A creative wellness blog by Amelia Nashe
Pressure Cookers, Waiting Lists and Work-Life Balance
Err See-what now?
Hello, and welcome to See-Saw: a blog about confidence and wellbeing in the gig economy, and other things that crop up in my life as a writer. That’s the shtick, anyway. Really, I don’t know what it’s going to be about at this stage. Come back in three months’ time and I’ll probably be writing about the magical properties of tea and chocolate in my local cat café…but for now, the aim is to go on a journey ‘into the woods’, to seek out the mystical elixirs of self-confidence and a healthy, balanced life. If such things exist. So I invite you to join me on this trek, where we will cross the rapids of self-loathing, juggle the balls of obligation, and climb the mountain of mixed metaphors to reach… something that I hope will be helpful to you.
Full disclosure: I don’t know what’s at the end of this little creative wellness rainbow (wow, could there be three more hippie-ish words in the English language?!), or even if there is one. But the idea is I will be investigating, testing and learning all this stuff along with you. There are plenty of blogs out there by qualified psychologists, psychiatrists, psychic cats (just checking you’re paying attention), etc. Unlike them, I don’t claim to know all the answers. I’m seeking my own way forward right now, and figured I might as well see if my experiences can help anyone else out there while I’m at it. I’m no expert.
Who’s Behind the See-saw?*
*Not in a creepy paedo in the playground way, promise!
So if I’m not an expert, who am I and why on earth should you pay attention to anything I have to say? My name is Amelia Nashe, for starters. I am a twenty-seven year-old, white, middle-class, British cisgender woman. Basically, I’m pretty darn privileged. Apart from the whole gender thing, obviously, and the fact that if Scotland ever goes independent, I’ll be an English immigrant! With high class BA and MA degrees, both in highly prized creative writing courses, I am quite literally a Master of the Art of writing stuff. Or should that be Mistress? There’s a controversial question for you! Keep it clean in the comments, please, folks! Of course, the idea that anyone can ‘master’ writing is ridiculous, but the point is I’m educated, not shy of hard work, and supposedly bright.
And yet, despite all I’ve apparently got going for me, I’ve always struggled with self-confidence low enough to give Trump’s re-election strategy a run for its money. My brain has its own ideas of what’s worth a thought – or a worry, or a panic attack. When it really comes down to it, I’m an anxious little kid, holding onto my dreams for dear life, totally unsure of how to do this adulting thing. But then, aren’t we all? I certainly hope so, as relatable panicking is how this thing is gonna work. That and my irresistible ‘mastery’ (‘mistressy’? ‘Mystery’?) of writing ;p.
Why See-Saw Now?
I recently pushed myself to breaking point. For the past year, I’ve been working my socks off to turn my pen-wielding life into a career, writing a ton of stuff on spec (i.e. unpaid) and fighting to get it some attention, while struggling to find a way to pay the bills that didn’t make me physically ill. Sound familiar? In my case, I let it all spiral like the air in a pressure cooker, faster and faster until there was no room for anything else…tonsillitis, insomnia, panic attacks, all the warning signs built up until…KABOOM! Three months ago, I found myself so paralysed with anxiety all I could do was sleep and cry. In story structure lingo, that was the turning point. That was when I decided to seek help.
So I quit my horrendous hospitality jobs, signed on at the dreaded job centre (note: nowhere near as demoralising as I thought it was going to be) and went to see my GP. She took one look at me and gave me a fit note, so that bit was easy. But then I had to go through an excruciating three week game of cat and mouse with the mental health call-back team. When they finally did ‘assess’ me and sign me up for therapy, I discovered the infamous NHS waiting list was fifteen weeks long. Yup.
I decided to take matters into my own hands. Do my own research, try out alternative ways of treating anxiety; investigate what’s causing it, in me and in society today. Crucially, I want to share all this with 100% honesty. No filters, no pretence, just a sense of humour and adventure.
‘See-saw’…between what and what?
Ah, now we get to the real meat of the thing (or plant-based alternative, if you’re vegan!). We’ve all heard of work-life balance. It’s a buzz phrase that’s bandied about constantly in the modern world, so much so that we rarely stop to think about what it actually means. And if you do stop to think about it, it’s a tad weird that it’s ‘work-life’ – ‘cos work is not part of life or anything, we all turn into the undead when we work…(please note: sarcasm warning).
Then again, we’re all familiar with that sense of being pushed and pulled about by clashing priorities, with family, friends, work, and (hopefully) love life and hobbies all clamouring for attention. As world-famous story consultant Robert McKee says, “Life is conflict”. The phrase ‘work-life balance’ is an attempt to capture that feeling of two opposing forces within our lives, even if it is a tad misleading in my view.
Personally, I’m a visual learner, and a bit of a child at heart (in my defence, all writers are), so I’m going to go with ‘see-saw balance’ instead. Still got the conflict aspect, but you could be see-sawing back and forth between any aspects of life. You’ve literally got the highs and lows, the struggle and the euphoria of life encapsulated in that one analogy. I would even go so far as to say it’s a veritable writer’s playground (see what I did there? ;).
Healthy Balance: Three Is a Magic Number
Terminology aside, what is a healthy way to manage your life, see-saw or otherwise? I took it back to basics with my research, and repeatedly came across three core ideas:
- Balance
- Fluidity
- Connections
I’d like to explore those in a bit more depth:
1. Balance
Yes, it’s 150% cliché and obvious, but if you want to avoid the kind of burnout that’ll turn you into a crying, sleeping puddle, you need to find a healthy balance between all of the various parts of your life. Professional life coach Melanie Allen emphasises that this will look different for each of us.
And on that note, I’ll just shut up and piss off! Nah, just kidding, bossing people about is really not what I’m going for here. The point is: your balance is bespoke, tailor-made stuff. None of that off-the-rack ‘the legs are so long they keep my toes warm, but it’s Calvin Klein at a steal!’ nonsense for the way you live your life. And yes, that example just came out of my imagination, it’s not based in fact AT ALL… There are a ton of self-help ‘life designer’ brands out there, but ultimately you have to be the one to shape your unique life…which leads us rather nicely into…
2. Fluidity
Things change, people change, and so it makes sense that your balance needs to be flexible enough to change with it. In a sense, that’s why maternity, paternity and compassionate leave exist – it’s the work culture’s recognition that at times of great change in the familial or social parts of life, you are going to need to shift that balance away from work for a while. Yet another reason why freelance work is tough.
3. Connections
Last, but not least, you guessed it! Well you didn’t, the subheading’s right there. But you’re paying enough attention to take it in, so well done!
Now when I say connections, I don’t mean it in the mercenary, networky sense of “that girl’s got connections, she can make things happen”. I mean having people around you who both connect with and understand you on a fundamental level, and people who ground you in reality.
This theme kept on coming up in different ways in my research, whether from a mental health angle on the importance of having a strong support network, the business employer approach of improving worker productivity via team building, or from every single BAFTA speech ever made, where the winner never fails to say ‘thanks, mum’. Shut up, watching BAFTA speeches counts as research! And to use my see-saw analogy, it simply won’t work without someone else to literally bring you back down to earth. It’s a two-way street, and it only works if you’re there for them too, but we all need someone to help us through the unsettling changes and challenges of life.
The State of the Nation
But the fact is, when it comes to work-life or ‘see-saw’ balance, a huge proportion of people in our culture do not lead healthy lives. My own burnout experiences aside, it appears that the materialistic, success-oriented way of the Western world is causing, or at least encouraging, a highly damaging imbalanced way of living. The Mental Health Foundation has recently stated its findings on this:
Scary, huh? At the other end of the scale, even hard-core U.S. business magazine Forbes admits that unhealthy work-life balances are the cause of so many sick days and low productivity that employers are beginning to look for alternative ways of managing their employees’ health.
And let’s face it, if the big corporate bosses are concerned enough to make changes, you know it’s bad. I mean, if burnout is that big a problem for employees who at least know they have a regular wage coming in, what about those of us who are trying to stay afloat as freelancers?
But I digress. That’s a whole other blog post, for another day. Talking of which…that’s all for today, folks! Next time, I’ll be reporting back with my top techniques for making your ‘see-saw’ balance that little bit healthier. I’ve already spent some happy and bizarre hours trying out a range of experiments and following all sorts of advice, and I can’t wait to share my thoughts on them with you! Don’t worry, I won’t waste your time with unachievable goals that simply won’t fit into a busy life, I’ll give them a proper test run on my own frenzied rat race of a schedule first. To make sure I’ve got enough time to do this justice amidst all the other goings-on of life, I’ll report back in a month (if you’re reading this when it first comes out, that is). It’s quality over quantity here, and on 1st October I’ll be providing you with top quality practical and time-saving strategies for rebalancing your life. Feel free to try them out, or not. Think of it as a shortcut – I put in the hours, you just have a quick mosey and pick and choose what you like.
And finally, as this is my first post, I would be extra, super, ridiculously grateful if you could leave a comment below with some indication of what you thought – what you liked, hated, gagged at the sight of (apologies for the hippie rainbow), found useful. And if you feel comfortable doing so, please do let me know who you are, why you read this, what you hope to gain from it, and a little about your own journey. Thank you so very much for reading ‘See-Saw’. See you on 1st October, and until then, let’s keep on just ‘balancing life on a ballpoint’. Xx
Recent Posts
- Top 5 Techniques To Playing At Life May 1, 2020
- The Playground of Life April 1, 2020
- Top 5 Techniques To Make Failure Work For You March 1, 2020
- What A Fail! Why Fear Of Failure Is A Forking Farce February 1, 2020
- Top 5 Techniques to Build Confidence December 1, 2019