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.
After Paula and I presented at Cannes, we were sent some photographs by WARC.
Of course I wanted to look at them, but the thing that shocked me the most was the difference between the photo from our session, and the one – almost 2 years to the day – from our Strategy Is Constipated, Imagination Is The Laxative presentation.
Of course I knew there would be a difference – I’m now literally half the man I used to be – but I guess I hadn’t realized just how different the overall impact would be.
Which highlights one important thing: Strategists are fucking idiots. [Or at least I am]
Anyway, this is what I’m talking about …
While I recognize the ‘before’ sight of me, I can’t quite believe I let myself get into such a state.
Now some of it was not entirely my fault.
When I was younger I was very fit but an issue with my eye [Not the issue I’m going through now, another one and another eye] meant I was not allowed to do much exercise as there was a real chance of losing my sight, which obviously I didn’t want.
But then, over the years, the sedentary life because my day-to-day life.
And while I – if I’m being honest – didn’t like how I looked, I couldn’t see a way out of it.
Part of it was because I couldn’t imagine a life where I had to stop eating the food I loved.
Part of it was because I didn’t let myself accept how I looked – a kind-of body dysmorphia.
Part of it was I didn’t know how to change it, which caused me real turmoil.
That last point is the biggest one … because I went through real lows at different points in my life, recognizing the position I was in, even if I didn’t allow myself to recognize just how bad the position I was in.
Now it is important to note I am not saying I was lazy. If anything, I was ill … so while it’s dead easy for people to look at overweight individuals and think it’s all their own fault, it’s far more complex than that. Sure, they have to take responsibility for their situation, but there’s a lot going on in many of their lives which means they just don’t feel they can. Add to that, the fact it costs a lot of money to eat healthily and it just makes everything much, much more difficult.
Anyway, I posted that photo on Linkedin and – bizarrely – it got the most engagement of any post I’ve ever written on that platform. And all the comments were not just supportive, but very human. For a platform that seemingly revels in replicating American Psycho, that blew my mind and gave me more hope for business than I’d had in years.
But one question many asked was ‘how did I do it’ … so to round out the week, I thought I’d tell you what worked for me. Can’t guarantee it will work for everyone, but it has – and continues to [because it’s never going to change, even though I can be less strict on the range of food I eat] – be the foundation of how I live.
So here I go:
+ 1675 calories a day [total or net]
+ 25 grams of sugar a day
+ 65 grams of carbs a day.
And then I walk 15kms a day. Didn’t start that way, so it doesn’t really matter how far you go, as long as you do a couple of kms and you do it consistently.
I also write EVERYTHING I consume on an app called Lose It and that’s it.
To be honest I found it easier than I thought it would be but acknowledge I’ve had a lot of help from family, clients and colleagues.
My total loss – so far – is 47kg and while I still crave bread, I manage to only have it on special occasions. There’s a lot of good alts out there – from coffee to chocolate to rice to sauces – and while it takes a bit of getting used to, once you have, you will hardly know any difference at all.
Last thing … we all will have bad days. Accept it. Try not to have more than one a fortnight and if you’re going to do it, make sure it’s with good quality food that you love. If you’re going to fail, fail gloriously … but occasionally … and then get back on the horse the next day.
Bizarrely, while I can now eat a few more things now than I let myself originally … I actually LOVE getting back to my diet. Not only do I appreciate taste more than I ever have, I also accept some food is for fueling my body not just satisfying my gluttony.
That’s it … so if anyone wants to chat about specifics, just reach out to me. As I said, I can’t guarantee it is what you need, but I’ll happily answer anything you want to know, including some of the recipes/foods that have filled me up without necessarily clogging me up – haha.
So if you fancy giving it a go, ‘go big’ on Saturday … eat to your hearts content … but use Sunday to start planning for the rest of the week. I get how big a deal it is. I get how daunting it is. But apart from the health benefits – of which they are innumerable – if you’re anything like me, you might find the biggest change is you start to like and respect yourself a little bit. And as benefits go, that’s incredible.
Good luck, I’m here for anyone who needs to chat.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Colleagues, Comment, Complicity, Corporate Evil, Corporate Gaslighting, Health, Hope
Once upon a time, Elton John once sang, Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word.
What he forgot to add to that sentence was … “if you’re a toxic bastard”.
OK, there are some exceptions … but even when you’re sure you’ve done nothing wrong, if you see a colleague hurting from something you said or did, common decency suggests you’d reach out to them, because no one willingly wants a colleague to feel bad because of a misunderstanding. Or even a debate.
And yet there’s lots of people who seemingly do.
Just one look on my Corporate Gaslighting site tells you that.
Reveling in making others feel bad.
Or small.
Or useless.
Or a failure.
For many, this horrible experience can take years to get over and often, it never really leaves – it just sits there, waiting to be triggered by something at some point in the future.
It’s why it’s important to get help.
You’re made to feel it’s all been your fault. You’re made to feel shame to talk about it. You’re made to feel embarrassed to ask for help.
But – as I have said many times – this is all part of their approach.
The systematic undermining of your confidence to force your complicity and silence.
It’s abuse, pure and simple.
However it can get better. You can get stronger. You can look and move forward … which is why I want to leave you with 3 points to this pre-weekend post.
1. Remember you are not alone. They just want to make you feel that way.
2. If you’re going through this, reach out to me/us at Corporate Gaslighting.
3. Should you ever come across the person who deliberately caused you pain, discomfort and despair … one of the best things you can do for your healing is the following ….
Sure it may not be nice.
I understand it may not be professional.
But not only did they start it, it allows you to finally end it.
… 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]
