This morning, while I was standing in the cold, waiting on the bus to take me back to work after nearly two weeks of doing little other than eating cheese and playing board games, I found myself wondering how many people woke up this morning, thought briefly about how much it can sometimes suck to work to someone else’s schedule and resolved to become self-employed by the time 2012 is out.

I happen to really enjoy my job, and I’ve also only been there for four months.  Plus I’m in training, so I get to move around twice a year, which means that I’m only in my ‘current’ post for six months at a time.  Nevertheless, after two weeks of lounging around followed by four hours of frequently interrupted sleep (not intentional – I aimed for 8), at 6.30 this morning I have to admit to finding myself daydreaming about how nice it might just be to work from home/for myself/not at all.

But here’s the thing: some stuff about working for the man is really great.  I never take my work home, for one thing.  I know that doesn’t apply to everyone who isn’t their own boss, but for me, one of the major plus points of working for someone else is that I rarely go home thinking or worrying about work – quite simply, it isn’t my responsibility.  When I shut my computer down at the end of the day I immediately revert from serious and studious to frivolous and ready to bake cakes.  I get my latest crochet project out on the bus and I forget all about what happened in the office that day.  I also don’t spend my weekends fretting over tax returns or attempting to balance accounts (which is a good job really, as my maths sucks).

Another thing I love about going out to work is that I have colleagues.  Colleagues are a brilliant invention.  People from different generations, with different backgrounds and all sorts of weird and wonderful stories to share with you at coffee time.  I once liked a colleague of mine so much that I got into a relationship with him.  And we’re still together, although we no longer work in the same place (so kissing in the stationery cupboard, not that we ever did, is no longer really an option).  Nevertheless, we would never have met had we not worked in the same office.  How many friends/significant others are you likely to meet at home?

I’m by no means saying that self-employment is a bad thing.  I’ve never done it, but I imagine that working for yourself would provide the kind of “I made this happen” satisfaction that is hard to come by in lots of jobs.  That said, I do think that being self-employed or starting your own business are given a weird kind of holy grail status, especially among lifestyle bloggers (if I had a pound for every blog post I’ve read titled ‘How to quit your job and start your own business’ I’d never need to work again!).  Which is something I find strange, because running an enterprise on which your livelihood depends looks like bloody hard work, especially in the early years when just breaking even is an uphill, all-consuming struggle.

Working in an office (or anywhere that’s not “yours” for that matter) may not be ultra glamorous, and it may not make for the most interesting dinner party conversations or the most spontaneous kind of lifestyle, but it does have its benefits, even if they are slightly difficult to focus on when the alarm is blaring and there’s no milk in the fridge.  And really – you could never have a water cooler moment in your own living room, could you?

Image above from here.  Admittedly I’d work anywhere if it meant I could have a desk as cute as this one.

…Whoever you are, wherever you are, however you choose to celebrate it.  Come midnight, I will be sipping home-made mulled wine while watching the fireworks dance over Edinburgh Castle.  Come say hello if you’re near the Meadows – I’ll be wearing a purple beret and wielding a giant Thermos…

And might I take this opportunity to thank everyone who has visited Thrifty Chick/A Domino Effect in 2011, and for sticking with me while I try to adjust to lawyering by day and writing by night – not an easy combination as it turns out! Nevertheless, whether we’re talking books, simple pleasures or the joys of a lazy Saturday morning, I have to say I thoroughly enjoy doing it with you lot, whether you comment or not.  Here’s to a 2012 that’s full of good things for all of us!

Wishing you sparkles at midnight and all of next year through,

Image above from here.

The penultimate day of the penultimate month of 2011 has been deathly cold and rainy round my way.  I scuttled, beetle-like, from home to bus to office to bus to home today in that depressing, wintery, never-saw-any-sunlight way which is by all accounts a little bit sad.  But given that there was very little daylight, let alone sunlight to be had anyway, no tears have been shed.  Plus, I saw a rainbow out of the window this morning, so it wasn’t all bad.

Thankfully, and gratitude being the general subject of this evening’s ramblings, there has been golden lamplight, spicy miso soup, blankets, reduced price flowers and pots of tea to enjoy tonight.  I’ll deliberately leave watching the news out of that cosy equation, although if you’d like a quick summary of the state of the nation as we enter December, the words DOOM, GLOOM, AUSTERITY and BANKERS seem to do a pretty fine job.

Anyway, I thought I would swoop down from my sofa nest to let you all know about a fantastic book I’m reading at the moment, and one that is helping me to think of the good that exists in the world, in spite of all I read in the paper.  The book is called In Europe, by Dutch writer Geert Mak.  Mak spent the whole of 1999 travelling around Europe, tracing the continent’s tumultuous passage through the 20th century as the Millennium bulldozed its way towards us.  The end result is a brilliant fusion of history and travel writing: immensely readable (it requires a little more concentration that some books but it handsomely rewards any effort you put in) and by turns hilarious and truly humbling.  If anyone is in need of something more ‘real’ than the tinsel, the credit cards and the John Lewis adverts this Winter I really would recommend giving this book a go.  Each time I put it down I feel a little more appreciative of the world we live in now, despite the spending cuts and the Tories and the Eurozone debt crisis.  I also feel a boundless sadness mixed with respect for the thousands of people throughout history who have worked and fought so hard for us to live the way we do now.  I am grateful that they did.  Truly so.

“Along the autoroute from Lille to Paris, the Battle of the Somme is only a tap of the accelerator.  In late Summer 1916, 1.2 million people died here, between two exits.  The motorway runs at a slight distance from the eastern boundary of the battlefield.  Drivers are kept informed of that as well, on big brown signs along the road, LA GRANDE GUERRE, the way a famous chateau or a pleasant vintage might be pointed out elsewhere.  Then they flash by, back into the serenity of present-day Picardy.

Here, the war has already entered the next phase, that of a popular tourist attraction, a mainstay of the region’s commercial infrastructure.  Everywhere one finds folders promoting these centres of infernal attraction; staying at my hotel – it is 15 February, the heart of Winter – there are at least three couples touring the front lines.  The museums compete by offering even more audio and visual effects.  For the first time in ages I can receive Dutch channels on the TV in my room.  On the news they are interviewing tourists who were stranded for a few days in a snow-bound Swiss village.  ’What we’ve been through!’ one tanned woman says.  ’We felt just like refugees.’  Another one cries ‘Everything, we’ve lost everything!’.  She’s talking about a suitcase full of skiing outfits and make-up.”

Image above from here.

I read a really brilliant article somewhere on the internet a couple of weeks ago (which I’m now unable to find again – très helpful chaps, sorry).  It was about certainty, and how the author almost never feels it.  It was one of those posts that leaves me wondering how someone halfway across the world who I’ve never (and will never) meet managed to a) get inside my brain, b) read my thoughts completely and c) articulate them so beautifully, all of the above without dot of awareness forming on my horizon.

I don’t really feel certain about many things (anything?) in the world today.  I know what I think about lots of different issues, but I don’t know if I could ever fully say that I’m certain that that’s what I think, or that I’m certain that I’m right.  My mind is always open to the possibility that I could have got my facts wrong, that I could be misguided, or that I’ve simply spent too much time reading Steig Larsson books and not enough reading the paper, and consequently haven’t got things clear in my head.

There are also, as everyone’s parent or grandparent or primary school teacher wisely said at one point, two sides to every story.  And the way I see it, there’s a reason for that – there’s more than one way to look at almost everything.

This is one of the ways in which Twitter bothers me.  It almost frightens me in some ways, all these people with all these concrete opinions – opinions they are quite happy to put their names to and argue, fairly ferociously in some cases, with other people over (albeit from behind a screen, which isn’t quite the same as having a no holds barred face to face debate with someone, is it?**).   I never feel like I can do this.  I never feel like I want to do this.  My opinion might change!  Some new and compelling evidence might emerge that blows everything out of the water!  I might just get older and start to look at the world differently.

Of course there are some things that I’m pretty certain about.  I’m certain of my love for Nick Hornby novels, I’m certain of my preference for Scottish Blend teabags over Tetley and I’m pretty well certain that I’ll never give up charity shopping.  But these aren’t really the kinds of things I’m talking about.  I’m talking about economic strategies, political stances and foreign policies.  That stuff I’m certain of none of.  I have opinions of course, but they’re nowhere near concrete enough for me to defend in the face of criticism.

I guess the way I see it there’s very little that’s black and white in this world, but a myriad different shades of grey.  Am I certain of that?  Well, show me a counter argument and we’ll see…

Image above from here.

**Just by the by, does anyone else ever wonder what percentage of Twitter users – the ones I’m talking about – actually behave the same way and promote the same views in the same language in “real” life?  My guess is less than 10.

The lovely Sarah wrote a great post a couple of weeks ago about the internet.  It’s here, and I strongly recommend you read it if you haven’t already.

The thing that really struck me about this post was its honesty.  My experience of the internet is that it’s definitely a place where people like to showcase their best bits.  Their most beautiful outfits, their most profound insights, their most perfectly golden-brown sponges.

And I’ll be honest: sometimes I open my Google Reader and am so overwhelmed by all the awesome going on that I want to pull the covers over my head and not wake up until Spring.

Show me something that’s less than perfect!

I don’t feel especially creative every day.  I don’t cook delicious, photogenic food every night and I most certainly don’t wear beautifully co-ordinated outfits all the time.  I do love to write and bake and cook and sew, but I don’t always have the energy, or the motivation, or even the desire to do any of those things.  My house is frequently a mess, I always forget to return my library books on time, I burp occasionally and I recently spilled a cup of tea over my duvet cover and didn’t change it for three weeks.  Pretty?  Heck no.  Honest?  Well, why would I make that stuff up?

I’m not trying to say that people are lying when they share their lives on the internet.  Far from it.  Lots of people are incredibly talented and creative and driven and they sew their own clothes and they cook dazzling things in the kitchen which they then share in the hope that it might inspire someone else halfway across the world.   And let us not forget how brilliant it is that the internet has provided us all with a free, globally accessible platform to share our thoughts, musings and photos of our latest batch of fairy cakes.

But after reading Sarah’s post last week I feel pretty confident that I’m not the only one who would feel just a little bit refreshed to see people bringing a bit more of what we can perhaps term their less awesome sides to the fore now and then.  The sides that wear tracksuit bottoms and moth-eaten jumpers.  The sides that have crap days at work.  The sides that get frizzy hair and smelly trainers.  The sides that occasionally eat chips for dinner.

Because folks?  We all have one.

Image above from here.