NEW BLOG! NEW BLOG! NEW BLOG! (Just a subtle hint to let you know....I have a new blog)

I’ve got a new blog. Come on over and check it out at:

www.whencorporategirlwentcreative.com

Why have I started a new blog? Because I’ve felt guilty bastardising my book-writing blog. Now I can blog about eligible bachelors, blind dates and bridesmaid duties to my creative heart’s content.


And now I have my own web address, which makes me feel like a bit of a rock star actually.

To all my email subscribers – sorry, but you will need to re-subscribe on my new blog if you want to keep getting my blog updates by email. And if you’re not an email subscriber, well, you should be. It’s what all the cool kids do.

A reflection on some Dad-ism's to mark my Dad's 60th Birthday.

Today my Dad turns 60. And although I’ve been slaving away on the piano learning ‘Happy Birthday’ so I could play it just for him, he’s not here. He’s somewhere in Namibia, cavorting with lions and hippos and eating a biltong flavoured birthday cake.

Since he’s not here in Australia for us to celebrate this milestone together, I’ve instead been sitting at my computer reading the Daily Mail reflecting on some of his Dad-ism’s and things he says and does that make me laugh. Here’s a small sample:

1. ‘Hmmmm?’ (eyebrows raised, quizzical look)
2. ‘Gosh I’m unlucky’ (click of tongue, shaking head)
3. ‘Heh heh heh heh heh’ (several small nods of the head)  

1. 'Hmmmmm?'

My Dad doesn’t say a lot. I’m not sure if he was always like this, or if it only really started when his first daughter was born when he was only 23 years old. By the time his third daughter arrived four years later, I’m guessing that he realised that he was going to have trouble getting a word in for…..ohhhh….about the next 50 years.

Dad and his girls (circa 1980). Yes, that's me picking my nose.  

After nearly 40 years of not being able to get a word in, the trouble is that you tend to tune out a bit and therefore you’re not always totally on the ball on the listening front. Hence Dad saying ‘Hmmmm?’ a lot when a question is actually addressed to him. ‘Hmmmmm?’ is usually followed by Mum going ‘Bill!’ (slight shake of head).

The thing about having a Dad who doesn’t say a lot is that when he does speak, you listen. Well, most of the time anyway. I have two specific memories of times I have thankfully ignored him – first when he wanted me to continue studying Japanese through to Grade 12 (when the only language I have half-an-ear for is English) and secondly when he wanted me to put accounting down as my first preference for University.

I should have also ignored him when he suggested a couple of years ago that I take out an investment loan to buy some shares. Unfortunately that time I didn’t, although apparently ‘they’ll come good in the end’ which may well be true.  I just might be dead by the time it actually happens.

2.       ‘Gosh I’m unlucky’

This is a standard dinner time expression used by my Dad. Usually muttered while trying to wipe mashed potato/gravy/something-certain-to-stain off his cream chinos at the same time as subtly pushing his chair closer to the table so his claim about being unlucky is not overshadowed by the fact that he was sitting about five-foot away from the table when he attempted to get his fork into his mouth. This is also usually followed by Mum going ‘Bill!’ (slight shake of head).

3.       ‘Heh heh heh heh heh’

I’m sure he’ll try to deny this, but my Dad has a Dad laugh. I think there’s a strong correlation between the Dad laugh and the not-always-listening mentioned earlier. This is the laugh Dad sometimes pulls out when everyone else is laughing but he has no idea what anyone actually said.

Or maybe we’re just not funny. I prefer to think of it as the first option though.

I love Dad’s Dad laugh. Just hearing it makes me laugh too. Except for the time when I got a letter sent home from school when I was in Grade 11 to inform my parents that I had been caught ‘fraternising with St Laurence’s boys’ over the back fence at lunch time. I was seriously scared of what Dad was going to say. When he got home from work, I burst into tears (refer previous post) when I saw him. But Dad just opened the letter and did a Dad laugh before telling me not to worry about it, patting me briefly on the shoulder, and then hot-footing it away from my blubbering as fast as possible.

To this day I still believe he did the Dad laugh because of the word fraternising. I mean, who uses that? Especially when talking about fifteen-year-old girls with zero self-confidence wearing highly unflattering lime green dresses that were clearly designed by a tent manufacturer in the early-1960's. I think the only thing I was actively trying to do with the opposite sex that day was avoid eye contact.

Hmmm. Twenty years on and not much has changed.

Anyway, I could go on. Instead, I'll just say HAPPY 60^th BIRTHDAY DAD! Wherever you are, I hope that the Dad laugh is getting a good, solid work out. I can't wait to hear it again! x

Me and Dad in the early days of the Dad laugh.

Why I need to either kill off one of my characters or make them wear a velour tracksuit

Most of you know that I have a slightly lazy left eye. I tend to point it out a lot, especially when anyone tries to take a photo anywhere within a six-mile radius of me. But what most of you don’t know is that this is not my only eye-related defect. I have another one.

Severely overactive tear-ducts. Yep, I’m a crier. A sobber. A weeper. A bawler. A blubberer. And none of it’s pretty.

I always have been. Mum has a photo of me as a two-year-old at a birthday party, hands full of lollies and cake, and I’m crying. Who knows, maybe someone ate all the chocolate bullets, but crying at a party? That just doesn’t seem right to me. 32 years on and I still cry at the most ridiculous things. And I’m not one of these criers whose tears neatly well-up before cascading in symmetrical little trickles down my cheeks. Oh no. At the slightest sense of a tear, the blood vessels in my eyes immediately pop, my face goes red to match them, and my nose decides it wants to join in on all the drip, drip, dripping action as well.

I got to thinking about the fact that I’m a crier because of two things:  

1.       On Sunday night I cried during JuniorMasterchef. It was seeing a Nanna in tears when her grandson made the Top 20 that set me off. Crying over TV shows is not uncommon to me. I once cried during the Funniest Home Videos grand final. I’m really not discriminating.

2.       I went to see Cecelia Ahern at my local Mary Ryan’s book shop last week, and she spoke about how she ‘laughed and cried’ while she was writing her bestseller PS I Love You.

So it seems that Cecelia and I have a lot of things in common:

1.       She wrote PS I Love You when she was 21.

2.       It only took her three months.

3.       She immediately sold the book and followed it up about a week later with the film rights.

4.       She’s sold 13 million copies of her books worldwide.

5.       She’s Irish.

Wait, sorry, wrong list. That’s all the things we don’t have in common. Here’s the things we do:

1.       She doesn’t talk about her books while she’s writing them. Not even with her husband (not that I have one of them. I just substitute husband with parents/sisters/friends/colleagues/cat).

2.       She’s obviously a crier too.

It’s uncanny really. I mean, we could almost be sisters.

The only problem is that I haven’t cried while writing my book. Okay, I’ve cried a couple of times, but not because my characters have moved me to do so, but from the sheer pain of bashing my head against the laptop.

So, if I’m a crier, to the point where I cry when my hands are full of cake and lollies or I’m watching a show called Funniest Home Videos (which by title alone tells you that I seriously have a problem), does it mean that I’m doing something wrong in my book because writing it is not making me reach for the recycled loo paper kleenex?

And Cecelia is not alone. Sophie Kinsella says that she cried writing the endings to all her novels. And her novels are light-hearted. Comedy. Laugh-out-loud kind of stuff.  I can only conclude that maybe she was crying from relief that the torture of writing the novel was over.

James Frey says he ‘was usually crying as he sat at his computer’. Clearly he doesn’t cry like me, otherwise he wouldn’t have even been able to see the screen through the torrential downpour. Anyway, he was probably just crying because he knew he was about to get outed as a liar for his supposed memoir A Million Little Pieces.

I don’t know. Clearly I’m doing something wrong. I’m a crier but I’m not crying. Maybe I need to kill one of my characters off. Or make one of them wear a velour tracksuit. You know, just add something really sad.

I’ve read Cecelia. I’ve read Sophie and James. And to be totally honest, they may have set their own tear ducts in motion, but none of them moved my overactive wonders to shift even a drop. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I honestly cried reading a novel, but I have a feeling it might have been Are you there God, it’s me, Margaret, circa 1985.

So maybe there’s nothing wrong with my novel, I’m just tougher than I think. Except when it comes to 10-year olds in aprons that is.

Why 27 Dresses would take top billing in a movie montage of my life

Sometimes I feel like my life is a movie montage, just without any hot male actors. It’s a bit Bridget Jones (single girl with a serious case of foot-in-mouth-disease), a bit Dirty Dancing (total lack of coordination and a tendency to be a goody-two-shoes), a bit Rocky (you can really work up a sweat in yoga you know), a bit Working Girl (just not that kind of working girl) and a bit Home Alone (Mum and Dad are currently communing with nature somewhere in Kenya).

There is one movie in particular, however, that would really have to take top billing in a movie montage of my life. 27 Dresses*. And not because Katherine Heigel and I share nearly-the-same name, and are both tall, blonde, and love reading the wedding section of the weekend papers. And not because it includes a reference to electric boobs, which sound quite fascinating actually. But because it’s about being a bridesmaid. And that is one thing I know a thing or two about.

No wetsuits or theme weddings in my collection!

My bridesmaid career started nearly ten years ago with Dress #1 for Sal (pink strapless) and will end sometime next year with Dress #7 for Cassie (dress and date unknown but if I don’t get Cass to commit to a date soon her mother might just kill me).  After that, I’m hanging up my curling tongs - no more bridesmaid duties for me. Not because I don’t love being a bridesmaid, but because I think once you hit your mid-thirties you start getting too old to be seen in public wearing the same dress as someone else. Well, knowingly at least.

I don’t know why I’ve been asked to be a bridesmaid seven times. Having two sisters has something to do with it, but I like to think it’s because of my superior bouquet carrying technique. If I ever manage to actually get down the aisle myself, I imagine I’m going to be pretty bloody good at it by then. I’ve certainly had a lot of practice.

Anyway, the point of this post (yes, there is one, I promise) is that 27 Dresses was on the telly last night and as I was watching it I was reflecting back on some of the more memorable moments in my bridesmaid career. And I thought I’d share a few of them with you:

Putting my heel through the skirt of my bridesmaid dress at Em’s wedding. Unfortunately this occurred about two minutes before we were due to walk out the door to go to the church, not on the dance floor after partaking a little too eagerly in the beverage package later that night. Luckily, however, it was at the back and you couldn’t even notice it. At least, I’m pretty sure you couldn’t. No one mentioned anything about seeing my undies anyway.

Kriso riding it like she stole it

Giving Kriso a few too many cock-sucking-cowboys at her own Hen’s party, which resulted in her entering a semi-comatose state about three-hours into proceedings. She never made it past dinner. An amateur bridesmaids error that one. Still, while she was on it, she really rode it like she stole it.

Finding my calling as a Jewish wedding speech maker. I’ve never received more compliments in my life than I did after I made a bridesmaid speech at Dana’s wedding. Seriously. I’d bump into people on the street two years later and they were still talking about it. Unfortunately I think it had not-a-lot to do with me and a whole-lot-to-do with some comments I made about Jewish weddings. Seems that Jewish people don’t get a lot of non-Jewish people making their wedding speeches. Now, if only I could find a few more Jewish friends, or get adopted by a Jewish family, I reckon I could make a career out of Jewish wedding speeches.

Want to see my five minutes of fame? You can check it out right here.

After Ali had calmed her nerves...

Walking from the hotel to the park for Ali’s wedding and having to make a pit-stop at the corner store to get her a drink of water because she was so ‘parched’. We could see all the guests in the park from where we were standing huddled outside the shop in all of our wedding finery, so I shouted out ‘Won’t be a sec, just putting my lotto numbers in while Ali has a ciggie to calm her nerves!’. Okay, not really. But I’m sure everyone wondered what in the hell we were all doing.

Getting pushed out of the way for the bouquet catching at Sal’s wedding. And I mean that quite literally. Some girl’s mother grabbed my arm and pulled me aside and said ‘Sorry, but Sandy** needs to get to the front. She’s my only daughter not yet married.’ Another amateur mistake. Stand your ground girls, stand your ground.

Thanks to Sal, Kriso, Dana, Em, Ali, Liss and Cass for inviting me to be a part of your big days so I could have these wonderful (if not some slightly cringeworthy) memories. I honestly think that there is no greater privilege in a female friendship than being asked to be a bridesmaid. Well, apart from organ donation. Or being a surrogate to your unborn child. Definitely top three though.

I just hope I didn’t blink in too many photos.

I would also like to say, just quietly, that I am very thankful that I was not a bridesmaid in the 1980s. There was a lot of taffeta involved back then. And perms. The combination of which is really just bad all round.

*Technically speaking it should not be called 27 Dresses. It should be called 26 Dresses and a Black Dinner Suit.

** Name has been changed to protect her identity. And for the record, yes, she is married now. I am not. You do the maths.

Why the blind date is dead

Last week a couple of my friends tried to set me up on a blind date.

Now, I’m not averse to being set up, despite a few disasters in my twenties when I really began to wonder whether my friends really knew me at all. Bless their cotton socks for trying, but honestly -I’d find myself sitting across the table from a mute accountant (sorry, don’t mean to stereotype) or a guy in a beanie and Birkenstocks, and I’d think ‘Really? Really?? This is who my friends think would be a good match for me?’

You’d think this would have turned me off blind dating forever. It hasn’t. I’m 34 and single; clearly I have no idea how to find an appropriate mate myself. I’ll take all the help I can get.

But what I found at last week is that there isn’t actually such a thing as a blind date anymore. In fact, the blind date is as good as dead. It’s been killed by social media.

See, when I was in my twenties, I had to rely solely on the judgement of my friend when it came to the looks stakes of my blind date. You know, a description that went along the lines of ‘He’s perfect for you! He’s tall, and he has brown hair (under the beanie), and…..well, he’s really tall!’ So you’d turn up at the agreed meeting point armed with nothing but a vague description that could fit half the men in Brisbane, and a single red rose clutched between your teeth.

Not anymore. Now you can jump on the internet and pull up their Facebook photo faster than you can say ‘Did your grandma really knit that for you?!’. And the same goes for them. No longer am I just a tall blonde, I’m a tall blonde with a slightly lazy left eye, crows feet and a touch of regrowth. Actually, I’m wearing blue rimmed plastic sunglasses and a panama hat in my Facebook photo, so I’m a tall blonde with no fashion sense.

It hadn’t occurred to me that I could look up his photo pre-date until one of the guys I work with said ‘So what does he look like?’ and I said ‘I have no idea. It’s a blind date (derr).’ And he said (slowly, to make sure I could understand) ‘What, haven’t you looked him up on the internet (derr)?’ So we did.

Obviously he looked up my photo too because at around 3pm on the afternoon of the planned not-at-all-blind date, he called in sick. He sounded genuinely apologetic, but I can’t be fooled. I know it wasn’t man-flu. It was Facebook fright. 

Damn those blue sunglasses. 

So my blind date which wasn’t really a blind date didn’t turn out to be any kind of date at all. Sigh. Looks like its back to the eligible bachelors at Bravo for me……

When Creative Girl went Corporate

Four weeks. Twenty days. Around fifty cups of herbal tea. Forty trips on the cross river ferry. Approximately 500 various responses to the questions “How was your trip?” and “Is your book published yet?”. Five pairs of laddered stockings. Ten calls to the IT Help Desk to recover forgotten passwords.

That’s how long I’ve been back in my corporate girl shoes for. And yes, it’s been a massive shock to my creative girl way of life (especially the herbal tea bit – I’m not drinking coffee at the moment and it’s nearly killing me). Such a shock that it took about two weeks for my brain to even really start functioning again. On my first day my boss Lorraine asked me to start thinking about developing a dashboard to measure KPI’s for Bid and BD costs, and I nearly had to ask her what a KPI was. Key Plot Item? Keep Pimms Iced? I remember just nodding and writing it down, trying to look serious and knowledgeable, all the while wondering how long it was until home time.

Unsurprisingly, not much in Corporate Girl world has changed in six months. Lots of new faces to avoid making eye contact with in the lift and a new job, but pretty much everything else is the same. The biggest surprise was only having 1800 emails in my inbox on day one, most of which were junk. Although there were a few in there from around March/April from people asking me to please run a workshop for them. Which was four to five months after I left – meaning that they hadn’t even noticed I was gone all that time. A good reminder that I’m not nearly as indispensible as I would possibly like to think I am.

As for my new role? So far, so good. Mostly because I still don’t know exactly what my role is so I’m able to bring some creativity into my corporate girl life when answering the question ‘So, what are you doing now?’ I’ve taken to just murmuring something about ‘global projects’ and ‘client development’ and I find that it tends to make people’s eyes glaze over, stops any further questioning in its tracks and lets me get back to surfing the net and stalking people on Facebook (just joking Lorraine. I swear. I would never stalk anyone on Facebook).

I will admit that the fulltime-work/writing juggling act is not nearly as easy as I thought it was going to be. I distinctly remember writing a blog entry several months ago (around the time I was in Spain and had 24 hours a day to devote to nothing more taxing that writing, eating and sleeping) where I stated that I thought it would be bloody easy to fit it in when I went back to work. Just an hour or two a day, that’s all I need.

Hmmm…..

You see, it turns out that spending my day talking about the impacts of the carbon tax on our clients is strangely draining on my creative juices. And the fact that I’m addicted to Masterchef hasn’t really helped either. The only writing I seem to be doing at the moment are emails to my accountant to organise my tax return and filling out forms to get my drivers license replaced. Even my beloved blog is slowly going to seed.

I clearly need a new plan of action.

So. I’m going to start up a new blog. Exactly what it will be about is still a work in progress – but it will be something that lets me continue to blog about my book, bachelors or bus station toilets. Stay tuned. I'll tell you all about it next week....just as soon as bloody Masterchef is over.

There's a few people I want to thank (because the fat lady is really bellowing now).

Alright. Enough stories of woe about all these Brisbane (in)eligible bachelors. Time to get down to more serious business like the fact that I am returning to work tomorrow. TOMORROW. As in about 10 hours time.

Good God. I really have no idea how this happened. One minute I was sitting in Spain having a bloody good time, writing a (crappy) novel, sleeping in and generally just minding my own business, and the next minute I’m back in Brisbane kicking myself for somehow not managing to get any of my jackets dry cleaned in the six months I had off, and checking all of my nude stockings for ladders.

So I can wear them, not strangle myself. Don't worry.

How do I feel about returning to work? Brilliant of course! (My boss reads my blog). Okay, maybe a tad depressed but I think that’s only natural after six months off. I’m also a little nervous to be honest – nervous that my brain has entered a permanent state of hibernation and will have forgotten how to function. I might need to pack a marketing textbook in my handbag just in case someone actually asks me a question about marketing. Like what it is.

I’m still not exactly sure what I’m going to be doing tomorrow, but I suspect it will involve answering the questions ‘How was your trip?’ (Fantastic!) and ‘How’s the book coming along?’ (Nearly finished!) around 850 times. My good friend Kellie Hogan suggested I just issue a memo on my arrival that provides a summary of answers to all possible questions to save repeating myself. I think that might actually be a good idea, thanks Kel. Or I might just commandeer the reception PA system and make a quick speech on my arrival.

To mark the end of my time as a full time ‘creative’, I wanted to write a list of acknowledgements. You know, like the kind you see in the back of a book where they thank Tom, Dick and his mate Harry for helping them with the book. I’ve actually got a lot of people to thank for helping make the last six months possible. And as my book will probably never see the light of day, I thought best to do it right here, in my blog.

Kelly Kent, aspiring novelist and inspiring friend, who made a bet with me two years ago and then kept me to it. Thanks for helping me with my ‘writing wobbles’, and encouraging me to just dive in and bloody well do it. I doubt any of this would have ever happened without you.

Lizzie and Paul. I truly can’t say enough about these two. Thanks for the festival of Paul, the copious amounts of herbal tea, not subjecting me to any horror movies, your gorgeous country cottage, robust debates about the movie Love Actually, and most of all for opening your home to a writer-in-residence you hadn’t even laid eyes on for five years. I can’t wait for my new bedroom in Bloomsbury to be finished!

Jane and Ben (and Bella the dog), the very-soon-parents-to-be who welcomed me so warmly into their amazing Knightsbridge home for the second year in a row, and who always make me feel like another Cleary sister! Thanks for my A-class rugby experience, teaching me how to make sausage rolls, and giving me a lifelong aversion to yellow paint/80 year old handymen.

Kate and Keith. For loaning me your awesome pad in Clapham while you were on holidays in Australia (and trusting me with your super deluxe kitchen).

Frank and Lorraine: my Corporate Girl bosses who said ‘Sure, off you go’, and are actually willing to take my hibernating brain back on again. Risky move.

Wonderful friends, sisters, family, colleagues and random distant acquaintances who have genuinely encouraged my novel writing escapade. I hear horror stories about people who tell family and friends they are writing a novel, only to be made to feel like they’re delusional and should be admitted to the local psychiatric ward ASAP. My experience has been the total opposite, to the point where it would be impossible for me to actually name everyone individually without getting RSI from typing.

Everyone who reads my blog. Yes, you out there, whoever you are and wherever you may be – from Russia to Japan, Singapore to Brasil. It always gives me a massive kick when people tell me they read my blog/their Mum reads my blog (hi Lyn!)/I made them laugh/they tell me about their favourite post. Thanks for being my writing guinea pigs. I hope it wasn’t too torturous.

Dell computers. Turns out your laptop was suitable after all, even if I did lose E, F, N and S.

And of course Mum and Dad, who always encourage and support me no matter what crazy idea I’m dreaming up (I’m quitting my job to go and work in the Canadian ski fields/I’m taking six months off to write a book/I’m getting a tattoo). I feel fortunate every day to be your daughter. Oh, and I’m joking about the tattoo.

Finally, to the woman who stole my wallet on Friday night. Thank you for your nimble finger work right before I am due back at work instead of last week when I would have had heaps of time to get my new license, medicare card etc sorted out. I would have given you the $50 I had in there if you’d just asked. Okay, maybe not, but seriously. Get a job.

I think that’s everyone, but I’m not sure (please refer to earlier note re: brain hibernation).

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Writing is a very solitary endeavour, and yet I honestly couldn’t have done it without my fantastic support crew. And I promise to repeat this if a publishing miracle ever does appear in my future. Even if I really am using a zimmer frame by the time that ever happens.