Month: November 2010

Work

Status

I’ve been really struck in the past couple of weeks by how much some people define status in their lives through work. I was talking to a smart guy I’ve not seen for a couple of years about his mother who had a very big job, but was also refreshingly down to earth. He said “she recognised she had a serious job, but didn’t take herself too seriously because of it”.

This strikes me as a good approach. Some people have greater status needs than others. I think mine are less than many people’s. But I do also wonder if I think that, to some extent, because they are more than amply filled by my current job. Last week I did a speech to 100+ people on the 40th floor of a major bank to generous applause. I used to fear these sorts of things, now I almost enjoy them, but the fringe benefit is to feel I have a serious job, even if I don’t take myself too seriously because of it.

But in these recessionary times we all wonder from time to time whether this status might be rudely taken away by redundancy or our face not fitting. I know a couple of good, experienced people who got the bullet this week. In some ways worse is the more realistic realisation that I will likely be taking some people’s employment away from them in the coming months. I feel bad about this and think about it a lot.

I was talking to another professional in a different field about this on Friday and he said “hard decisions should feel hard”. I think he’s right, it’s all too easy to switch off your emotions, don the protective armour of ‘managerialism’ and simply ‘do what’s wanted’.

I think to downsize with care, empathy, kindness and self-respect is do-able. Engaging with people as people, not losing my humanity or switching off my emotions is an important part of doing this well. And ultimately if I am asked to do something I feel is wrong, finding the courage to say I feel it is wrong and being brave enough to risk my own job and status feels important too.

The paradox of job cuts is what’s brave is to do the right thing for the many as well as deal with individual people with care, integrity and humanity. The cowardly thing is to ‘act tough’, switch off your emotions and use the excuse of managerialism whilst saving your own skin.

What looks and is often rewarded as ‘tough’ in job cuts is in fact comparatively easy in my experience. What is hard is caring, thinking fully about the consequences of what you are doing and doing it right.

Death, Life

Hospital

I went to hospital on Monday to see a consultant to check up on the moles I’ve been worrying about. Here’s what I tapped out on my iPhone as I sat waiting to go in:

Hospital

It scares the living sh1t out of me. Just walking here brings deep anxiety to the surface. My heart rate is up, I’m conscious of my chest.

We don’t see illness and death unless we go looking for it these days, but here it all is. Everyone you look at you don’t know if they’re losing their life or here to save them. Especially the older people.

The NHS is fantastic, but support staff sometimes look right through you. Two members of staff are currently hailing each other down the length of a corridor in front of me, while I sit here with several others wondering whether fate has something lethal, painful or banal in store.

I will likely end my life in one of these places. And in this very hospital we witnessed the start of life too – my son was born here. But this hospital despite its cleanliness and modernity reeks more of entropy, human decline and infirmity than life.

It brings back my melanoma which is why I am here. I don’t want to die here, but maybe I will.

It turned out to be banal. That’s the weird thing about health. Like life, you take it for granted for much of your life, although you know you shouldn’t. But also, like life, you have to take it for granted – to some extent – otherwise you don’t make the best of it.

In the space of five minutes lethal turns to banal and in the space of five days fear to insouciance. I’m glad it’s this way round. But the useful goad to action, which having melanoma on my mind has been, is something I now need to find from a happier more positive place.

Reading my old friend Aristotle again sat on a tube ride yesterday – and talking to half a dozen different really thought-provoking people this week – I have some emerging ideas…

Life

Sleep

I was talking to a good friend on Friday about fatigue. One thing you don’t get with small children is any rest. On Saturday we had a day out, buses, boats, trains, ice creams and by the time we got home we were all shattered. A good day though.

I had the same experience with slightly bigger kids at work all last week. Meetings, conversations, communiques and some adult variant tears and tantrums. It all got done and objectively it was a very good and effective week. But…

What’s true of both is I ran my batteries on ‘drain’. A combination of complex emotions at work and simpler but no less demanding ones at home means I’m dog tired.

I have an excuse for a bad night’s sleep on Saturday – next door had a house party. But there’s no excuse for last night. After the clocks going back and two hours of ‘trick or treating’ an early night was what I really needed. But distractions and ‘jobs’ got in the way.

It’s 100% my own fault. I had the diagnosis, I ignored the medicine. Periodic rest and consistent good sleep are the key to happiness, contentment and any sustained attempt at eudaemonia. Note to self, get some.