Let's not waste a crisis
I'm sick of being grumpy
(This is me, trying to look more like a writer and less like a constipated hobgoblin, as I usually do in photos.)
Hey fam,
How are we? It’s a mildly undecided day in Auckland where it’s been sunny, rainy, hot, cold and sticky - at the same time.
I’m almost back to normal after what felt like weeks of being sick, in that I’ve started drinking coffee again.
(I know I’m under the weather when I don’t drink coffee, usually I’m a x2 instant and x2 barista a day kinda girlie. And if you think that’s bad, when i had to get up at 3am to do the Paul Henry show I’d start the day with a Red Bull as well.)
I don’t stop writing when ill btw, unless i’m suuuuuuper ill, but I’m just slower. You know that feeling when every sentence is crawling through golden syrup towards you? That. There’s been a lot of that this week. But you just write through it.)
It’s the same with having a mental breakdown or life crises when you’re on a deadline - you don’t stop writing or performing or getting on stage. You just shut down the part of your brain that’s flipping out until after you’ve submitted the piece/got off stage. Then you flip out.
It’s bizarrely useful sometimes.
I’ve received some of the most shocking news of my life as I’m about to go on air.
Or get on stage and be a paradigm of sparkle. And just telling myself, “well, I know you need to lie on the floor and cry hysterically about this, but these women are coming tonight for a hens party they’ve literally waited their entire lives for. You cannot let them down. So put on your feathers, go shake your bonbon like a crazed pink parrot that’s just swallowed a bag of LSD, and we’ll have a breakdown tomorrow morning when you wake up.”
And it kinda helps. The act of turning up to work, and working through whatever fuckery is unfolding, blunts the shock a little. Helps you get through, go to bed, wake up and see it the next day a little clearer.
I was thinking about this, and the creative process more generally this week, because I had a strange writing week.
I wrote early this week, on a Tuesday, because I knew I’d be busy the Thurs / Fri I usually write. So I was trying to be smart and pre-prepare.
Often people think that all writers should do this, pre-write pieces a few days before the deadline so that when the deadline comes they’re chill and not rushing. And have time to polish. So I thought I’d try this eminently sensible strategy.
God, it was a mistake.
I wrote something on Tuesday. It was fine. Good. You know. Fine. I wrote it. Looked at it. Told myself it was perfectly fine to submit.
And then I woke up on Friday morning, 5am, and thought, “Jesus, fuck, you can’t file that. That’s not it. THIS is it.” And wrote the column that you read today.
So much for being sensible. It just doesn’t work.
Partially that’s because sometimes the best idea just doesn’t turn up until right before the deadline. And you always always always have to accept that creativity is a black cat not a golden retriever. You can call it all you want, but it’ll enter the room only when it’s good and goddam ready. And if that’s 5am on a Friday, that’s 5am on Friday.
And secondly, sometimes you write a perfectly good thing - but it’s just not what you want to be this week.
I wrote (on Tuesday) a fairly fucked off column. But then someone said I’m really down on NZ right now…and it really made me think.
I mean, I am down on it. But more from a place of frustrated love than actual irritation. A lot of what I write is because I love this place so much - and yet see how we get let down repeatedly. Hence the frustration.
And it really irritates me when it’s the same frustration. How, for instance, we are so shit at planning for crises. I’ve written about this from a national disaster POV, but it equally applies to our failure to electrify. We just fall back, time and again, on ‘she’ll be right’ attitude and fixing it up after.
(I find that suuuuuper irritating. We have so many smart people with so many smart ideas about how to prepare NZ for the future - and it feels like all this fabulous innovation and creativity and intelligence just gets left in a back drawer somewhere. And we just shrug and say, we’ll deal with it when it breaks. (Why not just stop it breaking in the first place?!)
And, more specifically, like the innovation and intelligence of our people never goes anywhere. It just gets trapped at a personal level, and never goes up to a Governmental / systemic change level. And I feel we get let down.
But equally, I get bored of hearing myself complain about shit all the time.
I think a lot of us do. I do think Kiwis enjoy whining, we’d much rather do something. So I wrote something grumpy on Tuesday, then woke up on Friday and thought,
“Fuck it, I’m not going to complain, I’m going to suggest something cool.”
Hence why I talked about how if we flip from seeing ‘going green’ as something that will cost us money - and think of it as something that makes us money - we could be making bank.
Just like Spain.
Spain went from broke - to balling - in the space of 10 years ish. Largely because it started investing heaps in solar, and became a great place to do business with clean, affordable, bountiful energy. (And it slashed power bills.)
We could do the same! Add 10 billion euro to our GDP and get amazing cathedrals that look like melting ice creams covered in smarties! Well. Maybe just the solar. But still. There’s hope! Hope we can get out of this mess! Hope from seeing other countries claw their way out of bankrupcy by being smart, having a forward thinking idea and getting out of the failure mindset.
That’s how I wanted us to feel this week - heartened. Especially in the face of all of this fuckery. There’s a way out!
I think it’s also a time when there’s kinda a weird news drought - we’re all just hanging around, waiting to see how this plays out. And then no one really knows, so we’re all just saying the same stuff about how no one knows, and how we still don’t know that now one knows, so it becomes this endless reporting on reporting reporting on the fact that no one knows what we’re reporting that no one knows.
And God. That’s dull. So I thought I’d pipe up with a few more suggestions.
Especially because I fckn love NZ. I think we’re agile and smart and tenacious and can react incredibly quickly to situations in a way that other nations can’t - simply because we’re tiny. It’s a superpower.
Plus we actually care about shit - that’s the REAL super power. And we want to change problems - get stuck in. It’s that gung ho attitude that is totally irreplaceable in a world of increasing pessimism.
So lets dooooo somethingggggg. Not just sit here moaning,
(That’s also why I get so frustrated when all that all our potential gets thwarted. Often by slow government or inane systems that don’t reflect our vitality and intelligence. Turns me into a right old soccer mum, yelling at the ref when my favourite child gets fouled.)
Anyway, I hope you enjoy my attempt to strike a more positive note this week.
Don’t worry, I’ve still got plenty of room for frustration too ;)
Have a lovely week fam, talk soon,
Much love
Vee xo