Transition and Challenges, Part 2

First up, I must apologise to those of you taken in by my April Fool’s Day prank. A dash of truth goes a long way to embellishing a little deception – yes, I was in Canberra earlier in the year; yes, Toby Ziegler is my favourite character in The West Wing; yes, I would love to earn a living as a speech writer; but no, I have not been offered a job as such.

Sorry about that Chief!

However, it IS true that I am in a time of transition. I was made involuntarily redundant back at the end of August 2010 from a company I had worked at over two stints for 21 years. This was unexpected and, at the time, traumatic.

Then came the silver lining. A payout which, while not huge by any stretch of the imagination, was enough to see me pay off my car loan, all my debts and allow me to write, augmented by a grant and some other bits and pieces, for 19 months without having to worry about things like responsibility and working to someone else’s schedule.

The downside to this is that I put off thinking about the long term future. Didn’t want to; couldn’t; haven’t… until the last few weeks as the money started running out and the inevitable conclusion, that I knew but had banished, dawned. I needed to get a “real job”.

So now I’m updating my corporate resume; contacting referees from over east; and I’ve finally overcome a huge mental block and contacted Centrelink. I really didn’t want to go to the local branch for a follow-up interview (pride, ego, fear of humiliation etc) but it went well as I can be quite gregarious when I want to be. Same with the job placement firm.

I know I can survive and thrive in the corporate world – I have a pretty damn good resume – but my fear is I get sucked back into that mindset and the creative side of me dies a little… or all together.

Will certainly make for interesting times. Hopefully I find something palatable (that is preferably writing related) so that my misadventures can continue!


With then Telstra CEO, Ziggy Switkowski back in my office-bound heyday.