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Should I Move to a Cheaper Location?

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , , , on September 24, 2013| 13 Comments »

I got into a conversation today on Twitter about the high costs of housing in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I was looking at houses for sale in the Seattle area, and they are just gorgeous. They have tall pine trees outside, they have views of lakes or Puget Sound or downtown Seattle, they have huge sheets of glass. A lot of them have three or more bedrooms, and some of them even have basements that you can convert into game rooms (air hockey! ping pong!) and/or home theaters. And they aren’t all that expensive.

Someone suggested I look into Omaha, Nebraska, and I found huge houses on huge lots with price tags that seem cheap by Seattle standards…which seem cheap by Bay Area standards. The consensus, whether you’re John Scalzi or Patrick Rothfuss, is that if you’re a writer, it’s best to live somewhere on the cheaper side. Read: not New York City, and not the San Francisco Bay Area. (The happy news is that you live one of those places, everywhere else looks wonderfully cheap.)

It’s a dilemma. For a long time, Silicon Valley kind of irritated me: too much engineer speak, too much social awkwardness, too much busyness competition, and not enough appreciation of the arts. But just when I was beginning to consider a move, it started to grow on me.

Photo Credit: Abe K via Compfight cc

I didn’t choose Silicon Valley as my home; I just ended up here. And once I’d started my business, I was stuck here; while the cost of living is absurdly high, that also meant I could charge more. I looked into moving to Portland at one point and discovered that what I’d save in cost of living expenses wouldn’t equal the amount of income I’d be losing, not by a long shot. I couldn’t afford to move.

Now I can afford to move, but I’ve made dear friends in the meantime, and I’m also more aware of the things I’ve been taking for granted. I like the energy of Silicon Valley. I might not like the culture of the busy, but I do like that people are engaged with projects and ideas that they feel passionately about. I like that people here are nerdy and geeky and care about science fiction movies and maker culture and playing laser tag. (Not to say there aren’t people in many other places who care about the same stuff, but I don’t know as many of them.) I like that a lot of people I know are living full-on lives of the mind. I like that people are liberal here, and by liberal, I mean they are supportive of free spirits and different lifestyle choices and basic women’s rights. Not that it’s perfect (because it isn’t), but it’s a step in the right direction.

Then there’s the weather (it doesn’t get much better than this) and the FOOD. I have the choice of at least twenty different types of cuisine within a fifteen minute drive of my condo. Maybe more. And if I’m willing to drive a little further, I have all of San Francisco to pick from. The beach is in driving distance, the mountains are less than a day away. I can take a day trip to a world-class aquarium or go to one of many excellent science museums (the Tech, the Exploratorium, the Academy of Sciences).

So therein lies my conundrum. I live in a beautiful and vibrant place. It also happens to be really expensive. There’s a push and pull that goes on whenever I consider my options.

Where we live matters. And there are always tradeoffs involved.

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The Crappy Person Cycle

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , on September 12, 2013| 7 Comments »

The blog post that I have found to be the most influential on my life is James Altucher’s How to Deal with Crappy People (and its follow-up How to Deal with Crappy People Part 2).

I don’t remember when I read it, probably a couple of years ago, and it was a revelation to me. Just the bare fact that there are crappy people who exist and we’re allowed to acknowledge this as truth was amazing to me. And that we are actually allowed to do something about it besides silently suffering? Wow. Heady stuff.

Then I read this article last week on The Problem of Being Too Nice (an issue I’ve written a little about myself). And I realized why receiving permission from that James Altucher article to call a spade a spade was so important.

Here’s the problem. If you come from a certain background, a background that generally includes at least a few influential and crappy people (usually but not always involving a dysfunctional family), then you become more likely to attract other crappy people. You turn into a Crappy People Magnet. And you’re so used to being around crappy people, and dealing with them, and having crappy things happen, that it all becomes normalized. You assume everyone is like that, and it’s all on you to make everything work out anyway. You can’t tell who is crappy and who isn’t. They just all blur together into an incoherent pile of people.

Photo Credit: jessicalsmyers via Compfight cc

With so many crappy people involved in your life, though, things never stabilize. There always seems to be stress and drama. You’re so rarely getting what you need that you get more and more tired. It takes all your energy to keep your head above water. And the worst part is you might eventually become a crappy person yourself. After all, it’s not like you’re learning healthy behaviors.

As a young girl, it was strongly instilled in me that everyone else was good and I should tolerate most behaviors. Even now I find writing about crappy people to be really uncomfortable. The people pleaser in me wants to make a million excuses for them. But the fact is, there’s a real difference between being an imperfect human who makes mistakes sometimes and being a crappy person. Maybe the crappy person is only crappy to some people. Maybe the crappy person won’t always be crappy. Maybe the crappy person has extenuating circumstances. It’s good to be compassionate. But…

It’s even better to take care of ourselves first.

I know there are plenty of happy people out there who mostly know other good and happy people. I am so glad they exist because they are excellent role models for those of us who have more of a struggle. But this post is not for them.

This post is for those of you who do have crappy people in your lives. This post is for those of you who need permission to call a spade a spade. This post is for those of you who might need to make some difficult decisions in order to take care of yourselves.

There are people out there who are kind and care about what you need. And life without so many crappy people? It isn’t perfect. There are some things about it that are sad.

But it’s also like being able to take a full breath of air for the first time.

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How to Overcome Fear

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 10, 2013| 7 Comments »

This summer I went to a workshop about dealing with fear, and I left it feeling disappointed. The teachers didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already known. They kept using examples that either weren’t really about fear or that were about being afraid of public speaking. So it wasn’t a talk geared for me.

Apparently fear of public speaking is the second most common fear in the United States. But to me, it just doesn’t seem like a big deal. I get nervous ahead of time, and I over-prepare, and I don’t always do a good job with it. But it’s so much better than having to sing operatic arias in a foreign language I don’t actually speak that contain high notes I can’t actually hit from memory and then have my performance critiqued in front of a group of fellow singers. That’s what I spent my college years doing. Which was still better than actual auditions.

So one way to manage fear is to do something a lot harder, and then easier things might not seem so bad. Another way is to do whatever you’re afraid to do A LOT. So basically you’re practicing your way out of fear.

But really I was disappointed in the talk because there is no easy answer. Whether you’re afraid of speaking in public or dying, uncertainty or being treated poorly, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. And I wish there was. Fear is such an uncomfortable emotion. It can both hold us back and make things a lot more miserable even as we trudge forward. It can warp the nature of reality itself, making things that might be true seem like they are actually true. And it can make us physically ill in a variety of ways.

Photo Credit: Funky64 (www.lucarossato.com) via Compfight cc

I have spent a lot of time being afraid. And ultimately it’s always the same thing that pushes me through.

Belief.

I remember once as a student, I was walking towards the music building where I had an audition. I think I was sick (I was almost always sick), and I already knew I wasn’t going to get the part. I thought to myself, Why are you even bothering? Why don’t you just go home? Why are you doing this to yourself?

But the answer was clear. I had decided to do this. I believed this was what I should be doing, even though I felt awful and I was really nervous and I knew I wouldn’t get the part. I had a vision of what I wanted my life to be, and this crappy audition experience was a part of that. So I went, and I did the audition, and I didn’t get the part, and I moved on.

Belief is still what gets me through fear. I fix my eyes on my idea of the future, and I clench my jaw, and I do what needs to be done to give myself a chance of getting there. The fear is still there, making things harder, making me pause and ask myself why I am putting myself through such difficulty. But I believe in my vision, and I hold onto that belief as if my life depends on it.

So I guess if I were to give a workshop on overcoming fear, I’d explore how to create a vision strong enough to withstand whatever fear can throw at us. I’d look for some exercises to promote self esteem, because in order to believe in a vision, I think we also have to believe in ourselves. And I’d talk about how to take care of ourselves and handle rejection and disappointment and failure and other obstacles in a resilient way that allows us to keep moving forward.

How do you overcome fear?

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Not everyone is cut out to work for themselves, and that’s okay.

Posted in Life, Society, tagged , , , on September 5, 2013| 10 Comments »

I really like James Altucher’s blog. I disagree with him some of the time, but he usually makes me think, whether I agree or not, and I appreciate that. Of course, one of the challenges in reading his blog is ignoring his heightened rhetoric. (Heightened rhetoric is great for blog traffic, but it makes ideas harder to talk about.)

My friend pointed me to the recent James Altucher post “How to be a Slave.” Its main point is that if you work for someone else, you’re trapped and getting a bad deal: you’re losing all this money you could be making in the company’s overhead and paying your boss’s salary, and then also you have to sit through boring sexual harassment seminars and dress a certain way and act a certain way. So you should go work for yourself and be free.

But it’s not that simple. First off, there is a trade-off working for a company vs. working for ourselves, and it depends on our individual personalities and circumstances which one we’ll be more comfortable with.

Working for yourself or the Man? (Photo Credit: Alan Cleaver via Compfight cc)

If you work full-time for a company, you often get paid time off (vacation, holidays, sick days) and access to cheaper and sometimes better health insurance. This is part of your compensation package, so yes, you’re paying for it, but it’s nice to have vacation days and good health insurance, so it might be compensation that you want. If you receive a salary, you know about how much money you’ll make this year. On the other hand, there’s also the possibility you could be laid off. You have an imposed structure to work within, which some people find quite appealing. Overall, people at companies are perhaps less self-directed, but the amount of self direction depends from job to job and company to company.

If you work for yourself, you do not get paid for time you don’t work, and health insurance is more of a problem (although we’re all crossing fingers it will get better in January). Basically you have to earn more money to make up for the alternate compensation methods you’re not receiving. You have complete control of your time, but this can be a double-edged sword. The amount of money you’ll make in a year tends to be more variable. You can’t be laid off, but your business might do poorly. My favorite part of working for myself is that ultimately, the decision-making is up to me. But some people don’t like calling all the shots; it can be a lot of responsibility.

In addition, it is simply not true that if you work for yourself, you automatically can spend all your time the way you like or dress the way you like or treat people like crap because they’re the opposite sex from you. It is true that you can avoid a certain amount of red tape, wasted time and money, and procedures that are inefficient and ineffective. But many people who work for themselves have clients/customers, and in order to be successful, they have to cater to these clients. I couldn’t dress like a slob as a music teacher, or no one would have hired me. I had to do tasks I didn’t enjoy to keep the business running healthily. I always tried to be polite, respectful, and professional in all my interactions with my students. If I hadn’t done these things, my business would have failed. Sure, I had more choice, and that was fabulous. I didn’t have to deal with policies that had no purpose. But I still didn’t have the leeway to consistently make poor decisions.

The irony is that even though I disagree with many of the arguments in that article, I have done what it suggests. I have never had a full-time salaried position. I like being in control of my time. I like working for myself.

But what I would like to suggest is that different people need and want different things. Some people will thrive working for a company, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Other people will do better working for themselves, and there’s nothing wrong with that either. Some people will go back and forth between the two. If you’re miserable, by all means change things up.

But if it doesn’t work for you, you don’t have to live somebody else’s dream. You get to create your own.

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I finally joined the crowd this weekend…

Posted in Life, Science fiction and fantasy, tagged , , on September 3, 2013| 4 Comments »

I just got home from WorldCon in San Antonio. I’m tired and I think I might be coming down with a cold, so my brain is not cooperating with interesting thoughts tonight.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, I hope they’re right.

In which I ultimately can't resist and take my turn on the Iron Throne.

In which I ultimately can’t resist and take my turn on the Iron Throne.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to my wonderful weekend!

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The best life advice I’ve ever heard

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , on August 20, 2013| 12 Comments »

I talk about creating change a lot, and I want to be clear about what I’m talking about. Making a change in our lives is not necessarily about happiness. I mean, it can be, but that is not the only reason to change. And even if the end goal is happiness, the process of change itself is not conducive to increased happiness; it’s too difficult and stressful for that.

So why change, then? We may wish to change to create more meaning for ourselves and our lives. We may wish to tell a different story with our lives than the one we find ourselves in. We may be thirsty for challenge or new experiences. We may be on a quest to become healthier or more empowered or more mindful. Or we may sense that we are being pushed down below our natural happiness setting and wish to change the circumstances causing this.

A lot of people are looking for something. We may be looking for happiness, or we may be looking for comfort or satisfaction or excitement. We may be looking for answers to questions that echo down the years of our lives. We may be looking for something larger than ourselves.

Photo Credit: h.koppdelaney via Compfight cc

At the World Domination Summit, Donald Miller, a memoirist, spoke about the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who wrote the bestselling book Man’s Search for Meaning. Dr. Frankl was a Holocaust survivor, and he worked professionally with Holocaust survivors. For him, life was all about creating meaning, even in the face of horrific circumstances.

According to Mr. Miller, Dr. Frankl believed three things mattered in creating a meaningful life:

1. Having a meaningful project that helps the world in some way (note this doesn’t have to be a paying project)

2. Having personal connections with other people, whether that be family, a significant other, friends, and/or a community

3. Having a redemptive perspective on suffering; aka finding the meaning in suffering, feeling one is achieving something through one’s suffering, choosing how to respond to suffering, etc.

This is some of the best advice on how to live life that I have ever heard. It’s so practical. It doesn’t wince away from the tough realities that sometimes face us. And it crystallizes my thoughts about my own life. It’s not happiness I’m seeking, not really. It’s meaning. It’s the ability to have a life that matters to me, and one in which I’ll be okay even in the darkest of times.

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” – Viktor Frankl

Maybe the happiness research is correct, and there isn’t very much we can do to affect our own personal happiness levels (although gratitude and mindfulness practice seem to help). But if we are most concerned with meaning, then that hardly matters. We don’t have to be the happiest people on the planet in order to create meaningful lives. We simply have to decide that meaning is important to us and make choices that reflect that belief.

A project that matters. Being brave, finding the silver lining, and experiencing gratitude even through bad experiences. Love.

Yes. These are the building blocks of the life I want to live.

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Optimism: Helpful or Harmful?

Posted in Life, tagged , , on August 15, 2013| 4 Comments »

“I’m not interested in blind optimism, but I’m very interested in optimism that is hard-won, that takes on darkness and then says, ‘This is not enough.’ But it takes time, more time than we can sometimes imagine, to get there. And sometimes we don’t.”

Colum McCann (by way of Jonathan Carroll’s Facebook page)

I think this is important to remember. Hoping for the best without taking the time to educate ourselves is not particularly helpful. Blindly doing the same thing we’ve been doing over and over while expecting a different (and better) outcome is Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity. Looking at silver linings to the extent that we’re blinded to reality and won’t look for changes we can make to better our situations keeps us stuck in one place.

But taking a real look at our lives and making change, real change, takes optimism as well. Optimism allows us to believe we’ll be okay whatever is happening. Optimism allows us to think change is possible for us. Optimism allows us to create a vision of a better future. Optimism gives us courage. And optimism gives us a greater capacity for both kindness and happiness.

The trick, then, is in being able to tell the difference between the optimism that holds us down and the optimism that lifts us up.

Photo Credit: Ira Gelb via Compfight cc

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Taking time off from social media is actually no big deal.

Posted in Life, Social Media, tagged , , , , , on August 8, 2013| 5 Comments »

Hello again! Long time no see.

I spent most of my month’s absence in France, eating delectable cuisine, soaking up sun, exposing myself to different experiences, and reading many, many books. And not once during my three and a half week trip did I check my email or log onto Facebook or read any blogs. (I did look up some travel information and Wikipedia pages on the internet, and that was about it.)

I hadn’t unplugged myself so thoroughly for quite some time, and I found quite a lot of value in it. Space to just be. Time to think about whatever I wanted to think about. Permission to be in my own present moment, whatever that happened to look like. And perhaps most refreshing, a break from most external stress.

Sometimes that’s what we want from vacations: a break from our regular lives and some of our ongoing problems, giving us a chance to recharge. Sometimes this leads to personal epiphanies, and sometimes it leads to a chance to rest. Both are valuable.

A relaxed Amy in Carcassonne.

A relaxed Amy in Carcassonne.

Taking a break from social media also reminded me afresh how much I appreciate my friends and colleagues. While I didn’t find myself overly tempted to log in, I thought about my friends a fair amount. I wondered how they were doing, and I wished I could send them little texts telling them how fabulous they are. I’m so grateful for the technology that allows me to stay connected with the people who mean so much to me.

That’s probably my greatest takeaway from my time without internet: technology is wondrous, but I’m allowed to use it on my own terms. Writers hear so often about they have to be on this social media site, or that new shiny one, or write blog posts every day, or whatever the latest trend is. But the truth is that in order to continue to do any of those things, we have to find the value in what we’re doing. We have to recognize the amazing feeling of being able to stay close to people who we can’t see face-to-face all the time. We need to appreciate the ability to connect in different ways with our readers and find the way(s) that work best for us.

I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. When we hate a thing or secretly resent it, we aren’t going to be doing our best work. A grudging connection has a different quality to it than one that is celebrated.

When I look behind all the best writer social media strategies, I see people who care. They care about their audiences. They care about providing something meaningful, whether that be information or entertainment or connection. Genuine caring is hard to fake. So our job, then, is to find a way to use social media that allows us to project our caring outwards, while still being able to take care of ourselves.

So how do I feel after my social media time off? Well, right now I’m jet lagged, and I have a head cold, so I’m not exactly feeling refreshed. But I’m so proud of myself for taking the break I needed.

And guess what? Nothing terrible happened. The blog continues. My friends and colleagues are still here. No crises occurred that needed my personal attention. The world doesn’t actually require my constant attention to keep turning.

Sometimes a reminder of that can be a very good thing.

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Taking a Short Internet Vacation

Posted in Life, tagged , on July 12, 2013| Leave a Comment »

The headline sums it up nicely. I’ll be taking a break from the blog, social media, and email for the next few weeks. So do not fear when next Tuesday rolls around and there isn’t a new post; I’m doing fine, just taking some time off.

See you later in August!

I can't leave without a cute Nala photo. :)

I can’t leave without a cute Nala photo. 🙂

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The Care and Feeding of Long Distance Friends

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , , on July 11, 2013| 9 Comments »

Shortly after I published Friendship Can Be Like Dating, I received a text from a long-distance friend of mine. How did internet friendships play into my theories, he wanted to know. He had a point. After all, he and I are good friends and we definitely don’t see each other once a week. If we see each once a year, it’s time to break out the party hats. And thus, an idea for another blog post was born.

Do I think it’s possible to be close friends with people who don’t live locally? Definitely. Do I think it’s possible to be close friends with people whom I’ve met on the internet? Yes, if certain things happen.

Basically, in order to be close friends, you’ve got to find some way to have both time and intimacy with one another. Without these, it’s hard for a relationship to grow beyond a pleasant acquaintanceship. Luckily for us, both of these things are possible using technology, which means we’re no longer as limited by geography in developing friendships.

Photo by Al Bogdan (another long distance friend).

Photo by Al Bogdan (another long distance friend)

I still think the Once a Week theory holds true in the online realm. The friends we interact with on a weekly basis feel like an active part of our lives. The friends we interact with on a monthly basis still feel present. Less than that, and we become less aware of and engaged with each other. (That’s not to say you can’t still be friends; it simply means you won’t be as immediately close and involved.)

But interactions look different when we live far apart. A few of my friends and I are what I call “text friends” because we communicate primarily via text. We might have an entire conversation over text, or we might just send a quick “You are my favorite brand of awesomesauce” kind of text. But what we’re doing whenever we send one is saying, “Hey, I’m thinking about you, I love you, and I value our friendship.” I have other friends who are “Twitter friends” because we mostly chat on Twitter. Still others are e-mail friends or Facebook/Facebook message friends or Skype friends. Time spent interacting is important, but interacting at all also plays a larger role in these LDFs (long distance friendships).

One of the great things about LDFs is that it is often easier to get one-on-one time. Although there are group-focused ways to communicate, many of the most common methods require forming a personal one-on-one relationship. Whether I’m sending texts to my friends in Ohio and Washington or Skyping my friend in Boston, we’re focusing on each other.

Some of the communication techniques are also great for balancing friendships to be more two-sided. In both e-mail and text, for example, both people will get a chance to speak, talk about their lives and viewpoints, and be heard. And because there’s an inherent delay built into the communication, it’s a lot harder to be interrupted in a way that’s truly disruptive.

I do find that my LDFs are greatly enhanced by any amount of face-to-face time. Often, in fact, they begin with face-to-face time and grow into something closer over the internet. Many of my convention writer friendships have started like this. In person time can be hard (and expensive) to arrange, but when it works out it’s worth its weight in gold.

What do you think? Do you have close LDFs? How do you maintain these friendships?

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