If I were you...

How annoying is that sentence starting with "If I were you...", does people not get it? you are not me and I am not you. It is quite simple. You can not never ever know inside out another person, so there is not use for If I were you...

I don't know everything; I am far away for being wise too. I do appreciate opinions and experiences sharing from knowledgeable people and people I appreciate like family and close friends.
But there is a different between and honest opinion and a "If I were you..." without base.

I was talking to a friend yesterday, we used to work together for a company, and I was telling her I applied again for that company as I needed a job to pay my bills while I am still looking a job I would actually like to do. And she started with all over "If I were you..." and "I would not apply for full time because it is way too hard..." and "you are very tired after this and that..." and "If I were you...." and I was just mad.

Helloooo? Get out of your self-centered isolation for a second; we used to work together there, remember? for 4 years? yes? I do know what it is about and if I were "me" ...

How much do we like to think we know better than the others? is it a wise thing to wind up?

What is better?

On friday I met a friend. She went to live abroad few months ago; this was her first time visiting after moving and she asked me the usual, how I was, if I found another job, what my plans are and so.

We used to work together and we left that job at the same time, so she knew I was in searching of something "better"; I told her while I am finding that better I got a job in a clothes shop (to pay for my bills and to close the retail circle), that I also was planning to move abroad next year when I finish my studies, so she asked -where?, back to your country?

Well - nooo, not back to my country, I left it because of a series of good valid reasons which the most important one is the lack of jobs. I was thinking of a new continent I told her.

And she replied back; "you and I we are both gemini and therefore always looking for something better. But what is actually better?"

And I thought and thought and I don't know what is "better", but I know what is not good enough; it is not good enough to have a job as sales assistant with a group of people in their 18s, 19s and early 20s while I'm in my 30s and have two degrees and finishing a master. It is not good enough for me because it does not make me happy, full stop.
It is not enough for me because I don't earn even £1000 a month in a city full of theatres, cinemas, bookshops and expositions I can not pay to get in. It is not good enough when I get up every morning and I don't like my situation.

I am NOT a conformist, and that is a very expensive thing to be. What is better?

The never ever again circle.

When I first arrived to London (UK) I started to work in a small clothes shop in Oxford Street. I hated it. I really did. I think I disliked almost everything. See, I was an accountant in my country, so I was not used to so many rules and supervisors and assistant managers and managers, and everybody wanting to boss me around. Not that I was not used to hard work; I worked hard as an accountant but I could go and pee without having to ask permission first. I also worked in customer service before that.
But it was totally different from this country, where there are too many levels in the hierarchy of small businesses.

It was a small shop; we were few in the shift; one guy in the shoe section; three sales assistants on the floor, plus two supervisors, the assistant manager and at some point the manager. A chain of command with a little problem, the ladder was having more people on the top than on the floor.

But I didn't hate it because of that; I hated it because the assistant manager hated me, so she tried to make my shift as miserable as possible, which I did not do anything at the time to defend myself. Why? because I was new to the country, my English was not that good to spar linguistically speaking with a british, and adjusting to everything new and not having any friends (I came alone) was taking all my energy.

I also hated it because we were working so hard while the manager was ringing every two mondays to her bank to cancel her credit cards because she usually drank so much during the weekend she ended loosing her bag with everything in it! That was a first for me. What can of people actually gets management positions here?

I hated the most that pressure of having to enrol people to their loyalty program. We were having a weekly target that if you did not keep up with it, you would appear in massive posters all over the communal staff areas with your name in red down the list and a sad- angry face. Was I back to the kindergarden? Did this people think that was a good team motivation strategy?

Finally they sacked me because spring came, we changed our uniforms to tops and they saw my tattoo, which they thought was unacceptable. Good bye!

I felt so free I didn't actually care about how unfair and illegal that was!

And then I said, never ever again I'll work in a clothes shop again!!!!!!!

But I suppose I did not give a proper closure to that circle, because next week I start a job as sales assistant in a clothes shop! (I need to eat and pay my bills, what else can I do?), and so "the never ever again circle" got me because we have unfinished business going on!

C'est la vie!

Are we still real?

Once I worked with a girl whose name was Sarah, but insisted that everybody called her Chanel.
Her hair was dyed red and she wore it straight all the time. Her eyebrows were dyed matching that tone. She wore green contact lenses, one day after another, for the whole year I worked in that place. She always insisted they were her real eyes, as real as her "real looking" fake eye lashes. She also wore a really really really long silver acrylic nails. If I see her in the street without all these things I don't think I would be able to recognise her.

Are we running away from reality? maybe creating our own version of it? one where we are how we should have been if we had the chance of dictate our DNA how to behave?

When I was in my teens the best we could do was to wear highlights/dye your hair, maybe straight it too and try to master the secrets of a good make up. That's all the tools we had to try to be a better version of our selves! nothing else... you could not disguise what your true colours were... learn acceptance that not everybody can be "perfect" as per "fashion magazine definition" of it and live with that fact.

But nowadays, where you can buy for under a tenner a packed new eye colour, or extra eye lashes, nails, hair extensions, a different hair colour, gel pads for extra size here and there...
are we so bored with ourselves that we need to pretend to be somebody different? a reality in disguise... Do we feel better if we hide ourselves behind a new version of us?

My friend Maya went on a date with a hot guy, and when she took away her "+2 sizes up bra" he asked where her boobs have gone?" so where our "real one selves" have gone?

Are we not brave enough to be real?

Life goes in circles, so Fran said.

As a catholic I always thought life was a straight line; at least that is what you are being told.
One way, one starting point and one goal; you grow up and you study a degree, get a job, get a mortgage, buy a small car and of course, you must marry. So simple.

But it is not that simple, there is not only one road, there are lots of cross roads nobody told you about, you don't have instructions either where to turn right or left and you don't get help or sympathy from your family when you start to think new ways to approach that end of line, or if you actually change that destination for other one, one that is not in the map of degree/job/mortgage/marriage/car.

So then I met Fran at one of my first jobs in London in a sandwich shop; I never made a sandwich before or served a coffee (as I was in my life straight line journey at the  degree/office job point). He was from Philippines, recently married to his sweet heart and doing a thousand extra hours as he was buying/expanding  a business  back in his county.

We were talking about those things you talk at 6 am in a kitchen of a sandwich shop; how sleepy I am, if it is already raining outside, philosophy, life, goals... and then he hit me with a "life is a series of circles, you know, you close one and you start another one, but you can't start one without closing the current one. That's how it works." as he continues doing all day breakfast sandwiches.

That night I could not sleep as I kept thinking about circles and trials and more trials. But what stroked me is that I forgot to ask Fran one thing; it was different circles that we are meant to live or the same repeating circle once and again.
Was I always be moving to new places and having to start from the bottom up as I will always be "new" to those countries? not being able to overpass that non spoken rule that states when you come to a country you have to start from a "job for foreigners" until you are settled, which usually takes 5 and a half years.
The rule that is written nowhere but everybody knows.

I never asked him about if it was that only one circle or many circles. Maybe there are things you better discover for yourself.