Author: karenkleinwort

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans

Posted on by karenkleinwort

So, my PLAN was to write this blog. To write about “a range of subjects”, such as gender, equality, parenthood, living abroad, society, culture, politics and economics. That is what I put down in my first post on 4 October 2013. After that, only two more followed. Post number three starts with “It has been six weeks since I wrote and published the last blog on thedailyimperfections.com.” Accordingly, this one could start with “It has been nearly four months”. But I am not doing that, as otherwise you might expect the next post not before 2015.

A friend of mine told me last summer that when you move countries as a trailing spouse and parent, the first year is usually consumed with settling in. I thought she was exaggerating. I had moved continents twice over the last twelve years by then, on top an inner-European move, and then last summer crossing the Atlantic again to go back to Mexico. The settling in during our first time in Mexico in 2002 had to be turbo-charged, as I was 30 weeks pregnant when I arrived. We had to do so many things in little over two months to be ready for when the baby was born. When we moved to The Netherlands in 2004, it was a bit like in the movie “Groundhog Day” – I was expecting my second child, just that this time round I had another six months to go until the due date. Both moves and adaptations were intense.

When we changed from The Hague to Vienna in 2009, I thought that things would be so much easier. Being German, I considered settling in in Vienna a home match. But little did I know, that Austria and Germany are actually quite different in some aspects. Looking back on our first year there, I was on constant information collecting mode: school, kindergarten, babysitters, apartment, dealing with bureaucracy (registering a car bought in another EU country; dealing with the Finanzamt; etc.), football teams, swimming lessons, music class, doctors, winter tires, skiing vacation (for a Northern German and a Mexican definitely a new experience), the list goes on and on. I managed all that really well, but when the first school year ended in June 2010, I felt drained – and I had “only” been a “homemaker” and a mum. It took me two years to find a fixed employment in my profession.

This time with our fourth move, I find the adaptation process much easier. I am hugely profiting from the fact that I had lived in Mexico City before.  And that my husband is a “native”. For a European who has not spent time in the developing world or an emerging country, coming to this place is a challenge: the sheer size of the city, the distances, the traffic, the noise, the density of concrete buildings and asphalt streets, the amount of people, the lack of green spaces, the poverty and the stark differences between rich and poor take time, emotions and energy to get used to. Some people never get accustomed to it, and remain feeling foreign and alienated forever. And even though a lot of things are not new to me here, eight months after we arrived I am realizing that what my friend said last summer was actually not exaggerated. All of us – my husband, my two boys, and me – are still to a certain extent settling in.

So, in September of last year I made the PLAN to do this blog. And then life happened. But in line with the motto of this blog, I am keeping on trying. I am failing (when it takes me four months between posts), and I am believing that I will improve my output (next post in days or weeks rather than months; write about something else than moving and settling in). This blog is a proof of my daily imperfections. But it is also the source of satisfaction and joy when I finally come around and create something.

A personal note

Posted on by karenkleinwort

It has been six weeks since I wrote and published the last blog on thedailyimperfections.com. What happened? Life happened. I got the keys to our new apartment and a couple of days later two trucks pulled up outside the building with nearly all our belongings, i.e. 38 cubic meters.

By that time we had stayed for twelve weeks with my husband’s mother, i.e. my mum-in-law. We had basically lived out of five suitcases – one for each of our clothes, and one for shoes. That was what we had taken with us on the plane when we moved from Vienna to Mexico City at the end of July. And actually, during those twelve weeks, we had hardly been missing those 38 cubic meters. It is both impressive and embarrassing how much stuff one has.

Impressive, because after twelve weeks, I had forgotten about a lot of things that had surrounded me before. All these books – a lot read, a lot bought with the intention to one day read them; all those clothes and shoes that did not make it as “essential” into our five suitcases and that could dress another two or three families of four easily; all those souvenirs, photographs and handicrafts made by my two boys that document life and growth. The fact that one is struck with a certain element of surprise getting a lot of those things out of the movers’ boxes is partly owed to life just being intense. One usually does not have time to “miss” one’s old life when one is busy trying to establish the most practical elements of one’s new – such as getting one’s kids accepted in a new school, finding an apartment, asking around about car insurance, or making an appointment with the internet service provider.

Embarrassing, because, seriously, one has so many things one does not need – the salad spinner I bought just half a year ago, but after 25 years without a salad spinner, I cannot get used to using one; the old video camera that was overtaken by technological advancement at least twice by now, but is still the format my wedding video was shot on; the Nordic walking poles I never quite had the patience to really learn how to use them.

After four moves with a family during the last twelve years, I have learned that it is usually best if you clear out your things before the movers come. But I have also experienced that usually your time at the place you are going to leave soon is too valuable to spend it with “properly” clearing out your things. So, that task at least has to be continued when unpacking at the new place. That is why I spent the last six weeks opening boxes and putting books, clothes and dinner plates into their new spaces; arranging photographs, mothers’ day postcards and fathers’ day paintings; and throwing out some odd souvenirs that we bought some where, but that never really meant anything to me. Proof for my daily imperfections – the salad spinner is still in a box and the Nordic walking poles are stored, as I could not bring myself to just tossing them or giving them to charity.

What I also did during the last six weeks was sticking the little Jip and Janneke-magnets to our new fridge and putting the Julius Meinl-coffee jar in our kitchen – as the former is a fond memory of our time in The Netherlands, and the later of our years in Austria. Those little things make me feel at home, and looking at them again after a long while, they manage to put a smile on my face. With this achieved, I hope that “life” in the upcoming weeks and months will offer more time for contributions to thedailyimperfections.com.

The big challenge

Posted on by karenkleinwort

I grew up hardly thinking about feminism and gender equality. That debate took place before my time, it seemed.

During high school, girls could take the same courses as boys, and they got at least the same grades, often better. Then, as an apprentice and later at university, it was the same – loads of women attending the lectures on micro- and macroeconomics, a lot of them on top of their classes. They all got good jobs – it was the mid-1990s when we finished, the economy was doing fine all over Western Europe.

When I got my first well-paid position, the story continued – there were about as many women as men among the new recruits at Roland Berger, and also later at Financial Times Deutschland, there was pretty much a gender balance among editors and staff writers. Once you went up the hierarchy, women were scarcer, though.

So, all these years, I experienced that men and women have the same rights and that they can achieve the same if they want to.

This believe drastically changed when I got kids.

It might be a “German reality” much more than it is a Belgian, US-American or Argentine one. That is because until a few years ago (and still nowadays in a lot of cities in Western Germany), finding a day-care for your one-year-old is not easy. Finding one, that is open until 6 or 6:30 in the evening is close to impossible. And how about a creche for a six-month-old baby – forget about it. Germans are still doing quite well financially that the pressure for both parents to go back to work full time right after birth is less heavy than in Chicago or New York. And as Europeans usually run their own households, both husband and wife working AND doing the cleaning, washing, shopping and cooking is very often more than a lot of couples and new-born parents can deal with. In the developing world such as Latin America, professionals have the luxury of much more support at home – a “muchacha” who prepares your dinner, some guy who washes your car, a person with a power-drill and a bag of tools who fixes your broken sink for a few dollars, instead of you spending precious time on DIY during the weekend.

The special German character of this situation gets even more pronounced once children start school – as up until today, a lot of German primaries and even secondary schools finish at mid-day. And classes are usually designed so that students do a substantial part of the understanding and learning outside the classroom. In such a set-up, it comes in very handy for the student to have the support of a well-educated person in the afternoon – either in some after-school institution (those are, again, not always easy to find) or at home. In the latter case, another task for mom or dad.

When I consider all the men and women whom I studied and worked with in the past and who got children some time along the way, most of the men work full-time, while most of the women are employed part-time. The “moms” are occupied more than part-time, though – as in most cases they have assumed the main responsibilities of raising the kids and running the home.

So, on paper, men and women, fathers and mothers have the same rights and are considered equal. Reality shows, however, that even with the same education and similar capabilities, moms and dads very often take on different roles and subsequently have different careers and reach different earning potentials. One of the main challenges of nowadays families is for parents to find the roles that suit them and for couples to negotiate along mom’s and dad’s expectations, desires and necessities. After more than 30 years without them, I am finally leading my very own debates on feminism and gender equality.

So, this is it…

Posted on by karenkleinwort

This is the very first post on http://www.thedailyimperfection.com. I have just asked WordPress to change the domain name to thedailyimperfections as each of us, for sure, “commits” more than one imperfection a day. I have chosen the title – whichever it will be in the end, the singular or plural – because I come from a culture where perfection and trying to do everything the right way, the correct way is given a very high value. In general, I consider it a virtue to try one’s best. But if you focus too much on perfection, you might loose the easiness and playfulness you need for trying. Some of the greatest inventions and achievements of humankind had their origins in ideas a lot of people considered crazy, impossible or outright stupid.

20 years ago, when I was having a job interview with McKinsey management consultants in the UK, I was asked what my strengths and weaknesses were. I mentioned that I was quite a perfectionist and that I considered that a weakness, but that it also had its positive side, i.e. that I would work my ass off to get things done and done the right way. Today, especially having experienced how my kids reacted to two different school systems so far – the very open and “learn from your mistakes”-based Dutch one and the so much more rigorous Austrian one – I have become a near enemy of perfection. First of all, what is perfect? And who defines it? Okay, I get that there is one single answer to the question of 2 plus 2. That there is only one capital of France and that there is a right and wrong when it comes to declinations in the German language. But for a whole range of other things that we learn and do in life, what is right or wrong is a question of perspective. Even more so, when we talk perfection.

So, this blog will be about the imperfections of life, about the importance of trying, the lessons of failing, the power of believing and of keeping on trying. The immense satisfaction that comes with achieving something, particularly when you came short before, but continued trying. And the joy we all feel when we create something. My personal creation in this blog will cover a range of subjects. It will for sure touch on the subjects of gender and equality, of parenthood, of living abroad (as an adult and a child, as my two boys are third-culture kids), and of society, culture, politics and economics. If you are looking for a sports blog – this is not the one to follow…

The main message this blog would like to convey is: Be yourself, be authentic. We all have our own personality. Enjoy your uniqueness and see it as a strength. Try to enjoy each day. Live imperfectly, and with delight!