Thursday, April 21, 2005 :: Chris
Outsource Yourself
This is a recurring conversation I have. If you need some time and space to yourself to do something creative and you don't have much cash, there is a simple solution: move to Thailand. Here you can live extremely comfortably on 500 pounds a month or less - and that covers everything: rent, food, booze, the lot. That's 3 grand for six months of having time wholly to yourself. If you haven't got that sort of money saved up, you could get hold of a cheapy loan from Sainsburys or go mad with a credit card and simply take off. The logistics are terrifyingly simple. True, your return home could be a bit fraught financially but it's unlikely to be disasterous if you've been careful. And that six months could mean finally getting a novel out of your system, or a great business plan, or a quintet of paintings, or... you get the point. If you really want to slog away at whatever it is you want to do, then there is opportunity to take it. It just doesn't seem like it when you're dragging yourself to and from an office unable to think beyond the next coffee to wind up and pint to wind down.

Hugh Macleod wrote a truly inspired manifesto last year called How To Be Creative. (It's on Gaping Void). In it, he explained the Sex And Cash Theory, where you do stuff to keep afloat (cash) and to support what it is you really care about (sex). He pointed out that ditching your job to try and making a living as a novelist was a pretty insane way to cultivate your art, because it takes years to get good at anything. And in the meantime you starve. But: a lot of people don't even give themselves permission to be creative. A lot of people don't even give themselves permission to even think about being creative. Six months out of all work ties, pressures and commitments to let your brain breath again and think about the scariest things - like what you want to do with your sorry little life - could be what changes everything for you. Or not. It's the terror of Sartre's "absolute freedom" handily repackaged.

I was discussing all the above with a good friend who's just gearing up to leave the UK in the near future. A couple of hours later he sent me this missive about living in Berlin from Momus, a man we mutually think is a role-model for our times. Mr Momus explain how cheap it is to live in the artist districts of Berlin - around 350 euros a month for an apartment - so if you don't want to be completely removed from Europe, you can always head there. Take the money and run.

More on cheap loans:
Spike | Google | Amazon UK | Amazon US | Wikipedia | Open Directory [permalink] | [0 comments]

W(h)at Roof: Eric Tilbury

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A journal about living and travelling in Thailand by Chris Mitchell, a British travel writer based in Bangkok, Thailand.

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