So this is it. Last post of 2023.
And while we don’t break up till mid next week, It’s time.
For you and for me.
A month of peace, quiet, overeating and underwhelming presents.
So I was thinking how I could end this year of blogging before realising there’s a whole other year of it to come – so instead I’ll end on two things.
First of all is thank you.
Thank you to all the people who read my rubbish. Who get in contact because of my rubbish. Who send me emails telling me it’s rubbish.
I do miss not reading comments on the blog, but removing them has let me become a hell of a lot more productive given I don’t have to continually check what has just been written. [Though the daily emails I get from John, Andy, George and – occasionally, Lee, keep me questioning how to fill in my weekly timesheet]
The other good thing with the blog silence is that I don’t have to deal with the couple of assholes who kept sending me shit. And by ‘shit’, I mean threats and attacks that were far more personal than the threat and attacks everyone else used to write every day.
So it’s a win:win.
Secondly, thank you to everyone who has made this year special to me.
From my family … to my friends … to my team mates and colleagues … to my clients … to the conference organisers who stupidly invited me to be a part of their event … to Nottingham Forest for staying up … to basically everyone who added to the year rather than took it away.
Because I’m in NZ, I get an amazing break where everything and everyone shuts down. As I wrote here, it’s probably the greatest example of protecting mental health than anywhere I’ve ever lived.
But while NZ is a wonderful place, don’t go thinking it’s perfect.
It’s not.
Not even with it’s amazing beauty – as demonstrated in the photo immediately above, which is from the bottom of my street.
And for the record, I don’t mean it in terms of ‘Dream Small’ sense – where too many of the younger generations here feel tolerated rather than welcomed.
No … what I’m talking about is in the alleged kindness and politeness of the people.
Now before any Kiwi reads this blows their gasket, bear with me …
You see on face value, when you arrive here you can’t help but think the people are the nicest bunch of kind, happy, considerate folk you’ve ever met. Always smiling. Always accommodating. Always calm and casual.
You may think they must be heaven sent given the aura of wonderful that radiates out of them.
Then one day you’re in a workshop and a client asks you to write what you think of their brand personality and someone writes something that makes you realise that under that soft skin of compassion and encouragement lies a bubbling cauldron of utter evil bastard.
And while this should make you like them less, it makes you love them more.
Especially when it came from our ever-lovely CCO, Simon Vicars.
Did he say?
He said this:
How amazing is that?
Better yet, he read it to everyone in the meeting.
Which is why I cannot think of a better way to leave this blog for the year, especially as his words could be as much about me and this blog as it was about this brands personality.
[For the record, the client agreed … and it was why they came to us to help them with it]
So to all of you … have an amazing break wherever you are and whatever you do and may you embrace truth over harmony like Si embraces truth over harmony.
Thank you again. For everything.
Till next year … specifically, Jan 15.
Love ya.
Rx