GUILT TRIP

To My Darling Daughter,

You are my sunshine and my moon. Where would I be without you?

Your funny little laugh and your beautiful smile make everything so worthwhile.

You are patient and you are kind. You are compassionate and very wise. Although I am the grown-up one, you have  taught me to be a Mum. At times I am not there to play. It must seem that I work all day and never stop for very long. I know it's true and it's just plain wrong. If I could have my time again, I'd be your playtime MummyBestestFriend. We'd spend every day out chasing snow on chocolate unicorns, away we'd go! Down broccoli streets and past fields of laughs, we'd sleep on strawberries and have lemonade baths. I'd take you where there was no sky, no ground below, just you and I. We'd see each others lives gone past and be two cosmic rainbow blasts!

But our life is here and now and long, so we'll have each other to stay strong. Two girls together, forever true. I'll never have a better friend than you.

My daughter is missing me. I see more of this computer screen than I do my kid.  She clings to me like a limpet, just wants so much to be seen and heard, given attention and played with.

I'm guilty. Guilty because I spend too much time working, guilty because if I don't work I let my clients down, guilty because if I do work the hours, I am tired and hopeless as a mother, a wife, a colleague. Guilty because I know the crap I am doing to my body in order to meet my work obligations is probably ruining me on levels I don't even want to think about. Guilty because I choose to spend half an hour blogging instead of meeting another deadline.

How am I supposed to explain this to her? All she knows is that I work all the time. She's gotten so good at playing by herself. I'm guilty for having her as a single parent, knowing she would likely never have a close sibling to bond and play with through her childhood.

I wrote this letter for her at 3am one day last week. I don't even know which day because it was just a shocking crush of deadlines that saw days and nights run together. I read it to her last night. She loved it. It kind of rhymes because she loves words that are 'married', which is how she describes them. She thinks I'm a rocking rhymer.She'll think I rock for another 6 years or so, and then she'll be mortified at having to spend a weekend at home with me. I'm so fucking mortified all these years have passed and that her babyhood has gone completely.

I'm so grateful that she is old enough to read this little thing I wrote, as my way to trying to help her understand how I feel. I'm scared that she is old enough to understand it because it's like I blinked just after she arrived on the table at the hospital and the best part of a decade had already gone by.

In truth, I have developed some horrible habits as a working parent. I remember what it was like to have a workaholic father. Late to get us to school, late to pick us up on the days he had to. Often racing up to the school gates because he had forgotten to pack us lunch and literally throwing paper bags at us that had pies or pasties or sandwiches in them. His liberal use of the word "promise" and how little it added up to.  Feeling like we were always in his way, we came second. His job came first. He always told us he loved us, he was always affectionate but I'm not sure it ever really made up for the temper, the controlling moods and the tension in the house when things were bad at work. Am I now parenting the way I was parented, hoping that words and hugs are enough to make up for not being able to simply give of myself?

God.

What are the things you feel you missed as a child from your parents and have you been able to focus on giving them to your own kids?

FORESIGHT AND FACEPALMS

Today I feel like taking a match to everything. I'm pissed off, tired and really over my own ability to see shit coming long before it hits. I'm over having this ability because no fucker ever listens.

I'm not psychic (much) it's more just an ability to see threads between things that others think are unrelated. To understand and know when they are going to converge and create demand, issue, opportunity.

There are numerous examples, big and small. Some of the standouts include:

I was working for The Australian some 15 years ago (or more).  When the first internet job boards landed (anyone remember Monster Board) the powers that be had conniptions because it threatened their cash cow of IT recruitment advertising on a Tuesday. They decided to lock Monster Board out and would not accept their advertising. I argued my ass off (no right to do so, I was a kid) but said to anyone that would listen "don't shut them out, lock them in. Get them on exclusives, the internet is the way everything is going to go, so let's work with them and be the first to do this."  I knew nothing about the internet. Did not own a computer. Had rarely even used one. But I knew it made no sense to shut out innovation instead of partnering with it.  Remarkably, this argument is still being had with print publishers that continue to fail to get it, as their print publications continue to fail.

Not long after I left the Oz, I started doing a bit of PR and marketing for an outfit called Quantel. They make high end editing gear for broadcast. I remember saying to the Australian MD, who was questioning my media strategy "you guys need to be talking to this market because in five years time you'll have opened your platform to 3rd party developers, be competing with consumer brands on editing capabilities and applications and have to know how to talk to telecommunications companies, because they will be broadcasters So you should be talking to them now and leading their thinking about how your technology will apply." He told me I was an idiot.

Once upon a time, I walked into the office of a guy who was also flogging broadcast equipment and had briefed my flatmates agency on a catalogue he wanted to create. My flatmate didn't understand the brief. I didn't know the first thing about this guys business, or his brand (Sony) but I marched into his office, told him I believed he was setting up a new division, outlined the business case for doing so and how he would then take his channel business into branded stores with his leading partners to open up a new category. He asked my flatmate if he had bugged the office and demanded to know how I knew all this when he hadn't even told his own wife what he was planning. He hired my flatmates agency to launch the division. He ended up running Sony AV/IT marketing. When he left the pro division and went to consumer, he dumped the agency and didn't take me with him. I still give him shit about that on a regular basis. I married him last year. He sometimes listens to me now :)

I flew to Columbus, Ohio with a client to pitch on the launch of a new product into SEAsia. It was not long after the Sydney Olympics and during the whole Bush/Gore election fiasco. Smack bang in the bible belt I was, in my 20's and still clueless. Got asked what I thought of the election and what would happen. Being Australian, I told them. Said history would show Gore won the popular vote, but Bush would take it on a point of law. Said in his first 100 days he'd be rattling his sabre at China and the Middle East and if they were not already scenario planning for war, they'd better. My Australian client went green and kicked me repeatedly under the table. I came home with the business. In April of that year, I had a weird breakdown and cried my heart out to my agency boss, told him something terrible was coming, something bad was going to happen and so many people were going to die. Started warning my clients to look at their exposure in the US. Very few of them listened.  When Sept 11 hit, I was numb. I'd already grieved.

Recently I said to a CTO I greatly admire and respect two things "soon, everyone is going to choose which application they want to use to do their jobs, even if they are all doing the same job. They'll do to their app cloud bank and choose the application that best suits their purpose, download and use it and the enterprise will let them." He said "It will never happen."  I also said to him after a round table "the thing your brand needs to focus on talking about at this level is not technology, it's people, because that is what is fucking your clients up." He said "our technology can't help them with that " #facepalm

He recently tweeted from Gartner that BYO Application is the next thing...duh, really.  Oh, and the marketing gurus at corporate in the USA have come up with new positioning that includes having to change the human element of thinking. They even have a nifty slogan for it and one of their blogging gurus has started referencing how many conversations with clients are not about tech, but about solving the human issues. Double Duh.

I mean, none of this matters. I'm not saving lives. Watching an interview with a young unknown actress starring in an indie film called Mystic Pizza and saying "She is going to be huge" when I was 15 didn't change the world. It's all swirling around up there but I'm not a millionaire because of it.

Right now I'm tired and pissed off because I have been seeing shit coming down the line for my own family. And today it hit. And it's a storm of crapola. I could not have stopped it. Talking about it would not have prevented it. But every now and then, it would be really good if someone stopped and took the time to consider "what if she is right."