Filed under: Attitude & Aptitude, Colenso, Collegues, Context, Doctor, Emotion, Empathy, Experience, Eye, Family, Friendship, Health, Nurses
Yep, that’s me.
Looking more and more like a pirate.
In fact all I need is a hook and a hat and my metamorphosis will be complete.
Sadly, I don’t look like this because I am going to a fancy dress party, I look like this because I’m going blind.
Good news. Only in one eye.
Bad news. The other eye is fucked from years ago.
I’ve written a bunch this year about my ‘new’ eye problem … how it seemingly came from nowhere when I was holidaying in Penang at Christmas.
I’ve also written how it is part of a rare, auto-immune disease that’s been triggered by the trauma my other eye experienced when I was 21.
I know, it makes little sense … but the upshot is my eye is getting worse – not better – which is humbling, frustrating and terrifying.
What makes it more painful is no one knows what triggered the disease in the first place, nor do they know what is causing it to sustainably resist all the treatment despite all the tests I’ve had, and having.
And boy, have I had a lot.
Injections.
Laser.
Drops.
Photographs.
Scans.
Blood-tests.
So many eye tests, I know all the letters without looking at them. Hahaha.
I’ve been seen by optometrists, surgeons, specialists and – because it is such a ‘unique’ problem – a fuckload of medical students.
Hell, the chief surgeon called me a ‘medical celebrity’ … possibly the best backhanded compliment ever articulated.
And while an operation in November will hopefully dramatically slow down the speed of my vision loss – potentially even restoring some of it – they’ve already told me I will be facing a lifetime of treatment and care.
The problem is my eye is a fucking diva.
The disease – if left untreated – will take away all of my vision.
The medicine for that creates massive pressure that can also take away my vision.
And the pressure meds are causing weird cataracts that are already robbing me of my sight.
[And no Andy, it has nothing to do with the size of font I use on this blog … though now, when I write a post, I have to make it so big that it could easily double as a fucking billboard]
So for the Doctors, it’s like a giant game of whack-a-mole, just with eyes …
Or said another way:
My eye is a perfect storm of fucked-up, pain-in-the-ass, one-in-a-million problems.
Aren’t I lucky, hahaha.
Now, before this gets too depressing, I appreciate that compared to many, I am in an incredibly good position.
I’m not just saying that, I mean it.
I have great doctors and nurses looking out for me, which I’m incredibly grateful for. On top of that, I’ve been brilliantly supported by everyone around me – including my team, everyone at Colenso, all our clients and the artists I work for, which is epic, because it’s definitely made life more difficult for them all.
Plus I’m in the best physical – eye aside – shape of my life.
Annnnnd the operation in November offers me some real hope and positivity about the future [for my eye, at least – ha] albeit it’s not a dead cert by any stretch of the imagination.
However I must admit, even with all this good stuff, the worry of seeing [excuse the pun] the potential loss of my independence is not a great feeling.
Without positive and successful intervention, my eye will be able to fuck me up in ways past bosses and colleagues only dreamed of pulling off:
From robbing me of my ability to drive.
To robbing me being able to travel with ease.
To robbing me of my ability to experience different forms of art.
To, albeit much, much further down the road, robbing me of my ability to work.
And then – worst of all – robbing me of my ability to see my brilliant son growing-up.
I know that’s all worse case scenario … I also know I’ll find a way to adapt if/when I get to this situation … but it doesn’t feel great. Though what’s strange is it’s less about the loss of my vision and more about the loss of my relevance.
By that I don’t mean in terms of my career – though that isn’t exactly awesome either, haha – but more in terms of being able to contribute to life:
My life.
My families life.
My friends lives.
My teams lives.
My colleagues lives.
My clients lives.
Societies life.
Maybe for the first time I’ve realized how important all that is to me.
Not because I see myself as some sort of’saviour’ or any bullshit like that, just I find real joy in helping people find theirs.
And while I am sure many people have experienced or discovered this revelation – be it because of age, gender or health situation – it served as an important reminder to me about what ‘value’ really means.
Because while titles, money, success and popularity are all very nice, feeling you’re connected and contributing to life is maybe even more vital.
How fucking ironic I’ve only been able to see this because I may not be able to see anything in the future.
Life certainly knows how to write the darkest of comedies.
And I certainly know how to write the most depressing post on a Monday. Ever.
Of course, the really bad news is that ‘talk to text’ technology means that even if the worst happens sooner rather than later, I can still rant on this blog. Which may sound terrible to you, but is quite lovely to me.
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As an aside, nothing has shown how much of a previous generation I belong to than trying to use ‘talk to text’. I “ummmmm” and “ahhhh” and take about 10 goes to say the simplest command or sentence … whereas Otis – who uses it a lot because of his dysgraphia – is clear and concise first time, every time. Regardless what he is expressing or trying to make a machine do. Proving I am from the generation where type was power, whereas the future – and kids – are all about voice
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But in all seriousness, while this post is depressing as fuck – I’m OK. I just needed to get it out of my system.
Not for sympathy or a cry for help, but just to get it out …
Because as weird as it may sound, now I own ‘it’ rather than ‘it’ owns me, and that’s helped me remember the one thing I know I’m good at which is being a fucking competitive piece of shit, so now I’m sure I can give it a good fight rather than let it have an easy win.
Even more so if the op in November goes well.
And if things do go south … then I’ll have a good excuse for my bad spelling and dress sense. Plus I’ll officially be more pirate than any person at TBWA will ever be. So they’ll either have to hire me into old age to maintain their agency positioning or I’ll get to Lord it over them for the rest of my days.
Win:Win:Win in every way.
Jesus, is this post ending on a high?
I think it is …
What fucking rollercoaster of a rant … but kinda perfect for a Monday.
So with that, have a good day, normal bullshit returns tomorrow. Promise.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Apathy, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Career, Collaboration, Colleagues, Community, Context, Contribution, Culture, Emotion, Empathy, Equality, Experience, Eye, Health, Jaques, Jorge, Linkedin, Loyalty, Management, Martin Weigel, Maya, Mr Ji, Paula, Pride, Purpose, Relationships, Relevance, Reputation, Resonance, Respect
Many years ago, I sent letters to anyone I felt had had an outsized impact or influence on my career, as it was then.
Some had been in my life a short time, some for many years … but all of them had made a significant difference to where I was and where I wanted to be.
And not one of them responded.
Nada.
Zilch.
Zero.
Eventually I reached out to one person to see if they had received it – fearing something terrible had gone on with the post.
“Robert, how are you?” … they said, as soon as they heard my voice … “are you OK?”
I remember how weird I thought their response was but reassured them I was fine and asked if they’d got my letter.
They confirmed they had and then – after a pause – asked if I was suffering ill health.
When I asked why, they told me they thought my letter was my way of saying goodbye to them before I died or something.
The irony was within months, I would get very ill, but I had no idea that was going to happen which is why my immediate response to their fears, was to piss myself laughing.
Fortunately, so did they.
And over the following weeks, I slowly heard from a number of the other people I’d written to who all had heard through the grapevine that rather than saying my farewells, I was simply expressing my gratitude.
The reason I say this is that recently, I started writing about another set of people who I felt I owed great thanks to.
There was no agenda other than to publicly acknowledge their importance in my life and my thanks for their talent and friendship.
At the time of writing this post, I’d written about Paula Bloodworth, Martin Weigel, Maya Thompson, Chris Jaques, Jorge Calleja, Clare Pickens and Jason White.
[There will be a ton more, but that’s all I’ve done so far … mainly because I have a job I have to pretend I’m doing diligently – ha]
Now, maybe it’s because people know this time I am suffering from ill health – specifically my eye – but the response to these celebrations, while different to the previous occasion I did it, are also quite similar.
In essence, they can all be summed up in 2 words: Gratitude and concern.
Gratitude for my words.
Concern for why I wrote them.
Now I appreciate my eye situation is getting very alarming, but this has been going on for almost a year so while I recently received less than favorable news …. this and my ‘Campbell Gratitude’ series are purely a coincidence rather than some sort of correlation.
But what IS concerning is how this reveals the true state of professionalism these days … in so much that the idea of someone saying nice things about someone else with absolutely no agenda, can only be explained away by them dealing with a major health issue.
Maybe this is what’s wrong with where we’re all at …
That no one should ever show generosity without having self-interest motivations.
Platforms like Linkedin haven’t helped …
For all their claims of being a place for the professional community, it has nurtured an environment where anyone who comments/likes or accepts a request entitles them to bombard you with unsolicited, irrelevant sales pitches or non-stop declarations of ego and bravado.
Mind you, let’s be honest it’s not just Linkedin is it.
From what I know, every dating site out there is doing exactly the same thing.
Claiming love. Championing self-interest gratification.
Look, I get it’s tough out there.
I also appreciate I am privileged as fuck.
But if we can’t say thanks to the people who mean a lot to us – simply because we want to celebrate to others WHY they mean a lot to us – then it’s no surprise we are promoting a culture of transactional interactions. The irony of which is that this literally undermines the chance of what all these people aspire to achieve.
Because as I wrote here, the most important and powerful relationships are based on your commitment to who they are, not what you want or can get out of them.
Like many words advocated by my industry, the meaning of loyalty has been completely fucked-with.
Changed beyond all recognition to justify self-serving actions and behaviors.
It’s why I love something I heard recently about how one person defined loyalty …
Someone whose entire business is based on appreciating what someone has done for them in the past, rather than simply evaluating them on what they can get out of them tomorrow.
“Always leave the dance with the person you came with”.
I love it.
I love what it means and how they expressed it.
There’s a lot of companies who could do with following that advice.
There’s a lot of professionals too.
… then this is it.
Because there’s going to be no more post on this blog for a bit..
I know … I know … you never imagined me as your Fairy Godmother did you – but I am because today I fly to Sydney for a couple of days and then, when I come back, I go away again almost immediately.
FOR A WHOLE WEEK!
Sadly it’s to do with my eye rather than a holiday … a work trip … or one of my ‘great blagger adventures’ … so while its my pain, it’s most definitely your gain.
I know, I’m a Saint as well as a Fairy Godmother. Who knew?!
So have a good 10 days free from me and see you a week on Monday.
[though saying ‘see you’ seems slightly ironic as you can see from the ‘crap pirate’ pic below]
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Dad, Education, Eye, Health
As some of you know, I have had a serious eye problem since the beginning of the year.
What makes it worse is that it has affected the eye that was once my ‘good eye’.
Over the past 6 months, I’ve had all manner of drugs, tests and specialist visits and unfortunately, it keeps finding new things wrong with it rather than fixing the things we knew were wrong.
It’s pretty shit to be honest, but one thing happened a few weeks ago that made me laugh.
So I’m at the surgeons and they discovered the pressure in my eye was at an extreme high.
In a matter of weeks, it had risen 300% without any clear indication why. They immediately took action, administering all manner of new drugs to try and bring it under control as the ramifications of leaving it could be permanent blindess.
In typical ‘Campbell luck’ fashion, when they first re-checked the results – post first medication – the pressure had actually risen. That really freaked them out and were getting ready to send me to the hospital for an operation to relieve the pressure. But after another check 20 mins later, they saw it was starting to take affect.
Slowly, but as my surgeon said, “any decline is a good decline”.
Eventually things calmed down enough for them to feel good to send me home for a few days before getting me in to check the results again. To increase the odds of things going in the right direction, they gave me some additional meds and said:
“They will make you very sleepy and increase the odds of you needing the lavatory”.
I burst out laughing and said, “that’s an unfortunate combination” to which they looked at me confused.
After what felt like minutes, they laughed before telling me they’d never thought of that before.
Now I am not knocking them – they’re amazing and doing all they can to save my sight – but it did remind me of 2 things I’ve learned over the years.
The first is that very smart people are often a bit stupid outside of their field of excellence.
The second is a quote by the actor, Peter Ustinov who said:
“The people who reach the top of the tree are those who haven’t got the qualifications to detain them at the bottom”.
So much in life seems to be focused on only valuing the ‘academically smart’.
I get it, we need them. They’re brilliant and can do things that few could ever do – regardless of the amount of training.
Doctors.
Scientists.
Engineers.
You definitely don’t want any Tom, Dick or Harry taking on work like that.
But by the same token, there are people who have another set of skills that are just as worthy of respect.
An ability to do things that a doctor, scientist or engineer could never do – and yet has real value and benefit to the rest of us.
I don’t mean ‘everyday generalists’, I mean people with a level of skill and/or craft that represents real ability.
In life we need both groups of people … the academically smart and [for want of a better term] the life smart.
Both offer value and skills to who we are and how we live.
Both do things that the others couldn’t do and probably couldn’t imagine doing.
At a time where more and more companies will only hire those with ‘a degree’, it’s worth remembering that while education is hugely important and valuable we should – like the ad industry – make sure we’re not forgetting to evaluate and value those by what they have done, not simply what they know, because as my old man used to say:
“Talk is easy, action is hard”.