Category Archives: Contemporary life

Enough is enough

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A good friend of mine said something very interesting the other day. She said that people just don’t know when it’s enough. She was talking about exhaustion and how someone she knew was on the brink of burnout and had actually already approached her boss to say that if she takes on any more she will break. My friend’s comment was that she, in reality, wasn’t on the brink of exhaustion anymore, she was already beyond that. You don’t generally go to your boss before you have too much to handle. Because the threshold to bring it up at work is so high, you only approach someone after it’s gone too far.

She sees things very clearly sometimes, my friend; I admire her for that, and this time I think she really hit the nail on its head. As a society, we really don’t know when enough is enough. We kind of go overboard with most things, whether it’s consumerism, depleting our planet of its natural resources, health trends, makeovers, parenting, or just simply work. How do you know at work when you’ve done enough? When you’re good enough? Your employer will take whatever he or she can get and you as an individual are responsible to draw the line. But in this age of major and multidimensional insecurity, how do you know you’ve done enough to stay safe and stay in the game? With an employer who is always asking for more it’s impossible to know.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a colleague a while back. He was recounting an interview he had seen with Rod Stewart, I think it was, or someone equally rich and famous anyway. And Rod was talking about how he wakes up every morning, thinking, “Am I comfortable yet?” And he’s a multimillionaire! This sounds pretty idiotic, but it kind of epitomizes the fear of disposability we suffer from that I wrote about last week. Even (or especially?) a talented, rich, and famous rock star doesn’t feel comfortable with the fleeting nature of success and security. The fact is, in this day and age things can change very fast.

So how can we possibly know when enough is enough if we don’t feel secure or comfortable in our jobs? When we constantly try to live up to unrealistic expectations?

Well, that’s a rhetorical question. In the meantime I’m going to try to recognize when enough is enough in my life, and actually slow down enough to enjoy the holiday season with family and friends. I’m going to take some time off from my blog and will be back after the New Year. Until then Happy Holidays and all the best for 2016!

Sometimes you need to fail in order to succeed

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A few days ago I found out that I didn’t get a job I applied for. For a while it seemed very promising and I was already mentally preparing to accept this job and considering the practicalities I needed to figure out in order to do that. But then I came second, so alas, no job.

Writing this I realize what a long way I have come. Not too long ago I wouldn’t have breathed a word to anyone that I was applying for a job much less announced globally that I didn’t get it like I’m doing now. I just wouldn’t have broadcasted my failure. Only it wasn’t a failure. It was actually a very good process for me. First of all it made me really think about what I want to do and what I can imagine myself doing. And I realized that I could actually imagine myself going back and working in an organization again. My own opting out and in experience continues to evolve, it is not static, and like so many people I have interviewed I also realize that the choices I made when I opted out weren’t forever. So that was good to really have a chance to think about my situation, my terms, and what I want to do. Also, although I would have been very happy to have gotten the job, I’m actually also very happy to be able to continue living the life I’m living right now the way I do. So what initially felt like a waste of energy since it didn’t really lead anywhere was actually quite meaningful. And besides, as an academic I deal with a lot of rejection all the time so in a way I’m kind of getting used to it. Scary as that may sound.

But this question of success and failure is interesting. I’ve decided to make a point of sharing my failures and rejections, because it’s important that people know that everyone experiences failures, and actually the people who are very successful usually are because they worked very hard and failed over and over until they succeeded. Their secret is they didn’t give up.

We have a very low tolerance for failure in our society, and organizations especially aren’t very forgiving, which is extremely unfortunate. The thing is, it is from our mistakes and failures that we learn and develop and if we’re terrified of making mistakes, and as a result maybe even getting laid off, we won’t ever dare do anything out of the ordinary or take any risks, which is bad both for personal and organizational development and learning. As inventor Regina Dugan says, “We can’t both fear failure and make amazing new things.”

But overcoming the fear of failure isn’t very easy in this day and age. Zygmunt Bauman talks about something he calls the fear of disposability – a fear of being expendable, of becoming redundant – which is a direct result of the constant flux that is our reality in this fast-changing economy. Organizations and individuals alike need to stay lean and flexible in order to survive the ever more competitive global market. Well, it’s a viscous circle if you ask me.

So what do we do about it? Well like so many other things, this too is organizationally driven. If organizations become more forgiving, they will help create a more forgiving culture, where we can be more accepting of failure. And not only that, I’m convinced that these very organizations will be the big winners in the long run, because people – their employees – will dare and have the space to be more creative, and they will make amazing things, as Dugan says. But in the meantime, I think we should just all become more forgiving as individuals, of ourselves and of each other. And we should be more open about sharing both successes and failures, and not just instagrammable versions of ourselves and our lives.

How time poverty kills creativity

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One reason I like my blog so much is that I never get writer’s block. I only write when I feel inspired and ideas for posts just come to me when I have time to think, like when cooking dinner or when I’m in the shower. If I can, I stop everything (which sometimes is a bit unfortunate, especially if I’m in the middle of preparing dinner) and I just quickly write it all down, and then come back later to edit and modify. So my blog really doesn’t cause me very much anxiety. On the contrary, I would say I get more energy out of it than I put in. And it’s perfect because I never sit in front of an empty screen not knowing what to write.

Except now.

For the first time since I started my blog, I sat at my desk thinking I need to post something, but I have no idea what. I have had a lot to do these past few weeks, and unfortunately I have been so busy and stressed that I have had little or no time for reflection. Which is actually pretty bad for an academic, because it is our ideas we live off, as well as the ability to write these ideas down. I have simply had too much to do. Since it never rains but pours, it seems like almost everything I’m supposed to do this academic year basically has to happen between August and November.

But not having time for reflection is really not that unusual. On the contrary, it is more unusual to actually have the time and space to think. In my previous career as a consultant I saw this all the time. When facilitating workshops or coaching business professionals, we would often hear how great it is to actually have a chance to stop and think, because that is something you usually never really get to do.

While living standards have gone up during the past decades, time has become a valuable but scarce resource. We use terms like time-poverty to describe what professionals deal with today. The pace is fast and hectic and having a (more than) full schedule is somehow strangely associated with importance or status. And research has shown just how detrimental this can be to our wellbeing and sense of self. Still, this is the way we live our lives, and it generates nervous energy in people, making it difficult to just sit around and do nothing. Have you noticed how when waiting for something or someone, you promptly whip out your cellphone and start checking social media or surfing the web? Try not doing that next time and see what happens.

But ironically, even though hectic is the norm, it doesn’t inspire or allow for creativity. Greatness isn’t borne out of stress and anxiety. In fact, according to Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, many of the greatest inventions and creations of all time have come about in moments of quiet solitude. That is, in places and spaces where reflection has been possible.

I want to share a poem, or part of a poem actually. It’s by one of my favorite poets and it seems to epitomize the multiple and sometimes overwhelming nature of contemporary life. In addition, I also think it quite accurately describes the struggle we often experience when opting out and in. At least it struck a chord with me:

But when I call upon my dashing being,

out comes the same old lazy self,

and so I never know just who I am,

nor how many I am, nor who we will be being.

I would like to be able to touch a bell

and call up my real self, the truly me,

because if I really need my proper self,

I must not allow myself to disappear.

  • Pablo Neruda

Reflections of a blogger

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Today I’m celebrating my 30th blog post. It’s about seven months since I started blogging, and it both feels like yesterday and as if I’ve had this blog forever. One thing is for sure though; I never thought I would ever become a blogger. There is something about being that public, and about being publicly private, that I found both off-putting and scary. You know, while being worried that no one was going to read my blog, I was also pretty worried that someone was actually going to read my blog.

And also, I have to admit that at a certain point so many people seemed to be starting blogs that my automatic – and irrational – reaction was that if everyone else is doing it I certainly don’t want to. It’s kind of like when the movie Titanic first came out. Everyone was watching it and talking about it and gushing over all the Oscars it had gotten and I felt absolutely no urge to see it. It’s silly I know, but what do you do? I did finally see it a couple of years ago in Adelaide when they came out with a 3D version, and I did enjoy it, which I never doubted that I would, but that wasn’t the point was it. Funny this semi-conscious need to be unique, which many argue is the essence of this era of individualization in which we live. Although ironically, perhaps the joke’s on us, because it’s also been argued that individualization is just a trend that we strive towards en masse, while we like to think we’re being different.

But surprisingly, since I was so reluctant, I have really enjoyed being a blogger. Although at the same time, I’m quick to tell people that I’m not a typical blogger, that I mostly see this blog as a weekly column. Although what is a typical blogger really? I guess I need to realize that I am a blogger just like any other blogger.

When I started this blog, I wanted it to be a place where I could to talk about my opting out research and make it more accessible to a wider audience, and I also wanted more control over the publicity my research was getting, i.e. what was being said about my research and when. After receiving my PhD I got quite a bit of media attention, all of which was positive. And although nothing of what was written about my research was wrong – I was allowed to check articles for accuracy before they were published – I still felt that journalists generally seemed to choose a similar perspective of opting out to write about, which wasn’t wrong in any way, but which kind of gave a one-sided version of what opting out and my research is about. The story was mostly about how combining work and family easily becomes too much for women for whatever reason, which in turn compels them to opt out and live on their own terms. And that may be true but there is so much more to opting out than that. So I wanted to use this blog to write about and raise discussions on all the different aspects of opting out.

And then I thought, well even if no one reads my blog, it will also be a way for me to accumulate texts on my research, which I could perhaps one day rework into a book. Because although I already have plans to rework my thesis into an academic book, I’m convinced there is also material in there for a so-called trade book, a less academic book that is. And since writing takes time, I need to think about what I choose to dedicate my time to. My supervisor gave me sound advice when I graduated, saying that even though a trade book is possible, writing one is time away from academic papers or articles, which I need to write if I want an academic career. Now, whether or not I want an academic career on the terms that one is expected to have an academic career is another question, and something that I will save for another blog post, but either way I want to keep my options open, so writing and publishing academic papers is what I’m aiming at. But writing two pages every week for my blog is very doable and doesn’t take a lot of time away from my so-called day job, so this seemed like a good plan. Who cares if anyone reads your blog, right?

Well perhaps, but somewhat unexpectedly, I got readers and followers! And not only that, my readers and followers are from all corners of the globe, which is very exciting. So I guess collecting texts is fine, but it would certainly not feel this fun nor meaningful to produce these texts if it weren’t for all of you!

So my original plan was to post every other week. And being something of a risk-averse control freak, I sat down and made a list of topics I could write about before deciding on whether or not I would try blogging. I came up with about 20 topics, which I thought should keep me going for about a year. And this I was going to do whether or not anyone read my blog.

But blogging turned out to be way too energizing to stick to my original plan. Not only did I realize right after publishing my first post, that waiting two weeks to publish the next one would just be impossible. Right then, two weeks felt like a very long time, and I got so inspired by all the comments I got that my mind was bubbling with ideas for new posts. So I quickly discarded my planned timetable, as well as my list of topics, as they seemed boring compared to the ideas I get from comments and discussions.

I sometimes worry that I’m going to run out of things to say. But as my husband says, if that should ever happen, I just need to read more because reading gives me new perspectives and ideas. And it’s true; you have to read in order to be able to write. Also, if worse comes to worst, I’ll just have to set up more lunch dates with my inspirational friends and colleagues, who always give me a lot to think about.

So thank you for being my readers for these first 30 blog posts! I appreciate every question and comment I get, whether online or in person. This is what makes me want to sit down and write the next post pretty much right after I’ve posted the previous one. I truly look forward to continuing blogging, and to writing the next 30 posts, and more!

Choice is complicated

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The concept of choice has been central in my research, which is expected, since ‘opting’ as in opting out is synonymous with choosing or exercising choice. In other words, when we talk about opting out, we talk about people who choose to do so. Therefore I decided early on not to include people who have had no choice but to leave their careers due to reasons like burnout. I wanted to study why people who at least in principle have the choice to stay decide not to, what it is that drives them, and what it is that they look for instead.

Early on I also realized that there was more to this idea of ‘free choice’ than meets the eye. The reason I saw this was because as I interviewed women, it became more and more clear that opting out – choosing to leave – was a long and often painful process riddled with crises. So either way, it certainly wasn’t an easy choice.

We live in a time of globalization, individualization, consumerism, and constant reinvention, and the rhetoric of choice today is very strong. As traditions become less important (we no longer have to live or do things in a certain way just because that’s the way things have always been done), we are encouraged to choose things like what we want to do and who we want to be professionally, a lifestyle, and what we want to stand for from a myriad of choices. And we’re encouraged to do this again and again. As Anthony Elliott writes in his book Reinvention, “flexibility, adaptability and transformation have become intricately interwoven with the global electronic economy.” We have to keep reinventing ourselves professionally in order to stay competitive, which is enabled and exacerbated by therapy culture and the instant makeover industry. But not only that, reinvention also fulfills another need: “the lure of reinvention is that it is inextricably interwoven with the dream of “something else”.” This I think really hits the nail on its head. In a time when things really are very hectic and it’s hard to keep up, we long for that something else which is always just out of reach.

So choice is evidently an important concept in contemporary society. But not only that, choice also gives us a sense of agency in a time when there is a lot of uncertainty, a sense that we can control and shape our lives. When we opt out, we like to think that it is completely our own choice, and not that there are factors that actually may push us to opt out.

Ten years ago, Linda Hirshman coined the expression ‘choice feminism’, which represents a belief that women can and should choose whether or not they want to have a career, or whether or not they want to take advantage of the opportunities that feminists have spent decades fighting for. According to choice feminism, a woman can choose not to have a career and embrace traditional gender norms and still be a feminist, if she chose it herself.

But for a career woman with small children, there are a lot of other forces at work. Mothering is so intimately linked to femininity that if you fail at your job, you’re just a bad worker; but if you fail at mothering (or don’t prioritize it), you’re a bad woman. Yes, ouch… So if having it all becomes too hard, that is if having two full-time jobs (first at work and then at home after work) or if trying to do it all simultaneously becomes too much to handle, women will more often than not choose mothering over their careers. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t want a career, it just means that we (society) expect women to be superhuman.

Choice is complicated. It’s not always clear what decisions are based on. Sometimes there are coping mechanisms at work (it may just feel better to believe that a decision was based on free choice) and sometimes a narrative is created afterwards to supply a sense of agency and control. The point is, choices (or should I say “choices”) are the result of both individual wants and needs, and societal expectations and social pressures. Not to mention all the internal conflicts that we all grapple with.

So yes, women do get pushed out to a certain degree: they still get discriminated, they get mommy-tracked, and they take care of more than their fair share of household chores and care responsibilities. But again, it isn’t that simple. In addition to push-factors there are also pull-factors. What I have found is that not only have these women been pushed to make a change, they also experience the pull of a life where they can be everything they want to be, and do it in a way that makes it possible. They experience the pull of a life where they feel that they can be themselves, instead of hiding certain parts of themselves (like their femininity or their children…) to get ahead in their careers. Or perhaps they just simply want a life where they can do meaningful work without succumbing.

Now I have just started my interviews of men who have opted out* and it is still too early to tell, but it will be interesting to see how similar or different their opting out journeys are compared to those of the women I’ve interviewed. What are the drivers that push men to opt out? What is it that pulls them in their new lifestyles? And how do they make sense of their choices? It remains to be seen.

* A very big thank you to everyone who contacted me regarding interviews! It has been most helpful! If anyone else knows of any men who have opted out who would be willing to be interviewed, or if you are a man who has opted out, you can still contact me at theoptingoutblog@gmail.com.

Guilt, care, and time with loved ones

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I was in Glasgow last week at the BSA (British Sociological Association) conference and as a result my head is spinning with plans and ideas for my research. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting lots of interesting people and have had some really good conversations. But as I sit here and reflect over the conference there is one thing that sticks out in my mind, and that is the word ‘guilt’.

It’s not that I or anyone else was feeling especially guilty at the time, although who knows, that is at least not what we were talking about. No, it came up as a recurring theme when talking about women, work, careers, and mothering.

Now I admit that I have a somewhat unhealthy guilt complex. I sometimes joke that if there is anything that I could possibly feel guilty about, I do, and if there is absolutely nothing to feel guilty about, I do anyway. I know this is completely irrational and I have gotten better at not feeling so guilty all the time.

One thing that seems to connect women, whether or not they have a career, whether or not they have children, is that they, or rather we, feel way too guilty about too many things. I know I probably don’t need to spell it out, but I will so that you know you’re not alone. Here are a few things that you possibly and probably often feel guilty about:

Not being with your kids enough; not being at work enough; not spending enough time with parents/friends/family/loved ones; not getting enough done; not being a good enough mother/daughter/wife/friend; not being attentive enough to others’ needs; not being ambitious enough; not exercising enough; not giving the kids food that is nutritious enough; not monitoring their screen time enough; and not getting enough done although we’re doing all of the above to the best of our ability (yes, really, to the best of our ability, stop beating yourself up) and feeling guilty about it too, which also takes a lot of energy.

I could go on, but there really is no point. The point I wanted to make when listing all these things, is that if you recognize any of these you will know that you are not alone, because unfortunately, this is something I have found in my research: women tend to think it’s just them. That every one else is doing fine, and many women ask themselves, why can’t I handle it when everyone else seems to be able to? The thing is, we’re just really great at keeping it together and putting on a brave face.

So why is this, you ask, why do we feel so guilty? Well, it’s complicated, but the main reasons are cultural and structural. With cultural I mean the way women are brought up and the gendered ideals prevalent in society. And with structural I mean the way we organize society, they way we define work, and the way we continue to put most of the care responsibilities on women. These two are very closely linked.

While women are taught to have it all – a family, a career, and to participate in public debate and policy making – we are also making it difficult for women to do this because of the contradictory messages we send them about femininity and what it means to be a good worker, citizen, woman, and mother. Simply put, women get extremely mixed and contradictory messages regarding what it is that they need to live up to.

Despite gender equality initiatives, which include encouraging men to take paternity leave and participate more in childcare, the change has been and is extremely slow, and women continue to be mainly responsible for care in society. Childcare is also actually only a small part of all the care done in society. Although we mostly think and talk about stressed and sleep deprived mothers of small children when we talk about care, we have other care responsibilities too. Not only are women mainly responsible for childcare, they are also mainly responsible for other care, like caring for elderly parents, spouses, or other ailing relatives and friends. And even though care is often outsourced, someone still needs to manage and coordinate it, and either way it can be draining and emotionally very difficult. Talking to a good friend and colleague at the conference, it really started to dawn on me how much women organize their lives and their work around care. This is also true for the women who opt out. A big part of their narratives, whether or not they have children, is about the people in their lives and the relationships they want to nurture, which the career they opted out of left very little room for. It may seem obvious, that we want to and should be there for the people who are important to us and need us, but this is just not the way work is organized. Very little room is left for care, which is one of the main reasons we tend to feel overwhelmed.

Now I’m obviously not saying that we shouldn’t care for loved ones, but we can be aware of how unequal the distribution of care in society is and work on that. And we can think about that maybe we need a society and a working culture that accommodates and makes more room for care and relationships, for both men and women. Either way, women have some pretty unrealistic expectations to live up to, and we need to realize this and we really need to not feel so guilty all the time. It is such a waste of energy.

Help that just isn’t helpful

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I’m not a big shopper, except when it comes to books, and when I travel I really like browsing through local bookstores. I’ll often buy a book, and this might seem strange, but I remember where I bought which book and what the bookstore was like. Like my used copy of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (I loved that) that I bought in a tiny store with a wonderful ambience in Greenwich Village in New York. This was right after enjoying some divine cupcakes at The Magnolia Bakery. Or Judith Butler’s Bodies That Matter (I haven’t read that yet) that I bought in the combined coffee/bookshop on campus at the University of Keele. Needless to say, the shop smelled wonderful. A couple of months ago I was in Stockholm and bought a copy of Psychobabble: Exploding the Myths of the Self-Help Generation by Dr Stephen Briers, which I’m reading at the moment and really enjoying. (This visit unfortunately included neither coffee nor cupcakes.)

I was interested in this book because through my research I have spent a lot of time contemplating what exactly it is about contemporary society that tends to make people feel overwhelmed. Because that is what many people seem to be – overwhelmed. There is something about life today that seems to make people feel generally less secure than they did in previous times. It is not necessarily more dangerous today than before, and if I’m not mistaken, research has in fact shown that it isn’t, but people are more aware of the risks, partly due to the incredibly fast and efficient global sharing of news and information (and disasters) through media and technology. Then there is of course the insecurity of working in financially precarious times, but there is something else as well.

It’s as if with the makeover culture, the TV shows dedicated to self-improvement (some of which is quite extreme), and all the advice that is not only available to us but that we are constantly bombarded with on how to get better at various things, we are being told that there is still so much room for (needed) improvement. The message we’re getting is that we just aren’t good enough the way we are. If we just lost a bit of weight, managed to give up sugar altogether (which I admit is something I’m seriously contemplating but don’t think I’ll ever manage to do, and this is making me feel slightly guilty), became stronger, fitter, more positive, more patient, and more assertive, we would be happy because we would have finally reached our full potential. Not to mention all the instructions on how to dress, behave, network, and organize ourselves at work in order to have that rocket career. But that’s the thing. With all the help and encouragement out there on how to change our lives and live to our full potential, we are also being told that we really have a long way to go. As we are being fed unrealistic expectations, this full potential becomes something that continues to be just out of reach, or rather light years away, in other words simply unachievable.

Have you been to the self-help section in your local bookstore lately? If you have, you will have noticed that it is packed, with self-help books that is. Researchers often use the term ‘therapy culture’ to describe the reality in which we live. But as Christopher Lasch, author of a book called The Culture of Narcissism puts it, this therapy culture promotes a type of cultural hypochondria. Crisis becomes personal and permanent and people dig deeper and deeper to find their core authentic self in order to deal with the ambiguity and ambivalence of contemporary life.

The reason I like the book I’m reading right now so much, is that Briers goes through the main self-help myths, debunking them one at a time. With every chapter that I read, I feel increasingly relieved to be getting confirmation that I can ignore these social pressures to change my behavior while trying to achieve unrealistic and impossible goals. Although all self-help isn’t bad – there are good and insightful books out there – Briers still maintains that on a whole, self-help hasn’t helped. We’re not any better than before, we’re just unhappier with ourselves.

The people who really need help, don’t need self-help, they need professional help, and I sincerely hope they have access to what they need. For the rest of us, instead of asking ourselves why self-help doesn’t help, we should consider that maybe, just maybe, we don’t need help. Maybe we’re fine the way we are, all different, imperfect, and quirky in our own way. Maybe we just need to accept that and get on with it. Life, that is.

Thinking out of the box (or working two hours per day)

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A few days ago, Swedish Professor Bodil Jönsson caused a bit of a stir in Swedish media. In an interview, she stated that, considering our technological developments and how productive we have become during the past decades, we should really be working much shorter days. She even goes as far as to say that two hours per day could be sufficient. Yes, you read correctly, two hours.

Now I think that is fantastic. I don’t know if I agree with the two hours, I still need to think about that, but I greatly admire what Jönsson is doing. She is questioning the status quo; she is thinking out of the box.

The working culture and career models that dominate today haven’t always been standard. They are a result of industrialization, and were developed after the Second World War. In the history of the world, 70 or so years is not a very long time, however, it is long enough that we have difficulties imagining an alternative. Since this is the only working culture we know, it has become a ‘truth’ – and it seems like the only right way of working and living. Imagining other truly different models or ideologies is difficult, and if we can imagine them, they may seem silly, unethical, or simply wrong.

Two-hour workdays may sound crazy, but that is assuming that being busy, efficient, competitive, and constantly striving for greater profits is something to aim for. And this is exactly what Jönsson is questioning. She is calling for a re-examination of the ethical and moral reasons for working the way we do. In our current working culture, we are defined by what we do, and advancing in our careers provides us with power and a sense of worth. Jönsson is asking why we still live according to these ideals, considering what we have achieved. Who really benefits from them?

At the same times she argues that we need to re-evaluate what is considered real and valued work. But this idea of two-hour workdays doesn’t only entail less work. Jönsson argues that we need to think about how we work; we need to find different ways of working. And let’s be honest, eight hours in an office doesn’t necessarily mean eight hours of efficient work. On the contrary, I think at a certain point energy levels just go down the longer we stick around cooped up in the office.

I might still be undecided regarding whether or not two hours is what we should strive for, but I do know that the hectic pace we have today is not doing us any favors. This need to stay lean, flexible, and competitive, combined with the downsizing and constant streamlining we’re seeing in organizations today, is stressful. And negative stress can have dire effects on health. It is simply time to create and adopt more sustainable ways of working. And this doesn’t mean we should achieve less, we just need to achieve it differently, and yes, maybe re-evaluate what’s important.

I admire Jönsson for her creativity and audacity, and her courage to voice opinions that may be outside of people’s comfort zones. More of us should try to come up with ideas that question the status quo and completely contradict what we know as ‘true’. And while you’re doing that, please ignore anyone that says that this is not the way things are done, because only then can we instigate real change.

As some wise person once said, “People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.”

The promise and perils of social media

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When I was little I had a whole bunch of pen pals and I had lots of cool stationary. My kids don’t have pen pals. They don’t have stationary either. If they did, they would never use it. They don’t ever need stamps.

It sometimes makes me a bit sad that they will never know the magic of a hand-written letter. I remember how special it was to receive a letter. They didn’t come very often, and when they did it was a wonderful and exciting surprise. I couldn’t wait to rip the envelope open. First I would read through the letter quickly and then I would go back and read slowly, savoring every word.

Writing a letter, getting a hold of a stamp, and posting it was an investment in time and effort. It wasn’t something you did for only a sentence or two, like emails or status updates. In a way it was like a diary entry for me – a bit therapeutic actually – because I had to think about what I wrote, and I wrote about my experiences and what I thought about them. I didn’t expect an instant response; that of course never occurred to me. And I still have letters saved somewhere in a box, maybe for me to read years from now, or maybe for my children and their children to read after I’m gone.

No, my kids don’t have pen pals; they have social media. Before long they will have WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram or whatever else will be trending. Their messages will be short and spontaneous, and frequent. They may not contain words, only pictures, and they will be easily deleted and forgotten. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Social media can be pretty great. Personally, I get a lot of pleasure from being connected. I’ve been able to find friends from my past who I had lost touch with. I know what people – friends and relatives I would otherwise hear from or see very rarely – are up to, sometimes on a day-to-day basis. And I have this blog! I find that I make less of an effort to call or meet friends in person, but I do keep in touch virtually. You win some and you lose some.

A couple of years ago I came across a book by Sherry Turkle titled Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, which has really stayed with me. (If you don’t want to read her book you can also watch her TED talk ‘Connected, but alone?’) Turkle talks about how social networks can have an adverse effect on individuals’ identities. In their messages and updates, people present a self they want to be. They keep it short and take out the messiness that makes up a real person’s life, and as a result, they are flattened and “reduced to their profiles.” They give less of themselves, and also expect less in return, and by communicating in short sentences, abbreviations, and emoticons, there isn’t really much chance of a complex dialogue. This would be fine, except that it is through dialogues that people learn about themselves and form their identities.

But it’s not only that. It can also be a problem that communication is so fast. People post without thinking, and sometimes you see the most horrendous comments. There has recently been a discussion about WhatsApp and how it is used in my kids’ school. Kids bully other kids, perhaps without even realizing it. They may say something awful about someone, and to make matters worse, it is done publicly, and shared with everyone because it is done on social media. While this may be hurtful and have long-term effects for the person on the receiving end, for everyone else the feed may already have been filled with so much more that no one even remembers it. It’s like it never was. Maybe there’s a reason the age limit for WhatsApp is sixteen?

But I don’t believe in going back, we can never go back, only forward. I do, however, believe we need to think about what kind of a culture we want and are creating together. We need to think about what values we pass on to our children, and about the examples we set. If we are obsessed with how many likes or followers we have, they will be too. And if we don’t show respect and think first before we blurt things out, neither will they. Social media is not just a form of communication; it’s a virtual space where people hang out. We need to be there with our children and our students, showing and teaching them what is okay and what is not; what is important and what is destructive. We need to make sure social media is the positive medium it was meant to be.

Longing for the authentic

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I’m reading a novel at the moment about a housewife in the 1950’s and I’m struck by the quiet and the sheer boredom that hits me on every page as she tries to keep busy in her empty apartment, thinking up new household chores just to pass the hours until her husband and kids come home from work and school. As I turn the pages I feel quite happy that I’m not her; that I don’t have to deal with the insecurity of not being independent, and the lack of confidence that comes from having nothing that’s my own.

I’ve been told that I sometimes make it sound like I think things have taken a turn for the worse, that they were better in the good old days, especially for mothers. Well, some things are worse than back in the day – global warming for one. But a lot of things are better, and I would certainly not want to go back in time. As a woman, I really like being able to vote, having a career, and being able to autonomously make decisions about my life. I like that my husband and I share household chores.

And things aren’t only better for women. Modern medicine and inventions like the vaccine have increased life expectancy; people live longer and living standards are higher. No, I certainly wouldn’t want to go back in time. However, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be critical of life as we know it today.

In the Nordic countries at least, the past few years have witnessed some sort of retro-housewife trend, where the 50’s housewife is romanticized. I’ll paint you a picture: the perfect house, the perfect wife, pretty cupcakes… I’ve been told it has become a question of status to be able to pick one’s kids up early from daycare (although it’s of course mothers who do this, not fathers.). This is certainly not what feminists had in mind when they struggled for decades to give women the same rights and opportunities as men to pursue a career and to have a life beyond the private sphere of the home.

And I do love cupcakes, don’t get me wrong. But this trend is a bit ironic, because I don’t think any of us, if we think about, really want to go back to the 1950’s. However, I do think a lot of people experience a longing for something else – for a simpler life. There is something about contemporary society that is completely different from anything we have ever experienced before. Yes, we have had globalization and travel since ancient times. We have had media and consumption. But it is the sheer speed and intensity of life and work today that makes living in the 21st century different. Way of life in contemporary society has a deep effect on us, on our identities, and on how we make sense of everything.

According to David Boyle, author of Authenticity: Brands, Fakes, Spin and the Lust for Real Life, there is a longing for the authentic and the “unspun”. Downshifting trends and the increased demand for natural, organic, simple, and sustainable products suggest exactly this: that we are simply getting sick of “the fake, the virtual, the spun and the mass-produced.” Now that I can certainly relate to.

Speaking of feminism, one of my favorite quotes of all time is one by Caitlin Moran from her book How to Be a Woman:

“We need to reclaim the word ‘feminism’. We need the word ‘feminism’ back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29% of American women would describe themselves as feminist – and only 42% of British women – I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of ‘liberation for women’ is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? ‘Vogue’ by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY?”