Meus Parem Locus

on progression

Well the finger is out and activity is taking place.  I do not want to say to much on here for fear of jinxing, but never underestimate the power of networking - as well as sticking your neck out a bit and asking for an introduction (this does not come easily to Irish people in general - we tend to sour-grapesly celebrate the losses and begrudge those who seek to succeed). 

Anyhoo, something is in the mix that seems quite exciting and I should know more next week.  Also, I complete a 3 day intense advanced Project Management course next week which I signed up to in a moment of self doubt a few weeks ago.  I'm not sorry I did this but I hope I extract as much value out of it that I can - it cost me $1800 of my own moolar

On Friday I had lunch with my old manager from Z (she got shafted a couple of weeks before I left) and we had a good yarn and bitch about things in general.  It was great to connect with her on a new level away from the ghosts of times past.  We were in fits of laughter talking about some of the things that used to go on there - not in any team spirited way but in the level of sheer bullshit from some of the people we worked with.  The princesses, the prima donnas and the macho crap that the culture had endorsed...

But most importantly, how glad we both were to be out of the shithole that the organisation had become.  As I left the lunch I thought back to so many situations over my generally miserable 3.5 years there and felt such a relief that I had moved on.  I noted I had only 1 migraine in the whole time since I have left - and that was a piddly one anyway.  At many points in the past I would have 2 or maybe 3 auras a day just sitting at my desk, and knocking back the nurofen or simply going home.  People suggested it may be stress related but I refused to believe it (stress?  but I'm not stressed at work! I'm bored and hate the place, but not stressed!).   Now I can see just how working there was bringing me down.  And the happy relief of being away from all of that has really REALLY hit home.  

In a brief coffee chat/interview I had the other morning with a very interesting partner of a consultancy, one of the first things I asked about was the culture and work styles of the group.  I assessed the manner of emails I had received, voicemails that had been left, and general demeanour of my interviewer.   Salary expectations etc were far from my mind - I will never be blindsided into a shit roll in a shit company again. 

As it turned out, all lights appeared green so I'm hoping our next meeting this coming week with continue along those positive lines.   I've got my finger out - now I'm crossing it

So it's taken me forever to get back here.   It's amazing the amount of stuff you can get busy with when you are not working.  I have actually had very little "down time" over the last 8 weeks.  Thoughts of heading to the beach, or spending the afternoon in the pub playing pool, or even walking around galleries and museums seem completely out of reach.  I have too much to be getting on with.

Like what?  Well, stuff.  And the weather is cold and wet.

I have been completing my "career transition" course that was provided to me as part of my severance deal in August.  It's actually really quite good and has helped my a lot on focusing my CV and networking skills in the job seek effort.  I have two more sessions to complete (Interview skills and Research methods) and I'm ready to go.  I have my "30 second commercial" ready to go for that most potentially revealing of interview questions "So - tell me a bit about yourself?"

I have enjoyed my time away from corporate life but it's time I get my arse in gear and get back into it. 

on the next steps

Back home, and desperately trying to shake off this nasty cold I picked up while in London.  It's made me feel somewhat maudlin these last few days, and despite the cold'n'flu stuff I am taking, I still feel under the weather a lot of the time.  

The focus is now very much on getting a job.  Before I left Z I created a little job-finding plan to activate when I arrived back home from my gratuitous holiday.   I've started it by completely reformatting my CV - with a view to having a quality product for generalist applications but can also be easily tailored for anything specific should the opportunity arise.  Needless to say, I am (although not desperate...yet) open to many different opportunities, even, dare I say, if a contract came up at my old employer, for stuff I know they need to do and they know I could do it well...   It's time to take it to the next level, let any pride take a back seat, and hit my contacts up with an email...

But I am enjoying my time off - there can be little doubt :-)  I can live quite frugally if i set my mind to it. and I think if this had happened earlier in the year I would be more relaxed about the situation.  As it stands now however, I feel I need to have something running by mid November at the very latest, otherwise I'll miss the boat until early Feb next year.  But I struggle without deadlines so that's not a bad thing.

As I tend to think/formulate ideas best through talking about them to any poor sod who finds him/herself in my company for too long, I was able to work through quite a few things on my mini-break to home.  Regarding my desire to shift my career in a more creative direction, I feel I cannot credibly do anything directly on that now until I can develop my skills with the (very expensive Adobe Creative Suite) software required.  However unless I am able to translate a concept in my head to a computer screen or printer with little or no compromise, then I will never be able to take this ambition any further.  So I figure that the best way to achieve this is to first focus on a regular, stable(ish) income  that will better enable me to afford both the software and any further training opportunities.  Once I can feel competent in the tools of the trade then I guess the rest is up to me - if what I can do with the tools is something that can be marketed or in some way income-generating then bob's my auntie's husband.  But if not - well then at least I tried.  Or maybe I need to go in a slightly different direction with it.  

Anyhoo - it's there - I have found direction at last - and I will work on it in the best way I know how.  In the meantime, I need to start earning my keep!!

adrift

I'm tardy.  I've been away for almost a week, with intentions of blogging and personal travel journalling, but neither have really come to fruition yet.  As I sit here on my mothers antique PC hoping the "broadband" doesn't drop out again, I am wondering why on earth I intended to maintain a travel journal in the first place.  I'm in Ireland (again) and going to London (again) this year.  There really aren't that many new experiences left to record!  

This, however, is the end of my third week sans travaille, and I was expecting some kind of revelationary path and/or direction for my future career to become clear (or at least clearer) by now.   Needless to say it has not occurred, nor has it occurred to me that in order for the occurrence to eventuate I need to at least think - if not also discuss - the issues at hand.   But then, maybe I am expecting too much.   My mother always said that as a child I was never really content with the current "thing" or "situation", but I was always asking "where are we going/what are we doing next?".   I have not changed.   I need to stop and smell the roses sometimes.

So once again I find myself in Ireland, after a glorious trip over on the oh-so-very-quiet Qantas A380 to London.  I am told (with some degree of assertiveness) that the summer has rained rained rained since June, and the sun has been in short supply to the point of non existence.  OF course, I arrive and not a drop of rain to befall the earth since my landing.  Everytime I come home the sun comes out and the weather is lovely.  Either I bring it with me or my Irish friends and family are talking nonsense for the remainder of the time :-)

On retrenchment and other things

So I finished up with Z last Friday.  The week was painfully slow in coming to a conclusion.  To add to the mixture of emotions and panic-management I had another brain scan in the middle of it.  This scan, being in the fifth year since my tumour removal, is especially significant as it's seen as a "key date" in the remission of a malignant tumour.  It's a lonely day - fasting for hours beforehand; going to the hospital radiology unit for the MRI procedure (I'm used to them by now but they are rather unpleasant, noisy and claustrophobic experiences); watching their faces to see if they have seen something awful appear on screen but can't tell you.   Then waiting around for 3 hours to pick up the scans and take them to the neurosurgeon for assessment (I walked down to Crown Street and joined the rather impressive looking new Surry Hills Library to take my mind off things.  It's lovely but rather short on books!!).  Sitting in the chair as he calmly takes each film out and puts it in place on his lightbox thingy.  Craning to see if there's anything that looks strange on the pictures.  Listening to his hums and haws as he points and compares images.  Anxious. 

But!

All good. No sign of any recurrence.  Come back in two years. That's a relief!

So anyway, I now find myself unemployed and unsalaried for the first time since (barring my initial move to Australia in 1999 and seeking temp work) well, I think I was about 12 years of age.   I updated Facebook today with a comment - "Every day feels like a Saturday..." and it was not appreciated by the office dwellers in the big city working away for the man :-) hehe

I plan to relax this week and next; indulging in my newly re-discovered passion for design with nerdy projects on Adobe design software, before jetting off to Ireland and UK on 6th Sept for a few weeks - taking advantage of both my availability and Qantas good value fares.  Upon return in late Sept I'll probably get a touch of the panics and start looking for work.  I don't WANT to think about it now - it's useless to do so - this feels a little like MY time and I want to just enjoy while my retrenchment payment can allow me to do so.  The only thing is, I don't do budgets too well...

Timeout PLEASE

I have this awful feeling that something is going to happen.  I'm at a big life crossroads and there is so much happening that I don't know where to begin.  Timeout NEEDED.   My job is most definately on the line - and I am torn between desperately clinging on to my employer and trying to maintain my salary and comfort zone for another period of time, or taking the payout and putting the last 3.5 (mostly miserable) years behind me and facing into the wide blue (and scary and daunting) unknown. 

I had food poisoning two days ago. Violent and wretched, it had me completely incapacitated for 24 hours while it worked through.   It also heralded a blinding migraine which has resulted in another one yesterday and now again today (funny that they are always worst when sitting at my desk in work - never as bad when started elsewhere - and much rarer too).  A veto in wheaten products, although reducing severity, is not preventing their appearance anymore.  There must be some other trigger.  And I'm starting to think it's stress...

I'm not busy in work, and this has given me time to drift and think about other things, like my graphic design amibitions...  and also how I would love to get away from what I am doing.  I hear friends and family give different advice depending on their read of the jobs front - it's so confusing - and I am such a stresser ever since I got my mortgage that I am terrified of placing myself in a position where I may have to give up the flat.  

I have another brain scan due this month (my 5 year point) just to add to the maelstrom - I don't have any reason to be nervous but these migraines sure aren't helping to lift the mood...

Ahhhhhh I'm stuck in a gloomy place right now.  I hope some clarity comes soon...

The beginning of a new journey...?

I started my TAFE Graphic Design course yesterday.  My class is made up of 12 or so Gen Y girlies - I am the only male and the only one on the wrong side of 30.  The instructor, a guy from somewhere in Ireland (I didn't enquire further) is a pleasant enough chap who runs his own graphic design studio somewhere in Alexandria, is a bit of a yawn but he is compelling enough to keep me interested so far.   Sitting in front of shiny new 24" iMacs we all attempted to use the Adobe InDesign application for the first time, in order to design a magazine cover title - our first assignment.

As I sat there during the day, happily working through my little graphical plans and concepts, I couldn't help but wonder at how it was that I ended up there.  Late last year I was drowning in my vacuous career - devoid of any direction and (as a result) confidence that I could lift myself from the rut in which I found myself.  In desperation I looked up the yellow pages and booked a career counselling session with a "coach" in Balmain - with degrees of both trepidation and cynicism that it would be worthwhile.   While the sessions themselves were interesting and a bit of fun, they were largely based on me blabbing out my whole career trajectory to date - from the reluctantly applied for and attended Bachelor of Commerce degree I did in 1996 in UCD Ireland to the 12 or so years I had spent since in the back offices of various financial services companies - desperately trying to impress and get noticed - to rise above and be "successful". 

If nothing else the whole coaching experience (I had 4 one hour sessions all up) gave me an opportunity to deconstruct my working life to date - to understand why it had turned out like it did and why I was no longer driven, motivated or engaged in the path anymore.  I don't want to go into this now (I think I may have before) but the key point of this is one specific question the Coach asked me in one of the sessions...

Coach: "OK so if you can put all of that aside - everything to date - and turned back the clock to 1993 - what would YOU have LIKED to have done in college - and what would be your ideal career now?"

Kev: "Ummm uh well I think I definitely would have gone into design - probably graphical focus"

Coach: "So what's stopping you from doing that now?"

Kev: "I wouldn't know where to begin/I'm too old/I have a mortgage/It's a silly career/How do you make money out of that/No one would want my work/I'm scared of taking a risk"

Coach: "You're 35.  You'll probably retire at 65.  So you've got 30 more years of work to think about.  Want to stay where you are for the next 30 years?"

Kev: "Shit"

So I signed up for a weekend TAFE course.  And yesterday, it finally started.   And I loved it and want more.  I can't stop thinking about it - this first assignment of a magazine cover.  This morning I met Stephen for breakfast in Newtown and afterwards I went for a stroll up to the second hand bookshops along King Street.  There I found a myriad of new and secondhand books on design, logos, graphics, brands, corporate themes, colours, typography, software, how-to's and more.  I spent about 2 hours going through them.  I am hungry to learn.  I bought two basics on Colour and Typography  for $10 each and am hoping for some inspiration to spring from them at some stage.

Walking back to the car I was in a bit of a daze, wondering what I had unleashed in myself.  I think for the first time ever I'm moving away from the "certainties" of my career to date and allowing myself to dream a little.  I'm feeling a confidence in myself I have not felt before.  It's so bloody exciting. 

wood for the trees...

Over the last few days I have been working feverishly to pull together an Audio Visual production for the Sydney Convicts Trivia night this Friday.  My weekend has been almost entirely devoted to it and despite a sick stomach yesterday, I spent most of the day planted in front of the computer perfecting the display, the music, the graphical movements and the placements in the runsheets.   And guess what.  I didn't even notice the time going.  I loved every minute of it - it didn't matter that is was 10.30 when I decided to quit for the evening, or that I was into it before breakfast on saturday morning.   The sun was beaming out of the sky on perfect Sydney Winter days and I remained indoors, perched at the desk, unconcerned about the climate outside.  I am already planning my tasks for tonight, as I sit here in work bored off my tree as I have nothing to do at the moment.

This is the first time I've ever really been "under the pump" for a personal project of this nature.  And it makes me think - I could do this - I could live very happily like this... Imagine working in something I am passionate about - something that engages me at this level - something that excites me.   I never really imagined it before.  But after the last few days I've had a taste of what my "career" has been missing... and I want more!  

I do commence a 5 week Grpahic Design Course in a couple of weeks - it's just an intro course at TAFE every Saturday - but I am really excited about it now.   I would love to think this could be the beginning of life & career change process - if only I wasn't so bloody frightened of taking a risk and doing something that my parents & peers may disdain... 

Time is a wretched thief of..er.. time.  How does it get away so easily?  Sitting at the new IKEA desk purchased last weekend, I felt compelled to be creative and update such great life events on my blog. 

Actually, I felt a bit more inspired (if that can be used in a sad sense) by the current and upcoming range of friend-departures to overseas lives that are happening just now.  It seems a lot of people are moving on to pastures new.  Some are taking calculated risks (eg back in a year) others going potentially not to return.  I'm a little jealous but mostly sad. 

Winter is a gloomy time in many ways in Sydney.  People stay indoors.  It's dark by 4:30.  And, by July, it's bloody cold.  Although I adore the colours of the winter sky on a clear evening at sunset, or the cold morning mist that hangs in sheltered spaces as I trudge up towards the train station at 7am, the desire to do much more than work,home,eat,bed of a weekday is hard to muster.  

So I've signed up with TAFE to do a six week (all day Saturdays) Introduction to Graphic Design course, starting early August.  It's something I have always wanted to do, and with the Design Centre just around the corner from where I live it's a compelling proposition.   It's also a bit of a toe-dipping exercise into this arena - I've always been fascinated with graphical design and animated graphics in particular (who else can boast hundreds of downloaded clips of tv graphical idents from yesteryear and today?  Actually, would anyone want to boast that...) and I realised not so long ago that, all else being equal, if I followed my heart as a young bloke fresh out of school and going to Uni, I would never have done a Commerce degree but into Design and Engineering focused areas.

So if this pushes my buttons it could lead me on to a different direction in the future.... :-)  I'm very excited, because I have never before formally studied anything I was actually interested in before...

SPAIN: leg 2

Well it's not really all of Spain, just Barcelona this time.  But then Barcelona can encompass so much for the occasional visitor.

Arriving at Barcelona's lovely airport (they're building another one beside it - why?) after a smooth flight from Dublin.   A cab took us to our Hotel in L'Eixample where we were greeted with another twin room instead of the double I had requested (This happened in every hotel during the trip.  Clearly the reservation staff had problems with 2 men requesting a double bed, and thought we must surely have made an error in the booking.  Most irritating).  Dumping our bags and having a quick shower (it was about 10pm) we hit the streets in search of a drink.  

Having been there before we managed to find our way to the Punto Bar - a lively and mixed bar that has a generally good mood and non sleazy crowd with good music.  We only lasted a few drinks there however, as the smoke got a bit noxious after a while (EVERYONE was smoking inside - I wonder how long that will last) and the lighting (bright bright BRIGHT) gave a feeling of impending closure for the evening.   We did however check one of the local fag rags for other venues nearby.   So we ended up next at Bacon Bear :-)

The night got a bit more hazy from here - the bar is as expected (and remembered) - dark, musty, cruisey and little dangerous feeling.   So of course we settled right in and soon enough J had an interested party.  He was standing next to us for a while, and I had noticed him trying to get J's attention.  So had J, and he was craning his neck to pretend to be interested in the wall in the opposite direction.    The admirer made his move...
"Can I ask you something?" he said to J.   American accent.  Glasses.  Dressed like a writer.  Out of place but trying to fit in.
"Um yes"
"Are you from the Dominican Republic?"
I chuckled to myself.  J gets this sort of thing all the time - people can see he is dark skinned, he's vaguely exotic looking but doesn't fit the hispanic/negro/indian/asian genres although he can have elements of each.
"No I'm Kiwi"   Blank look   "I'm from New Zealand"
"Ohhhhh! Okay" he says trying to be by-the-by in his response but really you could see he was think "now where is that again?"

The hazy night got hazier from here.  The writer went off in a different direction after we made it clear we were a couple, and after a few more beers we went on elsewhere. 

I know we got back to the hotel sometime around 3.30, just when locals start coming out in force....

***

Collected by my brother B the following afternoon, we headed to his house South of the city.   It's a BIG house with a pool, tennis court and stunning views across the vineyards to the sea.   I was dying to see my little nephew C who had just turned 1 and I knew he would be there when we arrived.  Sure enough there he was, all happy and smiling just the way I remembered from the year before and the multiple photos sent by B ever since.   We said our Hellos and greeted my sister in law and headed fro some local tapas.  Laughing and catching up over late lunch I of course had to tip a full glass of vino tinto over everyone, which I think brought things to a close fairly rapidly :-/

The remainder of our time in Barcelona was spent here - lazy & sunny & warm.  B had taken time off work so we were able to do many things together.  A highlight was the Bus Turistic tour which took us up to the 1992 Olympic site with fantastic views over the city.   A plan to visit the Joan Miro museum (I have been wanting to see this every time I've been in Barcelona and was really excited to finally get the opportunity) was unfortunately not to be as it was closed on Mondays AGH!  But after a top class lunch and some more vino tinto I was fine again :-)

The last day we had the place to ourselves until our flight in the evening (except of course for nephew and rather shy but amazing Spanish Omelette maker Nanny).   I was able to play with C on my own - we walked around the house for hours - him leading me and kicking the football - getting frustrated when it went under a table (Uncle Kev had to fix that) and downright grumpy when I led him back to the couch and stretched my aching back!   Holding him on my knee and bouncing him up and down was more fun than I could have ever imagined (I have NO experience with babies) and when he stared with his big brown eyes into mine and smiled I nearly burst into tears like a big sop.  Who would have thought...

J enjoying some of the local tapas

Siesta time in the local streets

My gorgeous nephew in his Irish Rugby jersey.   I brought him a little Wallabies one to grow into :-)

 
The pool and the view (sorry for someone blocking part of it)

My sister in law only weeds the garden in designer clothes.  Barcelona is very fashionable :-)

It was a big lamp.  I simply couldn't walk past it!

Melted....

***

At 3pm S picked us up in his cab and off we went to the aeropuerto once again.   London calling...