Happy New Year

Just want to wish you a Happy New Year. Even though for some people around me the year has not ended so well, everybody I speak to is optimistic, and I feel very much the same way too.

As my friend Nigel once pointed out, "A bend in the road is not the end of the road - as long as you make the turn". Let's make the turn and enjoy a great year.

All the best for 2009!

David

"A Normal Day" by Caroline

My Dad's wife's daughter wrote the following piece - I think it's just great. Thanks to Caroline for letting me post it.

A Normal Day!

My phone alarm rings at 5.45am, pretty lights flash and it plays a happy tune. I swear at it and turn it off. About 5 minutes later I drag myself unwillingly from my warm bed into the cold, the heating is off. I get myself ready for work, make a cup of tea, and some boring sandwiches for lunch. It always amazes me how something that looks so unappetising at 6 in the morning, I can devour eagerly at lunchtime. I leave the house at 7am. The dark walk to the bus stop, still cold, sometimes wet too. Board the bus full of dodgy looking characters. Get off about 20 minutes later and start the walk to work, keeping my eyes open and my senses alert for the off the lead, unmuzzled Rottweiler who is taken for a walk by his irresponsible owner at about this time. It has come charging up to me growling and barking on about 3 occasions, leaving me a nervous, shaking wreck.

Another boring day at work, it’s like groundhog day, the same faces, saying the same things, all moaning how they don’t want to be there and how cold they are. I feel cold all day too, warehouses do not have much in the way of heating. The only time I see proper daylight in the winter is when I go outside to the smoking hut in my break. The smoking hut is a converted bike shed with some plastic chairs in it. Some people go to wine bars or nice places for their lunch. I sit in a sordid canteen that smells of other people’s disgusting microwaved food, and then I go outside to a corrugated iron hut and sit next to a dustbin.

4pm, the time I should be pleased about, the time I can leave that depressing cold place. But I’m really only swapping one sort of hell for another. Walk in to find husband sitting in front of loud telly, he knows I can’t stand loud telly. Sometimes he glances my way as I walk in and says hello, but sometimes he’s asleep or he just finds the telly far more interesting than anything I’ve got to say. I go into the kitchen and put cotton wool in my ears, make a cup of tea and go and sit in the garden for a much needed cigarette, or two, no matter how cold, dark or wet it is. If the chair is wet I take a towel to put on the chair. I stay out there savouring the peace until I get too cold. Then I go in and sit and read the paper, I just feel like sitting in a comfortable chair and chilling out for a while but it’s hard to relax while listening to the loud telly, which is accompanied by him whistling and tapping the remote control against his hand or flicking the battery compartment open and shut. Sometimes I’m still cold if there’s no heating on, as it only goes on if he’s cold, it doesn’t matter about me.

Make myself and my son something to eat, sometimes I cook for all of us but it’s not always that easy when we don’t all eat the same things (we are all fussy eaters) or we don’t want to eat at the same time. I hate cooking anyway and can’t be bothered too much after a day at work. If I do cook for him, he comes into the kitchen and eats it standing up, he says it’s better for the digestive system, although I think it’s just a bad habit he got into when he lived alone and didn’t have a table. He then puts his plate in the sink as soon as he’s finished, in about 60 seconds and goes back to the telly. I wash up. I listen to my ipod if the telly is too loud or he is whistling. We watch the soaps if they are on that night, I’m wishing the volume was lower and that he didn’t feel the need to tap and whistle through it. Sometimes it’s a relief when it finishes, although I do like the soaps, I have a reason to leave the settee in front of the telly.

For the remainder of the evening its tv channels of his choice, I do not want to watch sport, war films or Bart Simpson! I have a chat to anyone who happens to be on MSN. Then I have a shower and go to bed early. Lie awake till at least midnight, sometimes later as I’m unable to sleep through his snoring. Can he never be quiet? He even irritates me when he’s asleep! I crave silence! Sometimes the only way to get any sleep is to go in the spare room. Peace descends when he leaves for work about 4.45am until my phone alarm rings at 5.45, pretty lights flash and it plays a happy tune…….

2008 © Caroline Levett

Running to change

I am reading a great book right now by a guy called Haruki Murakami. It's called "What I talk about when I talk about running". There are two things I picked up from the first pages of the book that hooked me into his book, and him as a person - he is a writer, and he is a runner. These are three of my main interests too, and considering he loves music and also used to run a bar, I feel a strong connection with the guy...

He is in his 50's now, and still runs a marathon every year. His book is a kind of mini-biography tied together around the 3 big themes of his life, and especially he describes some of the turning points in his life. The real key was when he decided to become a writer. At that time, he owned and ran a bar in Tokyo, and was trying to write and work at the same time. But the two lifestyles were not suited, and at a certain moment he made a decision.

To be able to do what he really wanted to do - write - Murakami realised he would have to change his lifestyle. His normal day was working at his jazz bar until 3am, sleeping 'til midday and snatching some hours to write before going back to work. But he realised that the most creative hours of his day were the first few in the morning. So his work and life did not fit with this at all.

He decided to commit two years of his life to writing a novel, even though he still had debt from the purchase of the bar some years before. It was a risk, but he felt it was the best thing to do, to suit who he was and who he wanted to be. He was 33 when he made this decision.

He also decided to go to bed at 10pm, and get up before 5. It was a complete shift, and he lost friends who were used to his bar-work-life combination. He accepted that because he knew it was the only way to get the best out of his abilities.

But Murakami found that one other part of his life lost balance. There was a lot of physical work in his job in the bar, and therefore he stayed fit - this changed after a few months of sitting at the desk and puttng the pounds on. So to keep in balance with his decision, he re-kindled an interest in a sport he could do anytime - long distance running.

His new life as a writer suited the running. And he started to fit his life - daily plan, diet - around the running. He set himself the target to run 6 days a week, and to write a certain volume in a certain period. Then he built his life around these two priorities.

It turns out that he sees many parallels in these two major pursuits. He describes a marathon as being a similar project to a novel. It is a long term thing, and to achieve it, you need a plan, and most of all you need to set the pace in both preparation (training, or research) and doing the task itself (running the actual marathon or writing the novel). And once you have that pace, you have to concentrate hard to keep it. In short - plan; commit; stay committed.

In the last 10 years, I have tried a bit of running. At times, I have done quite a bit - including running 5 half marathons and quite a few 10km runs - but I never really got serious about it. I never made the kinds of decisions that this writer made to be able to get the best out of my ability to run.

And yet, I know that when I run regularly, a series of positive qualities develop. I become more clear-headed; have more discipline; lose weight; I feel stronger mentally; am more creative and write more than any other time; and I feel better about myself. Despite all of this, I always get side-tracked by work, friends, holiday, just not feeling like it, losing concentration, all pulled together by a bunch of excuses to enable me not to have to commit to something which, I deep down believe, is something I can gain so much from as a person.

The same goes with writing, with even less output than the running. The most I have achieved is a few short stories here and there, completing a couple of creative writing courses, and getting down an intermittent diary called "Morning Pages" (at least this has yielded a dozen notebooks of scribbles first thing in the morning from the last 8 years). I never made the commitment truly to develop it.

In a previous piece about what I think about when the plane is "going down", I wrote that my main wish was to have 6 months off. But I think I was not clear with myself. The reasons for having the time off are followed by two massive desires - to write, and to run. To take time to do two things that feel good and right when I do them. And to use the time to change my life and form new habits that are truly in tune with my real and raw character.

I realise too that saying I need 6 months off to make the change is a way of hiding from the truth - I have simply not been prepared to make the decisions to change, and take the actions and accept the consequences of those changes. That won't be different if I have 6 months off, unless I really commit.

It's inspiring to read about somebody who did make those kinds of decisions, and who has followed the path and consequences of those decisions for over 20 years. It is an amazing co-incidence to find somebody with the same interests and some of the same choices ahead of them, and to look back on how he managed those decisions.

As we move towards 2009, I feel some big and radical changes coming.

Do I like my company? Part 1.

I was asked yesterday whether I had forgotten that I liked working for this company. It was quite a surprise for me, but that old friend said it seemed like I was sour when they read my blog. So here is my honest attempt to redress the balance and make clear that I may have had a few disappointing months, but I have also had many great years - not a bad combination! It comes in a few parts. This is part 1.

The same company has been my employer for 16 years. In that time I always had decent or good managers, great colleagues and interesting work. I have worked in 3 different countries. And I visited 41 countries in those 16 years (including Albania, Singapore, China, America and most European countries). Wow! What a life. How could I feel sour about that?

In the first phase of my life with the company, I was lucky enough to be in a 'pioneering' part of it, making and selling loudspeakers when the rest of the business was doing something completely different. We had around 50 people working there, and I learned so much - especially about how a small group of highly motivated people can work as a team and almost achieve the impossible.

It laid out a part of my future. The job was advertised in a local paper, and I saw the headline "Today Woking, Tomorrow the World". Woking was the town the office was based on, and the world part was because we were about to start selling in other countries. The headline has been a true description of my life in the company.

I also had the pleasure (and sometimes pain) to work with Lance Miller, then Marketing Director, who had spent 20 years in Advertising. When I joined the company, I had no idea which end of a mouse was which. Lance changed that - he decided that, in the face of Marketing budget cuts, we would design our own advertising and brochures ourselves. He ordered a colour copier and a high-powered Mac and said "Let's get bloody creative! You do the desktop publishing, I do the art direction". In a few months I learned a skill which has stood with me ever since, and sat for long hours listening to Lance explain the basics - not only about desktop publishing but about how to live your working life.

My Christmas Cd's are always a re-visit of those times and I hear Lance over my shoulder as I sit at home designing the things, as if he were saying again as he did in those days "don't knock it out on a piece of A4 - make it a document! Present it. If they expect it on A4, make it A3. If they want A3, make it A0. It'll do won't do! Presentation is 9 points of the law!!! Get bloody creative, Beckett!!!!!!" Yes, Lance, it has been ringing in my ears for 16 years, and all of those guiding principles are with me today, every day.

I also had the luck to work with Glen Harris. He was the best sales manager I ever met in my 16 years in this company. He could tell you the names of the wife, kids, hobbies and interests of all key customers. He defied logic, because he was a genuine and nice person, with real interest in people - yet he was a salesman. Sometimes Sales has a negative image, but the way Glen did it, he made it a noble pursuit. He did it by being a good, honest, interested person who connected with his customers like a friend, yet he knew the moment for "Business is Business".

Unfortunately we never sold enough. And despite rumours of TV products coming out (yes, even in the mid-90's...) we were so different to the rest of the company, there was no hope that we would have a future. In early '97 as it was announced the company would close, I was made redundant (so I am one of the very few people in our company to experience this twice) and I had to make my plan for the next part of my life.

Lasting memories of that time - working every day, 7 days a week, 6 weeks in a row before 2 back-to-back exhibitions. I left the office one afternoon on a Saturday and sat in the garden of a friend who was a nanny. Her 3-year old charge was running around screaming and yelling in the garden and I just sat against a wall and snored, exhausted.

But at the end of the triumphant PLAZA event - where we shared a Best Stand award with a company who spent 10 times the money on their stand - and the amazing Live 93 event with 150,000 visitors, Lance said to me "what's it like to be a f§$%ing star?" And I knew it was a standard quote, but I loved it. That feeling of total commitment, and getting the recognition for a job extraordinarily well-done, has been something I have wanted to give and get over the years.

Other memorable experiences include travelling the length and breadth of Sweden, visiting dealers and selling like hell with a salesman called Tommy Johansson. He and I made the story of the products and brand a great thing to buy into. I learned a lot about sales that week, but also a key thing about Marketing too - 6 months later, most of the dealers had most of the stock still sitting in their shop. They bought our story, but couldn't sell it to their customers!

Another memorable experience was driving across Europe to the MusikMesse fair in Frankfurt with a van full of exhibition kit. My colleague Budgie took a look at the map and said "sod driving North then South on the motorway - we'll cut across country and take that little road direct to Koblenz". It turned out to a be a near-disastrous choice, as the snow poured down, and we drove at 30km/h for 5 hours along a tiny road with no lights, seeing car after car slide into the ditch at the side of the road and wondering what the hell we would do if that happened to us. Completely terrifying, but we made it.

It all came to an end, and as it did, we were treated with dignity and respect. One example of that - I was looking into buying a house 3 months before the company went under. Glen took me aside and suggested I should wait a bit and see how the company is doing. He saved from making a possibly disastrous investment. I wish some people in my company now could have had the same integrity.

The first chapter in my real working life had come to a close and I look back on it as some of the most exciting and forming years of my life. Lance brought things out of me that I didn't know existed - like the skill of presentation which has been a great advantage ever since, or the ability/need to think creatively. Glen showed me how sales can really be done. And I loved working for my company.

And the next part follows later...

Christmas & Thanks

Just want to take a moment to thank everybody who has taken the time to read the blog, and all my colleagues who have shown such patience with the Works Council. The support from all sides has been very positive, and we are doing our best to get the best outcome for employees and the business.

And a good outcome seems on the way. After the announcements of last Friday, it seems there is security for those not moving and security for those who make the move. That seems the fair way to go.

Hopefully everybody gets a chance to relax and enjoy the Christmas break. Keep an eye out for more updates over Christmas, as there will be plenty of time to write...

Qualities and non-qualities - part 2

Here is the 2nd part of traits that are recommended not to be express in work or life.

11. Claiming credit that we don't deserve; the most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success.

12. Making excuses; the need to reposition our annoying behaviour as a permanent fixture so people excuse it.

13. Clinging to the past; the need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our past; a subset of blaming everyone else.

14. Playing favourites; failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly

15. Refusing to express our regret; the inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we are wrong, or recognise how our actions affect others.

16. Not listening; the most passive-aggressive form of disrespect for colleagues.

17. Failing to express gratitude; the most basic form of bad manners.

18. Punishing the messenger; the misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually only trying to help us.

19. Passing the buck; the need to blame everyone but ourselves.

20. An excessive need to be "me"; exalting our faults as virtues simply because they're who we are.

Time to tidy up your life... Brian Patten

My last posting mentioned the need to tidy up, and it reminded me of a great poem by Brian Patten. It is called "It is time to tidy up your life!" and seems especially appropriate now.

It's a moment to review and re-think. In our company/community, we are pushed to think again about our lives. It's a result of something very basic and simple, that maybe some of us took for granted, being moved.

Our job is possibly moving to UK, and some of us might forget that only a few weeks before, we might have sat and complained about how we didn't like our manager, or colleagues, or direction of company, leadership, pay, empowerment, etc...

We are focused on the unfairness of the possible job re-location and in many ways rightly so. On the other hand, we have to remind ourselves of what we felt some weeks or months ago. Were we really happy in the job? Were we fulfilled, confident that we could express ourselves? Did we have frustrations and were they even enough to think about moving along if we got around to it?

It's a difficult situation for all, and I know many people in difficult circumstances, who were perfectly happy with their job, management and colleagues. And for those who just bought houses, or have built up a life here, it is a serious and tough thing to deal with.

And there are those who were frustrated, and who did want to make a move already - so for those it can be a chance to think again, and tidy up.

I own a house here in Amsterdam, and have built up my life here with friends. So the idea of moving is difficult. But at least I have a choice as I am not so fixed and had been thinking of a next move already - I see it as a chance to think again and see outside my current life. I feel for those who don't have the flexibility to make the choice so easily.

Enjoy the poem.

It is time to tidy up your life!
Into your body has leaked this message.
No conscious actions, no broodings
Have brought the thought upon you.
It is time to take into account
What has gone and what has replaced it.
Living your life according to no plan
The decisions were numerous and
The ways to go were one.

You stand between trees this evening;
The cigarette in your cupped hand
Glows like a flower.
The drizzle falling seems
To wash away all ambition
There are scattered through your life
Too many dreams to entirely gather.

Through the soaked leaves, the soaked grass,
The earth-scents and distant noises
This one thought is re-occurring.:
It is time to take
Into account what has gone,
To cherish and replace it.

You learned early that celebrations
Do not last forever,
So what use now the sorrows that mount up?
You must withdraw your love from that
Which would kill your love.

There is nothing flawless anywhere,
Nothing that has not the power to hurt.
As much as hate, tenderness is the weapon of one
Whose love is neither perfect nor complete.

Coaching yourself

I have been reading a book called "Coach Yourself to Success". If I had seen the book on the shelf, I would never have bought it because the title seems too, too obvious and cheap. But a friend of mine in Vienna was reading it in German, and in that language the title is "Coach dich selbst, sonst coacht dich keiner", or "Coach yourself because nobody else will do it for you". That's a title that means something for me.

The basic concept behind her book is that we put up with so many things in our lives and those things cause stress. The stress creates a loss of energy, and that loss of energy means we have no chance to focus solidly on the things we really want, because we have to deal with so many things we don't want (but that we put up with) in our daily lives.

One suggestion she makes at the beginning is to make a list of all the things that you put up with. This might be anything as diverse as a missing button from a shirt, through to a relationship we are unhappy in - and everything inbetween.

My own list consisted of clothes on the floor in my bedroom, pictures not put up, light fittings missing, untidy computer table, unneeded exercise machine in my spare room, being overweight, not contacting friends and family enough, an annoying colleague at work, bad sleep... I ended up with around 55 things that bothered me and that I accept in my life.

I immediately started to sort out the small stuff on the list - she suggested that you get the big stuff written down, but not worry about it to begin with because you need energy to deal with the big stuff. That will come from the small things being out of the way, making way for more energy. Within a weekend, I got rid of around 15 items on the list. Some have re-surfaced again (my computer table is a mess) but I will keep this process going over and over.

Well, I am only on chapter 11 of the 101 good ideas there are in the book. I will share more ideas from it later, and can highly recommend it to anybody who wants to make a change in their life.

Life Poem

I was sent this poem by a good friend. I hope they don't mind me passing this on. I really needed this today, because it started finally to hit me what I am going to miss about the people I know in my company if the proposal for the re-location goes ahead.

The word 'company' doesn't feel good these days.

I prefer to use the word "community", even though some people may find it out of place. I am genuinely inspired by the quality of people in the community that is my company.

My hero Tom Robinson once said "the word Community is a political statement. Politicians use it as in 'we should all be the same.' But being in a Community is not that we all have to be the same. We just have to accept the difference."

And I live by that. I try to accept the difference every day, enjoy the difference - in a company where we are full of difference - in a community of 50 nationalities. That is why I left England and came to this great place.

I came here because of diversity, difference of opinion, difference of culture, difference of perspective. I didn't come here to be the same as everybody else.

Please enjoy the poem.

Rumi - Guest House
This being human is a guest house,
every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond

Last Lecture

Hi, take a look at this video, link sent to me by a good friend. It is a real lesson in life.

Why not just move to London?

So far, the idea to move 233 roles to London is still a proposal and details are being discussed between Management and the Works Council.

Nevertheless, I have been asked by so many people about why I don't just move back to the UK that I felt it would be fair to give my reasons.

I tell everybody that each individual has a different personal situation, and they have to decide themselves from that point of view. I also advise people that professionally, it is a good decision to go to London if they want to. It is clear that not everybody will move with the roles, so there will be space to develop careers for those who go. Of course it depends on package offered, etc, but I see that also as part of the personal, decision - everybody has a different idea of what an acceptable package is, so I can't comment on that. But in terms of opportunities, I truly believe those who make the move should see possibilities open up.

My own personal situation makes it almost impossible to move to UK ("almost" because "never say never" - but "almost" means highly unlikely). Before I moved to Amsterdam at age 30, I can't say I had a bad life. But in some way I was destined to feel at home in Amsterdam, which is how I have felt after being here for so many years.

When I grew up, we went on canal holidays for 13 years. This gave me an inbuilt love of water, and I love the canals in Amsterdam, as well as the water everywhere in Holland. Then we lived in a house next to a windmill (yes, really) from when I was 11 to 19 years old. My first business trip was to Amsterdam in 1993, during which I had my 26th birthday - I can still feel the hangover after trying to keep up with my bosses in the pubs during my birthday celebration. (Memorable moment of the trip - Glen asking for a beer, and being given the standard 'Vaasje', 30ML and a lot of froth. He looked disdainfully at it, drank it in 3 seconds and asked the barman "can I have 2 more please?")

So life was good as I grew up and made my first steps in my career. But as soon as I moved to Amsterdam, life started to get more interesting. Boundaries loosened, I met people from different places and cultures, I felt freed of a lot of English obligations to be polite and embarrassed most hours of the day, and took to Amsterdam life like it was home. And after a while, it has become my home.

The simplest way I can describe that feeling is the comment of another friend who came from abroad to work in the city. She said that after living in Amsterdam for a while, she felt like she had taken a mask off.

The obligations of being in your own country are subtle and binding, and of course can be very re-assuring. But making the brave move to live in another country, and taking in all it has to offer, whether good or bad, means a release and an openness to change which I can't go back on.

Home is made up of many things - people, physical home and belongings, surroundings, and maybe most of all a general feeling of well-being. The balance of these things for me has come together in Amsterdam.

In short, moving to London would be a personal step backwards, even if potentially it could lead to a professional step forward. It's a serious decision, and not something I take lightly. "Never say never". But Amsterdam is where I feel at home.