Goals, Momentum and Fapiao

I said I was going to bed. Of course I did. And then I created a spreadsheet to track my finances this year, read more email, posted some more links, downloaded my completed US tax paperwork, put away some laundry, began another blog post…

And didn’t you just blog a couple days ago? What is this about Jenny?

I just don’t stop. That’s still something I haven’t quite gotten the hang of. Learning to stop. The light switch is either on, or off. No light switch raves. Coasting in the middle isn’t really how I do things most of the time.

It’s funny, because I just read a post about setting bigger goals: http://chrisguillebeau.com/3x5/your-goals-are-too-small/#comment-96891 and the limits of self-censorship: http://www.fearlessjenn.com/2013/08/30/a-censors-reflection/

Both of which are incredibly relevant to where I’m at – need to stretch myself more and stop freaking keeping my mouth shut. It’s not good for me to stop talking. Well – ok that’s a mixed bag. Any way.

On the one hand, I think taking on China in my second year of teaching, and some of the other side projects I’ve got cooking, whether or not I’ve brought them up on here, illustrate some pretty big goals, actually. I’m finally being less of a wimp again.

On the other hand, my voice is still subdued. My writing is still self-censored. It will continue to be – but I am fighting for middle ground.

Tonight I put together my first fapiao paperwork with a neighbor’s help. Fapiao is an official Chinese tax receipt. A fapiao will have an official red stamp. After a purchase or meal you will probably have to take your regular receipt and then go to a separate counter, or otherwise ask for an official fapiao. Be sure you have your company’s name written in Chinese when you get this issued. You will also have to sign the back and/or get a chop made to stamp the back of your fapiao for verification.

There are several categories, we have to learn the Chinese characters to recognize which is which on our fapiao receipts. There are two types of forms that encompass the 4-6+ categories in different ways. The idea is basically you submit a bunch of receipts from living expenses: restaurants, taxis, other transport, rent, food (not grocery, that’s a different category when taken in translation and does not count), telecommunication… I guess it’s kind of like itemizing for US taxes, but it’s monthly and a little different.

A few colleagues have earned the knickname ‘fapiao’ because they are constantly collecting as many tax receipts as they possibly can in an effort to avoid taxes. Though, it can be counterproductive – you have to spend more than you’d pay in tax in order to get the full eligible tax break. So really, just go about your business but collect your receipts meticulously. And if you have a friend who doesn’t use a certain kind of fapiao because their contract is different – get them to collect those for you.

And I thought my US tax filing was confusing.

I am nervous. Earlier today I think I might have been more nervous than for starting last year. I don’t know. I do know I have a lot more support and a lot more resources. I also know I’m finally setting forward on some goals that have been backburnered for some time now.

I guess we shall see. But take it easy there, Jenny. You’re still checking your watch when people ask how long you’ve been in Shanghai.

Why are you Chasing the bus?

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I reflect a lot these days, but I do so less frequently in print. I decided to record some of my recent sentiments today.

I spent three hours trying to catch the number 11 bus today. Punctuated by a break for lunch at the corner of the bus stop, and an interlude attempting to use the trains instead - I actually chased down two number 11 buses – one which I missed and one which I caught, only to be told no this is the wrong bus and not let onboard, I fell back, defeated. And admittedly, swearing out loud with reckless abandon.

I knew I needed that bus. I knew it was the bus going where I wanted to be going. I even relaxed after the first miss, standing on the correct street but the wrong side of the intersection, re-evaluated and got brunch. After all, even if I needed that bus, I suppose it didn’t matter what time I caught it – that was my whole plan for the day.

When it came to being turned away from the bus I thought I needed, and storming off to a train station and even more maddening confusion related to that and where the connecting station ‘within walking distance’ even was – I decided to regroup and go back to my hotel. Tired, frustrated, drugged up and ready for the next dose and even more dehydrated – really, why was I chasing that bus? I had no ticket. There was no deadline.

It was the wall I built for myself. Sometimes, goals and objectives are worthwhile. Other times, being unable to achieve even the smallest of them, we allow ourselves to shut down. Or at least, I do.

I thought about it, and it wasn’t about the bus versus the train versus taxi fare. It was about my certainty in my own ability to ‘do it,’ to catch that bus, to do it myself without help. When that didn’t work, when help didn’t pan out either – it really just represented one thing: another failure. Plummeting electrolytes did not assist.

Now you might be saying to yourself damn, it is just a bus calm down. And you’d be right. But the thing is, it’s not just the bus. And it hasn’t been just the bus, or the visa, or any of that for some time. And really – the bus is yet another punctuation of that continued realization – until it sticks, it will be the bus, or the visa, or whatever it is.

I guess the point I’m trying to get across is to realize when you don’t need to chase the bus. When it’s ok to sit down. Buy a bottle of water and find another perspective. The semi broken colored window panes of a room that seems to serve no purpose, overlooking pigeon decorated rooftops with old shoes dotting the mix might do nicely. It’s not the view you were looking for. It’s not particularly scenic. But it’s a different view. A view from which to clear your head, and neither the journey nor the destination will matter until you can do that.

Perhaps we will try again tomorrow, bus 11 and I.
I have had the sense to acquire a map, at this point.
But I think I will work on the loftier goal of acquiring a Malaysian plug adapter and dinner. Wherever.

What’s Important, Discussing Goals and Finances

I’ve been trying to organize my finances a lot more recently. Yes I’ve been trying for years, but I’ve really ramped things up a bit lately. But I’m guessing very few of you actually know that is a piece of what I’m up to.

And it seems to be a downhill battle. My outgoing spending exceeds my income. I don’t have a month-by-month break down; nor would I publish it if I did. I will discuss some of the key players in my financial minefield below.

But the fact of the matter is I’ve been dipping into my savings fairly regularly for the past five years without fully making it back to ‘pay myself back.’ When including airfare, education and health expenses, I’m just not bringing in enough (Yes, like a lot of people in America and around the world, I know). In effect this means I’m not really financially independent, which if you’ve known me long enough and well enough is something I’ve been striving to accomplish for a long time and is very, very important to me.

Or maybe you didn’t. A lot of people don’t understand that I hold this goal in such high regard and that I’m highly offended when people ask me to compromise this goal. In fact I am more committed to this goal than getting married. (Gasp, Horror!) So when the suggestion comes up that I should throw this goal out the window so that I might attend someone’s wedding, but it’s really not financially aligned with my plans, I’m rather childishly pissy about it. And I’m really not sorry for that. Yes, I care, you have no idea how torn up inside I feel, but that doesn’t mean I’m putting my financial wellbeing or my goals in the trash. A marriage is about more than the day the wedding ceremony takes places, and I’d rather be able to support that throughout than go broke to be there one day. Not to mention, I think this is good planning and thought processing should I ever decide to take a life partner – going into debt is not the point of a wedding! I would like to add that it is not the individuals getting married pushing this issue; but this is why I’m motivated to write a post on finances.

A lot of people don’t understand my framing of life planning in terms of career goals, financial independence goals and freedom from ‘owing someone.’ But if you look closely enough, you need go no further than looking to my father and grandmother, the financial gurus of the family. I can no longer call on them directly for guidance, but I’m trying my hardest (which is ever more complicated as an American expat) to learn from them and the resources around me to actually live within my means and save for a future of my design (notice I said MY design, not anyone else’s design, though inspired by family role models, ah the irony). Granted, this means I come across as thinking and acting like my father, which is it’s own barrel of monkeys.

I need to be careful too; not to fall into the trap of framing everything in dollars, cents, baht and satang (and other currencies). So that said; it’s up to me to decide what’s important to ME and what expenses I’m willing to incur and why.

To give a better picture of my reasoning, let’s discuss what’s important to me in financial and life planning, especially over last year, 2011:

Jenny’s Goal: Find employment at an International School, teaching art, so that:
1) I’m on an International School calendar and I’m better able to coordinate with dates in the US for my vacation time.
2) I’m teaching what I studied to teach, what I want to teach
3) I can be home for Christmas in 2012; and should be able to save to pay myself back for this ticket by the time I step on the plane.

Plan has been in the making: 1.5 years.
Shared: With very few people because I was afraid I couldn’t do it, etc.
Level of Importance to me: 10 out of 10
Paid self back: No, plan to do so by December

Achieved: Obtained Employment in this category, proper working visa, and plane ticket to be home for Christmas purchased on credit.

Jenny’s Goal: Maintain Indiana teaching credential (or find another state/country who’s teacher’s license is actually stable, unlike my home state or my country of residence)

1) Enroll in, succeed in and pay for 6 graduate credit hours to upgrade to a five year teaching license (while teaching in Thailand and dealing with an epic flood – full disclosure, this chapter was not accomplished without anti-anxiety pills, I’m not Wonder Woman).

2) I can renew my license without moving home; which would kind of defeat the point of moving abroad to get experience and adventure.
3) Next Steps: Ministry of Education, Ministry of Labour and Teacher’s Council of Thailand – possibility of getting Thai teacher’s license to retain legal teaching status. Work Permit.
4) Dealing with 5-year license complications and the new Education Reforms in Indiana that are currently on the table, right now in June 2012. Begin 90 hours of Professional Growth Plan Work. Figure out what I need to keep in a teacher’s growth journal to accomplish this. Hope legislature does NOT get amended to exclude teachers working out of state from being able to renew; plan to write to state representatives on the matter before the bill’s vote.

Plan (Part 1 and 2) took: 9 months of planning, coursework and paperwork
Part 3: will be ongoing over the next three months at least
Part 4: To Be Determined, but gathering PGP hours already. Choosing another place to obtain credentials from is a much, much farther out goal.

Level of importance to me: 9 out of 10
Paid self back (monetarily): No

Fast Forward 2012:
Jenny’s Goal: Enjoy my summer vacation while living a little closer to within my means. If Goal: International School was not obtained, I would need to be teaching during these months which are ‘break’ in the US school calendar, and would not have had the time off any way. Since Goal: International School was obtained, I’m in the hole from visa run, moving, and only getting one week’s worth of salary for the month of April. So I now have ‘break’ however I’m close to ‘broke.’ Haha puns! But I’ve known this aspect of the plan for months. I knew it as I got a pit in my stomach a year ago when I was told the wedding date. I knew. And I knew the unspoken expectations that have now reared their ugly heads.
Plan has been in the making: Also 1.5 years
Shared with: The Individual who’s wedding I’m missing soon after the date was set, very few others, why start the fight early?

Level of Importance to me: 10 out of 10

Level of conflict I feel regarding where I am this summer: 10 out of 10

Jenny’s Goal: Support causes and lifestyle changes that are important to me.

1) Donate small amounts of money to causes important to me, including charity work in Thailand, Kiva lending, Kickstarter projects that resonate with me, The American Brain Tumor Association, etc.
2) Spend some money on healthy foods, relaxing at the beach and other things that are beneficial to my health, mind, body and sanity so that not all of my energy and money is poured into plane tickets at the expense of my happiness.
3) Continue to work on my financial planning so that I am living within my means, and actually getting back to a place where I’m saving instead of financially bleeding out. This takes a lot of work, patience and calculated plotting of money matters.

There has been a lot of confusion as to what on Earth Jenny is doing over there in Thailand, any way. Living in huts (or so people think) and peeing without toilet paper, teaching hooligans and Party Rocking like it’s 1959 (except we have iPads, or at least many of my students do) aside, I’m not just taking a Gap Year and forgoing thoughts of the future. Far from it.

I really don’t believe I need to justify my actions and decisions, but as it’s bothering me this much and people can’t seem to quit asking, there is a brief glimpse into the inner workings of Jenny’s brain. I hope that gives a clearer picture of the life goals I was working on in 2011 and am continuing on in 2012; and woah man, that’s a heck of a lot to have achieved, ya know? Certainly nothing to scoff at. So I’m not going to pull a Carrie Bradshaw and proclaim you should buy me $300 shoes to celebrate my singledom (I mean, demanding things like this is kind of the antithesis of my financial independence argument too, but any way) and successes therein; but dude, she had a point. There is more in life to be celebrated than matrimony and child-bearing, we’re not trying to bring it down, us disgruntled single ladies, but we’re just tired of being lost in the shuffle of unspoken expectation as if that’s the be-all end-all and we must sacrifice to make it happen on other people’s terms at the expense of our own goals. And I think pretty much every single lady the world over would agree with that.

My goal? My goal is to be in charge of my money. A lot of people can’t say that, and a lot of people are unhappy for it whether married, single or otherwise. Why don’t we work on lifting each other up; including through healthy financial choices all around; instead of continuing to buy into the myth of excess because it’s expected. I’m not deserting people, I’m trying to set up the scaffolding for a future where I can make the decisions to be places and see people and do so without incurring consumer debt; because otherwise there’s no way I can sustain what I want to do. Just because I’m not at the wedding ceremony doesn’t mean I’m not out here cheering on the marriage. And I only gave you a look at last year and the next few months, I have big dreams. Much bigger dreams than what I’ve shared.

Class Mind Mapping

I've successfully implemented a non-book activity in 9th grade grammar without it being a total flop. For the first week of the New Year, instead of opening the grammar book - I asked my students to write cards to someone they care about to actually send or give to the person, create a mind map of their 2011 goals, and a list of their 2010 accomplishments.

We then created a chalkboard mind map of one goal per student, and a chalkboard mind map of one accomplishment per student (one at a time based on the size of the chalkboard); and discussed them a little bit. Since we are studying different past tenses, and they've already studied some future tenses, I'm going to have them frame their writing and grammar activities with these mind maps in hopes of making it more relevant to them, easier to come up with ideas and slightly less grammar drill intensive. I also wanted them to be able to reflect on what they have accomplished in comparison to the new goals they are creating for themselves - a handful of them got it that I could tell, maybe more. We'll see how it goes.

Naturally things got a little silly, and my absolute favorite goal for 2011 is: "get married to Robert Pattinson." I had to resist telling this student how many other teenage girls she would have to fight for that one; or that it isn't exactly a reasonable goal, and just laugh it off. The concept of realistic goal/accomplishment didn't fully get through to some students, I just rolled with what I could get. As long as they can write about it I suppose.

Happy International New Year

From the Internet Cafe on Soi 2

Thank goodness for a break. I sit here thinking about the coming year; and the fact that until recently I neglected to realize we are ushering in a new decade. Perhaps it is the ambiguity of years that end in zero; or perhaps it is Thai culture to start with years ending in one. Or perhaps it's just a clever marketing ploy to get people to celebrate more extravagently. In the end it doesn't really matter a hill of beans - but it has gotten me to thinkabout the next ten year mark.

American society seems very goal-oriented, and I can't say two months is enough time to claim much knowledge of Thai society. From programs like 'Get Things Done,' to educational tracking and progress reports and Growth Model - to daily and weekly tracking of direct sales - there is a lot of overwhelming tracking of things. While sometimes this has its merits - sometimes it is more trouble than it is worth. Most especially when it is counterintuitive to the culture; or as asinine as to track every waking moment of existence.

Certain aspects of my school culture have been driving me up the wall, especially after the years of college training and year in a U.S. school. Here, tracking attendance is a joke. I've stopped bothering. Punishment for skipping, or cheating is nil. After exam retakes for students that failed - giving them the exact same exam - if they still fail you either a) give them the test over and over until they manage a pass or b) falsify their score to 50% (which is a passing score) and call it a day. The other teachers have mentioned having to raise passing scores to better passing scores after parent complaints. Oh bowing to the whims of the Ministry of Education of Thailand (no student can fail) and parental pressure. I see no similarities to the state of American education, nope not at all. That's sarcasm, in case that was lost in translation.

But I digress - goals, tracking, and what it is worth in one's personal life. An exercise at one of my direct sales job meetings was to write down your goals for six months, one year, five years, and ten years. Having just barreled through my five year non-stop dual degree a few months prior, I was kind of at a loss here. Set MORE goals? I finally just finished the one I'd had blinders on to finish - nearly; hit a road block at the end and here I am attempting to sell kitchen knives. What are my goals next? Uh... not be so blindsided by goals? How do you enjoy life with your eye constantly forward? Do you really need to set goals? Oh well, you won't fulfill what you want in life if you don't. How do you know? Maybe it just makes one more cognizant of what they haven't attained. This past summer I enrolled myself in a counseling program of my choosing; at the well-timed referral of a colleague. This was mainly to address the grief I hadn't faced up to since losing Dad; having only buried my head under the sand in my degree program and subsequent job search - in any case my counselor gave me a completely different exercise. Dry erase board, marker: What have you accomplished since graduating college? What? But I didn't accomplish my goal - well, so what HAVE I done? By the end of the exercise the marker board was full and I was crying. Less than half a dozen things on the board had been my 'goals' prior to doing them; but some of the things I hadn't initially set out to do were the most important. The exercise was to show me more about positive and negative framing - but I think it also illustrates how easily goals become burdens instead of inspiration. Sure - set more attainable goals, commit to your goals, work harder! But at some point I have to wonder - is it worth it to be a part of the rat race? To set big goals? When I could be happier with less? The phrase settling for less is misleading here - I mean doing without the excess many of us have come to know as our comfortable standard of living (which yes, has taken a hit with these economic times). Not to mention despite all the pep talks in direct sales marketing - you cannot always manage to get around every obstacle with creativity and will power alone along a straight path. Sometimes you have to be like water - and carve a new path. Yes, I stole that from the opening credits of Memoirs of a Geisha. As such I sit here wondering about the merits of setting goals at all. Besides which, my personal 'goals' are not under the governance of any Educational governing body. I will probably make a brief list of resolutions, but I won't publish it. Try and go with things without time frames, with out as much probability of external road blocks. Will it stunt my personal growth not to 'challenge' myself? No, I'll just have less hanging over my head. I'll give credit where it's due and cite the blog ZenHabits for its influence on much of this post. Though I won't claim for an instant to be a true minimalist.