Category Archives: Life and Family

Today I Give Myself Permission to Explore and Experience #atozchallenge

Letter EA couple of days ago I gave myself permission to be curious. I’m now going to extend that curiosity to the physical, by giving myself permission to explore the word and open myself to new experiences.

One of my passions is travel. I am grateful to my parents for instilling in me a sense of adventure and for exposing me to other countries during my childhood years. I have tried to do the same for my children and we have a few more family trips left in us. Time is precious and each trip now together as a family takes on another dimension and a sense that this is something special.

When I first had children, I remember receiving a pamphlet from the pharmacist which said something along the lines of:

Your children won’t remember their ironed clothes, but they will remember your shared experiences

The notion has stuck with me ever since. I’ve been busy creating shared experiences for the family (Oh, no not again!!!), but also now at middle age, solo experiences for my own memories. The realty is that my health can only decline from this point and there is a whole lot of living left to be done.

So here are the highlights of my exploration and experience bucket list. I’m getting itchy feet just thinking about these!

Egypt A

BMorroco

IstanbulC

DGreek islands

tomatina festival SpainE

Cable beachF

A = Egypt, which has long been a fascination

B = Marrakesh, Morocco

C  = Istanbul a city spanning two continents. Take me to the Grand Bazaar…

D = The Greek Islands, especially Santorini

E = Tomatina festival in Spain. Get down and salsa!

F = Sunset camel ride in Broome, Western Australia

There’s a whole lot more as well. The world is now truly a playground.

Right now all of my work colleagues are planning overseas trips within the next 12 months. There’s a lot of planning and travel talk, glossy brochures and yearning on my part and I’m living my vicarious travel dreams through them.

In the meantime I content myself with road trips within a two to three hour vicinity and create my own local experiences. After all everything can be an experience, depending on what you make of it.

It’s time to get busy making memories!

Do you yearn for farawy places and experiences? What places are on your exploration bucket list?

Today I Give Myself Permission to Deal #atozchallenge

Letter DI started my first job at the tender age of 14 years and nine months, which in this part of the world is the minimum age without having to obtain parental consent.

It was a part-time gig working at McDonald’s. And I loved it. My gateway to teen financial independence, it also provided a social life (there were boys!) and (at the time) free food. I am grateful for the start that McDonald’s gave me, because say what you will about McDonald’s, it has one of the BEST employee training programmes I have experienced. And in the ensuing thirty something years I have experienced many.

Beyond the mandatory “Would You Like Fries With That?”, it tought me about systems, structures and teamwork and all at a tender age when knowing these skills made a huge difference to a young life.

One of our mantras at Maccas (the Australian version of the term, Mickey D’s) was:

Clean As You Go

The concept was that if you make a mess, you deal with it then and there or as soon as the situation practically allows.

Now, I would love to tell you that I have religiously applied that philosophy to every physical mess I have ever created. But sadly, that’s not the case as the pile of notes, articles and clothes lying around my house will attest.

However, I believe that I have made up for this physical deficiency by applying this mantra to my metaphorical piles. I clean my messes as I go, meaning I DEAL.

Avoidance is the opposite of dealing. The problem with avoidance is that it’s a chancy strategy. Whilst the possibly of the mess disappearing all of its own volition or by having someone else deal with it is there, it’s by no means a certainty. The possibility of the mess compounding into something larger and more permenant whilst we wait for others to deal or for a miracle is much more likely. What could have been dealt with at the start with a small amount of pain, effort or unpleasantness now requires way more pain, effort or unpleasantness because mess tends to attract mess. The avoidance strategy also means that you give the mess time to creep and ooze into other aspects of your life, making the dealing all that much harder when the time to deal actually comes. And in my experience, the time always comes.

The consequence of not dealing was sheeted home to me at the age of 23. Like most people, I hated going to the dentist. Really, really hated it… as in anxiety, the whole nine yards and so much so there was a period where I avoided going to the dentist for five years. I paid for my avoidance however, when I finally went to the dentist. Instead of an hour of unpleasantness every 6 months if I had dealt, I was rewarded with 6 hour long sessions in the chair at the hands of the torture master. NEVER will I repeat that experience, it was a lesson of a lifetime.

Dealing with emotional pain is no different. Avoidance of emotional pain will come home to roost. At some point you have to do the hard yards and deal. And to deal, you want mole hills, not mountains.

It has been said that Carl Jung once observed that more people enter therapy at the age of forty-nine than at any other age. This is because this is often a time of life and death struggle between the old and new. It’s time to decide on your new way of being, it’s time to deal.

mole on a hill

Today I give myself permission to deal.

Today I Give Myself Permission To Be Curious #atozchallenge

Letter CSome people are content with being an expert in what lies behind their front fence.  Then there’s me.

Whilst I enjoy my home and my front yard, my imagination and thoughts have always had a wider calling. I have always believed that good things lie beyond my front fence and that the world offers endless possibilities for the curious. I remember that in my circle of friends growing up there was always one fascinating individual who knew a lot about a lot. In those days, given that we were not of driving age, that knowledge would have come from reading a wide range of sources. From science fiction to world politics, this dude understood it all. As a result, he was fascinating to be around and fascinating to talk to.

These days, I feed my curiosity in various ways. Reading blogs on a wide variety of different topics is but one. It is certainly refreshing to be able to hear different viewpoints from sources other than the mainstream media. Our press here seems to have a developed a homogeneity to it and what I personally feel is an element of intellectual snobbism. Information and news should be accessible, digestible and debatable by all but that’s a whole other topic and blog post. Another favorite way is to talk to people I haven’t spoken to before. You never know where such a conversation will lead, what nugget you may glean.

Remaining open and receptive is key.

When I first starting work after graduating from university, I found that I missed academic learning. Don’t get me wrong, there was plenty of learning to be done on the job, but most of that was of a practical nature. I

photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

craved something that involved digging a little deeper. So after a year out, I returned to undertake postgraduate studies and my curiosity was appeased for a time. Then came children and my learning curve and curiosity transcended a whole other level. However, in our little work team, I was the one that would ferret out new developments and report them. The ferreting was a welcome distraction from the day-to-day churn.

Then there’s the curiosity about other lands and cultures. Travel just ticks so many boxes. I see a lot of it in the future of my second act.

Curiosity in my midlife years has taken on new life and new urgency as the search for answers and new ideas escalates. I love having a variety of teachers, from the very young to the very old. We can learn something from everybody, whether they deliver the lesson with eloquence, articulation or just gesticulation.

And just to show that I’m still totally insane curious, I have just started a new course of postgraduate university study in a field that is totally different to that in which I work. The last four weeks have been a real eye opener in terms of what learning is like in the technological age and have been wonderfully gratifying even in those moments of pure stress during the submission of my first assignment. Last weekend was a real fun time in our household with mother and son engaging in a fascinating discourse on the Harvard in text method of citation. We both had assignments due either side of Easter – he as a university freshman, me as a postgraduate student. But THE very best thing about this experience is that I am undertaking this course of study simply because I want to. This is purely to expand my world. If something comes out of it in the job sense, then great, if not that’s great too. Whatever the case, I will have gained something other than just a university fee debt.

And remember as an undergrad how you looked upon mature age students as slightly freaky and not quite understanding why? Well, now I AM that mature age student, motivated and grateful for the opportunity to do it all again.

So did curiosity really kill the cat? I think not.

 curiosity killed the cat

 Are you curious by nature? Would you ever contemplate undertaking further formal study? Maybe you are already engaged in further formal study. If so, I would love to hear from you!

Today I give myself permission to be curious.

Today I Give Myself Permission To Be Bodacious #atozchallenge

Letter B officialI wonder how many of you landed on this page thinking you were going to see something related to the OTHER meaning of bodacious? Well, sorry to disappoint, but there is none of that here, although if you stick around a bit you might find something entertaining.

Bo·da·cious also bow·da·cious (b-dshs) or bar·da·cious (bär-) Southern & South Midland U.S.
adj.
1. Remarkable; prodigious.
2. Audacious; gutsy

It is also said that the word “bodacious” is a likely amalgam of the words” bold and audacious” with a resurgence in popularity in the ’80’s and ’90’s.

Remember the last time you did something audacious or bold? Your heart may have been racing and your palms may have been sweaty, but how good did you feel? I’m talking here about something subjectively audacious, not something that’s going to put you on the evening news for all the wrong reasons. It may be something as simple as approaching someone you revere or don’t know to ask something or wearing something you have not dared to before. And doesn’t it feel great?

I have found that midlife is THE best time to be bodacious. Possibly because midlife has helped to wake up the maverick inside me or because I don’t accept that we should necessarily stick to someone else’s script, midlife is the perfect foil to do something remarkable. A decade earlier and I would have been too self-conscious to do half the things I do today. But little by little I learned that most people do outrageous things, the world still turns for them and those that judge generally covet the ability to do something outrageous themselves without having to worry about external opinion. And the biggest empowering step? Faith. Faith in myself that I could deal with whatever consequences would follow – whether they were predictable or not. You don’t get to mid-life without acquiring a certain level of skills and smarts.

Bodaciousness accounts for those midlifers who change their career or start their own business. Whether they do so out of design or necessity, boldness and audacity are mandatory requirements.

Take a look at some of these bodacious midlifers:

  • Harland Sanders, also known as “Colonel Sanders”. He opened his first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise location when he was 62
  • Clint Eastwood didn’t direct his first film until the age of 41 and is the oldest person to have won an Oscar for best director
  • Wally Amos opened his first Famous Amos cookie store at the age of 40

These are all noteworthy achievements, but remember that your bodacious move doesn’t have to be of this magnitude. Pushing your personal envelope, even just a little is all that it takes to be bodacious. Just take a leaf out of the book of this bodacious reader who stumbled upon my site today via the search term “frangipani google nose” .

Midlife is a great time to be bodacious. It will set you up for a lifetime of aging disgracefully!

Thanks for sticking with this post and reading it through to the end. For your patience and persistence I reward you with a bodacious

Letter T Official letter a officialLetter T Officialletter a official

Today I give myself permission to be bodacious!

Today I Give Myself Permission To Appreciate My Achievements #atozchallenge

Letter AIt’s 1 April marking the start of the A to Z April Blogging Challenge. As this post is brought to you by the letter A, it’s time to give a huge thanks to Arlee Bird for conceiving the Challenge and for giving more than 1600 bloggers the impetus to fire up their blogs this month. Arlee is a true blogger and gentlemen and deserves the tag of awesome – another great A word.

Now, onto the Challenge post!

Most of us arrive at middle age wishing we had achieved more. More what exactly is up for grabs, but it’s just more. Whether we have visions of how midlife was for our parents and wanting our own experiences to be different and yes… more or whether we feel we have not met our own expectations, the feeling of something not being enough lurks.

Somehow, somewhere along the way we picture a different midlife scenario, one were we have ticked most, if not all, of the metaphorical boxes that one is supposed to tick off by mid-life. The weight of expectation feels heavy and rather than asking “Are We There Yet?”, we don’t ask at all, because we are afraid of the answer. Either that or we are just too tired to savour what we have done.

About four years ago, I came to realise that every big achievement is made up of many small achievements. The prize of the big achievement can never really be yours until you build a solid  foundation, until you have put tab A into slot B. Putting tab A into slot B requires patience, persistence and postponement of the need for instant gratification, so why shouldn’t it be appreciated? I know a good many people who fail to see that putting tab A into slot B is still an achievement, so focused are they on achieving the bigger goal. This is fine, except that when the bigger goal is not reached fast enough or the focus is solely on how far there still is to reach it, feelings of despondency and failure kick in.

I spent quite some time over the last couple of years castigating myself over what I felt I had not achieved. The film reel in my head was playing but intermission never came, all I felt was a greater sense of urgency to reach the end of the film.  Expectation will do that to you.

So, you’ve reached forty something and feel you have much left to do? You’re right, you do  – there’s the whole second act to live through BUT stop for a minute and savour what you have achieved so far. Chances are you have achieved a great many things from the time you graduated from high school, even if the film reel of how it is supposed to be in your head is not your current reality. Whether its surviving more than a decade of marriage without killing your spouse, becoming a parent and surviving the sleepless nights, building the foundations of a career or business or just being able to greet each day and your fellow citizens with a kind word and a smile you have achieved something. Whether it’s having travelled the world or some part of it, created a home, forged community connections, being a good sibling, maintained a blog for a time you have achieved something.

In his book, Life: A Guide, Adam Fuller describes the years between the ages of 43 to 49 as being in control, but only just as the demands of others tend to take precedence over our own issues. It is time to let our spirits catch up with us otherwise the sacrifice will be to lose the relationship with ourselves and our dreams.

Appreciating all of your achievements to date no matter how small is a great first step to letting your spirit catch up with you.

Achievment

 Today I give myself permission to appreciate my achievements.

What is the one achievement you truly relish?

I Give Myself Permission To …Reveal My #atozchallenge Theme

If you’re around my vintage, you might remember the television show Welcome Back Kotter.

The show which ran from 1975 through to 1979 brought many memorable characters to our screens and provided more than a few laughs. As a moon struck teenager I used to eagerly wait for the weekly time slot so that I could feast my eyes on one Vincent (Vinnie) Barbarino played by a youthful John Travolta. Apart from his machismo, who could forget Vinnie’s classic retort:

Up Your Nose With A Rubber Hose?

cast-of-welcome-back-kotter-5Vinnie was one of the students in Mr Kotter’s class (played by Gabe Kaplan) and he and his fellow class mates, Arnold Horshack (Ron Palillo), Freddie “Boom-Boom” Washington (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs) and Juan Epstein (Robert Hegyes) kept us entertained with great one liners, bravado and compassion. One of the great “non-characters” in the show was Epstein’s mother. Epstein’s mother, who we never saw on air, was a prolific permission note writer. In many an episode, Epstein (the guy in the denim vest in the photo) would miraculously produce a cleverly worded permission/excuse note from his dear old mother when placed in the hot seat. So close were the pair, that when Mr Kotter would read the note aloud, Epstein would mouth the words verbatim. Epstein’s mother certainly sounded like a formidable woman!

The concept of Epstein’s mother and the class permission note has stuck with me over the years. Self-permission has become particularly relevant to me in recent years as I take the journey through midlife. It’s the time for taking stock, for shedding the old skin and charting a solid course to the future. In short, it’s time to say it’s OK and to find the reasons why those dreams can and should be pursued instead of focusing on why they can’t.

Everyone’s midlife journey is different and whilst mine has not been without its challenges, it has, in the main, been a positive time. The potential for happiness is huge, the uncertainty is becoming less and less and the future looks full of promise. I’ve determined to fly rather than crumble as I focus on all the doors that are beginning to open rather than on those that may be closing.

Over the next few weeks of the Challenge, I will be blogging a 26 point permission slip. 26 permissions that we tend to deny ourselves in our lives caring for others and wish I had given myself earlier. I’ve come to the point where I have acknowledged that I am just as worthy as those I care for and deserve to give myself a break.

permission granted

Midlife has its perks. Google “midlife” and you’ll be met with a raft of articles about the midlife crisis or about the Middle Ages. Regrettably, there are very few positive messages about middle age and I’m aiming to change that. Some of my permissions will be funny, others deep. Hopefully you will find more than a few that resonate.

So, in the wonderful tradition of Epstein’s mother I give myself permission to create and commune in April.

Please join me for the A to Z Blogging Challenge Journey.

midlife prayer

Have An Uneasy Relationship With Your Photo ID? This May Give You Hope

It was not so long ago that photos displaying a bad hair day or an acne breakout could be safely locked away in the privacy of a bottom drawer.

Some of you might remember the luxury of being able to pick and choose which photo of your person would escape for public consumption. Remember sitting around with friends looking through photo albums that had passed through the family’s Censorship Department? Apart from your passport photo for which you were always suitably attired and somewhat somber, there were generally no photos circulating out there for which you had not primped and prepared. And all of this before the days of Photoshop.

Let’s roll the film forward (pun intended) to the present day in which photo ID cards abound. Apart from having a photo album on tap via a smart phone, most people walk around with a photo album of bureaucratic memories in their wallets. An absolute highlight reel of bureaucratic encounters and of putting your best worst face forward.

Rowan Atkinson funny ID photo

Some of my personal chart topping looks are:

  • Drawn, Haggard And Sunburned at the Motor Registry
  • You’re Kidding, A Photo, Really? at my local social club
  • You’re a Security Guy Taking This In A Dimly Lit Dungeon Using a Two Bit Camera at my work place
  • Gonna Have To Live With This Legacy For As Long as I Work Here also at my work place

Now, I don’t know about you, but the question of whether I’m going to have a photo taken on any given day is not on my daily morning checklist. It is enough to race out of the house in the morning with two matching shoes. I can’t tell you how many times I have confused navy with black in the early morning light. As a business woman, I know I’m not meant to talk about this. We are after all high-powered, multitasking infallible Amazons! But, a straw poll of some of my fellow working friends reveals that this is more common than the polished, together, high-powered female business fraternity have you believe.

So, I have never worried about how I look in ID photos. Then again, I have never had to date in the world of ID photos. Perhaps it’s different when a potential would-be beau is looking through your wallet and stumbles upon Drawn, Haggard and Sunburned at the Motor Registry. Better he sees the real you, I think. Less room for morning after the night before surprises.

I am now wondering what happens to the mountains of ID photos once they are taken. As I’m writing this, I have visions of faceless bureaucrats scouring through mountains of photo ID’s looking for hot dates, perhaps even plotting the creation of a ranking system like in the beginning of the Facebook movie.

It is impossible to believe there will ever come a time when we can offer up our own selfies to bureaucracy.

However, I’m pleased to report that a photo ID miracle occurred this week. Having stumbled into a situation where I needed to create a new photo ID, I headed off to the gallows photo centre to get shot. The lighting wasn’t great (is it ever?) and the camera operator was not a professional. Nevertheless, after a little congenial conversation around how this was my third attempt at navigating bureaucracy to obtain the ID and a couple of clicks I had my photo. Expecting the worst, I took the card, eyes going straight to the mug shot. And then the angels sang! The photo was passable, even more than half way decent. It even looks like a happy and excited me. Actually, it’s probably more likely relief that I had finally been succesful in my quest to secure this ID.

So this has restored my faith in the amateur model, amateur photgrapher shoot and produce process. I now have a new chart topping look – Happy, Excited And Ready For Anything.

And I have learned that it is possible to ace the photo ID and carry around a bureaucratic legacy which you can proudly show anyone, even a would-be beau!

Do you get anxious about having your photo taken? Given the opportunity, do you prepare your appearance for a photo ID shot?

A Letter to My Son On Entering University: The Journey Continues

By far and away my most popular post has been about the letter I wrote to my son on his final school year retreat.

Titled, A Letter To My Son: Reflections On A Journey it contained my thoughts and messages to my 17-year-old son as he was about to face the toughest academic year of his young life. Each day the post is read many times. It seems many of us parents are looking for inspiration about what to say to our teenage children, particularly on reaching high school graduation. My readers for this post come from all over the world and the issue seems to transcend geographic borders.

So in keeping with this theme, I am posting my next letter to my son who thankfully survived his last year of high school and just this week started university.

Uni grads

As parents, we often feel that the wisdom we try to impart goes unheeded. But I have a small, sneaking suspicion that when we turn our backs and when the going gets a little tough it is our voice that our offspring recalls, our words that are headed and our example that he follows. So in that vein, here is some of my Curtain Raising Wisdom. You never know, when my children are in their thirties and are parents themselves they might even acknowledge that I made some sense.

And so to the letter:

Dear J,

Without preamble or fanfare, let me say I am proud of you. You are now a high school graduate and a university freshman and at the start of what truly is a great adventure.

You will have heard a lot of people say that the university years are the best of your life. And they are right… to a point.

Much awaits you at university, it now all lies at your feet and ahead of you. Step carefully, son of mine as there will be many a siren call to tempt you from your path. You are now an adult of drinking age [note to US readers, the legal drinking age here in Australia is 18], and you will, for the first time, be surrounded in your academic endeavours by members of the opposite sex. Enjoy their presence and learn from them. Learn from their organisation, enterprise and their studiousness. Learn the subtle interplay between male and female, but always remember to practice respect and equality and above all, safe pleasure.

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Mix with the rest of the university population as this is your chance to make life long friendships from a wide circle. Trust me, friendships don’t get deeper than if you have sweated together at 3.00am the night before an assignment is due and neither of you has a clue what the question means. Make friends with people who are studying towards degrees other than your own, pick their brains, let them pick yours, ask questions, think broadly and enjoy the quest to find the answers.

At university no-one takes attendance. Whether you attend lectures and tutorials is up to you. However, as usual with freedom comes responsibility and your own destiny now lies more in your hands. Remember when your high school teachers told you what to read, how to answer a question, where to find resources and reminded you that assessments were due? All that has now stopped and it is up to you to work out what needs to happen and how to get to the end goal. It may be hard at first, but persevere, because this is where you will learn the essential life skills of initiative, self-reliance and resilience.

Enjoy the freedom of having time to work whilst studying, but do not be lured by the false promise of immediate and easy cash. Working is great and offers you a lot of freedom, but do not be lured by the instant gratification of what appears to be easy independence. You will earn more money than you have ever had, but keep your eye on the bigger goal.

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

You are laying foundations and foundations need to be strong and solid. They take time to build and time to settle. It really is true when they say nothing worthwhile ever comes easy. Perhaps if my words don’t resonate then the words of 50 Cent from the 50th Law might:

THE FOOLS IN LIFE WANT THINGS FAST AND EASY—MONEY, SUCCESS, ATTENTION. BOREDOM IS THEIR GREAT ENEMY AND FEAR. WHATEVER THEY MANAGE TO GET SLIPS THROUGH THEIR HANDS AS FAST AS IT COMES IN. YOU, ON THE OTHER HAND, WANT TO OUTLAST YOUR RIVALS. YOU ARE BUILDING THE FOUNDATION FOR SOMETHING THAT CAN CONTINUE TO EXPAND. TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN, YOU WILL HAVE TO SERVE AN APPRENTICESHIP. YOU MUST LEARN EARLY ON TO ENDURE THE HOURS OF PRACTICE AND DRUDGERY, KNOWING THAT IN THE END ALL OF THAT TIME WILL TRANSLATE INTO A HIGHER PLEASURE—MASTERY OF A CRAFT AND OF YOURSELF. YOUR GOAL IS TO REACH THE ULTIMATE SKILL LEVEL—AN INTUITIVE FEEL FOR WHAT MUST COME NEXT.

Your father and I believe in you and trust that you have the right tools to see you through the next four years. Go after some of the shiny, shiny distractions, but never forget why you are at University and never forget your dream. Shiny looks even better once you have taken care of business.

Enjoy this time and enjoy all that is to come. It is a parent’s biggest joy to see their offspring fly.

Did you have some great memories of Univserity/College? Do you remember your University/College days? Did you divert from the acadmeic path only to come back to it again in later life?

Stop Using The “CC” As A Weapon

Email, you gotta hate love it.

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

My introduction to email occurred about two decades ago when it opened up the possibility of real time communication with the whole world through an innocuous click. It also made serious inroads into my mastery of the fine art of workplace corridor loitering, you know the loitering you do as a junior whatever to wait for that perfect moment to jump into an office to experience some face time with a senior.

Some might say it is now outdated technology, that communication is all about flow and interaction. Email has a tendency to be fragmented and usually less gratifying. Some might also say that the advent of platforms such as Skype and Facebook chat have usurped the need for email. However, it seems that email is here to stay, at least in business.

I’m sure most of us have some humorous workplace email stories to tell. I’m also sure most of us have misunderstood or have been misunderstood through email and have had the experience where a lot of time and angst could have been avoided if we had just picked up this somewhat underutilised device, called the telephone.

For example, at my last workplace there was a row of desks and partitioning separating the offices which were located along  each wall of a long corridor. Sort of like the Berlin Wall, but the offices belonged to people from the same country department. Despite it being a five minute walk around the Wall (there were no gun or passport controls in evidence) and despite telephones being standard issue, my colleague would send me a slew of emails to deal with a simple matter that could have been resolved in a two minute conversation. Clearly this dude was not going to brave the Wall. Maybe he was too concerned about being thought of as a rebel dissident.

As I move through middle age, I spend a fair bit of time thinking about human interaction, relationships, motivation, influence and connectivity. I’m a fairly late study to these matters and so I approach all of them with the enthusiasm that only “mature age students” can muster.

I am particularly interested how humans use the “CC” field in email and how over time it has taken on a life of its own.

emailetiquette-cc2

Here are couple of observations:

Using CC as a means of CYA

If you have ever played the ancient art of  “telephone-tag” you will know that the  convenience of an email is unsurpassed. You can get your point of view across quickly to a LOT of people at a time of your convenience.

This possibility has led to a rise in what is also an ancient art, the CYA. The CYA, or Cover Your Arse involves copying an  email (through the use of the CC field  – CC, standing for “circulate copy” or “carbon copy”) to twenty other people, the last eighteen of whom are at least five steps removed from the actual subject matter, and couldn’t give a toss about such minutiae. But, rather than back him or herself, the author has purposely set up an “out” if things go pear-shaped “But you knew, you had a copy of the email!”. Here’s a tip: knowing and receiving an email are vastly different things, especially if you have a high traffic in-box. I truly wonder how much these CC’s readers understand the whole matter, even if they do take time to read the email, given they would only have one side of the discussion in real time. Stop with the CC’s already!!

tearing hear out

 

Using CC as an escalation device – the ultimate weapon

I will admit to this being my pet peeve as I detest passive aggression in any form.

This is an example of highly strategic use of the CC. It involves CCing*  senior managers who are perceived as important. Rather than build relationships with the recipient, the author sees fit to CC* the recipient’s senior managers to make sure they know about what is usually a request of the recipient. This way, the senior manager can ensure that his or her underling is performing the required task.

Is this really necessary? Where are you going to escalate to, when escalation truly becomes necessary – if it in fact does? I’m sure that the Lord’s inbox is a lot fuller than yours and that he has other priorities.

How these people must bask in the light of CC afterglow. The cries of “Ha, I showed you and I didn’t even appear to be as spiteful as I really am” echoing through the cyberworld.

I’m not going to touch upon the BCC (being “blind circulate copy”) field in this post, which takes passive aggression to a whole other level.

In summary, the use of the CC field for anything other than what it was designed for is fraught. The agenda of the author is often clearly obvious from his or her use of the field. It is time folks, that we all stopped using the CC as a weapon and actually used it for the purposes of positive communication. Spare a thought not only for the primary recipient of the email as to how your CC will be perceived but also to all your poor CC recipients, who will either get RSI from hitting the delete key or have to spend hours filing your butt covering tracks away. Time better spent having a non-written conversation with a living, breathing human.

Have you ever been on the receiving end of some CC aggression? Do you have a humorous email use story you wish to share?

* I apologise to all the grammar purists out there for using CC as a verb, but this reflects usual parlance and I treat my blog as a conversation not a literary vehicle

Mother and Son Relationship Punctuation Point #126: Fashion A La Mode

Is there anything more special than a mother/son or a father/ daughter bond? The Almighty has surely blessed me because I have experienced both. One as an offspring, the other as a parent.

As most of you know, I am the proud mother of two sons. It’s an amazing experience to be the centre of a child’s world, even knowing that the centre of that world is only leased to you for a short period of time. As a parent, knowing when to edge more towards the circumference of that world is the key to surviving your offspring’s adolescence.

Every mother/son relationship is filled with punctuation points. Those milestones that signify sometimes subtle, sometimes sledgehammer-like changes in the relationship. The points at which there is no returning to what was. I admit I look forward to these punctuation points because, at least in experience, they have generally been positive or have led to something positive. They are also confirmation that as a parent, one is doing one’s job.

Punctuation point #126 is one of these milestones. It’s the point at which a son develops a taste for fashion and a mother’s role as stylist comes to an end. This point is not necessarily marked by a sudden desire in your son to accessorize or colour co-ordinate or emulate a GQ magazine cover, but rather it means that it’s time to leave little boys clothes behind and become the master of one’s own fashion destiny.

David Beckham

In my experience, point #126 is reached somewhere when your son is between the ages of 12 and 15. Of course, there is always the odd would-be David Beckham prodigy who has the metrosexual thing happening at the age of 8, but they grow up to be Justin Bieber and well, let’s not go there shall we?

The thing is, you never really know the relationship has reached point #126 until you have passed it. You will blissfully be buying packets of 15 assorted colour jockeys as you have done many times in the past because your son needs them only to have them shoved at the back of the drawer with him continuing to wear the worn out underwear with the skull motiff that Aunt Clarice gave him as a Christmas present 3 years ago. The jockeys no longer work because point #126 has unknowingly been reached and because he’s your son and you are his mother, he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings. He doesn’t know how to break the news to you.

boys underwearRemember how simple life was when your son was 6 years old and you could go out with utter confidence and buy your child’s outfit? How he loathed shoe and clothes shopping and it was all you could do to get him to the mall to try on a pair of shoes. Remember how you used to go out of your way to never buy your son outfits with “skull stuff” on them? Seriously, when my kids were under ten it was an impossible task to find a piece of clothing without a skull or other gruesome Halloween creature on it. Why clothing manufacturers, why? Why do you want a 6 year old to channel their inner Hulk?

Somehow we got through the horror clothing era, testosterone intact and without either of my boys having dewingined any butterflies or ripped anyone’s arms off to arrive at point #126.

Yes folks, we are now at point #126 with my youngest. And true to form, I only know this because we just passed it with an incident involving socks, a T-shirt and a pencil case.

Him: “Just get me a plain blue pencil case, Mum”

Me: ” I thought your older brother’s advice was to stick the one pen you use for school in your pocket”

Him: “Yeah, that didn’t work. I’ve actually got four pens and a calculator”

Me: “Better that then three weddings and a funeral!”

Him: “Huh? Anyway, just don’t get me anything fancy, Mum. I don’t want any stars, skulls [!!!!! – my emphasis] or anything”

So, as part of the MO code and my service to mothers of adolescents everywhere, here are some of the signs that your son is approaching point #126:

  • he starts wanting to shower everyday
  • he starts taking a major interest in deodorant
  • he spends copious time in front of the mirror
  • he wears the same two T-shirts all week, because he now doesn’t like the rest in his drawer
  • he doesn’t have the usual hangdog expression when he receives clothing as a gift
  • he realises that blue and green are not the same after all
  • he knows the difference between coral and pink

clothes colour chart

He can’t quite articulate what type of clothing he likes until sometime after point #126 is reached. The fashion vocabulary and conceptualizing have not yet fully developed. It takes a mother’s keen power of observation, intuition, planning, mastery and all of your five senses to keep ahead of the fashion game during the transition period which ends when your feldging fashion plate is confident enough to fully develop his own sense of style.

One final word of advice, when your mother/son relationship arrives at point #126, it marks the stage at which mothers have to learn to SHUT THE FRONT DOOR!! Trust me, voicing your opinion at his choice of grey school socks with white sneakers teamed with camouflage coloured pair of shorts only leads to bad juju. There can be no winners in that contest.

Congratulations, you have now made the move from wardrobe stylist to wardrobe consultant. May the Zoolander be with you!

Have you had the same experience with point #126?Is there a similar point with daughters? What is the most outlandish outfit your child has chosen to wear?