The upside of the downturn

When the GFC first hit us, I panicked. Our collective income dropped. The bills piled up. Things looked grim. How do we support our family? What if we can’t make our mortgage payments? What do we do when the work dries up (because we run our own businesses and we can’t exactly pay ourselves redundancies).

I was spinning down faster and faster in a spiral of negativity, fueled by the media, friends losing their jobs, the talk on the street (or around the water coolers)…

Then I kicked myself in the butt. Hard to do, in more ways than one. I thought of all the people who don’t even know there’s a global recession, because they spend their lives living like it’s always one. And I figured, if they can do it, we can.

So we sold stuff we didn’t need, refinanced loans, stopped the retail therapy, focused on paying off credit cards, started living lean. And it was okay. It actually felt good.

But I didn’t even think about (or value) the other side of slowing down. The part where you’re not juggling  way too many projects and stressing over deadlines. The part where you have time to think, time to learn, time to connect with people again.

And I’ve realised, over the past few weeks, that there are other things about the GFC that are really, really good. We do more family stuff, and we eat out less and cook together more. We’ve shed lots of stuff that’s been weighing us down (even though we didn’t know it). We’ve thought about what’s important to us, and what we really want out of life, and we’re making moves towards it. 

Because when you step out of that whole rat race thing, there’s time to catch your breath. And so much more headspace! You learn stuff about yourself that was being obliterated by the busy-ness… and you get so much more creative.

So yeah, there’s still those clouds hanging around, but it’s not all doom and gloom. Not in my head anyway!

elle x

A tough week…

I’ve been back for a week from my scriptwriting course in Melbourne, and it feels like the whole world’s gone mad!

The recession is really hitting close to home, with many of my friends losing their jobs this week…so I’m more concerned about how they’ll get by emotionally and financially, than debriefing about my course!

I guess it brings up all those ‘what if…?’ questions in us  - about getting through the tough times, paying the bills that keep the roof over our heads, putting food in our bellies.

I remember back in the early eighties, trying to find a job. I’d get out of bed at six, race down to the newsagent and buy a paper, sit there scanning and circling jobs, then hit the payphone on the corner and start dialling.

Yes, this was before mobile phones and email – and in a sharehouse, who could afford a landline? (And no, I wasn’t around when dinosaurs walked the Earth!!).

It was like calling a radio station competition when the prize was a million $$. If you actually got through to the number, it was likely they’d already filled their interview quota.

I got ‘lucky’ after a week, got an interview, and got the job. It was harder getting the job than doing it!

Our kids don’t realise how lucky they’ve been over the last fifteen years, so maybe a little hardship will do them good too. They’ll certainly learn that leaving a job (by choice) in this economic climate isn’t a good idea.

Which raises a whole lot of questions about following your dreams. Maybe that’s why so many of our parents, many of whom lived through The Depression, never really had the job-satisfaction-or-die mindset. It was more about food on the table, clothes on your back, enough to scrape by on.

And maybe this recession will help us all get back some balance. Maybe we’ll work out the difference between ‘want’ and ‘need’.  Clive Hamilton talks about this in his book Affluenza - one of my favourite non-fic reads in recent times.

I reckon we’ll be okay. Even if sometimes, a week can seem like a lifetime and you get to Friday feeling like crap…

Elle x