“I’m just a retail assistant”

“I’m just a musician.”

“I’m just a mum.”

The above quotes are things I’ve heard from people all over the place who put themselves down because they say they are “just an x”.

But I’ve started to realise something. Underneath every label, every hobby and every interest, lies hundreds of skills. And almost every single one of those skills will be a transferable skill.

Find your Transferable Skills

Here’s the thing about me; I’ve had so little experience in my working life that I ended up feeling depressed because I thought I had no skills. The only jobs I’ve ever had have been in retail, and a short stint in an office as a data entry clerk several years ago. I felt like I couldn’t ever get anywhere I wanted to go in life because I didn’t have any experience in the fields I wanted to go.

But then I realised; hang on just a second. I do have a great deal of really useful skills. My whole working life I’ve had to deal with people. In retail, you’re constantly working with the general public and this gives you at least two skills:

1. The ability to approach people

In retail, you’re expected to approach people and ask them if they’re okay, if they need anything, and remain upbeat and cheerful throughout the whole day. It isn’t easy, and most people who haven’t worked in retail might not even have this skill. Before I realised this, I thought I was terrified of people and really shy, but once I discovered that I’d actually been having to do this every single day for years I felt really relaxed by the idea of approaching people! In fact, I even had to do this in office, because I needed to call people up regularly.

2. Endless amounts of patience

I don’t think there is a cashier in the world who would disagree with this statement! There are so many occurrences in retail where you just want to run away screaming because of the absolute frustration that customers give you! If you’ve never had the joyful experience of working with customers, check out one of my favourite websites NotAlwaysRight.com, a websites where users write in with their crazy customer stories just to find out some of the mad things customer service peeps have to deal with on a regular basis.

These are just a couple of skills working in retail gives you, but you can see already that these are two unbelievably useful skills in almost every single environment in the world.

People aren’t One Dimensional

Saying “I’m just x” is always going to be complete BS! First of all, the idea that you are your role is not true in the slightest and that idea assumes that people are one dimensional. You are whoever you want to be, not a job title. Second, nobody is ever just anything. I’m not just talking about transferable skills here either, although even if you are a data entry clerk that will span into other areas as well. Maybe you are a receptionist at a major firm… but also a girlfriend, a daughter or a sister?

That’s exactly what I’m talking about when I say nobody is just one thing and that we should be proud to follow all of our passions. We all have multiple roles in life and not one of those roles sums us up completely. We are all multidimensional and we should be proud of that!

More Examples of Transferable Skills

Here are a few more examples of roles that give you a great amount of transferable skills:

Website Designer – Web Designers these days don’t just design pretty looking websites, most of them work in several different codes and / or programs, liaise with clients, managing invoices and much more!

Parent – Probably the role that gives the most amount of skills ever! Raising a child, being completely responsible for another persons life, picking out food for a person, managing a hectic schedule, researching diets and child development, leading people (bossing about teenagers for example) as well as cooking, cleaning and a great deal of other things… I’m not yet a parent but I have the utmost respect for people who are, they learn so many skills throughout their child’s life!

What are your other dimensions?

Okay that subtitle sounded a little bit like reading David Ike, but ignoring that… it’s time to think about how you, yourself is a multi-dimensional human being! What skills have the unique experiences in your life (not just your career!) given you that make you stand out in an exciting and unique way? Once you find that, you’ll never use the word “just” to describe yourself ever again!

When this blog started out in February 2010, it was a way to help me keep a regular writing routine, share whatever I was thinking about with the world and post information about my projects and such.

But nowadays this blog has become… a little stale. What I’ve been doing instead of writing about what I love to do, is just posting a bunch of nonsense about the little things I’ve been doing that aren’t really that interesting or even that well written! I didn’t have a real focus when I started out and now it’s started to really show because of that.

A New Identity

So… I want to change this blog and re-purpose it completely. I want to give it a new identity, something where I can feel I’m doing more than just “showing off” my projects and ideas, where I write about things that really excite me and hopefully inspire people to do things themselves that give their lives a sense of satisfaction.

So, in a few weeks, on the 18th of May I’ll be relaunching this blog as “EverydayAnAdventure.co.uk“. I’ll still be blogging about my thoughts and my activities, but the brand new name somehow inspires me to want to bring the standard of this blog up a lot more. It makes me want to actually live a real adventure every day and share it with the world, as opposed to just having “my-name.co.uk” and talk about what I’ve done… The very idea of “everyday an adventure” makes me want to jump up and down and start living life to the full right now!

I’ll be keeping sarah-bates.co.uk as a redirect to everydayanadventure.co.uk once it launches until sarah-bates.co.uk expires, so if you’ve got sarah-bates.co.uk bookmarked you’ll still have that. But soon, ahhh! New blog, new shinies, new everything! I’m so excited!

I hope to see you there, too!

What do you you want to do with the rest of your life?

What a sucky question! It implies that there is just one thing that you’re going to want to do forever, for the rest of your life?

I know, I know. I’ve written about this before. I’m a scanner after all! But you know, I keep finding myself feeling downright miserable because I keep forgetting that I’m a scanner and go back to trying to answer that big nasty question when I should instead be focussing on finding out a lifestyle that embraces all of my passions!

The Bumblebee Syndrome

When I first wrote about the Bumblebee Syndrome, I had never heard of Barbara Sher, Scanners or anything of that nature. Here’s a quote from that post:

I’m currently doing something I call “the bumblebee syndrome” – flitting from flower new project to new project without going back to the ones that also matter.

Later, I found Barbara Sher’s book “What do I do when I want to do Everything?” (AKA Refuse to Choose) and I read something that made me jump out of my seat:

Whenever people complain that they lack focus, lose interest too easily, can’t find their passion etc, I ask them to consider the honeybee. No one in his right mind would ever accuse a honeybee of lacking focus or losing interest too easily. No one says bees can’t make up their minds which flower they want to be involved with. We assume that when a bee leaves a flower, it’s got a compelling reason to do so.

That, right there, was the exact same thing I had been describing with the bumblebee syndrome, right down to even using the same analogy!

Proud of my multipotentiality!

I recently discovered the lovely Emilie Wapnick on her website and community home PuttyLike.com, a place with resources, blogs and other awesome content from another Scanner, who calls us “multipotentialites”. Apparently that’s the “dictionary definition” for scanners… who knew?!

So I’m throwing specialism out of the window. I don’t have just one interest, or even two or three interests. I have more than ten, and those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head.

• Travel
• Website Design
• Drawing
• Illustration
• Music
• Piano
• Saxophone
• Recording
• Technology
• Writing
• Blogging
• Novels
• Screenplays
• Filmmaking
• Sewing
• Dungeons and Dragons
• Comics
• Philosophy

I have a “project” in almost every single one of these interests. And I’m not interested in only getting my feet wet in all of these subjects – I want to dive in head first and explore them all as much as I want to, because I’m allowed to. Somehow I forgot that I was allowed to and tried to just “choose one thing” again.

Let yourself do what you love

Now its your turn: Do you have a hundred things you really want to do in your life but find yourself feeling unbelievably depressed by the thought of only choosing one? You might be a scanner, too. Do you keep on feeling like there isn’t enough time to do what you love? Make time. Time is the one thing we can never get back. If you don’t make the time to do what you love, guess what? You’ll never do it. You’ll just be another “wanna-be”.

You don’t want that… do you?

So I’m wondering what counts as “composing a piece of music”. After all, I wrote and recorded a song last month which despite being 100% polished and finished and stuff, was a fairly decent attempt at a composition.

I really needed to be more specific on my Life List.

So, I do what I always do in times like this: Turn to Wikipedia. Here’s what it has to say on the matter:

Musical composition can refer to an original piece of music, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece of music

Therefore, I’ve totally composed a piece of music, right?

Okay, so Lonely Lucifer (the song I wrote and recorded, included singing, god forbid) wasn’t finished, so I won’t count that. However, I am going to count this:

Rain by sarahtops

This is definitely a finished piece, I composed it, and therefore… “58. Compose a piece of music”? Totally done.

I’m going to add something to my life list now though: #114. Write an instrumental, orchestral piece of music including at least ten instruments. Who says life isn’t challenging?

I made chocolate eggs! How exciting.

They’re a little thin though. By a little I mean… a lot. Like, if I hold them a little too firmly, they break.

Easter is my favourite time of year. It’s the season of new beginnings and fresh starts! It makes me want to start a zillion new things! I end up feeling very frustrated this time of the year because I’m not starting as much stuff as I’d like to… But if I’ve learnt anything these past few months, it’s that planning is everything

Happy Easter everyone!

Made a teddy out of my sewing ability

I finished him a couple of days ago and considered whether or not it counted as a Life List goal met, because… I kind of made him out of one of those pre-cut pattern box things that get you to make your own this, that or the other. But then I figured, hey, I made this bear all by my ownsome lonesome, except for a bit of help from the instructions and it’s not like I would’ve used the internet anyway…

So it totally counts. Life List achievement met!

It’s going to look a bit rubbish for a while as I’m redesigning it and in order to get the layout looking okay I’m experimenting with stuff, which basically means the design is going to look awful.

Until then, have fun!

Others, like this one, are things that sneak up on me in the middle of the night; a strong compulsion to get out of bed and write in order to get it off my chest. It’s like an egg being pushed through my heart, some heavy burden that’s been sitting on me for a long time. I’m going to talk about forgiveness.

I don’t know much about the concept of “strength” or the properties that make it but I’ve come to the understanding now that the biggest contributing factor in strength is the ability… no… the choice we make to forgive. Because it is a choice. It might be something that sits on you for a long time, knowing you need to do it, much like an “egg” on your heart, but until you pick it up, make the choice to forgive and then actively go out to do just that is something that we are all capable of… and we are all guilty of avoiding that choice.

So, I’m making the choice right now. The choice to not just understand that I need to forgive, but to also pick up that egg on my chest and own it. Take responsibility for it. There are people in my life, like there are in the life of us all, that have hurt me. From school bullies, to unintentional comments, to boyfriends and friends who have said and done hurtful things out of upset and frustration. But I forgive them. I forgive you. And I address the elephant in the room – the thing I’ve avoided talking about up till now, the thing I know I have to face… Forgiving myself.

Because that’s what it’s really about, isn’t it? All the frustration, All the things I feel guilty for over my life, from the things I’ve done out of fear of rejection, to being too big headed and getting carried away on a moral high ground… silly things I’m sure nobody else remembers, like foot-in-mouth comments I didn’t think through before I said them and standing like an idiot trying to be there for someone who just wanted me to enjoy the party… and the things that couldn’t possibly have been my fault because I was just a child… I want to pick up that egg, too. To say… hey, you know what? I’m okay. And for everything, all of the pain I’ve caused people, intentional, accidental or otherwise… I own it, I take responsibility for it and most of all… I forgive myself.

Obviously the evil that the spider created had already started to warp his mind, because he refused to help! Using some evil spider logic like “If I keep getting rid of them for you, you’ll never deal with your own fear.” And with that he put up his hands and walked out of the room, leaving me with the tiny little devil bug. I would have to conquer this myself. Instead, I resorted to sitting perfectly still, refusing to move, watching the spider, hoping for it to move away from where I was so I could continue my organisation in peace. I sat there for a very long time.

Mike came back into the room and began tidying up his desk. I watched him for a while, attempting the puppy dog eye look, but he saw right through me. “Instead of sulking, why don’t you take it outside?” But I couldn’t do that! That involved almost-physical contact with the thing! The funny thing is, I have actually willingly picked up a spider before. That situation was different though. In that situation, I had a point to make, and that point was “you can overcome your fear of things if you really want to!” and the guy was being stubborn, so I plucked a spider off the wall and then panicked for a good five minutes after it was off me. In this situation I had nothing to prove, only that I was terrified of spiders and nothing was going to change that.

It was at that point the spider decided to move. Towards my desk. Which meant it would eventually be on my desk and on my stuff and near me when I sat down at my desk, and that was worse than being on my DVD collection even if my DVDs had to not be in size order to deal with it! I knew I couldn’t kill it – I killed a spider in the shower once in a panic and spent ten minutes crying from guilt because I was responsible for its death. Yes, I know, I’m a wuss. There was only one thing for it. So I stood up, went into the kitchen and grabbed a mug from the cupboard. Then I found a decent piece of card, something sturdy so I could move the spider without having to touch it. I had my weapons. I was ready.

I spent another fifteen minutes sitting down staring at the spider before I actually made my move. Plucking up all the bravery I could, I moved my mug and set it down over the eight legged creature of evil!

Now I would like to tell you that what I did was immediately move the cardboard under the mug and move it outside, but unfortunately that would be an untruth. Once I’d trapped it, I spent a long time staring at the mug, terrified of the next step – putting the card underneath the mug and having to transport it outside. There was a strong possibility that I’d leave a gap and the spider could escape. Which meant it would be on me. Having a spider on me to prove a point was fine, but having a spider on me when there was no reason for there to be a spider on me at all, other than to get it out of the house… that just seemed crazy!

This time Mike came in and knelt down next to me, possibly to amuse himself in my panic. After seeing me freak out a little too much over such a little thing, he patted me on the back and told me, in his best “I’m talking to a five year old voice”, how to get rid of the spider properly. And he watched as I very carefully put the card under the mug… I  lifted it, making great care not to accidentally throw the bug onto me, and slowly made my way out of the front door.

But the final challenge was yet to come. I had to somehow throw the spider out of the mug and onto the bushes in front of the house, without breaking the mug and without getting the spider on me. It was dark, so I wouldn’t be able to tell where the spider was and I’d made the stupid mistake of using an opaque mug. I couldn’t tell whereabouts the spider was. So I decided to go for it. I’d come this far. With one quick movement, I moved the card from the mug and shook the mug enthusiastically over the bush! Then, completely panicked, I raced back into the house, checking everything from the mug, forcing Mike to check my back, all to make sure the thing hadn’t somehow bounced off the bush and onto my clothes… But I was in the clear. I had stared right into the face of evil and defeated it. Elated, I high fived Mike and stared into the darkness of the outside, daring any spider to come back into the house. I was Sarah, spider-defeater, defender of all arachnophobics everywhere!

There will be other spiders. In fact, there’s one sitting right above my clock right now. But now I have defeated one, I can defeat them all!

For example, a few years ago I was invited to the house of a few rather posh folk who I was attempting to help with their website troubles. They offered me a taste of this homemade vodka that they’d brewed in their bathtub and before I had the good sense to say “no thankyou, I don’t drink” I’d said okay probably just to be polite. They handed this fruity smelling stuff to me in a little shot glass and I figured, it’s a shot glass, you’re meant to down things in a shot glass quickly, right? I was pretty sure that’s what people did with shots. So I downed the thing in one gulp, feeling pretty impressed because that was probably my first ever shot. Everyone else in the room suddenly looked rather uncomfortable and proceeded to sip their little shot glasses, probably thinking I was some kind of crazy alcoholic and I spent the rest of the evening trying my best to pretend that the actually-rather-strong home-made vodka hadn’t just gone straight to my head.

Another event involving Sarah and alcohol happened upon the very day I turned eighteen, the first day I was actually allowed to drink alcohol legally, not that I’d really touched the stuff prior to that day in the first place. I was out at an anime meet, surrounded by people I thought of as much cooler than me for some reason, because they weren’t all that much cooler than me, just older and swore a lot more. One particular bloke at the meet had decided for some reason that he was going to buy me my first ever legal drink, probably because he thought it would be hilarious to see me drunk, and me in my trusting ways honestly thought he was just going to get me something like one of those little fruity drinks that had about 1% of alcohol in them and might as well have been a bottle of lemonade than an alcoholic drink.

But no, instead of the little bottle of orange aid-with-vodka in it that I was expecting he came back from the bar with something that looked like it had been brewed in a witches cauldron and I’m pretty sure it had smoke come off the top of it. I was informed of what was in it, something along the lines of several aftershocks, Guinness and a few other liquids that would knock me out in one sip and give me a week long hangover. I chickened out, and spent the rest of the night experiencing tipsiness for the first time with just one bottle of baileys.

But my most embarrassing, and most recounted story of stupid things Sarah has done whenever there is alcohol in a nearby region is what happened when I managed to get everyone kicked out of a nightclub after about thirty seconds. I’ve never been one for nightclubs – the very idea of sitting in a dark room listening to weird music that drowns out any conversation you might want to have while everyone else around you gets stupidly drunk and passes out at some point has never been appealing to me. I’m a bar with coca-cola girl, a cheap night out, I suppose.

My last experience in a nightclub sealed my decision to never touch the places again after I got dragged along to the Cathouse in Glasgow, a club where people have probably been stabbed in without anyone batting an eyelid. I managed to cling to the wall for the majority of the night and only attracted the attention of a large man with an afro, and only avoided him by escaping into the women’s bathroom. I admit it, I’m a wuss, but like I said, nightclubs aren’t exactly my cup of tea.

But the club I got everyone kicked out of happened a little closer to where I live – in a place called Costa in Birmingham. When the group of friends I was with announced they were going to Costa, I thought they were talking about the place you could grab a coffee and a hot chocolate and enjoyed the idea of sitting around with a warm drink socialising happily. Naturally, when we arrived at a big dark building that winded down into the basement of the club I started getting a little nervous – somehow I didn’t think I was going to get a hot chocolate and marshmellows here. But I clung onto my friends arm who reassured me I would be able to get something like a coke and a packet of crisps just fine and I should relax because this would be a lot of fun! I reminded him that I was only seventeen at this point and looked more like a fourteen year old, but he gave me the best advice in this situation: Lie about your age, just say you’re eighteen and no more questions will be asked. Right. Easy. I was eighteen, my birthday was July 17th 1985. Easy.

I was the last in the club out of all my friends and was immediately pulled over by the security guard who grabbed me by the shoulders and yelled “How old are you!” In all the eight years since this happened I still have no idea why the next words out of my mouth were “Sixteen!” Before I got a chance to correct myself (which, may I add, would have only been to correct myself to my actual age of seventeen, which would have helped a whole lot of nothing) I was being sent out by the scruff of my neck, for the rest of the group to follow me looking quite bewildered as I’d managed to lie about my age in exactly the wrong direction.

Whenever I tell people I don’t drink alcohol, they give me this weird look like I’ve suddenly gone bald mid conversation. But honestly, I have more fun sober, and even if that fun turns out to be something rather embarrassing, at least I have some strange stories I can cringe over a few years later…