too short. But like many people, beauty makes quite an impression on me. In restaurants, I gasp at everything from the starry night light fixtures to the crescent moon dinnerware in duck egg green. Whenever a striking young lady/gent walks by, my head will turn, and I will stare, then proceed to analyzing their bone structure. More intrusively, I love painting pen-portraits of everyone I know, the story of their lives, the highlights of their existence, the moments that take their breaths away. To write, to be held in the silky cocoon of all this beauty, is quite simply... bliss.

Of course, when my mind becomes distracted, as it often does, I wonder how I'm going to make a living from now on. Beauty is no bread. One time, when I went to the Ubud market looking for presents again, I spotted a beautiful, sky-blue handmade silk blouse, at a fraction of the cost we'd be able to purchase it in Canada. Maybe I could set up a store on Ebay and sell Balinese shirts? Great idea! I started investigating the cost of goods, shipping, pricing, shot photos, posted ads. Then I realized the profit margins weren't as high as I'd originally anticipated. So I brainstormed alternative sourcing methods: who'd be able to source it more cheaply, who would take care of this after I leave, so on and so forth...And then I realized these thoughts were taking over my days that were supposed to be saved for writing. I was letting plan B take over plan A again! Hadn't I carved out this time to do what I love to do? Why am I panicking about livelihood? 

How am I going to make a living from now on?

Every time this question came up, I just shoved it aside (into the dark corners of my attic, where I store all my unwanted thoughts) to be dealt with later. But it kept on insisting itself onto me. Will I live in poverty from now on? Will I disappoint my parents? Will I lose my friends? What will my poor old ego think of me when I've wasted the best years of my life pursuing a trivial hobby like writing and nothing happened? What if I don't have any talent?

Meanwhile, all my business school friends are either moving up the ranks toward that shiny corner office in that shiny new building, or getting their MBAs at Oxford or Cambridge, or starting their own businesses and making millions.

And I'm left behind in my parents' basement, scrambling to make ends meet, bussing tables like a starving artist-wannabe...

But what's the alternative? To continue in a lucrative career you're competent in but don't enjoy? And lead an unfulfilled life?

I closed my eyes and saw myself at the consulting firm. Everything felt like a blur. The days blended into each other like watercolour. I could not pick out a single memory during those years where I felt so utterly proud of my work. I well know what those moments feel like. But it wasn't there. What I remember mostly about those years was the feeling that I'd jumped onto the wrong bullet train, speeding along in a direction I wasn't sure I wanted to go. How I wanted it to halt! Just long enough for me to figure my stuff out. But to jump off, would mean I'd be left in the middle of nowhere. Unsure if the next thing to turn up will be a rocket ship, or an ox-cart.

For a long time, I wanted to stay on that bullet train. I desperately wanted to love that job. As consultants we get staffed onto projects based on location and timing efficiencies. Often we have little say in what sort of work we end up doing. I thought if I could just get on the right projects, then maybe I could carve out a career I could love. So I fought for it. I broke the spoken and unspoken rules, risked upsetting the bigwigs, got on the right projects, and yet despite my best efforts, there was an invisible film separating me and the job. I just couldn't love it. I felt like I was cutting meat using the dull edge of the blade.

A very wise and very kind CEO once said to me, "You're going to have to do stuff you don't like in life." I agree. And I have, Calculus, for example. I'm sure all of us have. The question is, to what extent? To what extent must one bear the dissonance?

The very same CEO's often hire us to perform Organizational Alignment for their firms. This means people, training, processes, are all meticulously organized to align with corporate objectives. They spend hundreds of thousands on us, to make sure they put money where their mouth is.

And yet, how many of us do that with our own lives? How many hours a day do I actually put against things that matter most to me? And if I don't know what they are, how much time do I devote to figuring that out? How aligned are my time and my dreams?

I met a lovely French family at a restaurant, who after waiting for 21 years, finally came back to visit Bali again. The mother had tears in her eyes when she told me she ran into the same women she'd met 21 years ago. She taught them English on the beach, where they sold jewelry. When I asked why they'd waited so long, she said, "Him," nodding at her charming 13-year-old son, and added regretfully, "And...work."

"Work is a waste of time," the Welsh father added. He said it brightly over pizza. He didn't seem to mind. He's at peace with it. He didn't seem bothered by the fact that the majority of his waking hours, for 20 years are, as he says – wasted. And I thought, "Until I can feel as peaceful about wasting 20 years of my life as this Welsh high school teacher, I cannot continue with the consulting job."

I want to be a writer.

At first I would only whisper this thought softly, furtively. Then I would catch myself asking, a tad sarcastically, "But do you have any talent?"

Well, I don't know. Ketut didn't say. I don't want to delude myself into thinking that I have lots of talent, but I would also hate to think that I don't have any. I decided the most reliable, scientific way to figure that out was to consult a palmistry book.

In there, I located a line in my palms that suggested literary talent. I was ecstatic. But then the book went on to say that lots of people have it. I didn't feel so special anymore. And decided the book is rubbish. But how will I know if I can be a successful writer if I don't know if I have talent? This circular question drove me nuts for days. I felt like a dog chasing its tail and never catching it. Eventually, I just stopped. I stopped asking the question. Yes I could very well fall flat on my face with this nutty writing business. But what are we to do? We must give ourselves permission to take risks sometimes.

Instead, I just asked myself two questions: Do you want to write full time? And can you afford to do it for a year?

And the answer to both was a quiet and calm...Yes.