Okay now I’m once again in sort of a NEET position. To be exact I am kind of self-employed. Freelancing is something cool that most people would hope to do – in many sense it is like making a living through doing what you like and accepting work only when you like them. In practice, freelancers often accept work because they need the money though I’m not in the situation yet. And besides that, another bad thing about Freelancing is that unless you’re very disciplined, you’ll almost inevitably procrastinate until the very last minute before submitting your work. And unless you’re really desperate, you don’t push too hard for your payments so they get delayed frequently.
Yet freelancing is admirable for the insecurity, the need for a balance of self-promotion, humility and service to others. To be able to work in the comfort of your home is not easy and it takes lots of discipline and a sense of routine if you do have lots of work to juggle. For me, I reinforce this discipline by sleeping at fixed timings and try to have my meals within certain time range as well. When you’re doing graphics design, writing, web development and possibly even a little bit of consulting sort of freelancing, it is always easy to end up chatting on the computer, visiting game sites and getting a little too hooked to Facebook games. To enforce this computer discipline, Mac users have this software called WriteRoom. I have it installed but hardly use it partly because I’ve been regulating my gaming pretty well enough not to affect my work.
I’m definitely enjoying my freedom.
I am lazy. I work hard so that I can slack later.
Wee Chern tells me this is has got to be the greatest motivational quote when I offered this in response to his query of whether I would feel lazy since I work so hard. For more ideas on procrastinating procrastination, check out my article ‘Slack Later‘ on ERPZ.
Asian Food Mall, Lucky Plaza.
“Auntie, I want the Thai-style Chicken Rice.”
“Okay” Points to lady in front of me and ask, “So what do you want?”
For a moment I was feeling embarrassed I kind of cut the queue.
“Mince Meat Noodles…”
“Sorry, that one is that other stall, please order there…”
I almost burst out in laughter but managed to suppress it.
Sunday, Driving Lesson #8
“Stop, stop, stop! I need to buy newspapers.”
“Err. Okay.” Brake and then depress clutch and applied handbrakes; switch gear to neutral.
“Wait a while.” Opens door and alight car. Soon, he came back.
“No more newspapers?”
“Yeah. Drive on. Forgot to buy newspapers at 10am just now, they get sold out quickly on Sundays. Now I don’t think there’s anymore…”
My driving instructor looked sad. I’m glad it’s not because of my driving though the scolding is still routine and I still make stupid mistakes but for someone who always appears angry and impatient, I was surprised that he’d be sad. For one, the instructor demonstrated that he is fallible and it dawned on me how insignificant his concerns in life is compared to mine. It might sound tainted with a tinge of self-importance, but my mind was filled with more worries (university, scholarships, studies, future work and career) than just concerns about getting to read newspapers on a Sunday morning.
Perhaps that’s why I’m still a noob and he is the pro.
Yep. Title says it all. I’m resigning.
Driving Lesson 6
“Just park with the bumper in.”
“Huh?”
“Steer right, full lock, just drive into the parking lot. Quick!”
“Okay,” I did the full lock to the right and the car was slanted but I didn’t quite bother (it was usual); I knew I needed the car to stop so I depressed the brake.
“Eh, you must depress the clutch!” Too late.
The car was slanted in the parking, bumper in, fully stationary because the engine stalled. I had depressed the brake and allowed the car to come to a full stop without depressing the clutch a bit. For a moment I was still wondering how the engine stalled.
Yeah, I’m still a noob.
After finishing a short stint of work at a small firm selling water filter systems, I’m back to being unemployed with a job offer pending. So this morning when I reading the article on Britain’s “Broken Society” from The Economist I was particularly intrigued by the concept of “Not in Employment, Education or Training”, or NEET. For this brief period I’m essentially under this sort of classification together with some of my friends, who might be lingering in this category for way longer than I do and will probably stay around until university comes.
Thanks to the Wikipedia article I got introduced to a whole load of similar concepts, including “Parasite Singles“, “Freeter“, and “Twixter“. This is an even wider concept of Boomerang Generation that spawned comedy films like Failure to Launch and Step Brothers. The idealism that is expressed by my generation of kids seem to hint that the figures for people in these classifications would grow.
For now I’ll be sitting back and relaxing at this new status.
