Professional success. Not good health and a beautiful family, a roof over your head and food in the fridge, and not money in the bank.
The career success that makes work exciting and challenging and keeps you coming back for more.
After a recent deadline heavy week, delivering with a small team on a year-long project with a go-live date set in stone, I headed for home and the weekend ahead wondering what the heck.
There was no collective sigh of relief, or group congrats. No high fives, backslapping or heading to the nearest pub for a debrief. No one expects fireworks or popping champagne corks but the anticlimax, the fizzle of adrenalin, and the emptiness of the non-occasion was real.
I had to ask myself, what does success look like to me now?
In the old days of a big, bold career success was cheers with the team, wrap parties, or bump out drinks. When success was really meaningful, it was a juicy bonus and a promotion.
Those days are behind me. Now, success is measured in meeting business objectives; the satisfaction of creating something of value; learning new skills and conquering fears (both hugely invigorating for me); and being proud of the outcome, even if no one else seems to notice.
Oh, and not killing someone in the process. That’s always a win.
I want to acknowledge a good journo and a good guy, a gentleman, who recently passed, suddenly and much too soon. Michael Yiannakis was a fellow in journalism and then corporate comms, He had a great career spanning prestigious mastheads and vibrant cities. He’s also the husband of my dear friend, another great journalist, Andreea Papuc, who now edits Bloomberg Opinion pieces from Sydney.
When bad things happen to good people, people you have grown up with, literally and professionally, it’s a wake-up call.
I was so busy building my career interstate and then oversees to get home for significant events like friends’ weddings and new babies. Now, I’m tuning in online to funerals.
The only upside of terrible, life-changing events is that it brings us together to reminisce and realise that strong bonds won’t be broken by time. I’m vowing to do better for my friends before it’s too late.
Do you ever feel like the protagonist in your favourite books?
Interestingly, I’m drawn to delusional, psychotic or narcissistic males in many cases: American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman is a wealthy, narcissistic, vain Manhattan investment banker who moonlights as a serial killer.
Liar’s Poker is semi-autobiographical account of author Michael Lewis’s time as a bond salesman on Wall Street in the 80s when ‘greed was good’.
And then there’s Death of a Salesman, a play by Arthur Miller fearing Willy Loman. The name befits the character – a 63-year-old travelling salesman from Brooklyn who has lost the youthful verve and camaraderie of his past. His business acumen is still at its peak, but he can no longer leverage his personality to get by.
Time has caught up with him.
I’ve been pondering Willy as I edge towards 60. Still some years away but in the professional world 50, 60 – it doesn’t really matter.
Time is nipping at our heels.
I hear the platitudes – age is just a number, there’s plenty more to achieve, you’re never too old, it’s about your mindset. Blah, blah blah.
Sure, they’re all valid comments, but it also becomes very clear that you don’t have (or perhaps don’t want to commit) 10 years or 15 years or even 12 months to reaching some milestone. Make it snappy. Time is short, we need to get a move on.
Gen Xers like me have been there, done that. We’ve been through social, economic and plenty of tech changes and challenges that have influenced our view of the world.
Unlike the tradition valuing Baby Boomers and the socially progressive Millenials, Gen Xers are pragmatic, self- reliant and skeptical.
Poor Willy Loman pre-dated Gen X and Baby Boomers. He worked at the same company for more than three decades, withstanding a pay cut and then being fired by the son of the guy who had hired him decades prior.
Willy created a fantasy world to cope with his lot, and he tried several times to end his life.
Author Arthur Miller was quoted saying Willys’ story was about hopelessness and mortality: “Willy was trying to write his name on cake made of ice on a hot summer day.”
No one wants to be Willy. To be fair, no one is probably keen on being any of my fictitious favourites.
There’s probably another discussion in why I’m drawn to dodgy New York male characters (husband excluded) but meantime I’ll seek out some sunny, female protagonist-led literature.
I’d love to hear which characters you are drawn to, and why?
You can get a university degree in three years, plan and have a wedding, birth a couple of children, change the direction of your life completely by moving abroad, changing jobs or Marie Kondo- ing your life.
But three years is no time when you are grieving. It’s as fresh as if it were yesterday. Three years, 36 months, 1095 days . It’s a whisper of time that hasn’t passed at all.
Three years is supposed to mark a period of transition. It’s when you begin rebuilding, and while the sadness of losing a loved one lingers, it’s not as prevalent, according to psychological studies on grief. It’s no longer socially palatable to talk about your loss, according to another piece I read One needs to move on. Easier said than done .
Here’s to my beautiful father who passed three years ago today. He is well remembered daily by those closest to him and especially missed this week.
In business, many of us spend hours networking. We seek out opportunities to connect with other people to expand our existing networks, or to meet people whose skills or custom we might be able to use down the track.
Interacting with others is a basic human need, and a skill we try to hone for business success. But imagine if you walked up to someone at an event and they turned their back, or walked away.
You wouldn’t physically ghost someone, would you?
And yet, increasingly I hear of, or see people reaching out to business connections via email or providing a proposal or a piece of value-add work and … crickets. No ‘thank you.’ No ‘I’m flat out at the moment but I really will come back to you.’ No, nothing.
It’s the corporate version of ghosting. It’s rife, it’s accepted, and it goes mostly unchallenged.
Ghosting, as the name suggests, is when someone suddenly stops communicating with another person without any explanation. It’s a term that gained traction in popular lingo in the dating world.
Poof! They’re gone
You connect with someone online and then, poof, they’re gone. Their profile vanishes, and it’s as if they never existed.
It’s increasingly evident in the recruitment sector too. Post Covid, I’ve heard countless cases of people going for a job interview and waiting for the follow-up call from the recruiter.
They’re still waiting. Apparently, it’s not the norm these days to advise unsuccessful applicants that they can move on. They are left hanging, wondering if the position was filled or if they’re still in with a shot, or where they went wrong? It’s a guessing game.
Likewise, job candidates don’t show for interviews. Successful candidates don’t turn up for the first day. They vanish without a word.
The Harvard Business Review quoted a 2018 study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships: 25% of participants reported having been ghosted by a partner. When it comes to job seeking, 93% of respondents in a 2020 LinkedIn poll said they had been ghosted during an active hiring process.
It’s a problem and it’s only getting worse.
At its core, ghosting is a sign of disrespect for the time and effort others invest in reaching out to us.
Just say No!
So why do people ghost?
In the era of everyone wins a prize, there are no losers, could it be that people have forgotten how to say no? Is there a phobia around rejecting an approach from someone or turning down a proposal. Are people scared to have a difficult conversation? Do they think that ignoring the elephant in the room will make it go away?
Of course, it will go away (eventually) and with it goes your reputation (eventually). When a business turns cold and fails to acknowledge your proposal or your email or a piece of work you’ve done for them, their brand is devalued by the people they ignore. Word travels fast and no one wants to be known as unresponsive, or rude.
So, short of sending a copy of Debrett’s etiquette guide, what do you do if professionally ghosted? Walk away and chalk it up to bad manners, or call it out and keep prodding for a response?
And just like that … it’s more than a decade since we relocated to Australia from New York. We said so long NYC and hello to Adelaide, South Australia.
Adelaide is where I grew up, It’s the town I left for Sydney, which I later left for New York. A lot of young people leave Adelaide and inevitably, one day, usually with children in tow, they move back. Some settle in right away, landing cushy jobs and riding high on their international careers: others take longer to find their feet and settle in.
I am probably the latter. it’s still debatable whether i’ve truly settled in, and certainly the family have their moments when this doesn’t feel like home. But day by day, we take turns feeling more entrenched.
Frankly, the idea of packing up and moving across the world again makes me shudder. It’s still too soon to contemplate another relocation so Adelaide it is. We have a house we love, a dog we adore and won’t ever leave behind, jobs and friends and family. And we have safety and security.
With all that is happening in the world right now, the horrors in Europe, the flood destruction across eastern Australia, to name just two of this week’s headliners, it’s good to be here.
So this is a bit of a peg in the sand. I write all day for work but I miss this sort of writing – letting the words flow freely with no real destination in mind. It’s rambling of sorts, and therapy after the boundaries and rigidity of my day shtick (which by the way, I actually really enjoy).
Now that the floodgates are open again, i’ll be writing more frequently I hope. So stay tuned for gdaybklyn from Adelaide.
Yesterday, I pressed ‘enter’ on a competition I barely read the details of. Something about the Barossa, a weekend away, food. It doesn’t take much more to pique my interest. It was a vendor that I trust and it didn’t take me to any dodgy links or spam, so why not.
Within a couple of hours, an unfamiliar number rang on my cell phone and I was told I had won two nights away at Anlaby Station in the Barossa Valley and a dinner at fermentAsian. Just like that.
The contest, run by Glam Adelaide for the South Australian Tourism Commission. builds on a recent, deliciously controversial, new ad campaign to lure savvy overseas travellers to our gorgeous wine region.
The ad – part of a $6 million tourism campaign – goes way beyond the well-known wineries though, wooing viewers with sumptuous produce and beautiful people. Lots of suggestive scooping of oranges and freshly-laid eggs, rolling around in fine Barossa dirt, a woman in a white dress and a man who might as well be shirtless for all of the ad’s lusty feel.
The tagline reads simply: Barossa, Be Consumed. You can watch it here.
Is the Barossa bringing SexyBack?
Anyway, I’m yet to set a date for this adventure but as we roll towards our second anniversary since moving to Australia, I think a weekend away is in order.
Oh, and if you’re wondering, yes, hubs will get first dibs on accompanying me …
This adorable chap made his way home with me after a recent browsing afternoon on Magill Road. There was just something about hot pink antlers that I couldn’t resist.
Thankfully the family realised his charms and my deer made his way above our bed, like some sort of hunting trophy.
For patchwork, Liberty-esque deer busts and other outlandishly individual homewares, furniture and art visit Louis Bond at 133- 135 Magill Road, Stepney.
George Shaw, a self-described ageing punk, says buying a loud shirt back in 2005 at his wife’s urging led to an obsession that changed their lives forever.
He picked up the well-cut shirt – with green felt running down the sleeves and a plasticised stencil on the back – in a UK boutique to wear to a friend’s 40th birthday bash. When some lads from Bristol mentioned that the stencilling on the shirt was reminiscent of the rogue street artist Banksy, who cut his teeth on the rough Bristol streets, Shaw’s curiosity piqued.
“I thought Banksy sounded like my kind of guy,” said Shaw.
“Through a hangover the next day, I Googled Banksy and I felt a rush. I was so excited – it was the first artwork that I really related to. It was a bit like the punk movement, it really had something to say.”
That loud, well-cut shirt and the street art obsession it inspired will bring Shaw, his wife and creative partner Shannon Webster, and more than 70 pieces from their urban art collection, including 22 Banksys, to Adelaide this month for the Oi You! Urban Art Festival.
The duo has run the festival in Sydney and in Nelson, on New Zealand’s South Island, where they live. Shaw says they approached Adelaide City Council (ACC) with the idea to host one in Adelaide, and the council saw its value. ACC, through Splash Adelaide, is backing the event with the State Government and theAdelaide Festival Centre, which will be the hub for festival events, including an exhibition, an art hunt, a scrawl wall and outdoor installations.
“There’s a fabulous local street art scene in Adelaide already,” said Shaw. “Hopefully this festival will allow for it to win an even broader audience and be a bit more cherished.”
As part of the exhibition, Adelaide-raised street artist Peter Drew invited fellow street artists to ‘respond’ to an unfinished portrait of Adelaide’s founder, Colonel William Light. These were hung briefly on the Gallery walls, alongside traditional, historically important paintings. They were then plucked one by one and hidden around the city, sending anyone from students to office workers running through the CBD in a game of finders keepers.
Elusive and anonymous
Elusive and still anonymous, Banksy is one of the world’s best-known street artists for his iconic and satirical stencil art in public places. His last major show saw some 300,000 people queue for hours to get in and his art fetches hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction houses in Britain and the US.
The Oi You! Festival will host 22 Banksy pieces, along with work from other leading graffiti artists around the globe, including Faile, Swoon and David Choe from the US, the UK’s Antony Micallef and Paul Insect, and the artist known as Milton Springsteen from NZ.
“I like a lot of art but street art really speaks to me, probably because it’s not exclusive. It’s inclusive, it’s populist.
“The way I look at street art: it’s almost like you think of traditional art as the theatre – street art is the cinema. It’s for the people.”
Matt Stuckey adds colour outside the Adelaide Festival Centre
Since 2005 Shaw and Webster have collected about 100 urban artworks, among them Banksy limited edition prints such as the Kate Moss image channelling Warhol’s iconic Marilyn Monroe and the original Flower Thrower canvas, the cover image for the Banksy bestseller War and Piece. Both works will be part of the exhibition in Adelaide.
Shaw says they have spent the best part of seven years following Banksy’s shows around the world, including war-ravaged Palestine and the more high-end Los Angeles for Banksy’s Barely Legal show in 2006, where Shaw found himself shoulder to shoulder with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
“It’s been surreal. We found ourselves at the epicentre of this phenomenon that just exploded across the world.”
Obsessed stamp collectors
Unlike the collectors who buy art on a hunch that an artist will make it big and their works will command big price tags, Shaw says he and Webster just bought what they liked, and they liked a lot.
“We’re like obsessed stamp collectors.
“It began with an interest in what Banksy had done and we kind of went overboard. If there was a new piece out, we had to have it.
“Most people start collecting art when they are rich but we weren’t rich – we were comfortable I guess – but we still sold both our cars and went to the bank to support our obsession.”
Their next goal is to find a permanent home for the Banksy collection, ideally in earthquake-wracked Christchurch, New Zealand, which is in the midst of a massive rebuild.
“We’d really like to see Christchurch become home to an annual Oi You! festival and to our collection.
“They’re going through a very significant rebuild there and we like the idea of being a part of that.”
Adelaide is sister city to Christchurch so it’s fitting perhaps that Adelaide will get a taste of Oi You!
The festival kicks off with an Opening Night party on 19 April before opening to the public from 20 April to 2 June. The Opening Night party will give fans a sneak peek at the exhibition and feature talks from some of the artists as well as a DJ set from local electronic artist, Oisima.
A large annex built outside the Artspace Gallery will provide plenty of space for budding local artists to express themselves. One side will be a ‘scrawl wall’ covered in chalkboard paint and the other, made from corrugated iron, is dubbed ‘corrugated irony’.
And while you won’t be able to take a Banksy original home, local duo Ankles and Smile, known as Rawhide, will give everyone the chance to own some art in The Great $5000 Art Giveaway. On Saturday 27 April and Sunday 28 April, 38 tokens will be hidden across the Adelaide Festival Centre Plaza, corresponding to 38 works of art. Find a token and take home a piece of art – it’s that simple.
Australian street art gurus Anthony Lister, Rhone and Beastman will be in town too, to create large works on big walls. Matt Stuckey will create a number of installations on the plaza outside the Festival Centre too.
Among other festival events are street artist guided tours of some of Adelaide’s best urban art sites, and a Street Art Film Night in the Space Theatre Foyer on Friday 10 May, featuring screenings of locally-produced documentary Who Owns The Street,and the Academy Award-nominated Banksy film Exit Through The Gift Shop.
As for the shirt that started it all, Shaw reckons he might wear it on opening night.
“It’s all come from that shirt. Our whole life changed in that moment.”
Visit the Oi You! Urban Art Festival on Facebook for all the latest news
The much talked about and anticipated bunny is the latest and possibly the final member to join our household. She is of course utterly adorable. A seal point, lop eared dwarf (or do I have to say bunny of short stature?), Miffy is somewhere between a pale gray and a very light cocoa. The breeder says this colouring is particularly rare.
I say it works in beautifully with our dark wood floors.
The progeny of mother Gypsy and father Thomas, Miffy was born 23 October 2012. It happens that she shares a birthday with Grandma, Mo’s mother, which the kids find especially amusing.
Artist Dick Bruna’s Miffy
Her name, which means little rabbit in Dutch, is in honour of the Miffy character illustrated in series of picture books by Dutch artist Dick Bruna. The first Miffy book was produced in 1955 and has since inspired two television series. Our children happily watched Miffy for many years on public televsion in the US – so it was a no brainer that our little, female rabbit should be a Miffy.
Miffy has been with us for only two days but so far she is curious, spunky – and fast. She’s a tiny, fluffy bundle of energy; easily startled like all small bunnies but still gutsy enough to explore our turf on her terms.
The children are probably a bit too excited for Miffy to warm to them just yet. They are busting to play with her but don’t seem to understand that she needs to suss them out first – have a sniff and wander around them calmly before they can lunge and pick her up.
