Changes are abounding

Well,

It's been a good long while since I last blogged - but I felt that now was the right time to start again. What happens when you realise that you have run your race in a place - when you have done everything that you can to make the town work for you and you can't seem to find a way out of your problems. I guess what we used to do was move to new places - places where we could find a new life or at least new opportunities. But we stopped doing that as a matter of course at some point in the past, we became settled and dependent even expected the right to live where we have always lived without change. Politicians and social workers have made it easy for us - why else do we see such significant variations in unemployment rates across Australia - Northern Tasmania is full of out of work trained miners and yet at the same time in Queensland and WA they are screaming out for such.

So I guess faced with similar issues I am forced to consider what options I have to make a difference in both my family and professional life. I have to consider leaving all I know behind including friends, church, work and history (28 years worth) dragging my somewhat unwilling family with me to stop the worst possible results occurring. I guess I should admit that we looked at the idea of downsizing in Canberra, but nothing here will make a significant difference to myself or my families' situation. So I begin to look at new ideas - new things to do and new places to live.

Can I say that obvious thing to do is to find a place with a lower cost of living - where a person of my limited skills can still find a good job. This is a big decision, we will lose a lot in the leaving but we have a second haven - mostly thanks to the presence of dear friends both old and rediscovered. So I have looked at the estimated cost of living and found that Brisbane has a lot going for it - easy access to schools, beaches and public transport - good Christian presence (especially in the south east of the city) and a strong and diverse economy.
Now we just need to decide that this is the place for us - I think that it is but a few problems do occur - one My son's unfortunate response to mosquitoes - two the change is school systems - three burning some bridges in Canberra.

So now we will see what will happen - friends of ours have offered accommodation for us to come up and spec the place out. I have seen some beautiful houses online and some good jobs as well - now to move forward.

more to follow

Staff and Family

I realise its an old fashion thing to be, but I really am a bit of a patriarch not in the grandfather beard way but in the way i think and act. This is of course no longer acceptable in the modern world because of all of the negative connotations that come with that these days - especially the repression of women. I am not looking at it from that perspective but rather from the more acceptable thinking about staff and family and what it means to be a leader.

As a manager of staff, I can't help but feel responsible for them, I mean that's my role to take care of them and to help them achieve the best that they can. I know a lot of managers who forget that and get all rapped up in being the best that they can be and damn the staff. Sometimes it means looking at the individual and seeing that they are the proverbial square peg in a round hole. It's far to easy for a manager to reach for the mallet and try and jam that peg into the hole. The only problem is it tends to splinter and doesn't hold very well. A lot of my job has included talking to my staff and really listening to them, it's not something that I am a natural at, but you have to try and hear them or else they break. So here it is my theory of management - a manager exists to allow their staff to achieve the best that can, this can mean moving them to another role, helping them find another job, helping them understand their role, teaming them with people who bring the best out of them or just giving them time off to sort out their home lives. If you do this they will work like dogs for you, go the extra yard and perhaps more importantly grow as people. I realise that this is almost a moment of touchy feely coming from me but it's also true in my experience.

Now if that works for staff why is it so hard to make the same decisions for family, we are blinded by our own arrogance when it comes to family and we have a weakness in decision making that has no simple answer. I mean you try to work it the same way at home and you inevitably fail, emotions just confuse the decision making process I guess.

Seeing Mormons tomorrow - lovely dedicated types - will see what we learn :)

change of pace

The kids are amazing at the moment, E the oldest is just brilliant she is just learning to read at the moment in school and she is so proud that she is spending every opportunity trying to read. I caught her spending the a fair amount of time just opening books up and trying to read them over the weekend. Her brother N who is even younger was sitting beside her for the whole time just opening and going through the books at the same time. H has moved from being a very unhappy young thing - she was starving it seems, to being incredibly happy as her tummy is now full.

Leadeship

I was reminded today as I sat in the shower (ok it's a shocking waste of water) thinking about leadership and what it means - I am doing a program at work called the executive leadership program and we are meant to be learning to lead and what a real leader does. The real thinking in this space these days is authentic leadership - if you are true to yourself, and that honesty shows through to your staff who in turn know what to expect.

So then with that thought in mind I started to think about political leadership in Australia these days. I mean look at the two front runners and decide which one if either you think is being authentic, Sadly my brain decided that neither was the answer to the question. A authentic leader not only leads but often takes people to places that they would not have gone by choice - the leader convinces them that this is the place that they actually want to be - I guess it's called inspirational leadership. Now as a test case look at Coal and the war - does clean coal technology actually make sense? - does Iraq make sense? Sadly in a unusual state of play I think that we should stay in Iraq and that this is the right leadership decision, I believe this because we made the mess that the Iraqi people are suffering through and we should clean up the mess we made. On clean coal I think it's a furfy, the reality is that the with the limitations with the technology and the time frames before it becomes functional (10-15 years) says to me it's a waste. Not that I am saying that Howard is normally anything other that a dessicated little coconut to quote a previous leader of this country, but it does raise questions about the cult of Kevin.

Just a thought:(

Aging and Parenthood

It's true, you can tell when you are getting older when you start remembering the past with a slightly rosy glow . I was at home today and watching a great movie on the nature of the past - Grosse Point Blank and feeling all sad and disappointed as a result of being sick. Then I got to thinking the past is like another country(surprisingly), it's a place you wish (sometimes) you could visit but in truth you would not want to live there. I wish I could have gone back and done things differently and I wish more often than not that I was a what I dreamed of being, but once again I am not really living in the belief that you can do that. Probably what saves me from the insanity that lurks in the corner of our minds.

Well enough of that - Everyone has been sick in the house requiring me to do nanny duty for everyone else for the weekend - which is a bummer and i think tests your assumptions, speaking about this from the patriarchal mind set here of course, about how much patience you really need to be a parent especially a single one. It's a massive load and explains one of the reasons why the stats regarding success rates for single parents are so poor compared to couples.

Online Comics

Online comics are one the more fabulous things that exist on the web these days are online comics especially those based on fantasy realms.

My recent favourites include:

http://www.giantitp.com/ - ah home of the Order of the Stick - D&D greatest comics

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/ - Home of Girl Genius a foglio special

My nerd type - thanks to Jav

http://www.gotoquiz.com/results/what_be_your_nerd_type What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Social Nerd You're interested in things such as politics, psychology, child care, and peace. I wouldn't go so far as to call you a hippie, but some of you may be tree-huggers. You're the type of people who are interested in bettering the world. You're possible the least nerdy of them all; unless you participate in other activies that paled your nerdiness compared to your involvement in social activities. Whatever the case, we could still use more of you around. ^_^
Literature Nerd
Drama Nerd
Science/Math Nerd
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Artistic Nerd
Anime Nerd
Musician