Connecting Ideas

A few days ago a friend asked me if there was a blogging etiquette.  I stumbled on my answer.  I don’t think I had given it enough thought to produce a coherent response (which is clearly a sign that I’m inept at thinking on my toes or really producing any impromptu information that could make me sound well informed! I made a mental note to work on this quality).

So now that I’ve taken my time to think about blogging etiquette I’ve come up with the following answer: there is no etiquette or code of practice.  There doesn’t need to be.  Here’s my reasoning:

Bloggers share a passion for thinking and writing.  No matter how different bloggers can be in style, personality and outlooks they have one thing in common: effort.

It takes actual effort to blog.  Most bloggers are not career writers so that basically means they have a day job (which chances are they are passionate about also) then go home to think and string their thoughts into sentences which they then edit and publish.  I think there is a lot of respect amongst bloggers who put the effort into writing and publishing their thoughts.  Blogging is a practice of people that are driven by the same interest in having a say and listening as others have their say.  It works becasue participants make it work.  Once inside you may think that the blogging world is huge, that every man and his dog has a blog, but blogging is a relatively small online alcove.  Not everyone blogs and not everyone understands what and why blogs exist.  For those that do I think that it’s a comforting support netowork.

I think that bloggers also share one or more of the following qualities:

- Curiousness
- Emotional intelligence
- Drive
- Motivation
- A desire to engage with other motivated people
- A general idea of what they want to do with life or at least a notion of how to discover it
- Analysis
- Engagement

So while there are hundreds of bloggers out there that have very distinct personalities they share many of the same positive qualities.  Cases of people using a blog as a forum to disparage others, or do anything other than offer up relevant advice, opinions or research are definitely the exception rather than the rule.

I don’t think there exists any rules of behaviour around blogging because in my experience and definitely in the experiences of the bloggers I follow, bloggers are generally happy to being sharing what they are doing with other equally as interested people.

There does exist terms and conditions for belonging to blogging communities but this isn’t the same as etiquette.  Even the terms of use of Brazen Careerist are very basic: don’t spam people, don’t write abuse and don’t impersonate anyone.  That’s it.  So from what I can tell as long as you’re not a neo-Nazi using your blogging community to propagate hate of any one person or group you pretty much have free range to express your ideas in whichever style you want.

I guess the only requirement then is to stay originally, feel excited about what you do and keep learning from others.

Do you agree or am I describing some Utopian blogging world that doesn’t exist? Is there a set of rules that govern bloggers?

Yesterday, after a pretty dodgy day at work where there were too many things that I didn’t understand about my job and I wasn’t feeling the best, these goals sprouted from somewhere inside of me.

I surprised myself as I wrote them because I’ve never really had concrete goals.  I’ve always been driven but I’ve been driven towards abstractions like ‘Always be happy’, ‘Aim to be successful’ and ‘Always do what I love.’  To me the aspirations that I’ve written below are the most specific goals I’ve ever had and I’m pretty proud of them.

You’ll notice that I’ve even developed a relationship goal which is included at the bottom of the list.  When the idea of a relationship goal was first suggested to me it seemed like a pretty strange concept to think about (“What the hell is a relationship goal?”). but I’ve spent a while considering it and if you have read my previous posts regarding my fears over having children and the ways I use writing in my relationship when I should perhaps be talking, you’ll understand where my goal came from.

General life goals:

1. To write a kids book that adults will fall in love with also.

2. To write an adults book.

3. To keep learning and writing about myself through blogs, books, articles (really any medium I can get my hands on).

4. To take my parents out to many many dinners now that we’re all grown ups.

5. To remain confident that imagination is valuable and can always remain part of my career (no matter how many times I’m told that that it doesn’t contribute to or change anything tangible in the world).  Always hold onto my belief in the power of perspectives when offered up to others.

Career goals:

1. Never be a manager.  I don’t think I’m very good at managing people (their expectations or their actions).

2. To define my success by my capacity to teach people.

3. To become an engaging public speaker.

Relationship goals:

1. Free myself of any preconceived notions (both mine and other people’s) of where I thought I’d be in a relationship.  Let go and completely trust my experiences.

There is a connection that I didn’t quite make in my last post.  It’s the connection between my fears about having children and why I feel that way.  The thing is I really do like kids.  I nannied throughout uni and loved it because I enjoyed the company of the children I was minding.  But that gave me the confidence to know that I understand the reality of having kids and I’m sure I don’t want that any time soon.

Here’s the scary part: my boyfriend is 10 years older than I am.  Im fine with that.  It has never ever felt like a gaping hole in our relationship in which we can’t relate to each other on certain levels.  We have always agreed that the different perspectives brought about by our age difference has enriched us, just like any differences in a relationship.  I think that we could’ve come from different countries, different family situations, different socio-economic circumstances and we would still be bringing differences to the table.

A little while ago I was at work (in a meeting for christ sake!) and everyone in the meeting was asked what their material goals are.  I said “ummm, I wouldn’t mind an Audi A3…” but the boy across from me who is a couple of years older than I am said, “I guess I’d like to be in a financial position to have kids.”  People jumped at this comment exclaiming “Really?” and “Wow, I would never have thought to plan for sending my kids to a good school” but BF said “I think that’s a reasonable goal.  I’d like to have kids within the next 5 years.” HE SAID IT IN A MEETING AND IT WASN’T EVEN HIS TURN TO COMMENT!

I stayed quiet (frozen and in shock but at least I gave the exterior impression of having barely noticed the comment).  I went downstairs after the meeting, back to my desk, and formulated a plan.  I was just going to come right out and ask him to clarify exactly how much he meant what he said.  So I emailed him with this request:

‘Shall we go to dinner tonight.  We need to get in all of ‘us time’ we can before I apparently start popping out children.’

Not my most mature moment but the effect I was going for was to let him know that I was thinking about this issue and would like to discuss it at dinner. He replied “Sure.”

At dinner that night I decided to have half a bottle of wine (I’m small so that’s actually quite a bit of alcohol for me) while asking him about his comment.  This is how our conversation went:

I blurted “I don’t want to have kids in 5 years!”

“You don’t know how you’ll feel in the future plus I didn’t mean 5 years, it could be 2 years or it could be 5.”

“Ummm I know you can’t judge how you’ll feel in the future but I can say with a fair amount of confidence that I WONT BE HAVING KIDS IN 2 YEARS.”

Another glass of wine.

I explained to him that he can’t bank on me changing my mind and suddenly feeling like I want kids in two years.  I asked him if he wants to spend those two years finding and building a relationship with someone who has the same plan as he does.  He said no.  I asked him if he’s happy staying with me with this knowledge? And he said yes, he is.  I didn’t know what to say after that so I cried and then had a bit more wine.

At that time it felt like the knowledge that we’re at different places on the baby issue would always be the elephant in the room.  I cried because I believed that things were ruined between us.  I felt that although we had both laid our feelings on the table and thought we could push past it, it would stay with us and make us both feel that anything that came after that conversation would be fruitless.  It would make me feel like every experience we had after that conversation would be numbered and I would be very aware of that.

The knowledge that he wants to have kids sooner than I do actually was an elephant in the room for a few days afterwards.  I was a bit on edge and I found a way to work the baby issue into every conversation we had (both jokingly and in seriousness). Then we got over it.  We couldn’t help but focus on how great things were between us and we seemed to have forgotten our make or break conversation.  The most important thing was, and still is, to be together for a long, long time and not to focus on things that have the potential to break us up.

That was about two months ago and I thought it had stopped affecting me.  Things had returned to normal and I had stopped thinking about that incident.  I had thought about it briefly when I was writing my last post but I really did think that the post was more about the different ways my friends see childbearing.  What I have now realised is the point I was trying to make in my last post, the connection I didn’t quite understand at the time, was that my baby fears are hugely connected to my fears about being with BF.

Things are amazing between us.  They really are.  But lately I’ve learned that my greatest fear, even greater than the ‘baby fears’ I described in my last post, is having to end this relationship because I don’t want to have babies and he does.  It is something that you absolutely can’t compromise on and that’s one of the most serious things about having children.  You and your partner need to be in exactly the same place.  I believe you need to both be at the same level of readiness and have the same expectations and ideas of raising children.  Otherwise things will fall apart.  I can’t have kids before I’m 100% ready and he can’t really keep waiting for that.

So I guess my real fear about babies is about losing someone I care very much about.  We both now believe we want to and will stay with each other for a long, long time and have no intention of breaking up.  So our conversation about children that was so out of alignment with what we both want, really shook me and maybe I’m taking that out on my hypothetical children.

A common term for a boyfriend, girlfriend or partner is ‘other half.’  I don’t even like this term but I wonder if that can still apply when my BF earns much more than I do and can thus contribute a lot more money to our lifestyle? Would I have to call him my other six eighths? These are the absurd thoughts I have pondered in my continuous struggle to become comfortable with a BF who is not just sitting in the pay grade above mine, but earns a significant amount more than I do.

Sometimes my way of feeling comfortable and in control of this borders on the crazy.  For example I have imposed all of these rules about what he can pay for and what he can’t.  I’ve divided our lives up into categories:
1. Core living
2. Luxury items and;
3. Personal expenses.
The informal names for these categories are:
1. Things I Go Halves In
2. Things In Which My Contribution Can Only Ever Cover About 20% of the Total Amount and;
3. Things That I Will Not Let Him Pay For Because Even Though He Pays for 80% of Our Dinners Out If He Buys Me Even a Bottle of Shampoo I’ll Feel Like a Whore.

So those are the lines that I have drawn in my own mind and although they are completely arbitrary they keep me feeling like I’m in control, I can still be a feminist who just happened to fall in love with a boy with a disposable income.

I believe that there are things in life you say, maybe naively, that you’ll never do.  Everyone has a version of this personal code.  For me I know I don’t ever want to be financially dependent on another person.  I don’t want to be in a position where I have to ask my partner for money.  That will always be important to me.  But how far am I willing to go to uphold these principles? Will I always insist on being equal in absolutely everything?  I’m not sure that’s even possible.  Already I’ve sacrificed pure equality because reality hit and I didn’t fall in love with a fellow graduate doing the exact same job as me and earning more or less what I earn.  I have to accept that and try and readjust if I want to live with him and make our relationship work.

When we eat out and the bill has been brought to the table 3 out of 4 times I know it’s more than I have in my spending account.  We both also know and are comfortable with the fact that he will be paying it.  So I carry on with our conversation knowing that he will get the bill.  This is done in a completely relaxed way.  It’s not like he makes a big deal of it.  It’s not a grand gesture or something to be held over me.  He has more money than me that he likes to spend it on eating out so he pays more often. This is the situation that we’re in.  I tried paying for half at the start, I tried to keep up but I just reached a point where I didn’t have the money.

I never thought I would be comfortable not paying for my share of dinner, even if it’s a ‘you get it this time and I’ll get it next time’ situation.  I always remembered and got the bill the next time.  It was important to me.  But the thing is we eat out 3-4 times per week and my income simply does not cover this expense.  I have talked to BF about this numerous times and he says this: “I work hard for the money I earn, we both love food and I love eating out with you. What’s the big deal if I pay?”  I don’t believe this is a rationale, it’s stupidly logical and I struggle every time we talk about it to mediate this logic with the things ‘I thought I would never do.’

How do I deal with those thoughts and still feel like we have an equal relationship?

I think about this most when we eat out or buy everyday things for the apartment.  Yesterday we needed to buy a clock for the bedroom.  I was just going to buy a small digital clock that shows the time in the dark.  I imagined the small one I would buy would cost no more than $50-80.  But BF loves technology and I can’t hold that against him.  For him electronics are more than just tech toys, good technology is one of the highest markers of human potential.  Devices mean that people can visualise better, smarter ways of doing things and that’s how his faith in the world manifests.  He likes to have devices in the apartment because he finds them personally inspiring and I can only respect that.  Needless to say that this afternoon what we came home with was not a small digital clock, it was a Bose Wave Radio worth upwards of $500.  While I love his appreciation of technological innovation I’ve long since accepted that the ‘really expensive tech stuff’ in our apartment will need to be paid for mostly by him (they fall into the 20% category).  I don’t make nearly enough in a week to go halves in this ode to technology that our apartment has become.

Is the Bose device his or is it ours? Should I be worried about what’s going to happen to the dynamic of our relationship because he has paid for more of the cooking utensils in our drawer? My answer is I think it’s different for everyone.  If I were in another relationship and it were a different guy maybe I would have to be concerned, but the thing with BF is that his approach to spending money doesn’t make me feel like the pot we use to boil our pasta represents a massive inequality in our relationship.  I know that he sees money as something to be spent in the present, just a means of exchange, and he doesn’t like the idea of placing any more importance on it beyond that.  He simply has more so he spends more.

Even now I hate the way this looks on paper. I look like a picture of a person I never thought I would be.  My friends worry about what this financial imbalance will do to the dynamic of our relationship but I guess I have started to understand that our dynamic is based on the conversations we have, the opinions we challenge each other with and the fact that we make decisions equally.  BF has made sure that money never affects that and I’m learning to do the same.