A New Foundation 

There I was, sitting in a shadowed office on a plastic chair that had probably been stolen from one of the many function spaces in the sporting venue. Across from me, separated by the same desk that I’d once been welcomed into the company over almost a decade prior, was my executive manager and to his left my position manager. Between them the silence was deafening as they both stared at me in shock, clearly processing what I had just told them. They both were jolted awake as a crash came from the building works going on outside my managers door. “You’re joking.. you can’t be serious” my executive manager uttered clearly still considering his position. “No, I’m not joking,” I replied through an awkward smile. My gut was wrenching and I had mixed feelings  of excitement, uncomfortableness, joy, fear and other indescribable emotions racing inside me. I remember my heart beating in my ears as I considered what I was doing. I wondered ‘was this right for me?’, ‘would I one day regret this’ and ‘should I have waited longer’. Another crash came from outside the closed glass office door as a builder hammered into a wall in the open plan part of the office space. My eyes shifted to my position manager who had not found any words yet, his eyes had become sunken and I honestly considered whether he was about to vomit. I was perplexed by his shock at the news, did he really not know? Was he honestly unaware of how unhappy I had become? How alone I felt as the only broadcast and audio visual specialist in the entire company? We had spoken many times about the stress I was under, that the new rebuilt office was going to be cramped, stuffy and crowded. I’d asked for a pay rise or trainee-assistant, more support or anything that would lead me to believe I had a future there. I never received anything or any sign that the company cared at all about my eight years of service. Why was he so panicked? Isn’t everyone replaceable? How could he not know that my time was over, that I had been pushed too far and after everything I had been through I was quitting. 

The meeting to submit my resignation was short and despite both of my bosses  clear panic at the idea of losing me, they both congratulated me on my new position at a different company. After shaking hands and discussing my handover duties, I left to walk back to my desk that was temporarily down the hall while renovations were being completed on the “new-and-improved” office. The moment I was alone I felt a weight lift off my shoulders, I was finally free, unstuck from a job that had been eating away at me in recent years. It’s strange how much emotional weight we can all carry around without truly knowing until it’s gone. Even from the beginning I had never felt at home at the sports venue, its culture was old and outdated. I wanted to be dynamic and champion new ideas and I was never going to be able to do that there.

I had been looking for a new job since the beginning of the year and as the year progressed I started to believe I was doomed to be stuck exactly where I was. As so many people know it is truly difficult to leave your workplace. Against our own differences, ‘corporate personas’ and the other odds, we all find connections and build a community at our workplaces. I had become comfortable, I felt I knew my craft and the longer I stayed in the same job the bigger and better any new opportunity had to be. I recognised this mixed feeling of wanting change and not willing to take a risk on an opportunity. I had instead decided to focus on the parts of my life where I could more easily make change. Reviewing my personal values, checking in with my past and understanding my life's perspective. I’ve always had this imaginary vision playing over in my mind that my theme this year was like building a house. I could imagine myself digging in the ground and removing rocks, ready to place out wood for the frame. Digging up the past is exactly what it felt like, asking myself the tough questions. ‘What emotional foundation was I replacing?’ And ‘When did I last rebuild myself’? The answer to these questions didn’t take much digging to discover.It was when I worked in the news. 

Over a decade ago from now I began my first real job, as a tv director in a local news station. I was a young white kid from the well-off suburbs that moved to a small town and received a radical wake-up call on the realities of ‘life’ and ‘humanity’. Although three years could be insignificant, those three years in news were where I last unwillingly rebuilt the core of myself. The news station I worked in had a room full of screens, one of which was ominously  called ‘the feed’. The feed was a network link that connected all news stations in the country together, where rawuncensored video footage could be streamed from around the world 24 hours a day for anyone in the network to use in their broadcasts. At the time this was the fastest way to share video files, as uploading and downloading would have taken hours and streaming was only dependent  on the length of the clips. My desk was below the feed monitor and I was constantly on the lookout for footage to use in mid day updates. The feed had no labels, no descriptions and you would see the most random clips ranging from ten minutes of sport highlights, raw footage from a fashion runway, clips from parliament , full unedited press conferences, video from war zones or stock footage separated only by moments of black. One morning while sitting alone at my desk I looked up at the feeds black screen as it cut away to footage of a car bombing from somewhere outside the western world. I remember watching people scramble as smoke billowed into the air and people screamed. The camera was shaken as the lens zoomed slightly on two men…  

The description has been removed as it  was so graphic that my talented editor felt it should not be published. 

…and then the screen once again went black. It was the most horrific thing I had ever seen and it was the beginning of a routine of horrific images I would see regularly working in the news. Although these images were endlessly unsettling and it has taken me a long time to be able to talk about them, it wasn’t what damaged me the most. It was the news team's reaction, and my own reaction to these images. Journalists and staff saying “it’s real shame it’s too graphic for TV”, “does anyone even care?” and “it’s important but we don’t have any good footage so dump it”. We were hunters looking only for the most engaging content and did not care who we hurt to get it. I remember feeling overwhelmed with guilt one night after we broadcast footage of a mother wailing and crying in the arms of police after being told that her son had just committed suicide. Our ‘news’ justification for showing the worst moment of her life to all of our viewers was that she and her son were both ‘bad people’ and her son had committed multiple armed robberies, and led police on a lengthy police chase moments before his death. Yet, in the footage all I could see was another person suffering, being used and abused for content. Those short three years I was a witness to the world's pain, and unless it was a good fit for the news bulletin, or good entertainment no one would ever know. As you would expect, in order to survive I put up a thick mental wall between my emotions, and it’s taken all these years since  working in the sport venues more friendly working environment, therapy and my family’s love, to pull it down. Now, a decade later as I am building my new foundation I am finally ready to let it all go. 

This year's theme and plan to rebuild myself was developed around changing jobs, but the idea stemmed from my relationship and a new feeling of connection I found with my partner after getting married. I am fully prepared to call it the ‘honeymoon phase’ but there is something undoubtedly different now that we are committed to each other. She has always been my best friend, the one I trust most and my deepest love. Getting married has given those feelings a founding moment. We both know that it’s unknown if it will last forever, but for now our marriage has let us both focus on more than our relationship. We know that the other will be by our side and that our connection is now more than a promise, it's our life. I am so proud of my wife and all she has achieved for herself this year and I’m grateful for all the support she has given me as I’ve tackled some difficult choices. At the midpoint of the year it was her who noticed me losing hope at ever finding a new job, and she encouraged me to look outside work for a purpose. With her support I began to reconnect with the things I enjoyed when I was younger. I was a ‘theatre kid’, and I’d grown up singing and dancing in musicals from age thirteen to seventeen. This year I dove back into live drama with a month of rehearsals at a tiny little local theatre. In what felt like the blink of an eye I was on stage again in a dramatic classic. I loved it, I’d missed live theatre and my wife’s enthusiasm pushed me in the right direction to see just how important it was to me. She surprised me by inviting all my friends to come see the play together. It would be so easy for me to take her love for granted, but I know how important her presence in my life is, and how much she will forever be a pillar of my new foundation.

In the final months of the year my attitude to finding a new job had relaxed. Although I still desperately wanted a change, I had also turned down offers that were not a good fit for me. I wanted the right position and not just any new job I could find. In the most serendipitous way, like magic, the moment I had accepted that I wanted more than just to ‘move to any old job’ the perfect position became available. It was at a different kind of venue, a new challenge, it had a larger theatre  fit for live production and was a step up for my career. I gave my notice and used my final weeks to say goodbye to the place and the people I’d worked with for eight years. I’d grown as a person over those years, healed from my time in the news and I knew I was ready to move forward.

The first few weeks at my new job were spectacular and for the first time in my career I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I’d made friends and instantly felt at home in the culture. It was at my new desk, wishing my team of talented audio visual specialists well and sending them home early for the holidays I decided. After such a big year of changes, growth and l reliving some of the most difficult moments in my life. I think I just want to enjoy it. I want to enjoy the love that surrounds me. I want to dance on the metaphorical foundation I’ve built this year, I want to spend time with my wife and simply give myself a whole year, just for joy.