Is McDonald's actually important social infrastructure?

Wherein Charlotte makes the bonkers claim that McDonalds is akin to libraries and parks. No, really.

“This led to an invitation to come and use the security office at the shopping centre. I’m going to hope he meant to be kind, but it was just really freaking creepy.”

Sometime in the first 2 years of my PhD, I was "moved on" from the foyer outside my local council library. The library is in a complex with a cinema, so the foyer was (and is … it's still there) a blind wide corridor of questionable sovereignty between those two institutions, having the same plush dark carpet as the cinema, but being bordered on three sides by the library.

Said corridor (which makes it sound narrow, but you could drive two cars through it) allows access to the council wi-fi even when the library is closed, which is why I assume I'd seen teenagers loitering there at all hours, enterprising on the hotspot, necks bent at angles that must make chiropractors see dollar signs.

I didn't need the wi-fi, but I did need a place to work. I had a young child at home, and books and PhD to write. My available work times were either late (after 6, after the parent relay-baton pass) or very early, and we were still at least three years away from embracing such pre-5am starts. More on that later. But those times meant I had to leave the house, removing myself as a sought-target every five minutes, or as soon as a thought was forming, whichever came first.

I'd been working for years in cafes during the day, but none opened at such hours after the demise of the last Gloria Jeans. Libraries, too, were generally not open as late as needed, cutting off momentum just as it got going, or the ones that are open (UQ, city) add unreasonable commutes. Or, they weren't open on "my" evenings at all. I had on occasion worked in the car, parked like some dodgy mo-fo at the edge of a local park, my face lit up in the glow of my screen. To be honest, not the most ergonomic solution. So, the nice carpeted loitering area outside the library seemed a great solution – out of everyone's way, a wooden bench to sit on, no closing times (since the cinema well outlasted my stamina).

And for a few evenings, it was great. Until I was moved on.

The mover-on-erer was a burly centre security man, who told me I couldn't sit there. When I asked why, seeing as I was bothering no one, I was told in a less-than-convincing way that it just wasn't allowed. In my usual tendency to overexplain, especially when upset and overtired, I told him I was so tired of looking for a place to work on my thesis, what with having a baby at home and deadlines and such. This led to an invitation to come and use the security office at the shopping centre. I'm going to hope he meant to be kind, but it was just really freaking creepy. A dude you don’t know suggesting you leave the public place to come work at night in his private office. Even coming from someone who often misses the creepy, that was creepy.

I moved myself on, and pretty fast.

To this day, whenever I go past the foyer and see the empty benches in that corridor, I think what a waste of space that is, having this well-lit, relatively secure public place that could be available, and making it decidedly otherwise. I eventually learned the term for this kind of place on the 99% Invisible podcast: "social infrastructure". Libraries are one of the few places that meet the criteria (at least, when they’re open). Along with parks and schools, social infrastructure form hubs that connect communities together. They help reduce inequality and polarisation by being accessible to all regardless of means, and putting everyone in contact with each other.

What has all this to do with McDonalds?

Well, ever since being moved on, McDonalds has been my solution (or sometimes, HJs). It feels absolutely daft to think of my local McDonDons as social infrastructure, but as a writer it's hard not to feel that way. It's open late and early. They have power points (for my increasingly aging laptop battery). The teenage staff and large dining areas generally ensures there's no tacit café-pressure to be gone after a certain time, or purchase a certain amount to stay. A cheeky writer friend often doesn't buy anything, occupying a corner table in the near-empty outdoor area. There's one 5 minutes from home, which is probably fairly common. It's well lit and populated, even at 5am, which is a far more typical time for me to be working now (thanks, covid).

And most importantly, to date I’ve never once been moved on by a security guard who suggests I should come work in his office.

I'm not the only one. At my local, especially at night, I see bible study groups, and freelancers, even real estate agents meeting clients at the tables. The golden arches is clearly providing some kind of community space that isn't being met by something else. And I’m aware this is probably part of their plan for market domination. But it’s more accessible to me as a working parent with a small child than many other options. And while it troubles me that the capitalist machine ends up in this place, making this claim that makes me feel uncomfortable, the pragmatic part of me that just needs to be able to work out of home at odd hours while my kid is small … that part is grateful.

That part only cares that there is a table here (yes, I’m writing this at McDonalds, because it’s late Sunday afternoon and I can’t be at home), and that I always feel welcome (or at least, comfortably beneath notice). Make of that what you will.

The coffee is still foul, though.

The new year post

I’m given to understand blogging is now a so-yesterday thing to do. While that might be confronting for someone who was alive well before the bloggosphere became a thing, I’ll take the tack of imagining I’m some kind of long-lived and wise immortal who can laugh at the rise and fall of trends. Muhaha.

Or, I’ll just be what I often am … retro, or a little out of step with everyone else. So be it.

In the spirit of being more in-step, I’m doing the kick-off post for the new year. I’m not a new year resolver type, but there’s something in rituals, or at least, little things we do to put our focus in the place it needs to be (even if we really could just go a few more days or weeks of the party season). I’m not going to say anything about 2020. Such words run the risk of saying far too much, or far too little, or running to tortured cliche.

So. I have three months left in the Arts Queensland grant timetable. Those activities are fairly well in hand. “Twenty-Six Letters” has been sent out to look for a publishing home, and now I’m working on the SF novel “Coderunner”. This is a book that I started writing back in 2011, and boy it reads like I had a lot of energy back then! In addition to that, there is the thread of my (really very good) day job that stitches my week together. That starts again this week, too.

I’m also kicking back into the 10% Happier New Year Challenge. Meditation is something I started formally more than a year ago, and it waxes and wanes in my life as it helps, and as I then become slack, and back again. This week I think especially I’ll need it.

New Years is a bit of a challenging time for me (as it is for many, I’ll guess) … the holiday come-down can hit pretty hard, the stuff you could gaily avoid before Christmas comes knocking, and there’s a tendency to navel-gaze at the gaps between the life/career you have and the one you might covet. But there’s comfort in routine in all that maelstrom, and in not running away from it. Easy to say. Teeth-grit easing into slow relax in practice.

And that’s all I think I’m going to say. The rest is doing. Wishing you the best in all your new doings, too :)

If you're an aspiring career writer, maybe you should be looking at FIRE

Writing careers have a reputation for being financially unstable. Many new writers are told to expect not to make money (perhaps ever) from their work - the old nugget “don’t quit your day job” is a mantra. The recent #publishingpaidme Twitter flurry, while it may have started to highlight racial inequalities in payment, also had a side bar for Australian writers: expect to be paid a lot less here.

This reality of writing pay (I personally feel) often gets used to put aspiring writers down / in their place, one of the many sticks of discouragement not to venture into the industry at all. I don’t like that, but for now, let’s acknowledge that even an “established” author, who’s had a good number of books published, is likely not making a living (even a poor living) from their work. Or if they do, the any certainty of continuing to make a living is not there.

This leaves the aspiring career writer with potentially fulfilling the starving artist stereotype, or slogging away at the soul-crushing day job while writing their work in the cracks and dreaming better times that may actually never come. And honestly, who wants those as the options?

Many writers acknowledge this problem, and talk about playing the long game and doing the work, and being clear about why we do this. And that’s all great. But it still shackles you in the long-term to the luck of the industry. No one ever seems to talk about how else you might be able to industry-proof your writing career. Maybe because it’s somehow dirty to talk about money and art? Or because people’s eyes glaze over when we start to talk about finances?

Whatever it is, fine. If you’re content to roll the dice and hope, have at it. I’m not content with that. And if you’re not, too, then this is where we come to FIRE.

How I got to thinking this way

I’m not just talking out my arse here. We started again with finances in our mid-30s thanks to the stellar combination of terrible investment advice and the GFC. It was the most awful, shitty shit time of my life. Think massive debts and financial advisors who just vanished overnight. We were great with numbers and saving, but we didn’t know how financial services work, and we were clueless about what we’d gotten into. I learned many lessons, but the biggest was NEVER trust other people with your financial security. As I result, I’ve educated myself, learned to trust what I know, and it’s during that education that I came across FIRE.

What is FIRE?

It stands for “financial independence, retire early”, and does what it says on the box. The idea is to live well within your means, stash everything else in investment assets (for me, this means incoming-producing assets like low-cost index funds) and through time, patience and compounding, gain freedom from the 9-5. If you want to know more about FIRE, I’d recommend going to other places, like Aussie Fire Bug and Pat the Shuffler. I’m not an all-things-FIRE officianado. If you don’t want to go hard at FIRE to begin with and need some more basic and easy to follow financial sense to ease into it, then I’d start where I did, with the Barefoot Investor.

(Note: I’m serious about not trusting other people with your finances - don’t take mine or anyone’s word for anything. Do your own research. Make your own choices.)

Where FIRE meets writing

It seems a no-brainer to me that if you aspire to write full-time, knowing it comes with no guarantee of income (let alone riches), that a smart strategy is to make the income-from-writing not a factor. If I’d known these things in my early 20s, instead of taking financial advice from dirty scum line-our-own-pockets advisors, I would have reached the goal in my early 30s. Even now, into my 40s and only a couple of years into doing this, I consider it more than worthwhile. If I get an extra 10 years to write without money worries, fantastic.

I know what some people must be thinking. But I’m not good with money. But that sounds impossible on a lower income / with kids / with debts. I’m not here to tell you this is for everyone, but there’s many people out there in those situations who’ve made it work. If you have a spark of interest at the idea, then do the reading. And the earlier you start, the better it is. There are, of course, trade-offs. Some of the downsides are:

• Needing to live well within your means.

• Needing to face what you actually spend and owe. I mean really face it.

• Needing to stick to a savings/investment program for a good number of years.

If, however, the longer-term goal (writing with a totally writing-independent supporting income) means more to you than a plethora of today’s pleasures, this might be worth looking into. Yes, you’re going to have to practice your writing art while doing other work for some years, but not forever. And you’re probably already doing some version of that - wouldn’t you like to know it will be limited in duration? I can’t imagine anything better than knowing that there will be a day within my control (not the publishing industry’s control) where I won’t depend on writing/teaching/freelancing for money.

So, if you’re aspiring to write full-time (long before retirement), perhaps have a look at FIRE.