I'm in a new year state of mind

I started this post with an intent to rant ad nauseum - about how the young folk don't understand good service (yes you, Maddison - i'm not staring at your nose-ring, i just want another coffee)! And how Australians are, literally, petrified of a bend in the road - your car's steering wheel isn't an afterthought; Kia actually expects you to turn at some point and has planned for it. 

But I've reconsidered. Maybe it's the 'first world problem' chants of my first-world friends echoing through my head. Or perhaps it's the rum in mum's fruit cake making me feel all too festive. Whatever it may be, looking back at 2015 I've found more causes for celebration than commiseration. And here are just a few of them:

Run run run run: Recently some Melbourne friends had the privilege of meeting my dad for the first time at a picnic, thereby discovering the origin of my world-famous chicken legs. But the very same chicken legs carried me across the finish line of the Run Melbourne Half-Marathon, and are still holding me up today. 

Roman Holiday: Atop my bucket list, since creating one, has been visiting my new spiritual home - Italy. It was OK, I mean, if you like eating gelati every day, driving Ferraris, ogling blue-eyed Adonises, and Jesus. I know there are parts of the world I've yet to see - most of them, if I'm honest - but experiencing such an intoxicating blend of everything I love will be a hard act to follow.

Moving on up: Compared to many of my friends and relatives, my path through life so far has been fairly linear: I finished school and went to uni; I finished uni and got a job. So it stands to reason that, within my career, as I've worn away one rung of the corporate ladder I've climbed to the next. 

Slave to the machine I may be, or just another cog in the system...or something like that, I'm no good with technical language, only marketing speak...but I'm realising my goals and fundamentally leveraging the skills, opportunities and learnings I've been afforded, in a recognised and supported effort, although not formally communicated at a macro level, to improve my position both industrially and financially. In non-jargonistic terms - I'm doing what I've always wanted to do.

So on this last day of 2015, why not consider a new year's reflection before your resolution? While counting down the minutes for your Uber to arrive tonight, look at the path you've walked this year rather than the path of your driver. Or if you're planning a quiet night in, count how many more TV channels you can now watch, as Grant Denyer counts back at you.  

I hope you'll find as many reasons to smile as I have. I'm still fighting the urge for a good whinge, but if I dared to claim I'd been hard done by this year...I wouldn't have a chicken leg to stand on.

it's the year of living dangerously

So here, somewhat shamefully, is my first post for 2015 - almost a year since my last! The reason for my apparent hiatus? A late discovery of Game of Thrones has certainly played a part...but a far less debauched reason is that time has simply got away from me. And it would be a shame to waste all of 2015 in front of the idiot box. What's special about this year?

80s film nerds would note it's the year Doc and Marty McFly travel to first in their DeLorean. It's also the International Year of Light, a UN-endorsed initiative that celebrates light and its myriad applications.

And it's the year I make my first, long-awaited trip to the home of cannoli, Caravaggio and cosa nostra - Italy. Growing up in Adelaide's own little Italy, I often felt there was more bolognese than Bollywood flowing through my veins. I formally studied the language and culture through high school and uni, yet since then have only practised the lingo with insouciant Italian wait staff and nursing home nonnas. Finally, in 2015, I can embarrass myself some 16,000 kms from home!

It's also the year I travel back in time to 1990, as my primary school exhumes its inaugural time capsule. 1990: Vogue was #1, California pants were billowing; what pearls of wisdom did my 9-year old self drop into this crypt of ingenuity? 

I wonder if I had even the slightest idea of who I would be today. I don't remember what I contributed to the capsule; I remember the paper I scribbled on but not the scribble itself. I vividly recall, though, looking 25 years ahead and imagining me as a 34-year old next to the unearthed capsule, blonde wife by my side and two (remarkably white) children in tow.

Back to the present: I have no wife or ill-gotten children. And to gain a husband I'd have to overcome a couple of significant obstacles: one - finding a man to marry, and two - an Australia that's needlessly clinging to its past. 

In a nod to refracted light, the Irish Catholics have just embraced a rainbow-coloured future. Surely, in 2015, Australia can crawl out of its time capsule, rub its bleary eyes and see the light of today.