Vive la revolution!

I’ve been having an awful day. A day full of straggled sobs and salty tears. I got some sad news regarding my darling Nan*.

Earlier in the week I was actually knocking together a post about happiness. I had come to the realization the more I tried to force creativity, the more I struggled to produce anything. Well nothing other than a set of shoulders knotted with stress.

Whilst I am aiming to make a living from writing, I have inadvertently been sucking the life out of my writing. Extreme expectations, intense workloads, strict deadlines etc.  So it’s almost no wonder that writing was making me feel rather stressed and anxious.

I was feeling so miserable I started reading ‘The Happiness Project’ and this quote hit me like ton of bricks:

“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.” Robert Louis Stevenson.

Today this seems particularly potent, as I've been painfully reminded about the fragility of life. It makes me even more determined to prioritise happiness.

Last week, after reading that quote, I let go of the self-imposed pressures and just chilled out*. 

Once I stopped forcing myself to produce work that would make O. Henry go “oh my!” - I found that ideas starting popping up faster than corn kernels in a hot pan.

Like they say - a happy worker is a healthy worker.  In fact I stumbled across this report “Making employees happy, healthy and productive”

"First, consider the domino effect. Employees are overworked. This overworked environment encourages stress and stress-inducing behaviors and illnesses, which in turn increase turnover, absenteeism and employee dissatisfaction and ultimately costs employers billions in higher healthcare and labor costs" **

It feels like I’ve just given the one finger salute to a bitch of a boss.  I’m now working in a much healthier (and happier) working environment.

I’m learning to be the nice boss. The one who says things like “my door is always a open“, ”free muffins for all!” and “of course flannelette is appropriate for casual Friday!”

Of course there will still be demands, I won’t allow my writing to slip to just jotting down shopping lists, but I can already see that happiness doesn’t hinder productivity.

Whilst Red Smith famously said “There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein”

I think that would be a dreadfully messy business to engage in on a daily basis. I definitely think experiencing a spectrum of emotions is important to foster a sense of honesty and excitement in writing (I can attest to braving the stormy swell of emotions today). But I think that one needs to establish a happy working environment to ensure that the creative muse turns up and clocks on.

So Vive la revolution! Farwell Fi the dictator! And hello happy little camper!

Every revolution needs a couple of smashed eggs

*She is just the best.  Plain and simply – the best.

The woman herself! [photo taken 3years ago, during a freezing Irish winter!]

** This may have coincided with the discovery of the truly amazing show – Downton Abbey AND the hilarious podcast 'The Minutes'

**Note that this report was written for actual corporations, so perhaps it's prudent I edit out the word 'billions' for - “ultimately cost employers (read: Fi)…a fine button collection, a stack of tatty band posters and her sanity”. I think that this gives a clearer indication of my fiscal relationship with my writing!

By a sneeze

I didn’t anticipate my Madeleine to be so – unpleasant. With a rib-rattling sneeze a wallop of mucus flung from my nose, and I was instantly transported back to the brothel Bucharest.

Hot tea and cake is so much more delightful to yield a relaxing reverie. But I suppose you can’t be picky about sensory stimulus! So here is the result of last week's writing exercise: 

Bucharest

I lay on the floor of my tent in a sweltering fug of fever. Lashing rain drowned out my haggard cough. I fidgeted, fighting to get comfortable. I finally flung off my sleeping bag, only to retreat under it moments later. A platoon of mosquitoes laid siege. We were camping in a poorly drained swamp. Even without a fever the air hung like a soppy, hot towel.

We had pulled into Bucharest earlier in the day. We pitched our tents in a campsite in outskirts of the city. The campsite used to house laborers during the communist era. A handful of original plywood huts still stood. They had since been tarted up with bright paint. We were later told that that wasn’t the only tarty behavior.

Campsites have a less then savory reputation in Romania. After the Iron curtain fell, these types of huts were sold off for private enterprise and turned a fine profit when rented by the hour.

This particular campsite was built on the edge of an industrial estate, a forty-minute bus trip from the city. We eagerly pitched our tents and set to work washing our filthy clothes in the bathroom sinks. Giggling at the strategically placed massage tables in the toilet sheds. Not yet knowing about the campsite’s avenues for revenue.

With everything washed, we negotiated with each other for space in the campgrounds backfield. We hung our wet clothes from fence posts, tent guide ropes and trees branches. The field looked like a launderette had exposed. We were immensely satisfied. Everything was washed. We failed to anticipate the impeding rain.

It wasn’t the rain that broke us. Bucharest broke us. As we eventually drove any from the wretched city we were weary and unwell.  My lungs were still a cesspool of mucus; everyone else had hangovers from a night on the city’s wild side. I suppose I haven’t explained very well why I’ll never return to Bucharest, that’s for another time. I highly doubt anyone else I travelled with would return either. I guess I risk the possibly of returning to it whenever I have a heavily laden sneeze.