Uncategorized – Page 10 – Two Degrees of Separation

Creativity…I want to get me some.

If you’ve ever read the Dr. Seuss story ‘Oh, the places you’ll go!‘ you’ll know about a feared destination called ‘The waiting place’. It’s basically a place where people are waiting for things to happen, a form of limbo if you will…and I think it’s fair to say that 2012 has been pretty much a year of ‘The waiting place’ for me. Waiting for the renovations to be finished, waiting to see if I’ve been successful in applying for my own job, waiting for our eldest child to start going to sleep without 2 hours of coaxing, waiting for our youngest child to just go to sleep, waiting for the chance to get back into exercise, waiting, waiting, waiting.
But the whole point of the ‘Waiting place’ in ‘Oh, the places you’ll go!’ is that’s it’s very easy to get stuck there and wallow in your self pity. If you want to get out, you need to put in some effort. So I have decided to break free of my wallowing, and declare 2013 my year of creativity!

So what the hell does that mean?
Good question. I’ve worked with, and been dazzled by, genuinely creative people, and I do not include myself in their number. When I worked in film and TV I was the Producer or a Production Manager, which is basically a nice way of saying I was kept as far away from the creative process as possible. And with good cause, if there were ever a battle between the chaos and anarchy of creativity and the structure and organisation of order…I will be there with my ‘Hurray for structure’ banner.
However, I have always admired the end result of creativity and have always harboured a desire to be more creative. I love music and film and photography and various other things where people have ignored the beautiful structure of order…and just been creative. The challenge has always been to get involved in the actual process of being creative rather than just admiring what other people do. But this is not easy, because to be truly creative you need to have a singular vision and belief in what you do…which is very tricky to have when you’ve never really done it before.

For all it’s ‘Waiting place’iness, this year has actually been a really good year for me creatively. I’ve started really getting into photography, and I’ve started trying to do new stuff with my video work. But I think I’ve treated it as a pleasant distraction from the more mundane work…rather than something to focus my attention on.
So for the next year, I’m going to actively embrace the creative process as an opportunity, rather than an entertaining by-product.

That was sufficiently wanky…what does it really mean?
Well for starters I’m going to do some singing lessons. If I’m willing to be seen in public in a triathlon suit…then I can no longer claim that I refrain from public singing out of a sense of common decency. Plus I really like singing…it’s just that my preferred venue is an empty beach where the only thing that can possible hear me is the unfortunate dog I’m walking.
I’m going to pester O’nev into giving me a photography masterclass…and I’m going to try and take some photos that I can enter in a few competitions…and I’m going to set aside time to go and take photos, rather than trying to fit them in around some other activity.
I’m going to finally shoot my short docos on Melbourne people I admire and get them up on YouTube.
But, most importantly I’m going to start putting my work out there…and wait for the internet to tell me how much they hate it. After all, there’s no one’s advice you should take more sagely than an anonymous loner with a keyboard.
So here are my favourite photos that I took this year, let me know your thoughts.
Unfortunately WordPress isn’t playing nice with ‘media’ at the moment…so for the time being you’ll have to click through to Flickr to see all of them…but here’s five to get you started.

2Degrees_2012-4 — Scarlett O’Hurta at the Rollerderby

My Movember reflections

I’ll keep this one short and sweet. A massive thanks to everyone who supported me for Movember…whether you donated money, took a photo of me every day, or you just resisted the urge to snigger until I had walked past…Thank you!
Here’s a 30 second video of my progress:

And another big thanks to the other members of Comms Comancheros.

Eug you looked terrifying. Brendan, your hirsute abilities are beyond compare. Matt, you would have made an awesome extra in Deadwood. And Luke…well at least we tried…now let’s get this 70’s themed Christmas party out of the way so we can shave these sodding things off!

Movember…an update

In 1998 I travelled to Ireland. Both my Mum and my Dad can trace their ancestry to Ireland and I genuinely thought that when I arrived there I would feel some sort of connection…some sort of ancestral calling. Not surprisingly, I didn’t.
Movember has been similar. I won’t lie, as much as I played the ‘I’m going to look ridiculous’ card going into this, part of me genuinely hoped that I would actually look good. That it would suit me. That it would redefine me. In short, I really hoped that I could rock a mo. But, like Celtic ancestry, some things work better in the realm of imagination.
But here are some things I have learnt after three weeks with a mo.

People are so unkind
After the initial week of justified sniggering and pointing. People began to delight in taking the piss. A few people at work told me that I ‘looked like Cary Grant’. Which I took as a compliment until a quick Google images search revealed that the man never had a moustache!
Then my brother-in-law took to Twitter to tell me that if I just moved my eyebrows to where I wanted my mo to be, I would look like Magnum P.I! While this may be true…I think it’s fair to say that his Christmas present this year is going to be remarkably crap…or entertainingly flammable.
Then people on Instagram started to tell me that I looked like either Gomez Addams or Burt Reynolds. While this did lead to some pleasurable audio memories of the band Gomez, it also lead to some less pleasurable memories of…well…Burt Reynolds.

Movember is the equaliser
As a man you live in constant fear of accidentally asking a non-pregnant woman if she is pregnant (which roughly translates as ‘you’re looking a bit tubby’). It really is the ultimate social faux pas. So much so, that even if a woman is clearly in labour in front of me…I will avoid asking if she’s pregnant, just to be safe.
Up until now, I could never find a female equivalent. But with Movember, women feel quite comfortable coming up to you and saying ‘Oh, you’re doing Movember?’ (which roughly translates as ‘Oh Christ there is something that looks like a caterpillar under your nose. Please don’t let that be serious!’) So all you have to do is look innocent and say ‘No, I’ve been growing this since October…I really like it’, and you can sit back and enjoy a lot of conversational back-pedalling and desperate attempts to extricate themselves from the situation.

A moustache is not particularly comfortable
Perhaps in time this will change. But after three weeks, my Mo is itchy and scratchy…and not in the good Simpsons way.

Some people are very generous
After my most recent post, three exceptional human beings donated to our Movember team. So thank you very much Julie, Karen and Marta. It is really appreciated.
But for those of you who don’t see me regularly, and who want me to prove that I really am growing a mo…here are some progress shots

If this isn’t enough to shame you into a donation…then you are dead to me.

Movember week 1

Like most men I’m not afraid of having a moustache, nor am I afraid of not having a moustache. But what I am afraid of is the horrible limbo that exists between having a moustache and not having a moustache…at best you look like the bass player in an average rock cover band, at worst you look like a teenager trying to trick the guy at the bottle shop that you really are over 18.
That’s the beauty of Movember, you get 30 days to try and work your way through this limbo with relative social humiliation impunity. So I’ve decided to give it a go… Now I’m No Expert But here are my experiences thus far.

What mo to go with?
It’s not until you consider growing a mo that you realise just how enigmatic they are. On the right person they can convey power and authority (think Dennis Lillee, a policeman, or my father in law). Combined with rock stardom they can convert a not so attractive man into virile stallion (think Lemmy from Motorhead or Freddy Mercury). They can even define a man (think John Waters, Adolf Hitler or Boony).
But they are also the domain of the second hand car sales man, the creepy PE teacher and bikie gangs. And if you want to be a captain of industry or the leader of a country (one that hasn’t been taken over in a military coup), then no moustache for you!
So when it comes to choosing a mo for yourself, what do you go with? I’ve seen both my cousin Austin and fellow Movember teammate Eugenio converted from friendly and approachable to ‘underworld standover man’ simply by having a handlebar moustache. I’ve seen photos of my Dad when he had a mo and was affectionately known as ‘Shifty the Pimp’. I’ve seen men walking the streets with mos and thought ‘Yeah…nah. That doesn’t work’. And of course I’m also painfully aware that genetically I am not pre-disposed to growing facial hair. So as much as I would like to go with something intimidating or something ornate that requires wax…I’m just going to settle for something Clark Gable-esque.

How to grow the Mo.
A dodgy beard or a dodgy goatee will always look better than a dodgy mo…so for safety I recommend you grow out a beard and then trim it back to a mo once you have sufficient growth.
But if you are doing Movember, then you are morally obliged to just grow the mo. You may look like a dodgy teenager. You may get wry smiles or stifled sniggers…but that is burden you have to bear.

So how’s my progress?
Well here’s my progress from day 1 to day 7

I think it’s fair to say it’s sketchy at best. But there is potential!

What have I learnt in my first week?

I have a very tolerant wife
I will need all 30 days to come up with something half decent
There are some grey hairs in my beard…GREY HAIRS!
Sometimes you forget you even have a mo, until you catch your reflection or you see someone sniggering
Nobody respects a man in his late 30’s with the moustache of 16 year old

I’m fascinated, how can I find out more?
You can head to my Mospace page , check out the daily photos…and ideally donate some money towards men’s health. At the very least, get me above $0!

Around the bay

About 10 years ago I did my first Around the Bay bike ride…and having done the 210kms swore I would never do it again. But last weekend, in what can only be described as a brazen example of just how little my word is worth, I did it again. If nothing else, it showed me just how much I’ve learnt about cycling and nutrition…and perhaps more importantly, it showed me just how stupid I was 10 years ago. So Now I’m No Expert But, here’s my guide to doing Around the Bay.

What is the Around the Bay bike ride?
Ok, first and foremost all the cool kids call it ‘Round the Bay’…so I’m not going to argue with the cool kids, I’ll call it that for the rest of this post.
The Round the Bay ride is a 210km ride with 2 options, Melbourne-Sorrento-Queenscliff- Melbourne or Melbourne-Queenscliff-Sorrento-Melbourne. The main difference is that when you have done about 180kms and your are in a world of pain and just looking something..anything!…to distract you from just how sore your arse is, you can choose between looking at the seaside and breathing in the sea air…or you can choose Werribee. Not surprisingly the ride home along Beach Rd sells out a lot quicker than the industrial back blocks of Melbourne version. There is a ferry that takes you between Queenscliff and Sorrento, but if you’re really keen you can try to get a good run up and jump your bike over.
There is also a 250km version, but that is just basically the 210km ride with an additional 40kms thrown in to make the people who choose to do this think long and hard about the decisions they’ve made and where that’s left them.
And there are also a range of rides that cater for people of all abilities.
But I did the Melbourne – Queenscliff – Sorrento – Melbourne ride and here’s what I learnt.

It is about the bike
Ever notice the way very few formula 1 racing teams use station wagons for the Grand Prix? This is because a racing car is much better suited to driving at 300km/h, whereas the station wagon is much better suited to picking up the kids after school. Similarly, a long ride like the Round the Bay is best suited to a road bike, due to their light weight, their aero position and the fact that this is exactly what they are designed to do. This would appear to make perfect sense.
So why the Christ I did this ride on a Mountain Bike 10 years ago is beyond me! It was freaking horrible. The bike weighed a tonne, it had big tyres that meant more resistance, it had suspension which meant part of every pedal was absorbed by the suspension rather than making me go faster, little things like your gears and your hubs that only make a few % difference…make a big difference over the course of 10 hours.
In my defence, 10 years ago I’d never ridden a road bike and so had no idea what the differences were…but the fact that every other person was a) on a road bike and b) going past me, probably should have been a subtle hint that I was ‘doing it wrong’. For me the defining moment was when I was riding out of Geelong heading home and just well and truly in the ‘hurt locker’, but convincing myself that I was still looking strong. Two guys rode past me and I heard one say to the other ‘Gees, he’s doing it hard’.
Indeed I was…Indeed I was.

You are what you eat
Which means that the first time I did the ride, I was numerous packs of sugary lollies. My reasoning was sound. Sugar gives you energy, and I was going to need a lot of energy…so every time I got tired I would just eat some lollies. Genius! This of course meant I swung in sporadic bursts of energy and lethargy. I’ve you’ve ever learnt how to drive a manual car and spent an hour in a car park lurching forward and then stalling the car…you’ve pretty much got how I felt…for 12 hours!
This time around I made sure I had plenty of food that would provide longer term, slower release energy (aka the sesame bars from the Preston Market), as well as about 4 gels and some electrolyte drink…and plenty of water…and a hot dog in Geelong…and a coffee in Queenscliff…and…look, I’m not saying it was the perfect nutritional plan, but it worked a treat.

Ride with good people
No matter how good your nutrition is and no matter how much you’ve trained, there will be times when you feel flat or when you you can’t maintain the pace of the group you’re with. A good group can recognise this and make sure you are protected from the wind until your energy levels return. Similarly, there will be times when you feel really good and could travel a lot faster than the group…but surging off into the distance leaves the rest of the group either exhausting themselves by trying to maintain your pace, or dropping off and having one less person to work in the group. Instead, if you have a lot of energy, you can spend some additional time at the front where the wind resistance is the strongest. That way you get to use your surplus energy…and the rest of the group benefits.
The group I was with (and a big shout out to Lach, Regan, Marty and Sam) were sensational like this and made the ride all the more pleasant.

Training
Ideally you would have spent a couple of months training at least once a week and have built up to a ride at least 75% of the total distance. But if you have small children then your sleep patterns are probably similar to that of a night shift nurse, and your ability to just ‘duck’ out for a 150km bike ride is slim at best. So if you have trainer at home, then I can’t recommend the Sufferfest videos highly enough. In the space of an hour you can get a really good workout…and you can train your kids to be domestiques by getting them to refill your water bottles.

On a sadder note, in the time between starting this post and finishing it…some unsavoury person has stolen my bike. So if you see or hear about someone selling an Argon 18 Plutonium with Mavic Aksium wheels and Speedplay pedals, Taser them in the genitals and let me know. Then I also will Taser them in the genitals…and then take back the bike that has got me through a half Ironman, the Alpine Classic, numerous triathlons, the Murray to Moyne and the ride to and from work for the last 6 years!

My night at the roller derby

On Saturday night I headed to my first ever roller derby bout, armed with a media pass from The Victorian Roller Derby League and got some of the best photos I’ve ever taken. So I thought I’d spend this blog talking about some of the things that worked…and of course a few of the things that didn’t.

Get good talent
I’m a great believer that you can take a great photo of anyone, it’s just that some people need a little more coaxing and effort before you can get a good shot. Of course the flipside to this is that some people are just naturally outgoing, naturally engaging and generally up for anything…a number of these people play Roller Derby.
I was pretty keen on getting some shots that actually reflected their personalities, so I literally just gave them the chalkboard prop, told them to write their name and then just let them do whatever they wanted. Sometimes this sort of lack of direction drives people back into their shell ‘But what do you want me to do?’…I was blown away at how quickly the players adopted a range of poses I would never have thought to have asked them to strike.

Have a plan
I knew that I wanted to have a consistent background for the photos, but not knowing what the venue was like I didn’t want to be reliant on finding something that would work. So I decided I would use a big roll of white paper I had used a couple of times as a background. I also knew that the players all had awesome roller derby names (‘Pony Slaystation’, ‘Mon U Mental’, ‘Calamity Maim’ etc) so I thought it would be cool to have them write their name on a small blackboard and then have them hold it so that the photo was somewhere between a mugshot and a school photo. The final part of my plan was to shoot a wide shot and a close up and convert them all to black and white.
I think that going in with a vision was great as there are basically hundreds of ways I could have shot them, but when you only have a person for a minute or two, you need to know exactly what you are after. To once again quote General George S Patton ‘A good plan executed violently now is better than a perfect plan executed next week’.
Of course you also need some leeway, and when I started working on the shots in Lightroom I realised that a lot of them looked a lot better in colour.

Take a risk
A couple of years ago Veeral Patel quit his comfortable IT job and decided to go and photograph the Tour de France. It was a massive risk and I really admired his dedication. Since then he has won awards and his photography has gone from strength to strength. Clearly going to take photos of roller derby players isn’t in the same league as throwing in your job to follow your dream, but this was the first time I had decided to call myself a photographer and put all the focus on just my photos (rather than having them as an incidental part of a video).
The risk certainly wasn’t huge. If the photos had been appalling, there probably would have been a few people who were annoyed that I had wasted their time, and the person who helped organise everything (Monica Campo) would probably have been annoyed that she’d wasted her efforts.
But it was still a big step up on the previous level of risk, which was ‘Nan doesn’t like the photos’.

You can see all of the photos here

But what didn’t work?

Action shots
Without a flash it was always going to be difficult getting good action shots at the speeds they were travelling. This was one of the best action shots I got, and that’s just because someone else’s flash went off just as I took the photo.

Also, not knowing anything about the sport meant that I was always just off with my timing or I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I tried to make up for this by taking a number of photos of things that weren’t moving. But this lead to my second problem.

Batteries
I had no idea when I would get access to the players, so I just headed around taking photos of the games and the audience…for 4 hours. So suddenly after the second game when a whole lot of players came over to have their photo taken, the battery light on the camera was flashing furiously. Which meant I rushed the photos of the last few players, which meant I didn’t get the shots I was after.

The viewfinder
I know this is going to make any real photographers reading this throw their hands up in the air, but I find the LCD screen on the back of the camera a lot better to use than the actual viewfinder. But the LCD screen also chews through the batteries a lot quicker. So when I switched to just using the viewfinder for the last couple of shots to preserve the batteries…I ended up with shots that were at best ‘soft’ and at worst, out of focus.

But ultimately if you can come away from an experience like this with some photos that you are really happy with and a few lessons learnt…then you can chalk it up as a success!
So a big thanks to my Dad for coming along and being my camera assistant. An even bigger thanks to Monica for giving me the opportunity. And my biggest thanks to the players from the Dolls of Hazzard, the Toxic Avengers, the Rock Mobsters and my team the Dead Ringer Rosies for taking the time, and being so damned photogenic on and off the track.
The VRDL Grand final is coming up on Nov. 24, I suggest you be there!

2degreesofseparation’s photostream

2degreesofseparation’s photostream on Flickr.

My Brother is totally rad

Why you should never have photos taken of you when you’re fit

A few weeks ago as part of an Olympics based office bonding activity, each of the teams in our office was asked to adorn their work areas with something suitably Olympic. As is my want, I was out filming for the big presentation and so missed the whole thing. But when I returned to my cubicle the following Monday, there was roughly 80% more sniggering from my work mates. I eventually discovered (and this is really good opportunity to say that you should never piss off a graphic designer…they have long memories and highly functional image archives) that someone had resurrected a photo of me competing in a triathlon about 6 years ago.

While I pretended that I was hurt that this sodding photo had resurfaced…I was actually quite chuffed, because this is hands down the most flattering photo of me ever taken. For starters this was when I was in full training, and was doing weights three times a week. I had also just strolled out of the cold water after swimming 750m, so if ever I was going to look buff..this was it. And best of all, the digital watermark was over my stomach…so any trace of fat was gone.
But what I soon came to realise was that everyone had assumed that this was a photoshop job…that the graphic designer had simply put my head on the body of an athlete. The thought that I may have actually been that athlete was as absurd to them…and it wasn’t until I saw a recent photo of myself that I realised why. They see me everyday as I actually am…whereas in my mind, I’m still that muscly guy strutting up the beach in the budgie smugglers.

Who is that old/ugly person in the photo?
For work I take a lot of photos of people. Even when I have taken a photo that I think looks really good, the reaction from the person whose photo I’ve taken is invariably ‘Is that really me?’ If I take a photo of two people, both people will say ‘Oh you look great, but I look terrible’ It’s not that they look terrible, it’s just that they don’t match up with how they think they look. I can remember talking to lady in her 60s once who said she often saw herself in the mirror and thought ‘Who is that old woman?!’ She still felt like she did when she was in her 20’s, but reality wasn’t backing that up. Just as our social media profiles have photos that do not belie our actual appearance…it would appear that even on a subconscious level we are prone to bending the truth a little.
So I’ve decided the best way to ‘unbend the truth’ (this will either be the name of my first band…or at least the message on a t-shirt ) is to go through the reasons there is such a big disconnect between my body and my body image.

Kids and effort
I know that pretty much every blog I write seems to bang on about the myriad ways kids have made my life difficult. So I should state now that I love my kids and I love being a parent, and I have no doubt I have grown a great deal as a person because I have them in my life. However, no one wants to read about someone else’s happiness…they want to feel happy about themselves by reading about someone else’s misery. So I’m really only doing this for you.
I can still remember that when that photo above was taken, I was spending pretty much all my spare time exercising. The result was that I was fit and healthy. Now that I have three kids, I still feel that I’m using pretty much all my spare time exercising…so logically I should still look fit and healthy. But the reality is that with 1 child I probably had 6 hours a week of spare time…but now I probably only have…well let’s see…does the run to work count as spare time? So the effort level is the same, it’s just that it equates to a lot less actual exercise…and accordingly, much smaller pecs.
For the visual learners out there, you can equate the top photo as being what you can achieve when you have one child. This next photo is what you can achieve when you have two children.

You will note the significant loss of upper body muscle due to your training suddenly involving a lot less weights and a lot more running…as you can get a good run done in half an hour, but you’re going to need at least an hour for a gym session…and that’s not going to happen all that often.
Finally, when you have 3 kids, this is what you look like.

As you can see, your arms have reached Andy Schleck like levels of bulk, and you could really do with a hug.

The little 1%ers
OK, so that’s one reason why there is a physical change…but why don’t you notice it? I think it’s because you see yourself everyday, so every day you get to incorporate this new version of yourself into the ideal you have in your head. It’s not until someone who you haven’t seen in a couple of years says ‘Wow, you’ve really lost weight!’ that you realise the death by a thousand cuts. I should stress here that as a man I’m worried about losing weight, not gaining it. If you are woman and you are worried about gaining weight, then no-one in their right mind is going to comment on the fact that you have gained weight…so you’re pretty much doomed on this one.

Being the photographer
As I said earlier, it wasn’t until I saw a photo of myself recently and thought ‘Holy crap, my head looks huge compared to my chest and shoulders! My head hasn’t grown, so my chest and shoulders must have shrunk…a lot!’ but if you are the dedicated photographer for your family and friends, you very rarely actually appear in photos. So if you want the occasional reality check, make sure someone takes a candid photo of you when you haven’t had a chance to suck in your stomach, or furiously flex every muscle in your body. Alternatively, if you think you may have reached your physical peak and no longer want anyone creating evidence to the contrary…I highly recommend buying a camera, the more expensive and confusing it looks, the less likely anyone else will offer to use it to take a photo of you.

So I’ve identified that I have been deluding myself, I’ve blamed the kids for everything, there is only one thing left to do, and that is to make a promise on this here blog that by the time my birthday rolls around in December, I will have at least got my head, chest and shoulders into some sort of proportions that no longer resemble Mr. Mackey. From there I will begin the long road of getting back to my former budgie- smuggler glory…but in the short term, no photos…please.

Our 10 year wedding anniversary

About this time last year, Katie and I decided that for our 10yr wedding anniversary we would offload the kids onto the grandparents, and head off for a week in Byron Bay, staying at the same place we did for our honeymoon. We would get massages, eat dinner at a civilised hour, do things at our own pace, and most of all remember all the reasons that we got married in the first place.
Then reality clotheslined us with all the force and subtlety of a 70’s VFL player, and suddenly we are spending 3 days with the kids down at Sandy Point instead. Where we will not have massages, we will eat at hours normally reserved for old people’s homes, we will try to work at the various paces of three people whose moods are in a constant state of flux between happiness and hangry (that’s hungry angry for those not in the know), and at no time will we think about the reasons we got married in the first place or reflect on what 10 years of marriage means. So I’ll make a preemptive strike with this blog.

Congratulations you’ve been married 10 years…here’s your tin.
OK, so I wasn’t expecting the 10 year anniversary to yield a really precious metal like gold, silver or adamantium…but tin?! Come on. A tinny is a small boat that people in the Northern Territory and far North Queensland tip themselves out of to feed crocodiles. A tinny is something that people who have ‘I shoot and I vote’ stickers on their utes drink beer from. When speakers are crap they sound tinny. Tin Tin is about the only thing with tin that I like…and that’s only because you get a double dose. My theory is that as they were sitting around trying to decide which metals go with which anniversary they got to 10, and a Kiwi (if you’re from New Zealand just swap ‘Kiwi’ for South African) said ‘Wow, ten!’…but unfortunately with the horrifically exaggerated accent I like to give other people in my stories, everyone else heard it as ‘Wow, tin!’. And seeing as no-one wanted to argue with him, suddenly 10 years of marriage was equated with a metal best used as a cup to hold Coke in at Christmas when you’re 6! It’s not fair.
While I’m on my high horse, for years your long service leave kicked in once you’d been at one work place for 10 years. Then everyone realised that no-one stays in the one job for that long, and so they said ‘if you’ve been in a job for 7 years you can start accessing the leave’. Society’s expectations had changed and so the system changed accordingly. Well I think that society’s expectations of marriage have changed as well, staying together for 50 years is obviously an amazing achievement, but nowadays we are marrying so late and having so many affairs…how can we be expected to meet this lofty goal? I think we should bring everything back 10 years so that at 10 years I’m staring at platinum…and 20 years I’m staring at diamonds…and at 30 years…ah who cares…I’ll just be staring.

A big thanks to the Essendon football club
Ten years ago, in the interests of fiscal responsibility, we got married on the day after Grand Final day. At the time I remember thinking, that with our anniversary invariably falling on the weekend of the Grand Final (if not the actual day, as it is this year), what would I do if my team was in the Grand Final, but Katie wanted to do something else?
Well thankfully my generous Bombers have spent the last decade ensuring that I don’t have to worry about that.

So how do you stay married for 10 years?
That’s a very good question…and seeing as every relationship is different, I’m not about to tell you what will work for you…but I will make some vague statements that I will later claim was sage advice.
Vive le difference
When I was growing up, one of my best friends was Marcus. Where Marcus was a risk taker and always up for trying something new, I was more the person saying ‘I don’t know if that’s such a good idea’ and ‘I’m pretty sure there’s a Rottweiler in that backyard’ and ‘Yes Marcus’s Mum of course Marcus is here at my place…he just can’t come to the phone right now…because he’s…on the toilet’. But we worked really well as a team. He got me to try things I wouldn’t have otherwise, and to push the boundaries beyond what I was comfortable with, and as a result I learnt a lot and had some life changing experiences. At the same time, I kept us both out of fights with Asian gangs and prison.
I think that a marriage has to be the same, you can’t survive if you differ on every point…but if you’re both exactly the same, then you’ll never grow as people.
You each need to do things by yourselves
When you met you both had things that you loved to do, and some of these things became things that you both loved doing, and so they tended to take up most of your time. But you have to make sure you still have things that you like doing by yourself…and equally you have to let the other person do the things that you don’t like, but that you know they love.
But at the same time, you have to ensure that every time you let them do something they like, they are aware of just how disappointed in them you are for being so selfish. This is usually best done via passive aggressive terms like, ‘Oh are you heading out again?…I thought we were doing something together tonight’ or ‘Wow you must be getting really good at that…seeing as you are spending so much time away from your family to do it!’*
Say you love each other every day
Nah just kidding…once every 4-5 years should be fine.
Distract them
If you’re a man and you marry someone out of your league (as I did), then you know that every time your wife has a second to think, is time when she could suddenly realise ‘Wait a second…I can do much better than him!’ What you need is something so overwhelming and exhausting that they have no chance of ever actually gathering their thoughts, let along acting on them.
Having kids is great for this. You may find you have to repeat the process a couple of times…but once you’ve got two or three kids your wife’s only thoughts will be ‘sleep, sleep, coffee, sleep’, so as long as you can make a decent coffee…you’re pretty much in the clear.
You’ve got to choose well
What you need is someone fun and exciting, someone who is good at things that you’re not, someone who laughs at your jokes, likes your cooking, challenges you, celebrates your victories and knows what to do when the black dog starts circling. When you find that person, you have to love them with all your heart through everything that 10 years of life throws at you. I know I have.

*In order to ensure another 10 years of marriage, it’s worth mentioning that Katie has never said either of these things.

Moving out

I’ve always been deeply suspicious of people who complain about how hard moving house is. I mean I once sat through an entire ‘Twilight’ movie, so I think I know a little about suffering and enduring hardship…and unless Hollywood has lied to me, moving house involves a rough 2 minute montage of people packing boxes, moving boxes and occasionally bumping into each other and then laughing about it, before heading off to watch some ‘salt of the Earth’ workers load all of your stuff into your new home. Doesn’t sound so hard.
Well Hollywood has lied to me…again! Because moving house does indeed suck…so Now I‘m No Expert But here is my advice to anyone considering moving.

Do you have small children?
If yes, then there’s your first big problem. Nothing impedes the process of emptying a house quite like having to regularly rush into another room to stop a child from; pulling something onto themselves, or wanting to play the game where they hide inside a box and you have to be surprised for the 800th time when they pop out, or trying to eat whatever has just been uncovered by moving the couch.
Also, if you’ve ever looked around your house and thought ‘man we have a lot of stuff!’…let me assure you that a very small proportion of that is actually yours…the rest belongs to your kids…and you are in for some incredibly guilt inducing looks/tears if you try to get rid of any of it.

Have you hired removalists?
If yes, well la-di-dah…it must be nice to have your disposable income!
I’m sorry, that wasn’t about you…that was about me and my issues. We did not get removalists in…and in hindsight getting some people who actually know what they’re doing and have to pay their own chiropractic bills…does have quite a bit going for it.
If you don’t have removalists, then you had better have some friends/family who are willing to help out. We were very lucky enough to have some great people who came over and helped with moving things, cooking things and stopping small things from crying the whole time. This was invaluable!

Have you hired a truck?
If you haven’t got removalists, then you will need a truck. If you have already hired a truck, then you will need a bigger one…seriously, you have a lot of stuff in your house and no-one wants to spend a day carting around small amounts of it, when you could get all the transporting done in one hit.
And speaking of hits, if you’re driving a truck along Murray Rd in Preston, there is a pole outside the Supermarket that sits out further than all the other poles…it costs about $100 to replace the side mirror…you will swear quite a bit.

If you think you’re 80% done…you’re actually only about 60%.
Every time you empty a room you will move out all the big things and feel as though you’re making swift progress…but it’s the litany of small things that will see you at 11.30pm surreptitiously dumping stuff into garbage bags.

Do you really need that?
If you haven’t used it or worn it in the last 12 months…then no you don’t. We are currently house sitting at a friend’s house for 6 weeks, and so I packed everything I could into a backpack and left the rest of my stuff at my parent’s house. It’s becoming pretty apparent that all I actually need is a back pack full of stuff. The rest is like local government elections…occasionally necessary, but you really could do without them.
However, there are a few exceptions to the ‘backpack rule’. The first is the coffee machine and grinder. If I had come down to choosing between packing the coffee machine & grinder or pants…let’s just say I would have been arriving at work pantsless…but highly caffeinated.
As the picture below shows, you can question my parenting…but never my dedication to coffee.

The second is the Thermomix…because you know…it’s good for making porridge for breakfast and cutting things up and stuff. But most importantly it means that your insistence on bringing the coffee machine suddenly doesn’t look so crazy.
Finally, a good set of knives. We have been lucky enough to stay in two houses so far with good knives…but you should never risk staying somewhere with crap knives. If you prepare food using crap knives it will eventually make you want to stab yourself…the only upside being, crap knives won’t pierce your skin.

Cut the kids some slack
If you do have young kids, there is every chance that this move is away from the only home they have ever known. So while you may be annoyed by the fact that the weather’s warming up and you can’t for the life of you find where your shorts have been packed, they are going to be going through an emotional upheaval equivalent to your first break-up. So ready yourself for some interrupted sleep, the occasional emotional outburst and a feeling of helplessness on your part…actually, come to think of it, this is EXACTLY like your first break up!

But, unless you’ve been evicted by your landlord (or an audience on Big Brother), you are probably moving out of your house for a good reason. You might be moving closer to the city, or further from the city, or renovating, or downsizing…whatever the case may be, you are following a dream of a better life, and moving out of your home is just the first step in this journey.
It’s just a pity that this first step is straight onto a rake…which flicks up and smashes into both your head and genitals, leaving you dazed, in pain and wishing you’d never started this journey in the first place.