Getting down with da kids

Monkeyrina was three last week. Bex kindly wished me a happy third labour day and indeed it seems that, as with the actual birth, children's birthdays cost mothers all the stress and expense, with only the reward of a happy little girl with a chocolatey mouth. And that, it cannot be denied, is a fine reward.

As our house is the size of most people's garden sheds, we hired the local community centre for a nominal amount and took all our junk over there for the party. When I was three, parties were regimental affairs, with party games at set times whose winners tended to be the kids who my mother felt deserved it the most. These days, kids' parties are at playbarns, where they can climb and swing and slide and scream until the food is served and they continue to climb and swing and slide and scream at the table. Monkeyrina's party was a cross between the two - we had a small bouncy castle (which took an hour to inflate with a lilo pump) and Mr B threw caution to the wind by upgrading to Spotify Premium so that we could play nursery rhymes offline from his laptop (anyone remember CDs?). I filled paper plates with junk food that was eagerly devoured by children and parents alike (even those who claimed to spurn cocktail sausages) and the remains of which now sit temptingly in the kitchen as yet another reason to boot me off to the gym. Anna, my ever-generous sort-of-step-mother-in-law, who told me she sometimes reads this blog (hello!), created her usual artistic triumph of a birthday cake, along with a full set of spectacular cupcakes, and in the end I didn't need all five of the bottles of cider I'd bought to self-medicate with afterwards.

I didn't know much about children before Monkeyrina came along. I still don't know much about children but I do know that people make allowances for your behaviour. Here are some snapshots of things I'd love to do but, for mysterious and disappointing social reasons, could never get away with at 35.

• Monkeyrina running round and round the long kids' table before the guests arrived, giggling uncontrollably.
• Kids jumping and twisting to catch glimmering bubbles.
• One little boy refusing to sit at the table to eat with the others, because, his mother said, he was afraid of the adults.
• One girl refusing to leave the food table until every cake had been eaten. Um, that was, in fact, my daughter. Family resemblance, anyone?
• Continously turning around and shaking random limbs all about and then wandering off to play with balloons during the Hokey Cokey.
• All the kids locating the duck whistles in their party bags and gravely honking away when their parents tried to take them home.
• Pretending to be tired at the end of the party just to get a hug.

Grown up parties are fine - sometimes you want to get a little tipsy on alcopops and argue about government policy with someone you don't know quite well enough to say what you really think - but children's parties are so much freer. Kids really can shake it all about and the photos on Facebook the next day will be captioned "Aaah!" rather than "Aaargh!"

Children learn from us and we learn from them. I hope that, as well as contributing to their educational development and nagging them into submission, they learn that sometimes - given the right circumstances - it's OK to do you really want to do.

It's the winning that counts

Exercise and I have never seen eye-to-eye. Actually, I don't see eye-to-eye with very much at all, because 1) I'm 4 foot 11 (150cm, metric fans) and 2) I can only use one eye at a time. And those are two reasons why I'm not a sporty type. I can't play racquet sports, as it's a distinct advantage to have depth perception. I'm not keen on team games because I'll get crushed in the scrum and can't get very far very quickly on my miniature legs.

There are plenty of other reasons why I'm not a sporty type: lack of time, too academic and, here's the clincher, I can't be bothered. Not when there are books to read and blogs to write and the web to explore. Not when I see so little of my husband and daughter. Not when it's raining or cold or hot or windy. It's not that I'm lazy - it's just that there are better things to do.

And then there's the legacy of horror from school. I'm sure these days there are no winners or losers, teams are chosen randomly and all participants are praised equally. I'm sure it's not at all as it was 20 years ago, when PE teachers had their favourite team captains and ignored the less physically gifted, except to shout how useless you were across a wind-blown hockey pitch and then make you take a communal shower (we often showered wearing our full sports kit rather than strip off and display our pubescent bodies to our peers). My friends and I were clever but not cool, so we were chosen last for teams and had no reason to be motivated other than for the opportunity for the four of us to wear our matching "disco" socks to our Wednesday PE lesson as some sort of anti-sports solidarity movement. It got a bit better as we got older, when the PE teachers left us pretty much to ourselves so that they could concentrate on the ones who had been nurtured, so we would pretend to play table tennis and sneak off to do our homework early (yes, I really was that studious). 

None of which helped to build any sort of interest in, or appreciation for, physical exercise. My family, by contrast, were all pretty sporty, but that was something they did - it didn't apply to me.

But then, for reasons I can't quite recall, in the third year of university I discovered jogging. I would get up at 7 each morning, do a lap or two of Christ Church Meadow, shower, breakfast and be at the library for opening time (yes, I really was that studious; talk about a mispent youth). It was fabulous. I was fit, I was energised and I could pack away an extra biscuit or two without it going on my hips. For a year or so, I revised my view of physical exercise, if not PE, and embraced it.

And then I started work, abruptly ran out of leisure time and, for the past 15 years, have sporadically done a little yoga, a little dancing, gone for the occasional very slow run. It was OK. I could have been a little fitter, a little thinner, but I was hardly stationary and obese.

But when you (one, I, we) enter our 30s, a switch flicks somewhere inside us. Suddenly that pint, that cake, that delicious greasy pile of fish and chips start to haunt you. They linger, ghostlike at first but increasingly tangibly, until one day you look in the mirror and see a flabby body that isn't as young as it used to be. And ahead of you stretches a tedious lifetime of the cursed PE.

When I see people with good figures, male or female, my first thought is, "Lucky them". My second thought is, "They've cheated. I bet they have to do lots of exercise to look like that." And then I glare at them for a while, or maybe eat a piece of cake to make myself feel better.

About 18 months ago, I took my extra tummy and me down to the gym for a class or two. I did some step aerobics but co-ordination is not my storng point and I couldn't get the hang of staying upright. As it turned out, the class that I've been going to ever since is the class that, given a long list of options and a slight knowledge of my personality, you (and I) would have put on the bottom of that list. It involves lifting weights to music and is called BodyPump. It is fantastic - definitely one for the checklist of inspirational things that I haven't got round to compiling for this site. To paraphrase Kate Bush, I love it and I hate it too. I now look like this - Wonderwoman with a barbell. 

Well, actually, I don't, and I'm very surprised she looks like that either, lifting pathetic 1.25s, by the look of it - you'll never get decent biceps that way. Mine are looking pretty good under the flab. But you need to do a lot more than an hour's intensive weightlifting every week to get truly fit and toned. So now, at last, I've cheated too - I've joined the gym itself and will, from now on, be found most mornings running up imaginary hills while watching Jeremy Kyle berate truculant layabouts via subtitles on the big screen.

And my point is? There are several - take your pick. The glib one is that you have to put effort into anything for it to pay off. The stern one is that you have to get over your childhood hangups once you're old enough to make your own decisions. The realistic one is that it's hard to do what needs to be done, but do it anyway. And the inspiration for the cynical? Try something new. You never know, you might find you enjoy heaving a good proportion of your own body weight around on a stick to cover versions of beat-heavy hits. And even if you don't enjoy it, try things until you do: it means you can fit a few more slices of cake into your accommodating body.

One step beyond

Last day of corporate life - goodbyes said, thank you cards read, tears shed. Now on to greater things, or at least a barbecue and a few glasses of cider.

People keep asking me how I feel. I feel busy. Or buzzy, as Mr B puts it. As much as I enjoy a chargrilled burger, a cool drink and a small child smearing me in damp rose petals ("Do you like my perfume, mummy? Why don't you want it on your tights?"), I can't relax if I'm not buzzing around making plans and compiling lists and writing web copy and creating design briefs for WordFire's visual identity. I'm not exactly going to be sitting around watching Jeremy Kyle and eating doughnuts.

But why not? This is my big chance to do nothing of any particular value for as long as I like. How fantastic!

How tedious. Now I won't be wasting my days working for someone else, there is so much I can do to fill my time:

1. I will read a novel every week.
2. I will meet a friend for lunch every Wednesday.
3. I will...

Hang on, Buzzy Ju. This is real life now. Why set targets for things that are supposed to be fun? Make a list, by all means, but make it aspirational. Hell, make it inspirational. Find the river. How do I really want to spend my time?

1. I want to read as many novels as I can. My Kindle will be loved.
2. I want to gossip over morning coffee, have long leisurely lunches and chatty teatimes and candlelit dinners. Maybe all on the same day.
3. In order to sustain Point 2, I want to join the gym,stay upright in Zumba classes, raise my weights in Body Pump, jog in the early morning mists, lose half a stone and feel brighter, fresher, fitter.
4. I want to say, "Yes, why not?" more often to Monkeyrina and Mr B. Even if it means what I'd planned to do that moment isn't done until later.
5. I want to keep in better touch with my friends, via whatever medium they prefer. Even if it's by phone.
6. I want to make new friends. The world is full of fascinating people.
7. I want to watch TV shows I've never seen before. Jeremy Kyle excepted.
8. I want to make time for Mr B. Parallel laptops is nice, but so is actually speaking to each other.
9. I want to do things I don't want to do. It's usually for the best.
10. I want to stay passionate and excited and committed to WordFire, so that I can stand up and say "This is mine. This is what I made. This is what I am."

 That seems like a life worth living to me.

What's the buzz? Tell me what's a-happening

To avoid writing my business plan, I've signed up to Twitter. It's certainly an effective distraction. Is it Superman who hears all the voices in the world clamouring for his attention? Or, perhaps a more Ju-like analogy is from the safe haven of 1970s musical theatre - that temple scene in "Jesus Christ Superstar" where the heaving, rotting masses crawl over Lord J until he breaks off from his multi-register falsetto to shout ungrammatically: "There's too many of you...Don't push me. There's too little of me...Don't crowd me." Not that I'm comparing myself to Lord J (my initials are almost the same but I could never get the beard right), but Twitter makes you feel as if the whole world is having a party on your computer screen.

It's my fault, I suppose - in a frenzy of enthusiasm at the novelty of it all, I seem to be following 45 different people (are they "people" on Twitter? Accounts? Voices? Twits?), only a few of whom I'd actually heard of before this morning. And 3 people were following me before I'd even (brace yourself for the jargon) tweeted. They're obviously fans of Bayberry Moonrise [insert winking emoticon in the spirit of social networking memes].

Look what it's gone and made me done! I've used the words "Tweeted", "emoticon" and "memes" in the space of two lines. I am being sucked in! I'm simultaeously checking my Facebook updates and my LinkedIn connections. And my new WordFire Communications email account. And Gmail for personal messages. And Hotmail for diverting e-newsletters. Oh yeah, and writing this blog post

And yet... and yet... it's fascinating. And liberating. And really rather wonderful. There are millions of people all over the world with something to say and a platform to say it. I read an article recently by a curmudgeonly editor (in SfEP Editing Matters, where else?) who scorned the use of social media and its tedious, self-obsessed fixation on our own tedious, self-obsessed lives. But the reality is that other people are interested in our tedious, self-obsessed lives, especially if those lives are a little like our own - or not like our own at all. I think it's a glorious thing that we can learn from each other, learn with each other, build relationships, do business, laugh and share and affirm our humanity as social beings.

Already I have found a blog, via Twitter, which was of such immediate appeal that I've added it to my blog roll. Norfolk Kitchen has lovely photos and tells of "foraging, growing and cooking fresh, local, seasonal food" fairly near to where I live. It's the sort of lifestyle many people aspire to but few have the courage to get out there and actually do it.

Mr B and I are sitting side by side on the sofa with our his 'n' hers matching laptops. It is nearly half past ten in the evening of Mr B's birthday. Here's a novel idea - let's power down and do what they used to do in the olden days: have a chat.

After a long and difficult labour, I am pleased to announce the birth of...

WORDFIRE COMMUNICATIONS

Thanks to everyone for their encouragement.

I'm just having a little lie down with some gas and air before the hard work begins.

The Art of the Blog, Part 1

Seth Godin is stalking me. Or maybe I'm stalking him. Actually, I think a good proportion of those in creative and techy industries are stalking him. In my case, several factors combined to bring him to my attention.

First, Amanda [Julia waves] sent me links to his pithy blog. Then Mike [Julia waves again] recommended his work. And, having his name in my subconscious, I came across him online and, well, there's inspiration for the cynical right there.

The main reason I remembered his name was due to its similarity to reedy-voiced tousle-haired tenor, Josh Groban, most famous for the scarf-waving anthem "You Raise Me Up", which is also inspirational, but not for the cynical, at least not for those who are irritated by its shameless similarity to "Danny Boy" and those with a low tolerance for songs with a single verse and 327 repetitions of the chorus. ("Get me the screwdriver, Mavis, the CD is stuck again.") And, while I'm on the subject, how can you raise me up to more than I can be? I'd like to see you try. You can raise me up to more than I should, in a fair and just world, be, or to more than I would be if I wasn't so short, but more than I can be? Never.

Anyway, to Seth. He is effortlessly wise, and extraordinarily prolific. Not only has he written more accessible, quirkily named books about marketing, culture and personal development than should by rights be physically possible, but he also manages to produce a perfectly honed diamond every day in his blog. His concise, perfectly targeted, posts are everything a blog should be (at least, a marketing blog. Bex's Reasons To Be Cheefuller is everything a personal blog should be). Perhaps what he says isn't new - what is? - but the way he says it, with the authority of a clear, confident and accessible communicator, is why his name comes up wherever a little inspiration is in order.

Although a rousing rendition of "You Raise Me Up" will do the trick under certain circumstances too.

Taking on a silent role

Work is strange when your role is redundant and you're biding your time. It’s a little like being in a play.

Scene 1: a group of managers is meeting to discuss strategy. Enter Redundant Manager One. This is a silent role. The discussion continues.

In some ways, it’s liberating. Management information? Delete! Business plans? Delete! Any email headed “Implementation plan”? Transfer to the junk folder. Remove my name from all circulation lists because soon I won’t be here.

But when won’t I be here? That uncertainty is not liberating at all. There are procedures and negotiations and consultations. There are handovers and meetings and occasional communications. There is gossip and sadness and hollow emptiness. Everyone likes to feel useful, to have a place in the world, to make a contribution, and to suddenly have no contribution to make – or at least to have a contribution that is not required or appreciated – well, it’s a little demoralising.

But we’re here for inspiration, are we not? We must rouse ourselves and swim down the river before we are dragged beneath its choppy waters and make our mascara run and our artfully blowdried hair go flat.

And so, into our institutionalised corporate lives comes some exciting news – one corner of the canteen is becoming a Costa coffee bar and the site shop will close for a few days and reopen as a Londis. (What else can be privatised? Desks, sponsored by Ikea. Loos, sponsored by DynoRod.) This really does count as exciting on a campus where Explorer 6 is cutting edge technology. A sign on the shop door explains that stock will be temporarily relocated and ends:

“We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused”

And here, from this awkwardly phrased statement, came my inspiration for the day. Attempts to sound official rarely communicate any more clearly than if the writer had just expressed it as they would say it. Do we need all these words? (Don't answer that, reader.) If I had the job of writing the sign, how would I have expressed it? My critic’s mind clicked into position and off it went:

• "We sincerely and unreservedly extend our apologies for any inconvenience that our actions might cause, directly or indirectly, to you or your associates at any time, either at the present time or at an as-yet unspecified future point."
• “Sorry about this.”
• "We apologise if you don't like these changes. We're not too keen on them either but sometimes you just have to put up or shut up."

So many apologies, so much to be sorry for. Is it an empty, automatic stock phrase or are companies so afraid of their customers that they have to make excuses for improvements to their service?

• "Why should we apologise for bringing you filtered coffee and a proper newsagent?" 

But, on the other hand, acknowledging potential difficulties is strong reputation management. But some methods are better than others. There's really only one solution:

• "We're sorry if you find these changes inconvenient, but we're confident that our great new facilities will make up for it."

Which takes me back to the start. 

Scene 2: Redundant Manager One is in a meeting with Big Boss.

Big Boss: We're sorry if you find these changes inconvenient, but we're confident that our great new structure will more than make up for it.

Redundant Manager One remains silent. She has a lot to say.

You are on your own. Just do it. Better

If someone lends you a book, they're also lending you a little piece of themselves. Not just because there might be a hair or a fingernail trapped between the pages but because they're bridging a gap for you: they're saying, "Here, I have something that I think you need". I'm touched as much by the act of lending as by the item itself, the fact that the lender has rummaged through boxes and bookshelves with me in mind.

So Suzanne at work lent me a little manual with a big title. I've reproduced the cover here (Ju's Reviews-style), partly because I haven't put enough pictures in this blog, and partly because it sums up the book - audacious, clever, subversive. The self-consciously retro style continues throughout, so that I was surprised to find the book was first published in 2003 rather than the 1973 that the typeface and page layout suggests.

But that's just it - that and the outrageous subtitle, "The world's best-selling book" combine to summarise its contents - how to get ahead in advertising (yourself). Be different ("It's wrong to be right"), be generous ("Do not covet your own ideas"), be creative ("If you get stuck, draw with a different pen"), be brave ("Getting fired can be a positive career move" - that's good to hear). Yes, it is a book of platitudes but they are presented with such an arrogant self-confidence that becomes the epitomy of inspiration for the cynical - use that cynicism to make a difference by being different. That's my sort of advice... now, how can I put it into practice?

Inspiration for the cynical

Hey there, little speedyheads. Join me in the river flow - come on in, it's warm in here.

Let's start with the basics. This blog's name is adapted from the REM song, "Find the River" (the last, glorious track on 1992's Automatic for the People, and therefore the last decent song they recorded). Google the lyrics and interpret them as you will, but I see it as a call to freedom, to escape from self-imposed rules , from the restrictions imposed by work or by society, to find your own way, to go with your own flow. 

Incidentally, my first choice of name for this blog was "Find the River" but it was claimed in 2003 by someone who made two entries in a language I can't read and never updated it again. Which turned out to be a fitting opportunity for me, not being blessed with any particular creative powers, to think a little laterally and find what turns out to be a far more inspirational name. 

And that's what I'll try to share. Calls to freedom are not my speciality. I'm pretty straight-laced, down-the-line, more train track than meandering stream. Cute husband (Mr B), cute daughter (Monkeyrina), house, car, job, blah. As my occasional C of E tendencies suggest, I'm not particularly spiritual, and I'm not inclined to warble on about chakras. I am cursed - blessed - cursed with an enquiring mind - I'm the sort of person who can't relax during a massage because I'm wondering why salons always assume you want to listen to pan-pipes while a stranger rubs your back. My idea of spontaneous is going to Morrisons instead of Tesco. My idea of daring is not typing an apostrophe before the S in Morrisons even though the omission is their brand style. My idea of a fun Saturday night is sitting beside Mr B, each with our laptops, as I write my blog.

So when the opportunity presented itself to look for new challenges (that's LinkedIn speak for being at risk of redundancy) I surprised myself with my enthusiasm for seizing them. The redundancy process is long and torturous, and I may not even manage to escape, but life is suddenly full of possibility, of painting and writing and dancing and being somewhere other than a badly lit office for 8 hours a day while the world spins on. 

More prosaically, I also have to pay the mortgage, so self-employment as a freelance proofreader / copy editor / copywriter / enquiring minder seems to be an option for at least some of my time.

So where does the inspiration come in? Once you start to look,  it is there in every imaginable form (remember, my imagination is a little, well, little). Sometimes it comes to you, as song, a phrase, a person. Sometimes it is brought to you, by a friend with a book or a blog. And sometimes you have to go out and find it.

So share the journey with me. Let's find the river and cast our dreams into the flowing water.

This is where I should insert an arty photo of a rising moon. But that would be too predictable. And I don't have one. So here's another wonder of nature - the inside of a tulip. It's included not just a shameless excuse for showing a photo I'm proud of taking (it's in focus and everything) but, close up, tulips don't look quite as you'd expect them to, do they? Rawer, more exposed. Hmm, I feel a metaphor coming on.