Days of Being LJ

I did entertain the thought of writing a retrospective post for 2009 but in between sauntering off with family on xmas adventures, Wicked the musical, loads of food and BBC xmas specials, I really couldn’t be bothered.

Upon reflection I guess 2009 was this:

In the beginning I was fighting fit, tanned but very broody

unemployment was my game and lack of future prospects made me cruddy

somehow an interview in Jan landed me a job in a place I dreamt

but I quickly went from neat and officey to threadlessly unkempt

frustrations boiled and insomnia plagued my Uni rattled body

I realised fulltime work for the next 40 years will drive me potty

so I lost myself in food that was junk and taboo

in tv shows set in Rome, on Battlestars and  in Cylon goo

got back into photography and unleashed my dormant talent

along with a deep abiding love for all special tennis moments

especially those of Federer, painful loses and sweetest wins

gave me excitement on my boring days and plastered a grin

on my ever widening face.

However my lack of grace,

was personified as i tried to emulate the GOAT on an actual court

as i thought skills for the game could easily be store bought

along the way of corporate restructures and freebie film tickets

in the end my friends and family were still the winning wickets

On the cusp of 2010, a month till I’m twenty-four

I need to get this body back to where it was before

leaner, fitter and fighting for those goals unaccomplished

to keep those creative juices flowing and unblemished.

Happy New Year Everyone and Best Wishes for 2010.

LJK life 2009, family, musings, poetry, retrospection

“So you put a decade of blood sweat and tears, not to mention the countless lunch breaks you didn’t take, the pain and agony of building your businesses, contacts and networks.

You deliver budget time after time, over countless years adding to the coffers of those above…

…and then one day you’re given the envelope, a pat on the back….

“Well done old boy, you’ve poured your heart and soul into this place but the folks above don’t like you, so sorry but we have to let you go, nothing personal…”

It’s not that you were incompetent, they just didn’t like you…and there’s nothing you can do…absolutely nothing.”*

—

Treatise on Leadership

Are you going to be a pleb or a senator? A soldier or a general?

If you are the latter, are you going to be a tyrant or bring a sense of anarchic compassion?

If I were a leader and I got pushed off my dias, I’d want people to cry over me (unlike Eva Peron)…because at least it meant I touched them and instilled a sense of loyalty.”*

*written 29th Oct 09

LJK job corporate restructure, emotion, life, musings, work, writing

“All the little things we cry about. Silly little things, in hindsight, are so ridiculously inconsequential yet our initial reactions are to yell, scream and then cry.

Such is humanity that the minute we are pressured, when turmoil and conflict hit us, we immediately regress into babies.

But the minute the tears dry, there is still that lingering guilt and anger, why the fuck did I cry? And then further thoughts and contemplation leave us still with wet glistening corneas and we start this masochistic quest to quell the most fundamental of emotions.

What is it all for? Other than pure release crying does nothing else. We sit here day after day making so called meaningful lives for ourselves but in the end it’s just elements, senses, nerves, electrical impulses…”*

*written 28 Oct 09

—

I couldn’t stop crying, anything could set me off. For three days my usually cool calm exterior could crack (and did crack) at any moment, and any time and anywhere. Bus Stops, the office, at home. I joked to a friend that I didn’t have this many tears in the aftermath of my actual uncle’s passing early last year (of course the tears for that event were delayed for months, and boy was that a flood when they did come out)

Last night, after hours of which I consumed an entire six months of alcohol, I just started crying as I walked home. I don’t know why or what I was crying about, but it just continued and I decided to just let myself go. I thought perhaps this was the final release, 1am on a Saturday morning, beyond this cliff was the valley of acceptance. This was the release of more than 7 months of internal tension, turmoil, drama and something I needed to go through to attain catharsis.

Perhaps this morning a newer me stared back from the mirror.

LJK job corporate restructure, emotion, life, musings, work, writing

The email actually went out 6pm Tuesday but by that time I was already on my way to Leichardt to see Genova. I got in on Wednesday morning and heard from my colleague that Pompey had been dethroned, my first reaction is to let out an entire string of “fuck fuck fuckity fuck fucks” and then I fired up my computer to inspect the damage.

I read the email…blah blah, restructure, blah blah, thanks for their work and we wish them the best luck for the future…

Sucker punch to the gut, anger, denial…I can’t believe this is happening…

And then the tears…red hot, full of anger well up…and this is the one time I’m really thankful that I’m actually in an office rather than in the open plan. I wipe them away angrily and check the rest of my emails. Ten minutes later my boss boss comes down to explain the situation to me and I can’t hear anything, it’s like the scene in the film where the music drowns out the other person’s lines and your eyes glaze over, except you my case my eyes were dripping tears as I was both mortified and embarrassed at crying in front of my boss boss. And when he left I took a 30min time out in the bathrrom where I decided to re-enact some bad office movie were the protagonist goes and cries in the cubicle.

—

“A mini-empire came down today, torn apart by barbarians and the leader crucified as the plebs wept (well at least this pleb wept)

I never expected to experience this level of torment at the start of my career but I guess this is life right? Leaders fall and leaders rise and if you become a leader you reap the sugar and spice of the far reaches of your empire but also suffer the consequences of the ambition, greed and treachery of those around you.

The plebs continue to go about their daily lives, selling fish and whatnot. The plebs who harden the fuck up tend to survive the onslaught of the changes in leadership. Those who don’t, fall by the wayside and take their ticket out of the daily lottery.

But hey, power is just a business; it’s nothing personal we tell ourselves. It’s got nothing to do with emotions, feelings, you, me or the other person. But we also forget that unlike machines we can’t build a perfect impenetrable partition between emotions and cognitive thought processes, that’s what makes us bloody human.

The worst thing is, each sequential sacking of an empire makes us harder, more ambivalent and cuts ounces of humanity from our souls…little by little…

So all we are left with is this empty shell of what was, because nothing is personal anymore…everything is just business.”*

*written 28th Oct 09

LJK job corporate restructure, emotion, life, musings, work, writing

An event happened this week, something highly difficult to deal with and the resulting emotional responses and contemplations will stay with me for the rest of my life. I guess it’s one of those coming of age experiences, a colleague explained it best as suffering through your first break-up; the heart pangs and the uncontrollable tears. Except that I’ve never really been through a first break-up so I guess if this is how it feels, I really wouldn’t like to go through this again if I do end up having an actual first break up.

The following posts will be a series of random, thoughts, pieces of dialogue and analogies written in the past few days to make sense at least in my own mind of the event which conspired. Most are just simple emotional responses but which actually adhere quite well to the principles of the 7 stages of grief.

A little bit on the backstory

I’m going to keep this a quite vague since I’m going to be selfish and self-protecting on a professional level. I want to focus on my emotional reactions rather than the facts of the matter, and also because since this is the internet confidentiality will obviously be an issue.

I’ve been working for the past 7 months; it’s my first real full-time job, in an actual office. Corporate restructures are nothing new, and I’ve expounded on my first one previously, but this one was slightly different. I’ve known this manager (let’s call him Pompey) for over 7 months, worked as part of his team for 6 and grown to love everyone on the team almost like family, we bonded over some crazy experiences and lots of alchomohol but the personality mix in the team was one in a thousand, you were very unlikely to find or be apart of something as brilliantly visceral with such connections on a human level. The relationships on that team reminded me of how my own closest group of friends work, anything goes, you’re brutally honest both with compliments and insults and you’d help move dead bodies for each other. That’s how deep the loyalty goes.

So Pompey was like the crazy uncle I never had, who also took me in under his wing occasionally, literally and figuratively and pushed me into some industry events and training.  Pompey had been with this firm for a long time, had loads of experience and knew loads of people and was mostly well liked and respected by all. I’d say given perhaps maybe another 6 months or so, he could have become a solid mentor, the possibility was definitely there.

However Pompey had certain personality clashes with upper management and whilst the writing was on the wall for years as other rebel factions were slowly but systematically weeded out, when the time came for Pompey, it was still the greatest shock to all, and for his loyal Labradors, it was something unfathomable and impossible to accept and deal with.

LJK job corporate restructure, emotion, life, musings, work, writing