What I Learned In 2008

• I confuse movement with achievement: I felt that as if I was doing a lot of things I was somehow being productive. Truthfully I had no idea what I wanted to achieve. I just felt as though good things would happen if I just did things. There was no master plan, just a string of lofty barely articulated hopes.


• I need to put myself first: If I don’t take deliberate action to make my life the way I want it to be there will be others who will mould it to fit their visions and purposes. I found it very empowering to just tell people ‘no.’ To say I’m sorry I but I have x, y and z to do; I couldn’t possibly. All my life I’ve been preoccupied with wanting to be ‘liked.’ There is no joy to be had there. Just a lot of resentment when you say ‘yes’ to things you don’t want to do.


• When you schedule things, they usually happen: It probably sounds silly, but I have been very impressed by how often I’d note something on my whiteboard or schedule it in Google Calendar and witness it taking place. Suddenly months of ‘Yeah, we should totally work on that project – let me know when you want to do it,’ morphed into ‘Are you free on Thursday at 10am AEST? We can conduct the interview then. It will take about 30 minutes.’ Even when I didn’t take much notice of the whiteboard, its action items seemed to resolve themselves in beautiful and organic ways.


• WordPress upgrades aren’t as scary as they might seem: My first attempt to upgrade left me fearful and wary of future upgrades. However each one has taken place without incident, usually after a period of anxiously wondering if I was doing the right thing. Truly, it is a great platform.


• If you believe something must happen, you’ll amaze yourself with what you can achieve: I feel like I’ve always known this, but haven’t really reflected on it until recently. When I felt I needed the job, I became the most engaged interested articulate interviewee. A far cry from my usually introverted self, my performance astounded even me. When I know I have a deadline to meet I can record things in a single take. (If I believe I have the luxury of time I make many more fumbles.) Its time to stop thinking of contingency plans and decide the things I want to achieve are absolute musts.


• Don’t fix it in the mix – live is much more exciting: This flies in the face of everything I’ve believed about production. Going ‘live’ always seemed so risky; being prerecorded meant everything could be polished and stylized. The truth is there is something really exciting about turning on the microphone and knowing that whatever happens will happen. Towards the end of the year I realised I couldn’t shake a feeling of missing my former community radio involvement and this inspired my podcast. Sure it’s prerecorded but I keep editing to a minimum because I feel it makes my performance more rounded and genuine.


• Collaboration is wonderful, but interaction is better: The thing I appreciate about the podcast is that it is an entirely interactive process. I scarcely give my guests any warning of what they might expect by appearing, and we can feed off the information we both present in the course of the interviews. I compare and contrast this with a notion popular on YouTube and other video sharing sites, the ‘collaboration.’ People produce their own videos, either adlibbed or scripted, and forward the results to the person compiling and editing the project. Suddenly the editor takes those pieces and constructs their own vision. What I love about the podcast is that it happens in real time and is being steered by all of the participants. It is organic and playful, and I like to think the finished product is more than just two intersecting single person narratives.


• Social media is an invitation to be yourself: Facebook and MySpace to some extent, but mostly I realised this through the use of twitter. I came to realise I could express my thoughts in my voice and they would be received well by an audience. This was exciting. I always felt that I was never ‘good enough.’ I always felt as though I needed to tailor myself to fit other people, roles and situations. In 2008 I learnt that wasn’t true.


• Emotional wellbeing is paramount: This relates intimately to the earlier point on putting yourself first. You have to do what is best for you. I found myself in a situation that was making miserable. I didn’t want to upset the status quo so I would bite my tongue. The whole thing was soul destroying. I can’t begin to tell you how wonderful it felt when I eventually took the stand and got the distance I needed to feel better and return to my life on my terms.


• I need to create: Some days I fight the urge. I convince myself that I shouldn’t be writing, or that I won’t be able to pull it off, or whatever my ‘certain fiction’ is for the day. The truth is once you push through the initial resistance you realise not only can you do it, but also that doing it enriches your existence.


• I am not religious but I have a great interest in religion: I struggled to explain to my friend Dave why I wrote a religiously themed blog entry on Sundays, why I listened to a religiously themed radio show on Sundays… and why I didn’t go to church. There is something so fascinating about the subject. It has so many dimensions – social, psychological, cultural. People seem to pick and choose which aspects of religious texts they will believe. They will use the word ‘faith’ to justify the absence of scrunity of personal beliefs. They will discriminate horrendously while telling themselves and each other to love thy neighbour. I confess I aggravated a friend of a friend when I wondered loudly why people were fighting for ‘holy land’ in the Middle East. How ‘holy’ could it be, I wondered? I guess to my mind religion still falls into the realms of the paranormal, and that has always fascinated me.

What did you learn in 2008?
What are you looking forward to in 2009?

Happy New Year!