Recently I joined a new company in a managerial role. This is always a tricky thing to do because it’s like you’re joining a family who have their own established culture and way of doing things. Then as the outsider, you’re in a leadership position which can be a bit uncomfortable at first. You need to balance leadership with humility – a delicate things to do.
When I joined the company, there were a few things that I thought immediately that I’d like to change. For one thing, I noticed that they didn’t have name badges. Australia does have some rather large companies, despite being perceived as such a small country, and our company is sizeable. It’s always been important to me as a manager and also having a background in HR to work towards creating the right mood in a company. Happy workers are good workers, and the culture of the work place is so important. I’ve worked in companies that are cold, where no one looks at each other in the elevator, and it’s not a nice place to work. Companies that have a sense of community operate much more cohesively. I mean, it isn’t surprising. That’s why name tags are so important. Learning someone’s name is a huge icebreaker from the start. You chat with them in the break room, learn about their role in the company and a bit aboút their personal life and it’s a great thing because a few months down the track you’ll be calling on them to help you out or collaborate on something. I persuaded the boss to factor in magnetic badges into the budget. They’re a good investment because they last longer than the plastic-paper ones, and people treat them with more respect, meaning they’ll take the aim of social cohesion within the company more seriously. Further down the line, I hope to organise more social events and activities during lunch break.
I thought everything was fine with my dear old house. I’ve been living here for ten years, and although the house is quite old, there’s never been a single problem. But then when the first thing broke it suddenly triggered an avalanche of other things. It all started with the humble old light bulb in the hall. Just blew out one day when I came home. Next things I knew, l sudden needed window replacements, exterminators and 
sian grocery, but nothing like they have in Melbourne. And the nightlife? Hah, don’t make me laugh. Clubs, bars and restaurants are so subpar, you’d be better off having a rave in your living room. 
When you’re in high school, your world is very small. You don’t realise it at the time but your experience is extremely limited. Many young people (like me) grow up feeling that they are special. I was top of my class in school and felt superior to my peers. I believed I was talented and that I’d go on to make a mark on the world. All of that changed when I graduated to college. 
Man, jargon is tiring. Searching around empty offices, even more so. Paperwork is perhaps the jewel in the crown of things that are really, incredibly tiring. I’m not giving up though, because I have people who are counting on me to give them a job. I’ll look at as many empty offices as it takes, and I’m really not keen on the idea of renting.
Rich people are the only people who are allowed to be eccentric. The middle class are always the most conservative while the working class are judged and condemned for their peccadillos. For instance, take Steven Kings who has become one of the richest writers of all time. He now lives in a haunted house. Who in their right mind would want that? He’s got two period mansions in the States, one of them is a gothic manor fenced off by a formidable wrought iron gate, the bars fashioned into spider webs. These are the kinds of things that rich people take licence to do. 
Finally on the topic of rich people, another writer friend of mine also demonstrates this illustrious disregard of social mores. He’s purchasing a disused mental hospital and turning it into a kind of haunted fun house for ghost hunts and writers’ workshops. Nuts, all of them!
When my husband and I got married it felt like we had everything in common. We were alike in all the right ways and different in all the right ways and we tended to bounce off each other’s ideas. Our dream was to get a cottage by the beach and it seemed like we were going to be on our honeymoon for the rest of our lives. All of that came crashing down when it came to moving in together. 
I may have made a seemingly minor mistake a short while ago that is now coming back to bite me on the behind. When my son was falling asleep the other night I was telling him a ‘bedtime story’. I’ve put that in quotations because, after reading him the actual story from start to finish, he wanted me to keep going so I just started making things up. Nonsense mainly. This is a pretty standard practice in our household and I usually don’t think anything of it, except that he latched onto one, relatively minor detail, when I thought he was pretty much asleep and now he’s become kind of obsessed with it.
Do you ever find yourself getting curious about life’s oddities? I do. I love unearthing forgotten inventions at Trash and Treasure markets and learning about the obscure professions that people have. Recently while browsing on ebay I discovered a retro photobooth up for sale. The thing was long out of order but a collectable nonetheless and it got me really curious about photobooths. Did people still use photobooths? I assumed that they were for people in need of a last-minute passport headshot or teenage girls drunk on seven eleven slurpees. Turns out, the humble photobooth has a long and fascinating history.