Diary Management

Last year I missed out on a position I'd applied for with a well known corporate. Yes, I was punching below my belt but I liked the idea of a front-line position with harbour views and having been in this exact role before, the hours allowed for work/work balance I sought. A week or so later I got a call from this organisation saying I had missed on on the job but would I like feedback? Sure, I agreed, although with hindsight I might have been better not to put myself up for this as I had just stepped out of the Coroners' Court after a grueling first day of the inquest into my younger brother's death three years before. However Ms Personnel Manager was not to know this and I was bluntly told by her that I had missed out because I didn't have the skills of “Diary Management” .

Later that same week I was talking with a friend who incidentally manages much of her high profile partner's life with grace and aplomb. She told me she had just been turned down for a position for the very same reason.

What was this “Diary Management”, this holy of holies we asked each other? How had we reached this point with abundant life and work experience behind us, yet had never been initiated?

For some days, I fumed over probable replies to Ms Smug-Under-Thirty-HR Manager.

Dear Ms____

It came as a surprise to me that I was turned down for this position because I lacked the required skills in DM.
(Honey,you sure kept this card up your sleeve for this was never mentioned at the interview).

This has prompted me to develop a new program for Microsoft Office, requiring the user to have a microchip inserted into their brain. It converts all the parenting and life experience outlined below into transferable skills required for Diary Management. Incidentally you can download an app to your smart phone.

• Working full time in a deadline driven job as a sole parent to three young children
• When above mentioned children were older, working in same deadline driven environment incorporating children's after-school activities into my after work hours
• Managing to get away Boxing Day for annual family holiday after working long hours getting two publications to print, the lawns mowed, car and roof rack packed with camping gear, all three children accounted for and the dog not locked in the house.
• Being a language a teacher, both here and overseas, who was expected to chew through the curriculum by end of the term with measurable learning outcomes for fee paying students.

P.S. However in my mind I still hear you ask "What has all this got to do with Diary Management? " Very little perhaps but it has a lot to do with AGEISM and ATTITUDE to mature people applying for jobs. Shame on you AMP.

Yours etc...

Dare to Bare in Bondi

As we get older, part of our denial that we are aging is to disguise parts of our body indicative of the process. Whether we cover the dewlaps under our arms or take to wearing turtlenecks in the manner of actor Diane Keaton, most of us are driven by pride and fear of condemnation by others, spectres riding in gruesome tandem in our heads. We hope that the world will regard us as growing old gracefully and we somehow meet some pre-determined ideal of what is acceptable ageing. Who determines this ideal though? The culture of the society we subscribe to or ourselves?
 
We have all come across women whose dress sense has been captured in a time warp. A bit sad we might think, “mutton dressed as lamb “ we might comment. Channeling your inner Stevie Knicks or sporting leg warmers with fluorescent gym gear are looks that are not only dated, they are not particularly flattering to women of any age. However if the wearers are comfortable, so what? While I am particularly coy about showing my legs and stomach, (testimony to my having borne three whopping sons), such physical evidence of fertility is not seen in Western Society as a badge of honour. It should be however, for we are living longer than ever before. The unlikelihood we would have even survived into what we now consider middle age, (i.e. our fifties and sixties), is reason enough to honour and be proud of our beautiful non-gym, bodies bearing the battle scars life inevitably adorns us with be they stretch marks, sagging boobs or varicose veins.
 
Just take a look at fertility figures from ancient cultures. No stick figures here, instead these figures with their heavy breasts and rounded bellies embody an ideal of womanhood that was essentially reliant on protection by males, adequate food, surviving childbirth, accidents and disease. Abundance was an ideal, celebrated whether it was in the hunt, the harvest or the form of someone who had the rank and privilege of eating well. Nowadays instead of celebrating that we are living longer than previous generations, we have become obsessed with youthful appearance and in the process have become highly self-critical.

Just prior to Christmas Day, I decided be bold and bare at Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia, the quintessential Aussie beach scene complete with surfers, backpackers, tourists of all ages wearing overall very little. Humidity lay languidly over Sydney with a suffocating intensity. Venturing out in the steamy fog, I embarked on a nostalgic exploration of Tamarama Beach and its environs south of Bondi, where my husband and I had lived as newly weds some forty years ago.
 
No I didn’t go as far as breaching the surf in a bikini. I ventured out in a sleeveless top with my knotted legs in knee length shorts. Vanity put up a strong case but for the first time in many years practicality triumphed. While this may seem a small matter, it was a first for me to whom personal presentation has always been of high importance. With only a couple of days to Christmas the shopping malls seethed with people too preoccupied with their hangovers, indecisiveness around last minute shopping or the imminent visit of their relations to be critical of a middle-aged woman dressed appropriately for the weather.

So I dared to bare in Bondi and continued to do so throughout the remainder of my holiday. Just this week I wore a dress to work without the complementary pantyhose I usually don. Capri pants have been eschewed for short dresses and my lightly tanned legs sport my varicose veins for the world to see – if the world cares to look, which I doubt. I have been liberated and in the process I remind myself I am alive and well at an age I would never have reached two or three generations ago, especially given our family carries a deadly genetic disease. It is now or never to determine our own ideal and if that is not the ideal of others, so what?