Filed under: 2025, Anniversary, Attitude & Aptitude, Content, Context, Creativity, Dad, Daddyhood, Death, Emotion, Empathy, Jill, Love, Loyalty, Mum & Dad, My Childhood, My Fatherhood, Otis, Parents
So today is the 26th year of Dad dying.
Given I’ve written this blog for almost 2 decades, you’d think I’d have said all that needed to be said about him – and in some ways, you’d be right – however, despite the fact that next year he’ll have been gone for over half my life [so far], he is arguably more a part of my day-to-day reality than ever.
I talk about him.
I think about him.
I reference his learnings and lessons in how I live my life and do my job.
He’d probably love that I do this, though I can’t help but feel he’d also ask “why?”.
Of course, part of it is because I love him and miss him – but more than that, the older I get, the more I appreciate how great he was.
As I’ve written before, my Mum and Dad blessed me with an epic childhood.
A life overflowing with the full force of their total love and support, even when I tested it to varying degrees and extremes.
They were compassionate, considerate and continually encouraged me to find and follow my own path … even when it went against what they wished I’d do.
And most of all, they ensured they sheltered me from many of the challenges and hardships we faced over the years, so that I could forge my life rather than be held back by theirs.
In terms of unconditional love, they were the posterchild for it.
But please don’t think they were walkovers …
While they were willing to let me explore, they wanted to ensure I’d really considered what I was doing or wanting to do.
Not so they could talk me out of it, but so they could understand it. Have a deeper appreciation of what was driving me so they could both encourage it and make sure my eyes were open to the realities of it.
It’s why they encouraged me to be a studio musician when they would have loved me to go into law. It’s why they pushed me to continue with my move to Australia when Dad had his stroke before I left. It’s why they taught me the importance of fulfilment when most parents were fixated on achievement. It’s why they let me follow Queen around Europe when I was 15 when most parents demanded their kids stay at home.
Incredible, eh?
But the thing is, I didn’t know that at the time.
If truth be told, there were times where I thought my parents were holding me back … cramping my style … oppressing my dreams.
And while I worked out I was being a bit of a fuckwit, I didn’t really realise how much of one I was being until I heard about other people’s parents and when I became one myself.
Because on top of all the advice and support they gave me, the big thing was they were always present.
In my life and by my side.
Be it for homework, parent/teacher evenings, birthday parties or just bad days … they were there. Standing in my corner … supporting me … encouraging me and being interested in me and my life.
What a fucking gift …
And yet, because it was part of my normality, I took it for granted … never realizing the effort and sacrifice it took for them to make sure they were always there.
And they made some major sacrifices.
Not just in terms of time … but also in terms of their choices, career, money and opportunity.
And I was immune to much of it because they didn’t want me to know – either because they knew I’d try and talk them out of it or because they feared it would add pressure on me to justify whatever I was doing instead.
Do I understand their reasons for doing that?
Yeah … I do.
But what I understand even more is how hard it must have been to keep doing it … and I say this as a Dad who loves his son but has still moved him to 4 radically different countries [so far] in just 10 years.
[And don’t get me started on how many times I’ve made my wife move]
Which hopefully all goes to help explain why my Dad plays so much in my present … more and more, I realise how fortunate I was.
How fortunate I am.
He – like Mum – created the space and time for me to fill on my terms, rather than expect me to fit in with whatever they had available.
They enabled me to be part of their life rather than an accessory to it.
Believing their role was to teach me how to make the best decisions for my life rather than telling me what to do.
That forging my own path would be the ultimate demonstration that they did good.
So, it’s a shame that for all their generosity, it’s kinda-backfired.
Because so much of what I’ve done and do is driven by my desire to make them metaphorically proud.
To let them know I didn’t take their lessons and sacrifices for granted.
It’s one of the reasons I have kept living around the world, because I feel it would be disrespectful to ‘go back’ when they sacrificed so much to let me go. It’s also why I keep running towards the exciting and unknown … because for me, it’s a way to demonstrate I value a life of fulfillment over a life of easy contentment.
Whether they would think agree with what I’ve done is anyone’s guess.
There would definitely be some stuff they’d be shaking their head at, but I hope overall, they’d be proud.
I hope overall they’d smile and see I’m trying to make as much out of what I’ve got.
It’s my way of honoring them.
Of ensuring that while they’ve gone – their impact is still here.
With me. With love.
Filed under: 2025, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Death, Emotion, Empathy, Environment, Holiday, Home, Jill, Love, Loyalty, Management, Miley, New Zealand, Nottingham Forest, Otis, Professionalism, Resonance, Respect, Strategy, Stupid, Success, This Blog, Toxic Positivity
Happy 2025 and welcome to year 19 of my rubbish.
I trust/hope you had a good break … even if that is simply because I didn’t write a blog post for a few weeks.
I had a great one.
Not just – as I’ve written before – because New Zealand does the ‘holiday season’ better than anywhere on the planet, but because this year was so different to the year before.
And just to reinforce how much better it was, the day I landed back in NZ I was rushed to hospital as my ‘good eye’ decided to basically stop working.
I say ‘good eye’ because when I was 21, my right eye got a detached retina [from picking up a bag of bloody coal, like some cliched Northerner from the 1800’s ] and while they managed to reattach it – which was touch and go due to some complications – it resulted in it having very bad vision out of it. However, thanks to my left eye being good, I’ve never had to worry about my sight beyond how much it costs to have for lenses that don’t look like I’m wearing beer bottles on my face plus the general protection of my head and eyes.
Even though it has been like this for 33+ years, I’ve never taken my sight – or the protection of my eyes – for granted, so you can imagine how freaked out I was when suddenly my good eye basically stopped working a day before we flew back to NZ from Asia.
Now it’s not totally sorted, but I have been assured it will over the next couple of months [which is handy as you can see from the photo below, I look bloody weird with different sized pupils which means people are even less inclined to look at me] and yet despite all this, I STILL CONSIDER THIS HOLIDAY BETTER THAN LAST YEARS.
Let me explain why …
You see back in December 2023, I started work with a new private client.
They had asked me to do a big project for them with a first check-in date of mid-Jan.
I knew it would take a couple of weeks or so to write things up but stupidly, I decided I’d do it over the holidays rather than before.
There was some rationale for that decision …
+ I had a bunch of stuff to finish before the holidays.
+ I had a bunch of reading to do relating to who this client was as a person/artist.
+ I was exhausted and wanted a break before I got stuck into things.
+ It was the bloody festive season and that’s a time I wanted to spend with family.
But the problem was that even though I had a plan for when to do the work, my brain wouldn’t let me forget about it.
So each day, the thought of the work I had to do would nag and niggle at me.
Slowly upping the volume and pressure.
So as each day ended, all I could think about was how I had even less time to relax before I had to start work, which resulted in me not being able to fully enjoy or relax until – in what felt like the blink of an eye – it was time to get started.
When that happened, the annual break I was so looking forward to, wasn’t just over … but never even had a chance to properly start. So instead of being relaxed and ready, I was tired and anxious.
Add to that, that the holiday season the year before had also been rather a traumatic – with Otis and I both ending up in hospital and my dear friend Chelsea, passing away – I was a shattered, emotionally not just physically.
The result of this was that the first 3 months of 2024 were, in all honesty, one of the most stressful times of my life. Not necessarily because the project was hard – though it was certainly demanding, albeit incredibly exciting – but because I had not allowed myself the break I needed to be ready for a completely new challenge.
The good news – if you can call it that – was the impact of these choices and decisions was very obvious to me and I knew I would never, ever let something like that happen to me again. Which is why before the most recent holidays started, I wrote to all my clients – both my private ones and Colenso’s international ones, who don’t have the same holiday duration as our local clients – telling them I was out.
Not ‘out unless you have an urgent requirement’ … but out.
Nada. Zilch. Gone.
And you know what?
No one minded. Not one.
Now, you could say that’s because they find me an absolute pain-in-the-ass to deal with, but I think – or should I say, hope – I believe it is because they respected my time and respected the efforts I’d put into their business over the past 11 months.
I get not everyone has that opportunity.
I get being able to have a break of this duration is a privilege.
But the reality is a break is the greatest investment you can make in yourself or your people.
It gives them a chance to decompress. To think. To let shit go. To get excited again.
Doesn’t matter if you’re a checkout operator or an old bastard, advertising strategist.
It’s why I hate how some companies treat ‘holidays’ like it’s a gift … something you can only have if it suits the organisations needs, timelines and ego.
Fuck that.
For all the talk companies say about ‘our staff being our greatest asset’, the second best demonstration of that – after being paid fairly – is valuing, encouraging and protecting their rights to a break.
And by that, I mean respecting their people’s right and need to have ‘proper holidays’ rather than attempting to hide their toxicity under the guise of bullshit like unlimited holidays … which not only aren’t ever true, but are something they actively go out of their way to ensure can never be realised.
And don’t get me started on the US attitude to vacations, with their 10 days a year allowance … meaning many people can’t have any break of significance without either years of sacrifice or days of unpaid leave.
It’s why I’m eternally grateful for Colenso’s attitude to holidays.
And why I’m eternally grateful for how NZ values and protects their ‘festive season break’.
[Though one unfortunate side-effect is people often don’t take a break in the rest of the year so they can save it all up for the end of the year, which can also contribute to people feeling and experiencing burnout]
And why I’m eternally grateful to my clients for appreciating and encouraging it for me.
Of course part of the reason for their generosity is because it’s in their interests … because a holiday increases the odds great things will happen for them thanks to your renewed energy, focus and inspiration. But hey, I respect they get this because we all win from it rather one person feeling indebted to the other for having what is their god-damn given right to have.
So hello 2025 … let’s see what you’ve got in store for me.
Or should I say, look out for what I’ve got in store for you.
Filed under: 2024, 2025, A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Colenso, Colleagues, Contribution, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Death, Emotion, Empathy, Family, Fatherhood, Home, Jill, Love, Loyalty, Marketing, Martin Weigel, Mum & Dad, My Childhood, My Fatherhood, New Zealand, Nottingham Forest, Otis, Parents, Paul, Paula, Relationships, Resonance, Sport, Strategy, Sunshine
So this is it, the last post of the year.
Can’t believe it.
Looking back on 2024, I have to admit that generally it’s been a really good year for me.
+ The family are happy and healthy.
+ I’m happy and unnervingly healthy.
+ Work has been good and rewarding.
+ My team have been [generally] bloody wonderful, haha.
+ I got to travel a bunch to work with talented people on awesome projects.
+ I experienced stuff I’ve never had the chance to do before, which at my age is epic.
+ I was part of some creativity that’s right up there with some of the best stuff I’ve ever done.
+ This blog – albeit by its ‘questionable standards’ – had some pretty decent posts. Kinda.
+ I got a bunch of new tattoos and a new car – albeit one that was crashed into within a week.
+ Forest stayed in the Premiership and – so far – are doing better than the last 2 seasons.
+ And last but by no means least, the Tories got kicked out of government in the UK.
So, with that list of achievements and experiences, I can say this year, by all accounts, has been a pretty epic year for me.
Now I completely appreciate my privilege in being able to say this when so many are having such a hard time, but I can’t deny it happened … and while I’m obviously grateful for it, I also know it is as much down to luck than any so-called ability I may or may not have.
That said – and in no way am I trying to suggest this ‘balances things out’ – there’s been a few things that have been very challenging for me and my family to deal with this year. Not just in terms of the shit the World is going through right now … but things much closer to home.
The loss of our dear Rosie after 17 amazing years, the break-up of my best friend’s marriage after almost 20 and the horrible, premature death of a dear client placed a huge toll on us/me emotionally and professionally.
And while we know ‘life goes on’, that doesn’t mean they don’t leave scars … scars that I/we are still experiencing and dealing with today.
Each of these tragic events had a very destabilizing effect on me/us … amplified by the fact that in the case of Rosie and Paul/Shelly especially, they were long-term ‘stability pillars’ for us and now they are irrevocably fractured.
I should explain what I mean by ‘stability pillars’ …
Put simply, they were entities we could rely on – or lean on – through good times and bad.
An emotional life-raft, as it were … and given we have chosen to live so far away from so many of the people and places we feel most connected to, it meant we probably had an over-reliance on their involvement in our life.
An over-reliance that we may have taken too much for granted. Thinking it will never change or go away. Naïve maybe.
Now don’t get me wrong, we have friends in NZ and enjoy living here, but it’s different … partly because we’re not from here, partly because we’re still relatively new here and partly because we know we won’t be here forever.
Of course, I get that’s ultimately our choice and decision, but the point is for all the positive things that have happened to us and for us this year – and there’s more than we could have hoped for or maybe even deserve, at least in my case – the impact of those 3 important relationships, have left an indelible mark on the year for us.
Which leads to why this holiday season is so important for me … for us … and most likely for the people involved and affected by the events that have happened.
I cannot tell you how much I’m looking forward to it. Not just because it’s a break, but because it’s a chance to unite, gather, refresh, restore and replenish.
I absolutely get others deserve – and most likely need – it more, but it still is very important and valuable to us too.
Fortunately, not only will we be getting it, but by living in NZ – which, as I wrote here, is the best place in the World to have it – it means we will have the space to truly embrace it and I’ve never been so grateful for it.
Talking of grateful …
This year was only possible because of the people around me.
From my family and friends, through to my colleagues and [some] of my clients, haha.
But it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the people who read my rubbish on here.
And while I no longer allow comments, I know there’s still a bunch of people out there who do thanks to the data, the emails or the sarcastic texts. [Hello Andy!]
I’ve been writing this for almost 2 decades and in many ways, it has forged the glue of connection that has made our constant moving around the World a bit easier.
A way to never feel too alone. Too isolated. Too new.
That may sound dramatic, but it’s true.
Which is why I want to offer my thanks to each and every one of you for all you have done for me – even if it’s just occasionally read what I write.
I’m grateful for your interest and commentary and hope the holidays will be as good to you, as I hope 2025 is good for all of us.
Just with mine being a little bit better than yours … hey, I’m an only-child, so what do you expect? Haha.
In all honesty, I have some specific plans/hopes for next year. Plans/hopes that could give me a different perspective and experience in my – and my families – life. Whether that happens is anyone’s guess, but I’m quite excited to see if I can pull it off. See what we may discover and experience if it happens, both individually and as a family.
But before that can even happen, it’s time to rest …
So with that, I say ta-ra.
See you on the other side.
For year 19, starting Jan 13, 2025.
Happy holidays everyone. Wherever you are. Whatever you celebrate.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Age, Agency Culture, Ambition, America, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brands, Colenso, Colleagues, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Curiosity, Cynic, Distinction, Emotion, Empathy, Environment, Experience, Fulfillment, Individuality, Innovation, LaLaLand, Love, Luck, Metallica, Miley, Mr Ji, Mum & Dad, Music, My Childhood, Nottingham, Parents, Perspective, Play, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance, Respect, Rick Rubin, Rockstar Games, Standards, Talent
A few weeks ago, I found myself wandering around Marina Del Ray, in LA.
It’s an area I know well given I both worked and lived relatively near the place a few years ago.
Anyway, as I was strolling around, I was looking at the boats moored along the marina. Be under no illusion, you need a bunch of cash to own a boat in LA and even more to be able to afford to keep it in a shared dock – but that’s the thing about Los Angeles, it’s a place of financial extremes.
There were all manner of boats in all manner of shapes and sizes … but the thing that grabbed my attention was their choice of names.
I love hearing what people call things.
Years ago, with cynic, we did a project with a video rental company [told you it was years ago] which included us exploring the ‘passwords’ people had on their account.
We didn’t know whose account it was – or the details of the recipient – it was just a list of random passwords. Anyway, it was pretty fascinating.
No random letters or numbers.
In fact, nothing approaching any level of security protocol whatsoever.
Instead, it seemed to be words that reflected a family ‘trait’, an individual’s alter-ego or something mischievous that the creator forgot would have to be said out loud to the store assistant every time they rented a film.
I say this because as I looked at the boats, there seemed to be a similar approach to its naming protocol.
Of course a boat name is very different to a password, but for all the choices you have, many seemed to fall into certain groups.
+ Reference to life on ‘the high seas’.
+ An individual persons name.
+ A sea-reference pun.
+ Or a mark of achievement …
… of which, none was better than this.
For those who can’t read it properly, it’s called, ‘Dream Worked’.
I have to say, I bloody love it.
Of all the names I saw, this was arguably the most honest.
A statement that whether through hard work, luck or other means … their ambition to own a boat in LA had come off.
They’d done it.
Hit the goal.
I wanted to meet the owner. To hear their story. To understand their journey.
Was the boat the prize or a byproduct of it?
Maybe my interest in the boat was because we all like a good news story. Or because I like learning how – and why – people do stuff. Or maybe it’s simply because I’m approaching that point in life where you’re running out of time for dreams to work and so you’re questioning what you’ve done or still want to do.
This is not in any way trying to say I’ve suffered.
If I’m being honest, the life I live is beyond anything I could ever have imagined or hoped for. Probably more than my teachers imagined for me too.
But despite being 54, I still have a lot of ambitions.
Things I want to do.
Things I want to try.
Things I want to see.
Things I want to achieve.
However – as I’ve mentioned many times – the older you get, the more you realise not only will you not be able to do all of them, you won’t even be able to pursue all of them. You have to be more focused with your energy and time. You need to prioritize rather than chase down every rabbit hole.
Frankly, that part of growing older is shit especially as I’m someone whose entire bloody life has been chasing the intrigue, the possibility and the creative opportunity. But whether I like it or not, I’m slowly learning how important it is to be more measured in my choices if I want to keep moving forward rather than standing still.
Sure I’ve had to accept I’ll be working at a different pace than before.
Sure I’ve had to accept I’ll be working from a different place than before.
But it means I don’t have to accept what others expect me to do and frankly, that’s all the motivation I need.
However despite all this, growing older in your career does ask questions of you.
Uncomfortable questions.
You realise your relevance in the industry you work in is reducing.
Your abilities haven’t – quite the opposite – but their desire to hear or work with it has.
And it can feel like you’re being left behind when you’ve got so much still to give.
Like you’re screaming in a vacuum that no one gives a shit about, hahaha.
A while back I saw a quote from an ex-footballer than summed this up perfectly …
I get it. We all will at some point …
It really forces you to question who you are and what you’ve done.
And how you deal with it defines where you can go with it.
So while it was more luck than judgement, I consider myself very fucking lucky that I fell into a new chapter of my life … where I have got to learn, express and discover how my creativity can be used in new ways with incredibly talented new people … the best and most successful of the best and most successful … who, despite all they’ve achieved, value what you do and bring far more than who you are and what you have.
I’m under no illusion it could all end tomorrow, but it’s going great right now and the stuff I’m getting to do and be a part of is not just creatively exciting, it’s allowing my creative ambitions to flex and be pushed.
To be able to do that at any age is awesome, but to do it at 54 – alongside rockstars, fashion gods and creative legends – is fucking incredible.
Which is why I realized – as I walked around those boats in Marina Del Ray – that if I had a boat, I wouldn’t call it ‘Dream Worked’ … it would be ‘The Dreams Working’ … because to be at this point of life and still be able to look forward and see exciting possibilities rather than just look back at what you’ve done, feels like the greatest achievement of all.
___________________________________________________________________________
As an aside, today is the 3rd annual ‘Fuck Off And Pie’ Colenso Planner Bake-Off competition.
A time where, contrary to this post, I am reminded I’m the biggest failure of all time.
Or should I say the ‘silver medal’ biggest failure.
I’ll let you know if I maintain this standard or – god forbid – achieve gold loser status.
Given this years theme is ‘birthday cake’ I’m in with a shot and to be honest I like what I’ve done.
Not just in the fact it tastes pretty good – no, seriously – but because I’ve created a design and theme that will never be forgotten. Especially by our HR department. And probably by my colleagues and team mates who run the risk of spending Christmas with gastro. The gift that keeps on giving. Cue: Evil laugh.
Filed under: America, China, Dad, Death, Emotion, Empathy, England, Family, Home, Hong Kong, Jill, Love, Loyalty, Mum, Mum & Dad, New Zealand, Otis, Parents, Rosie, Shanghai, Singapore
So tomorrow marks the 2nd month since Rosie passed … and I am still struggling with it.
I appreciate how pathetic that may sound, but it’s how I feel.
In many ways, the loss of Rosie feels very, very similar to the loss of my parents.
I don’t say that lightly.
I also don’t say that because my parents weren’t wonderful.
Frankly, they were amazing and gave me a childhood where I can honestly say I never wanted for love, support or encouragement. And while I didn’t really appreciate how special that was until I was much older and realised not everyone got to experience that, I definitely understand how blessed I was for what they gave me and left me.
However, while Mum and Dad were my physical and emotional constant throughout my first 20+ years of my life … as I went through my key adult ’life stage’ years – such as marriage, moving countries [a lot] and starting a family – they weren’t. Part of this is because by then I was living far, far away from them – so only connected to them by phone, albeit on a daily basis, as well as my annual visit home – and part of this is because sadly, both of them died over this period of time. Which means from 2007, Rosie – along with Jill – were my physical and emotional constants.
Wherever I was … whatever I was going through … they were the ones who I went back to each and every day.
Who were there for me, each and every day.
In essence, they were on the other side of the bridge that took me between childhood to adulthood, which I hope helps explain Rosie’s significance and importance in my life.
But there is another reason I feel such loss and that is because I can’t help but feel I had something to do with it.
At the end of the day – while it was out of love to ensure she didn’t suffer given her kidneys had stopped working – I/we made the decision when her life would end. And for all the compassion, care, gentleness and tears we shed, it is something I still feel guilty about.
Of course it is full of irrationality …
Somehow, I am of the belief that we could have nursed her back to health. That … had we not taken her to the vet that Saturday morning for a routine injection, she’d still be with us.
And maybe she would … except the likelihood is she would have ended up suffering far more as we wouldn’t have had the time to get her the specialist care that ensured she didn’t suffer more than she had to.
But that Saturday is burned into my mind.
That morning she was almost back to her old self.
Jumping on our bed in the morning. Wanting food. Doing her loud ‘surprise happy scream’ every time she saw us. We even said, “she’s back to her old self”.
The injection at the vets was just to help with her arthritis – nothing more – and yet a quick blood test set off a chain of events that led to us saying goodbye to her 48 hours later.
And while I know the reality of the situation is her kidneys had started to properly fail … in fact, her readings had more than doubled within the month – from an already terrible score of 400, which represents ‘stage 4’ out of 4 possible levels for a cat’s kidney health to just under 1000 – I still find the image of leaving our house looking well and returning ready for goodbye hard to reconcile. Hard to let go of my complicity in creating this situation – even though every vet we spoke to had already warned us of the severity of her situation and, if truth be known, we were aware that her previous illness a month earlier signified a major shift in her wellbeing. As I wrote in the post announcing her death, that shift felt similar to the final stages I saw my Dad go through before he passed.
Doesn’t make it any easier.
Doesn’t make being home any less challenging.
Because everything screams she is not there.
It’s all so heartbreaking. I keep wanting to ring the vet who helped her sleep to give her an injection to make her come back alive. To erase the decision we made, even though it was absolutely the right decision … a decision that I think even Rosie wanted. Especially as kidney failure gives a cat about 30 days before it all ends in tragedy and we were close to that timeline being hit and yet I want to ignore all that as I just want her back.
Hell, I keep finding myself saying, “come on Rozzie” when we go to bed … expecting to hear her feet make a little sound as she jumps off wherever she was to follow us down the stairs. But the hardest thing … the thing that absolutely reinforces she’s not longer with us is that I no longer have to check the front door when I leave in the morning or get in at night.
Each day, as I was heading out to work, Rosie would come upstairs with me. While this was because she hoped for extra Friskies – despite I had just given them to her downstairs – I would end up giving her a couple more because I couldn’t resist her face and it was the best way to ensure she didn’t sneakily follow me out of the front door where she felt a compulsion to explore, even though she knew she wasn’t allowed to. And at night, when she heard my car come down the drive, she’d be waiting at the glass next to the front door where I would see her silently meow to me through the glass as a way of saying hello, before trying to get through my legs when I walked in.
Occasionally she’d succeed and then proceed to sit under mine – or Jill’s – car until finally getting bored [or tempted with treats of falling in reach of one of our arms] but it was a daily ritual and now I can keep the door wide open and it literally fucks with my head.
I miss it. I miss all the things she did.
Even the stuff that annoyed me … like coming into the lounge at night – when Jill and Otis were asleep – and literally screaming at me, telling me it was time to come downstairs to bed with her.
She did a lot of screaming, but over the years she ‘educated us’ to what each one meant.
One was that she wanted to sleep under our sheets in bed and needed us to lift them up for her to go underneath. One was that she was hungry and wanted us to hand deliver treats rather than eat the food in her bowl. One was for us to open the lounge doors so she could go and sit out on her special bean bag cat bed on the deck so she could look out on the trees and feel the sun on her fur. In fact, the only time she didn’t scream was when we were actively looking for her, fearing she had got out when we came home and didn’t realise.
She did do that a couple of times, but never went far. Or for long.
She knew where home was.
She knew how well she was cared for.
She was definitely not a stupid cat.
And that’s why I can’t think about getting another. At least not yet.
I did look for cats who needed adopting very soon after Rosie had gone, but then I realised I wasn’t doing it to replace her, but to replicate her and that is both impossible and unfair to whoever we adopted.
So we need time. And while this may all sound dramatic for a cat, I point you to the post I wrote about Denise – the woman that I need to apologise to. Who gave me a very early warning as to what this would feel like. Because a pet is not just for life, a pet adds to your life and Rosie was – and will forever be – my first animal family member and I’d do anything, as I would for Mum and Dad, to have her back. Even for one day.
So regardless who you are or what you’re doing, don’t take the good shit for granted.
Because as annoying as it can be, it is better than it not being there.
And that is why – despite having experienced death throughout my life – Mum, Dad and Rosie’s passing has been the most significant.
What is interesting is that at my age – which I recently heard described as ‘the youngest of the old bunch’ – I am heading towards more of that. Including, my own one day … albeit hopefully a long time away. But it does make you re-evaluate what is important and who is important, which is leading to a lot of discussions and considerations about the future we want to have rather than the future we will get given.
But while there is a lot of sadness in this post, I want you to know I’m not in a bad way.
I was, but not now.
Part of that is because we have Rosie’s ashes with us and weirdly, it feels like she’s home.
Not exactly as we would like.
But exactly where she belongs.
And that, I’m increasingly learning, is the real definition of happiness, fulfillment and success.
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This is the last post I’ll be writing for 2 weeks as I’m off on a ridiculous trip for work.
Across Canada. Across America. And a quick visit to Australia. Quite bonkers.
But I am eternally grateful for it. Not just because of the air miles, but because it is being organised by a client who wants me – and 3 colleagues – to really understand who they are.
The details. The nuances. The values. The realities.
At a time where so many clients want simple, superficial and easy, they’re going out of their way to make it difficult for all of us … but in the most brilliant, rewarding and valuable way ever.
And for that we’re all eternally grateful.
Not because it’s rare, but because it means they give a fuck about what who they are, what they do and what they want us to create together.
They’re invested in making something great, rather than just expecting excellence without contributing anything to it beyond deadlines, mandatories and distain.
And you know what this ‘in it together’ approach achieves?
A team very, very motivated to do something extraordinary for them.
That’s contrary to what many companies think is the way to work with agencies or partners these days. Believing that if they treat people like disposable commodities, they’ll get them to work even harder for them. Which means they value you nothing other than the price they pay for something.
And while I appreciate what we do costs a lot of money and so being on top of things is important, I’ll tell you what ends up costing a whole lot more: treating partners like shit. Not because they’ll stop caring about what they do, but because they know you don’t even care about who you are.
Which is why we’re thrilled to be going on this trip … because nothing shows commitment like inconvenience.
See you on the 29th … as there’s a holiday in Auckland on the 28th, hahaha.
