If I Ever Feel Better

Politics has been a bit of a taboo topic around these parts - mostly due to caution around my “new” job and the possibility of saying something that could end up in the wrong RSS feed.

The time for that is coming to an end, because this is my last week in the job.  So it’s time to say it out loud (online at least): I’m pleased Kevin Rudd won on Saturday.  He’s not perfect but he’s new and he’s our best shot of shifting Australia out of its materialistic stupor and into the present day.

I watched the election coverage with even more investment than usually because I’ve had a few people suggest that I might be a shot at getting an advisory job in the New World Order.  And I’m putting out some feelers.  The timing is not ideal with me about to step on a plane overseas, but it’s not impossible.

The ultimate sideline-sniper may have to start taking some responsibility for the way things are around these parts.

I hate inspirational “climb every mountain” speakers as much as the next cynical jerk, so I’m not about to turn around and say that I’m a fervent believer in subjecting everyone else to your latest amateurish, mediocre project.  Seriously, dude, keep it to yourself.

But redundancy and a few days of “outplacement” training have made me notice some changes in my outlook on things.  For most of my working life, I’ve been controlled by my various fears - never getting a job, losing a job, hating a job, not being able to get out of a job etc.  Winning a job that allowed me to move to Sydney, meet amazing people and attempt some real challenges has changed me.  Being made redundant after six months has changed me even more.

I always figured I’d work the corporate scene for a few years, get more financial secure and experienced and then move on to some kind of dream career.  Now I find myself facing the decision - return to the safe option until that mythical future time, or realise that maybe now is the time to try that hare-brained scheme at the back of my head.  Because if you can’t follow a dream when you’re 26, single, living in a big city and  blessed with a fat redundancy cheque, then when can you?

And I’m not nearly as scared as I should be, because I know that the worst case scenario is really not that bad.  When you’ve lost something you were relying on and you realise that you didn’t actually need it - that’s when you start to see things properly.

Andy’s tagged me asking “What would you do with $7 million?”  Here’s a start:

• Start up the awesome pop/progressive culture magazine I’ve always imagined, giving jobs to my best friends and writers I admire.
• Start a few micro-credit schemes in Sub-Saharan Africa, offering seed funding and providing financial advice to local people starting up businesses.
• Give money to drug and alcohol counselling services in the inner city of Sydney, especially around my neighbourhood.
• Financially support friends who are in full-time Christian ministry and never have any money.
• Two pairs of really cool Vans and a dozen Threadless t-shirts.

Just the right mix of altruism and shameless self-interest, I reckon.

The whole point of this is to draw some attention tot www.onehitwonder.org which aims to get $1 from just 1% of all internet users or something like that, which would raise $7 million for the world’s poorest people.  Check it out and see what you can give.

And I hate viral things (maybe because I work in pharmaceuticals), so I’m not tagging anyone.  But if you want to tell me what you’d do with $7 million, fire away.  Over to you…

A Land Cruiser in the Eastern Suburbs with a “Fight Climate Change” sticker.

My first proper experience of the private sector hasn’t been entirely successful - what with being made redundant and all.  But it’s given me some insights into the kind of person I do and don’t want to be.  In an interview (unsuccessful) the other week, I apparently came across like someone my interviewer “could see running a company in 20 years”.  Is that what I want to be?

Some of the senior executives in my company are reasonably young and I’m now pretty clear on how they’ve got where they are.  They’re willing to do what it takes.  If cut-backs need to be applied, then they’ll make them.  If Head Office wants something, they give it.

But as it turns out, they’re not too happy about it themselves.  A number of conversations since the decision to give me the arse has revealed that a lot of our senior people are looking for some way to come out this feeling better about themselves.  They’re particularly enthusiastic about some of the job possibilities I have and I can see them clinging to them as evidence that they did the “right” thing and that I’ll be alright.

Sure, I will be alright.  But if they need that to ease their consciences, then maybe there’s some bigger questions they should be asking.

There’s a great episode of Black Books where Bernard and Manny decide that anyone can write a kids’ book. After much drinking and procrastinating and fussing around, they finally write a brilliant book about an elephant that loses a balloon, which they end up destroying in their drunken state. If you haven’t seen it, you owe it to yourself to do so.

I had a similar moment back in June when it hit me that I’d read enough books to my niece and nephews that I could probably have a bash myself. But I had my doubts soon after and I didn’t really get around to doing anything. Until now.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve written and illustrated a story about a little boy whose toy truck goes off on an adventure. Tonight I coloured in the pen drawings in watercolour and it looks a hell of a lot better than I could have hoped. And I’m keeping away from the bottle tonight so that I still have the book in the morning!

Here’s a sample of one of the pen-and-ink sketches of Josh and Chug the Truck.

On two separate occasions at my current work, I’ve mentioned how old I am to a group of people and they’ve all been surprised (and a little bit horrified). Apparently they take me for being several years older, presumably because of the job I do and the fact that most of them are on the other side of thirty.

It’s really only notable because I always have at the back of my head the suspicion that everyone thinks of me as being some kind of young upstart with zero credibility. If only I’d known the truth.

And if only I’d had this problem when I was underage and trying to get into pubs.

Dear Tanya

I read your book “People In Glass Houses” and I have to say, I was impressed. You’ve got an amazing story to tell and you do it with such passion and such guts, that I am filled with admiration. I had some issues with it that I’ve outlined in my review for Popmatters, but they’re trivial in the grand scheme of things. All said, though, it was a hard book for me to read because it reminded me so much of my own upbringing and my own journey this far.

There are some big differences, obviously. I figure from the chronology of your book that you’re about ten years older than me (I’m 26) so we grew up in slightly different eras – I listened guiltily to Pearl Jam instead of Bruce Springsteen. And my parents took me to a wide range of churches, most of them not Pentecostal. We spent most of 1992 in various churches that had two-hours of worship followed by a fiery sermon and we copped the Toronto Blessing in the mid 90s (I think you were probably away from the church in those days – but you didn’t miss anything).

Still, I feel like we’d understand each other pretty well. The same kind of guilt-trips and mixed-messages made my teens a very conflicted place to be and have stayed with me to this day. The same kind of contradictions and wilful ignorance offended my intellect. The same fakeness made me doubt myself and drove me away from those around me in church.

So the surprising thing to me is that I’m still around, calling myself a Christian and going to church every week, while you’ve pretty much burnt your bridges. Maybe your doubts were bigger and your negative experiences more dramatic. Perhaps your lifestyle choices made you more ostracised than mine have. Maybe there’s no God after all and you’re just smarter than me.

I struggled a bit after finishing your book. It hit me at a time when I was annoyed at my fellow Christians for the usual reasons and feeling pretty negative. You reminded me of the 268 reasons why I am tempted to chuck the whole thing in on an almost daily basis.

Yet a strange thing happened in the last two weeks. I remembered the one reason why I stick around and how it somehow outweighs all the others.

I just don’t know how any of this makes sense without the idea that there’s a God who looked at the mess that we people have made of what he gave us and decided that drastic measures were called for; who called a bunch of people out of a Middle Eastern desert and said that they were going to show the world how things should be done; and who actually rolled up his sleeves, came down here and explained it all in the most extreme piece of interpretive dance you’ll ever see. Because that story gives me a reason to hope that things are going to get better. Because it fits with the changes that I’ve seen in myself and other people around me as they start to understand that story better and start to live it out day to day.

To a lot of people, that sounds ridiculous, even offensive. It does to me some days, too. But it’s got a hold on me that I can’t shake.

At the end of your book, you make a reference to the Emerging Church that’s popping up around the place where people are trying to fix up some of the mistakes we’ve made in the past and get back to what Jesus meant 2000 years ago. I’m trying to be a part of that and I figure it’s worth a shot. After all – it might just help me work out what I’m still doing here after everything.

I hope that your questions get answered too.

Take care

Dave

One of the trade rags that pop across my desk occasionally had an article in its latest issue about networking that actually referenced Dale Carnegie.  I shit you not.

I guess that sums up why I’ve never really liked the concept of networking.  It seems so manipulative and transparent.  The simple fact that an event has a “networking” component has always made me think that I seem like a pathetic leech when I strike up a conversation with someone.  In my head, I’m an anti-networker and I don’t play the game.
And yet, at a political lunch last week, I spent a good half hour afterwards touching base with a bunch of people I’ve met in my working life to date - several of them during the networking component of work conferences.  So it turns out that the last few years, I must have been networking accidentally.

Honestly, I’ve still got no interest in going into these things with a “networking strategy” or of using people as mere contacts.  I’m just going to keep doing things in the generally half-arsed way I always have.  It seems to be working ok.

I’m not sure if many people saw this coming, but Stylus Magazine is closing its doors shortly.  I wrote for the stypod section in 2006 and it was my first “proper” writing job (unpaid, but read by more than 10 people).  One year isn’t long, but it’s longer than most real jobs I’ve ever held.

I stopped writing for them because I was losing my interest and I couldn’t help feeling that the site was on a downhill slide.  Which is probably just a function of being too familiar with it.  When you know that really anyone can write for it, you start to feel that…well…anyone does write for it.  And it all starts to seem a tad mediocre.

Not fair, though, really.  Because it was always better written and more diverse than Pitchfork and a lot more fun than Popmatters.  I’ll miss it, now it’s gone.