future – Career material

Here’s to the present (and why I was much cooler as a child)

August 13, 2018August 13, 2018Leave a comment

Here’s a funny thing.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about it.

The reason why everything have felt so effing hard is because of thoughts. There was really not much of external problems. It was my mind.

And so while I try to learn this new thing called “Don’t judge yourself”, I feel the need to judge myself a little bit for this. For me overthinking from the lava in the middle of the earth out to the next galaxy.

I miss the younger me. I was a much cooler kid when I was younger. I didn’t ask much for permission: whether it was society or people close to me. I didn’t ask so many confusing, deep questions about everything. I just did things. I didn’t care if I was good at it, if it was “meant to be” or anything. I just lived life.

So that’s one part of adulting that really has had me fooled: Trying to overcomplicate shit and be so “smart” and “reflective” over everything and making sure perfectionism has had it’s peak of it’s own.

I was excited about the future – not stressed about it. I didn’t stress about tests. I didn’t think about what path would lead to what. I just went ahead and did things.

I think for the past 2 years I’ve had more of a mess in my mind that I’ve had all through my teenager years. Yes. I was a pretty stable teenager. It’s as if puberty hit me mentally in my late teens/early 20’s.

I really don’t need to read any more motivational or inspirational books. Today I bought “The Power Of Now”. It’s supposed to give you insight into how not identify yourself with your thoughts, and become more aware of the present. To live in the present. All there is now is now. Not the future. Not the past.

When I study I get worried about my grades. And then my degree. And then my future. Fuck.

When I work on a project I would rather give into procrastination, I ask myself “Is this taking me towards my goal? Am I going to be happy with this when I’m 40?”

Sometimes, it can be nice to take a minute and reflect over certain things. To have some sort of goal or direction.

But if you’re going to live your life based on the future every single fucking second, you’re never going to enjoy the present. Because one day, the future will become present. And you won’t be able to focus. And the results will just get shittier in the future than if you actually focused on what you had in front of you right now. If you plan everything and are always going to make sure you’re always following what you had “planned”, you’ll never leave room for the exciting, hidden, uncertain things that are just waiting to give you a even better surprise.

So cheers: Here’s to the present.

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What are you “meant to” choose as a career? And when visions starts to change…

July 1, 2017July 1, 20172 Comments

Originally written in early June 2017.

I’ve always had a lot of different hobbies and passions, and it’s hard for me to pick just “one thing” I like to do. I loved everything from writing, photography, film, editing, graphic design, dancing, singing, playing instruments and so on. But what I wanted to become for a long time was to become a film/music video director. That’s what I, for a long time (around age 12-16), pictured myself I would be doing. I loved creating stories, whether if it was a short film, story or a song. It wasn’t about film being better than everything else (like music), but more about that I thought I would be happier with that as my career. Film also seemed more as “work” (in a positive way), if that makes sense? As a director you have a lot of responsibility etc, as well to the creative part. It would also just be a much bigger project than just record a song – it would cover most of my beloved areas of hobbies/passions than just directing (like photography, editing ++). So while making videos in spare time while going to school, my goal was to go to film school in L.A. after high school and study film. I was so set on it for years.

Then I opened my eyes for YouTube. I started watching YouTubers who made videos regularly. The perfect fit! An online plattform where you could share content you create from home. So I started my own channel. I guess my goal was still becoming a director, but YouTube was a fun thing to do as a hobby.

Then I also got an internship at Topp Magazine – the biggest teen magazine in Norway. I was only 16, and in my first year of high school. I learned a lot and got to experience so many cool things so many kids my age at that time would just dream of. Interviewing popular boyband members, being invited to exclusive events and get my articles published. My visions started to change. My focus shifted from film to journalism and YouTube. I also became Topp’s first official blogger, and my YouTube channel started to grow.

Through my internship I met a music producer. He had seen some of my singing videos on YouTube, and we started to collaborate. I had been dancing since I was 5, playing the piano from the age of 8, singing in choir and written a lot of songs in my room from before. When I was 18 I released my first official single, and because of the following I had from YouTube and Topp, it did pretty good. Of course as a kid I’ve had visions and thoughts about how it is to be a big superstar singer, and I had some experience from performing at school etc., but I just never had a goal to choose “singer” as my career option. So when this opportunity came around, of course I wasn’t going to let it down. I’m not 100% why I wasn’t set on becoming a singer before, but I think there were some various reasons I was aware of: A lot of people “can sing”, and maybe I just never thought it would be something extraordinary. I also had never ever met a girl in my life (and not a lot of guys either) who said their dream was to become a director, so I felt I stood more out. Maybe I thought becoming a “singer” was just so… Cliché? We could also mention the fact that music is a hard thing to make a living of, but film director is not known for being the most stable career choice either.

But then we also have my family, who have influenced me to get an education. Not getting is education is kind of not a choice. And since I want to mix business and creativity, I thought economy and business law would be a good choice. So after high school I dropped my “going to LA to study film”-long time goal, and kept on going in Oslo where my new career and college was expecting me.

Now I’m sitting in my own home office, turning 20 years old in under 2 months, and I’m questioning myself and what I want to do. Even though I have a career and actually make money out of this, I feel a bit lost. I don’t feel I’m specializing myself in anything. I see my friends go for one thing, and they spend their time being good at just that. And then I feel like I’m bad at the things I do, because I don’t have “one thing” I’m spending all my time doing.

There are just so many options in this world. I feel lucky that I’m a part of the world where I can do anything I want to… But sometimes it’s just hard to choose what you want to do. Or well, I know what I want: But it’s hard to be picky when you love so many things and feel like you have so many passions. But I’ve also discovered the down sides with a lot of these things as well. Especially with being a public figure, but I guess because of social media a lot of us can relate to that.

I love making YouTube videos, but obviously I wouldn’t have made videos like “morning routine” and “18 things I love about guys” if it wasn’t for the intention of sharing it on this plattform. Before YouTube I used to make short films, funny videos and spend hours of just finding new effects for the editing part – without having any intention of sharing it anywhere.

I’ve always loved all of the things I’m doing now, and I still do. But I think my intentions has shifted a little. Most of the things I create today is because I expect an audience. I expect a certain number. I want to see the likes, comments, subscribers, streams and views roll in. It’s OK to visualize and hope for that: The problem is that when it becomes my main goal. When that is my drive. When the outer motivation eats the inner motivation. When I don’t come up with an idea because it’s a cool idea, but because I feel like I need to post something and want to see the number of views. That’s not what drives my creativity. Sometimes I wonder if I was more creative at the age of 13 than today.

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13 year old Tina with her first DSLR camera… I took that with me everywhere I went.
What I learned from this, is that it’s not always so much about what you do, but how you do it. I’m not saying I now want to drop everything I do now and go back to my film director dream (even though that has been a temptation a couple of times), but I should be careful with what drives me. Let’s say I want to create a media company where my focus is to work with influencers: I’d want to be creative and make some cool projects and try to do fun marketing, as a fun project itself. Not being driven by the views or money. Just because something is commerce, doesn’t mean it can’t be good. There’s a reason why pop music is the most commerce genre – it’s because people like it.

So my tip for you reading this, is that you should look at what drives you – and does it work? Does it seem meaningful to you? Are some passions better as a hobby, or vice versa? If you want to become a singer and make a living of it, you gotta remember it’s so much more than just “singing”. It’s the environment, the people, social media, being compared to other singers, management, business stuff, and the list goes on. And what does it take to be a singer expect just having a good voice? Do you really think you would be happy doing it for a living? This is obviously something you need to experience for yourself, so if you do have a dream, chase it. You’ll find out on the way. You won’t know unless you try. I’m just giving the critical questions as well to point out that there are other things than just the “main quality” itself when choosing a career. Maybe you wouldn’t see yourself as a lawyer, but do you like solving problems? Do you think it would be fun to fight for justice everyday? Do you think criminal justice for example sounds exciting? Would you feel safe knowing you’d have a stable income every month? You get my point.

I just realized the topic for this post could be a lot of things, like “When visions starts to change…”, “Inner VS Outer motivation” and the winner “What are you “meant to do”?”. But I hope there was some sort of clear point to this (even though I was kind of everywhere, as usual). This is one of those nights where I felt it so in my stomach that I had to write something.

Please tell me if you have any thoughts regarding this! And you definitely deserve a huge cookie, pizza and ice cream if you read all of this… Love, Career Material xx

Exams & finals & stress

April 26, 2017April 26, 20172 Comments

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Hi guys!

About 2-3 weeks left until the first exam for this semester… Yikes! These are the classes I’m enrolled in this year:

– Organizational behavior and leadership
– Finance
– Mathematics for economists
– Statistics for economists

Organizational behavior and leadership is the first one out. This is the subject I enjoy the most, considering it’s a psychology-subject about how we behave at work. It’s more of a subject you read for rather than doing tasks (like math) to understand & to be good at the subject. The other ones are more math- and economy-related, and I have to say I enjoy more of the psychology- and law classes. I’ve always loved to read about interesting subjects, and especially write. Math and finance is OK I guess, but not what I enjoy the most.

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So I was kind of stressed because I realized I had waaaay too many pages left for my O.B.A.L. class, so I decided to sit down and make a plan. On this plan it says how many chapters I need to be through with with a due date. And I’ve actually managed to stick to it!

It’s written in Norwegian though, but if you would like me to make a post with tips on how to study for finals, study routine, how to catch up etc – let me know in the comments!

Your future is important

April 22, 2017April 22, 2017Leave a comment

I just finished another episode of 13 reasons why. When people talk about the show, they usually talk about the kids in school. How they were mean and didn’t care. One thing I noticed more relatable were the teachers and adults. It made think about my time in school before attending college.

Choosing what high school to go to was hard for me. In Norway, choosing a high school is like college. They look at your grades. The schools has different “majors” like college, where you can choose between for example music, media, athletics or just a “plain one” where you got a specific selection of subjects to choose from. As long as all the “majors” have a specific amount of “plain” subjects like english and math for example, you can still choose to go a normal college, even if you didn’t attend the “plain” major (hopefully that made sense).

I had pretty good grades. I guess I could have attended almost any school I wanted. My parents wanted me to go this prestigious private school that had a really good reputation. Their friends kids went there, and their parents had a lot of good things to say about it. I applied just to have my options available, and got accepted into the school early. That was also the year with the most applicants the school had received.

I, on the other hand, wanted to go to a different school just to take a media “major”. I don’t really have to explain why, do I? I loved film, photography, writing, graphic design… All of it. The school I wanted to go to also had a good reputation, but the media major was easier to get into. A lot of unmotivated students apply for these types of majors, because they are “tired of school” and just wants to have fun in high school. That’s why some people told me to avoid it, but I didn’t really wanna listen.

I remember telling one of the counsellors in middle school about my dilemma. I didn’t know what to choose. She just shrugged her shoulders and said something like “You can attend any normal college after high school if you choose a media major”, as if it didn’t really matter what I chose. And that’s the “advice” I got. She didn’t ask me any questions. She didn’t ask about grades, what was important to me or anything. Maybe it’s just me who is very passionate about these kind of things and could talk to someone about why they chose their major for hours. But isn’t it the school counsellor job to help guide the students to make good choices in life? It’s just… She didn’t seem very passionate about her job, I guess.

Then – let’s skip to my senior year. I already had a career within the media business and pretty good grades, and had a plan for my “after high school”-life. I was ambitious and very excited about my plans. I remember sitting next to one of my teachers on one of the last days of high school, and she asked me what my plans were. When I told her I was going to both college and keep working on my career, she looked at me unsurely and said something like “Isn’t that a bit too much?” with a really monotone tone in her voice. You should have seen her face expression. She just looked at me so… Weirdly. And the way she said it – way to motivate your students, to say at least! Luckily that only made me more motivated to prove that I could do it, though.

This is one of the reasons to why being passionate (or at least like) your job is important – especially when you have such an impact! As a teacher your goal should be to motivate your students and make sure they have possibility to reach their fullest potential. I really liked my teachers in elementary school. I feel like they really saw me, and wanted to help me get better. They challenged me. One day I want to go back to my old hometown and thank them for setting such a great basis for me and my life. You could see that they really cared about their students.

I don’t regret choosing the media major, but I do wish a teacher would have helped me looking at what options were good for me. I guess I didn’t see how important it was for me to go to class with someone smarter than me. How much more safer I would feel. How I should be pushed to my greatest extend. Because later I did realize that I went to a school with class mates who didn’t really care that much about their grades (or media, for that matter), and I lost a lot of motivation to that. Luckily I met 3 amazing friends who had a good work ethic, but I don’t know what I would do if they had not end up in my class.

This is one of many reasons why Career Material is important to me. I want you to know and feel how important your future is. I want to inspire you every single day, and remind you how important your goals and potential are. How anything is possible if you just do something about it. I hope my blog posts, videos and myself just in general will make you get some good vibes about your future, and see your own potential. If I only can help one of you to do that, I’ve completed an important mission. It’s true though, what they say about life: You are your only limit. And you can’t rely on other people in your life. Please do know, that your future is important.

Me (to the left) the first year of high school with my new high school bestie named Bea at an event with Bikbok. Good times, tho ❤️

Passion project

April 15, 2017April 22, 2017Leave a comment

Well… So this is exciting!

I’m Mondelia. Well, most people call me Tina (my middle name is Mondelia), but Mondelia is usually what I use on social media and as an artist since it’s kind of an unusual name. I’m a 19 year old girl from Oslo, Norway who gets very easily passionate about everything and anything. I run a Norwegian YouTube-channel which has a following of over 18,000 subscribers, I sing (“Mondelia” on Spotify) and go to a business college.

How come I’ve started a career blog? For over a year I’ve wanted to start a new international YouTube channel with focus on career and school. There’s always been “things in the way”, until I realized that there are no such thing as a “perfect time” to do something. Just do it! I’m busier than ever, but I’ve decided to finally take on with this project.

I used to be blogging in Norwegian for years, so this will be something new for me – but I love it! Everyone around me knows I got a love for the english language, and this “Career Material” project is my new passion project.

So… Will I keep seeing you here? 🙂

xoxo Mondelia