Success or failure #2

Yesterday I wrote about some information I had researched, regarding to the failure of people – women - over the age of 50. This morning I continued with that, and found many other websites which provided me with more information which I found relevant.

Clarissa Bye wrote for The Advertiser (Daily Telegraph) on 29 April about Ageing women in financial strife the new face of Australian homelessness. She wrote about lack of super, casual jobs and high-priced housing, and spoke about Dr Ruth Skilbeck, a “published author with a PhD in literature [who] went from a Mosman residence to being penniless and unable to find work.” She said that “government stats are showing half a million women will fall into housing stress over the next two decades”. I know about this because that happened for me – and I'm 60. She also said that “26 per cent of people living alone report feeling lonely often, compared with 16 per cent of people living with others”.

There were some stats added to this article which made me feel very vulnerable:

• women over 55 are the fastest growing group of people experiencing homelessness
• 59 per cent of Australians seeking help from homelessness services are women
• women over 50, after many years of loyal service, are made redundant and can no longer afford to pay high private rentals
• 700,000 Australian women over 45 are single, earn less than the median income and don’t own their own home, and
• 500,000 women are likely to fall into housing stress over the next two decades

These were her own stats. I didn't make them up, but they relate to so many people like me.

Nick Evershed wrote for The Guardian about Australia's divorce rates: the real statistics (28 May 2013). I already knew about these. My ex left me in January 2013 – no real reason. Evershed said “New figures from the Australian Institute of Family Studies have shown a big increase in people divorcing after 20 years or more of marriage”; for me, it was under 10 years.

Evershed's points included:

• the age that people get divorced has increased dramatically
• the median age of divorce for men is at 44.5 in 2011, and women are similarly high at 41.7 - the highest since 1970
• 12% of children were with only one parent by 2010 , and
• unmarried couples cohabiting is 27% - more than twice as likely to break up

Professor Edwards for ANZSOG Institute for Governance, 26 July 2013, wrote Not Yet 50/50: Barriers to the Progress of Senior Women in the Australian Public Service Report. Her report seemed very much similar to others which spoke of barriers to women. She spoke well, but what she said could be filed away by men who didn't really care about the women in their industry.

Her points included that:

• men were unlikely to look beyond women’s duties as mothers
• women pointed to exclusion from networks, personal style differences and male stereotyping as well as family-related barriers and a lack of confidence, and
• different leadership styles can impact on a woman's career progression

Professor Edwards' report is available as a pdf if you would like to download it.

In 2011 – before Professor Edwards' report - Mark Evans wrote that “[m]embers of the Institute were concerned that data on the representation of women in the ‘most’ senior echelons of the public service in Australia showed a decline despite the election of Australia’s first woman prime minister and governor-general.” 

He wrote this year When Meritocracy fails females: a culture shift to 50/50 (8 March 2017) for Broad Agenda. The following points were his own comments from his article from this year about how women fit in:

• Competing priorities/family responsibilities hinder women from taking up demanding leadership roles.
• Negative male perceptions of a woman’s ability to lead impede women’s progression into leadership roles
• Workplace structures and cultures hamper women’s progress by distilling processes of unconscious bias that afford comparative advantage to men with the requisite attributes.
• Workplace cultures and practices undermine the self-confidence and self-belief of women in seeking career advancement.

Extremely sad... or frustrating. Women have the right to believe they can move up in the “male management” as they fit, but too often women don't for... what reason? Meritocracy? Motherhood? Or men rule?

Has it changed now? Will it change?

Accumulating poverty? Women’s experiences of inequality over the lifecycle was a report written by principal author Somali Cerise and her group for the Australian Human Rights Commission in September 2009. This report looked primarily at superannuation, and how women get so much less than men – and why. The report said that “[i]nstead of accumulating wealth through the retirement income system as intended, due to experiences of inequality over the lifecycle, women are more likely to be accumulating poverty”, which, on reading, would make women feel pretty frustrated, yet most men feel good for how well they did. So why are men, at retirement (65+), sitting on more money than women? Is this still going on? It's now 8 years since this report!

Max Opray, in his article Govt plan for older workers falls short (29 October 2015) said “The employment situation only got worse for mature-age workers after the launch of the program – in the year to January 2015, there were 80,000 unemployed Australians aged 55 and over, an increase of 12 per cent over the year before.”

In 2013 I received my Grad Dip OHS which I had spent two and a half years studying for. I was 56 then; now I'm 60. Sometimes I feel grateful that I am on DSP because of my stroke – and I have no other income because I can't work now. Yet other times I think I am no different than many other women who are old and unable to get a job. Part of the 12% increase, maybe.

Women over 50 can work if they find decent work. 

Maybe you can help us.

Success or failure

When I started looking up on Google for info about comparison of success and failure, many of the articles I found were USA-written and about school. I read on: that didn't have to convince me that USA is overcome with differences between failure and success, but I had a look through. I started as a skeptic, but the more I read the more I was intrigued.

NY Times said the “secret to success is failure”. Is it? Early in this article it said “Riverdale is one of New York City’s most prestigious private schools, with a 104-year-old campus that looks down grandly on Van Cortlandt Park from the top of a steep hill in the richest part of the Bronx.” Private school? Was that necessary? The headmaster, Dominic Randolph, seemed to have changed some of the education facilities for this school – an expensive school. Was that necessary?

For the headmaster of an intensely competitive school, Randolph, who is 49, is surprisingly skeptical about many of the basic elements of a contemporary high-stakes American education. He did away with Advanced Placement classes in the high school soon after he arrived at Riverdale; he encourages his teachers to limit the homework they assign; and he says that the standardized tests that Riverdale and other private schools require for admission to kindergarten and to middle school are 'a patently unfair system' because they evaluate students almost entirely by I.Q. 'This push on tests,' he told me, 'is missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human.'

The writer then spoke about a different school, the KIPP Infinity middle school in Manhattan which supplied education to students who were black or Latino and from low-income families. Randolph from Riverdale and Levin from KIPP were both, it seems, intrigued with Seligman and his co-writer, Peterson, who had had just finished an 800-page book titled Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification which was, apparently, a “manual of the sanities” and a “science of good character”.

That sounded pretty good, but how would it affect those who finished (or not) Year 7 at school, had attended (or not) a university, and had a job and grew older? Or did they not? Perhaps that one was just supposed to be read by parents whose kids go to any school, even if it wasn't “intensely competitive”.

Next, I found 99U which wrote about Tim Harford's new book, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure. Harford identified some of the wrong ways to react to failure, including denial, chasing your losses and hedonic editing. The writer said: “We’re so anxious not to 'draw a line under a decision we regret' that we end up causing still more damage while trying to erase it.”

That might have sounded true, but the “recipe for Successful Adaptation” seemed to have too many points:

• try new things
• experiment where failure is survivable
• recognise when you haven’t succeeded
• gather feedback
• remove emotions from the equation
• don’t get too attached to your plan
• practice disciplined pluralism
• finding “a safe space to fail is a state of mind”, and
• imitate the college experience

The “college experience” was the point that frustrated me (funny how it was at the end). I couldn't imagine all of these points worked, at least in Australia, for many or most people. How many people went to “college”? How many would even go to university? How many people do this for their success? Have you ever heard of any of this before?

The next article was from Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business Review – yes, still USA. (Give me a little bit of time, I am attempting to compare USA to Australia!) So this writer had been looking at enterprises for 20 years. She'd already looked at “pharmaceutical, financial services, product design, telecommunications, and construction companies; hospitals; and NASA’s space shuttle program, among others”. Did it even included retail or tourism, which – at least in Australia – are huge enterprises?

Edmondson wrote that a

“sophisticated understanding of failure’s causes and contexts will help to avoid the blame game and institute an effective strategy for learning from failure. Although an infinite number of things can go wrong in organizations, mistakes fall into three broad categories: preventable, complexity-related, and intelligent.”

She understood this, but would everyone? She provided a “Spectrum of Reasons for Failure”, from blameworthy to praiseworthy. Looks pretty good, but would everyone understand it?

Onwards to Australia articles. Monthly produced “A rich history of failure: Australian history according to undergraduates”, written by Professor Neve R Stenning-Stihl (really??) in 2014. Methinks this is satire, but have a read and think about it - perhaps that is definitely a printed 'failure' here!

“Many Australians viewed their history sheepishly. In 1841 the average number of sheep per shepherd was 450. In comparison, in 1851 each shepherd was in the care of over 1000 sheep. In the 1840s depression the sheep were burned down for tallow and candlemaking. But the introduction of Alien species to the environment compounded the effects of soil erosion with hooves and the tendencies of European animals to up-route fauna.”

or

“In the 19th-century city, prostitutes occupied a variety of positions. The historical impression of prostitution notoriously has a shady storyline suspect to more probing. Prostitutes are commonly depicted as being very sexually promiscuous. Some historians suggest that the history of prostitution is largely oral.”

Okay okay, I've stopped laughing now....

John McDuling, writing for AFR, looked at the subject with comments which pulled me back onto the straight and narrow road - new start-ups. So what is a “start-up”?

Wikipaedia says that “A startup company... is an entrepreneurial venture which is typically a newly emerged, fast-growing business that aims to meet a marketplace need by developing or offering an innovative product, process or service.”

Investopaedia said “A startup is a young company that is just beginning to develop. Startups are usually small and initially financed and operated by a handful of founders or one individual. ... In the early stages, startup companies' expenses tend to exceed their revenues as they work on developing, testing and marketing their idea.”

The Investopaedia explanation is probably much more relevant for start-ups in Australia. McDuling said that 90% of start-ups will fail - “they don't make it to a trade sale or IPO, and are wound up.” He claims that “success is the exception, not the rule.” He says that start-ups are most good, even if they fail - “there are also honest failures, where for whatever reason, it just doesn't work out. And the best venture capitalists expect to back lots of them.” Does the entrepreneur learn from its failure?

Adam Courtenay, writing for SMH last year, titled his article Small business and start-up failure rate: is it a cause for concern? He told us that D&B's economic adviser, Stephen Koukoulas, said that “[t]he high proportion of business start-ups and failures was largely due to a weakness in overall retail spending, he said, but could also be attributed to aggressive competition from large retailers...” Weakness in retail spending? Aggressive competition from large retailers? Oh dear...

Yet those stats aren't just for Australia, they are global, according to Karen Lawson, CEO of corporate start-up accelerator Slingshot. So how is that for Australia, compared to, say, Zimbabwe? Lawson says we need customers and finance and resources, so why don't we have them? Why do we fail?

Is failure a secret to success? Do all the start-ups which fold over actually success, or are they actually failure? Do our school kids need private schools to become success? Do we need a lot more than 10% of start-ups to succeed?

I read too much tonight... maybe I should feel I failed. Or succeeded.

I think I need another red wine.

Money money money

I saw an ad yesterday on one of the channels I never normally watch. It was about money. Having money seems to affect love, freedom, security and power. Funny, that. This ad was from Suncorp. Their “Money profile” includes:

• Love - retail therapy, generous gift giving and gestures of love and affection
• Freedom - long to be free from the routine and restrictions of a paid job so they can pursue their whims and interests 
• Security - impressively organised money habits and serious attitude toward finances
• Power - confidence and strong drive to succeed 

How does this happen? Do you have to work to get to any of these? What about if you're in poverty? Don't laugh at me.... too many people in this country are there.

The trouble I saw with this ad is that it's never intended for people in poverty. It's intended for those who work and earn a lot and can spend wherever they want to. Retail, whims. Those words are in their explanation.

How I dream about it! I would love to spend. I would love to shout myself a brand new expensive white shirt with a lovely collar – rather than inexpensive second hand. I would love to have my hair cut every 4 or 6 weeks - rather than every 3 months. I would love to go for a holiday every year, out of this country – rather than staying home, shut in my unit. I would love to eat out at a nice restaurant – rather than buying an unfilled breadroll on my fortnightly payday. But I can't change. I lost my employment income four years ago. I had brain aneurysm surgery, my heart stopped and the stroke happened when they got it going again. I didn't ask for any of that!

So how do any banks (with very well paid employees) help anyone on DSP, Newstart, single parents benefit, pension or any of the other incomes through Centrelink? What happens if a person is made redundant and can't find another job so ends up on Newstart – a lot less than they had ever earned? Do they still use a bank account? Oh yes, I know they do – because that's how Centrelink would pay them. But on payday most of their Centrelink income is spent on what they can't control: rent or mortgage, food and personal accessories, car petrol or train tickets. Many people cancel insurance because they can no longer afford it, unless they get help to pay it. Some will lose their home, because the Centrelink income will never meet the mortgage payments they met when they were actually employed. Really employed.

Sometimes, now, I'm really glad that I no longer have young kids. I was a single parent through most of their lives. I worked, and all my income went onto setting them up for their future. That was back in the 1980s and 1990s – not as bad as nowadays.

An article in the UK Telegraph in 2009, titled “Does banking contribute to the good of society?”, said “This distinction between creative and distributive goes some way to explaining why the financial sector has become so large in relation to GDP – and why those working in it get paid so much.” This is UK, yes, but it's very similar to Australia. And this government allows banks to not pay tax. 

I looked through Aussie pages for how a beneficiary could get funds to buy a house. Home Loan Experts said “Not all lenders will accept government benefits as supplementary income when assessing your home loan application.” How does that work for those who had a mortgage and have been made redundant? And if you're FTB, maybe you qualify for a loan... just maybe.

In May 2017 Finder presented an article titled “Don't let the pension get in the way of getting a loan” and yet their first paragraph said: “When you receive Centrelink payments, whether it's a carer's allowance, the disability pension or another type, you might find it difficult to access credit.” That's not a “pension” - it's Centrelink benefits. Another page (October 2016) was titled “Business loans for Centrelink recipients” and “Don't let Centrelink stand in the way of a business idea.” It seems that there are many ideas – Centrelink ideas – on this website.

I found a page which looked at disabled pension benefits, and asked “Am I eligible for a home loan if I'm on a disability pension?” It seems that lenders probably won't consider you unless the “amount of income support you receive is sufficient for you to comfortably repay the loan.” What purchase price? What deposit? About the deposit, they said: “Generally, a person on a disability pension will need to come up with a 20% deposit. This is because there is no other salary or other source of income that can be used to service the loan- there is little security should you default on your loan.” 20% deposit on property of, say $350,000, would be $70,000. I can't find that.

I went into the contact page and found the following info about Finder: “Hive Empire Pty Ltd (trading as finder.com.au, ABN: 18 118 785 121) provides factual information, general advice and services on financial products as a Corporate Authorised Representative (432664) of Advice Evolution Pty Ltd AFSL 342880.” Their website has a few pics which show pretty much all the staff are young. As a pensioner I don't think they would really help me, but maybe I should “find out”.

Google “government home loans for pensioners” - there are a lot of pages that you might have to look through if you think you're eligible. Me? I'm not eligible unless I could buy a first home – a cheap one – and maybe get in someone to share with me. Perhaps rental is better for me.

Onwards... Wikipaedia says that microfinance is “a source of financial services for entrepreneurs and small businesses lacking access to banking and related services”.

Good Shepherd Finance was the first website I came on. I had already had contact with them before I went into hospital. I had supported a couple of projects through them, and the people had some wins. Well done to them! These days I can't afford to support anyone, but I'd love it if there were any people on here to support me! I have three books waiting to be printed. I'd need someone to help pay for the printing, market them and share with me. Anyone?

Good Shepherd provides NILS funds from $300 to $1200 and say that to be eligible “you must have a healthcare or pension card, earn under $45,000, have lived in your current residence for three months, and have a willingness and capacity to repay the loan. There are no credit checks.” There is a related NILS page – read it.

Thrive supports refugees to work towards becoming new Australians by settling into their communities. Thrive CEO Mahir Momand says microfinance is helping: good on them. I've only been a citizen for 16 months but I doubt if I could get any help from them. 

I looked through an RBA report from 2006 titled “The Structure of the Australian Financial System” and another from University of WA from 2010 titled “Reserve Bank Of Australia, The Role Of Finance”. The first report said that Australia went away from owning any banks in 2001 and looks at how it's now set up. The graph show the difference between 1980s and 2005.

Glenn Stevens, who introduced his paper as a discussion for the Shann Memorial Lecture, said “We tend to think of financial activity and innovation as very recent, but in fact the history is a long one... almost as old as civilisation itself.” 

He looked through the history, and spoke about how Australia had changed in the 1980s and 1990s, “allowing banks to compete vigorously for all lines of business and allowing pricing to be driven by market forces.” He said that “Total assets of financial institutions relative to the size of the economy have increased from the equivalent of around 100 per cent of annual GDP in the early 1980s to almost 350 per cent in recent years.” His graph shows very similar features. These are necessary reads. Please do so if you have a bit of time!

So, where have I gone? I started talking about the ad I'd seen from Suncorp, went through some home funding websites and microfinance websites, and on to RBA reports comparing our banking between the 1980s and 2000s. Perhaps this doesn't answer any question I had in my head, but I still think of them.

Many people on benefits didn't choose to be there, but now in poverty and with no funds to move up they can't choose what they would prefer.

Who will loan funds to beneficiaries? Who will help beneficiaries get off poverty? Who will support you if you want to advance?

I'm still waiting for answers.

What about me?

What about me, it isn't fair
I've had enough now I want my share
Can't you see I wanna live
But you just take more than you give

This is the chorus of an old song, written in 1982 by Garry Frost and Frances Swan and sung by Moving Production. Earlier this year, in a comment on You Tube, someone who was signed on as “Eldorado Perth City" said this song was now “A Message to the LNP Government of Australia”. I see that too.

Two years ago RJ McAllister said: “For those not old enough to remember ..., the economy here sucked at that time as well, and that little corner shop is now likely gone, replaced by a mega-mart, where the pretty girl's standing at a register seven hours a day for minimum wage and no benefits. She probably has those same dreams now as then, and just as little chance of seeing them come true. So few have so much, and when those whose answer to 'what do you want' is always 'more' have it all, they might figure out it's not what it seems, though I doubt it. It hasn't changed; it's just gotten worse.”

So sadly true. So how has this country gotten worse? My previous blogs were about toothless legislation, WHS, ageing, medicalisation, homelessness, feminism, climate change, animals, world wars, moving forward, moving backward, brain injury, strokes, cancer, suicide, zero tolerance and so much, much more. Pretty much all of it was connected with the crap this government has brought down on this country. Even some disgusting misogynist attacks by Abbott on Gillard.

Recently I looked through my blogs and thought I was negative. But after my brain surgery in hospital along with a stroke which has left me with aphasia, I wonder how I can get positive? In fact, for me this negativity goes back before hospital. I lost my grandkids in early 2012. The start of my downhill life. Do you live with something like that? What, then, leads you through your life? Are you grieving, or do people growl at you to cheer up?

This morning I googled “Australian positivity in 2017”. There were a lot of schools listed in there, and a lot of positivity psychology groups, but there were very few media articles. News.co.au wrote on 13 March that “Aussies in the dark as big changes loom for credit card, loan and mortgage applications” - very little positivity. On 6 April, Business Insider wrote “Citi's positive outlook for global shares doesn't include Australia” - definitely very little positivity.

The ABC reported on 10 May a “positive” response from the AIG about the budget outcome, and MYOB CEO Tim Reed on 9 May said “It encourages business growth and is exactly the type of measure that delivers confidence to the business community.” Business. Typical.

And yet the only real positive report came directly from the government: 29 March this year, “Australia has experienced the longest period of economic growth in the developed world”. Methinks this “positivity” is for business, not for anyone in this country who has not had a pay increase, or has had a very low pay increase, moving them below the GDP. Perhaps we have been set up for the future... the whole country will be under GDP.

I googled “Australian budget negativity 2017”. It seems that much of the “negativity” is in relation to negative gearing for housing. Labor has laid out their new policy, Crikey wrote that the government has ignored negative gearing and ABC wrote “Federal budget 2017 lacks the silver bullet needed to slay Australia's housing vampire”. Well, someone needed to see that.

So I went back to Google and removed the word “budget” - and came up with a whole lot of different things.

Conversation gave a “guide for the perplexed” to try to understand climate change. New Daily reported that “[a] 2017 survey by Deloitte across thirty countries, suggests pessimism is rampant in developed nations, with Australians among the worst”, and that “[f]our per cent of Australian Millennials (born after 1982) expect to be happier than their parents, compared to 23 per cent of their global counterparts.” Oh goodness!

ABC wrote that Adrian Wooldridge said “[v]ery large numbers of companies are mandating or at least encouraging their workers to be happy. They want them to have a smiley face; they want them to be bubbly and enthusiastic.” Why on earth do they want that?? I ask you to read this. This article compares between the fall of permanent workers (fired) and the growth of casual workers (employed when they can smile).

Business, listen to me. Why force them to smile? Why employ them as a casual? Why fire anyone who has nothing and can't smile?

For Pete's sake, business – PAY THEM!

What is causing negativity? Well, look through the long list of stuff: struggling for some time, negative thinking, past experiences, self-preservation, lack of success, bad work environment, social withdrawal, apathy, physical illness, life events, criticisms, lack of compliments, depression, lost job satisfaction, feeling isolated, apprehension, lack of support. So many more things. Each person will feel different, yet most are very similar.

There are far too many quotes that came up on Google which despise negativity. They don't understand that too many people feel that way and need help. I know I'm not the first woman to separate from her husband, not the first diagnosed brain aneurysm, not the first stroke and not the first suicide attempt. I also know that I react differently to whatever happens to me, which is why I feel different when I should know I'm not. Don't hold that against me.

What about me, it isn't fair
I've had enough now I want my share
Can't you see I wanna live
But you just take more than you give

This is the chorus from the song I mentioned at the start. These words have never changed, and the reason behind them has never changed, but it frustrates me, too much, to think too many days that everyone should have a similar life. That everyone can own one house, if they want to. That everyone can have a well paid job, if they can. That those who don't or can't work didn't choose that. That everyone on this planet should care for other people they see.

I've had a lot of connection with wonderful people, with support organisations, with doctors, with psychologists but unfortunately they turn off at the end of their work day, go home, feel good about what they did.

Would you ever share with someone who needs you? Do you know who does?

Can't you see I wanna live?

Before the stroke...

This morning I looked through some old documents in my PC, written before my brain aneurysm surgery and stroke. This one I found was written on 9 April 2014, before hospital, and was published in another blog, Its Okay to be Angry on 11 June 2014, when I was out of hospital. I've reprinted it here because it means a lot of my life 4-5 years ago.

What do you do when the proverbial rug keeps getting pulled out from under you, no matter how hard you try to stay standing?

In 2012 I applied to attend the first TEDxSouthBankWomen. I wasn’t at all sure I would be accepted, but I knew I had to try. So much kept happening in my life, the rug had been pulled so many times, that I needed some motivation, some forward vision. My application was accepted, and I was on a very brief high.

Before the event something happened which sent me into a huge downward spin. In India a young woman named Jyoti Singh was raped and sexually abused by five men. That event triggered some horrific memories of my own, PTSD I had never dealt with. I got to TEDxSBW and loved every minute of the day, every speaker, but at the after-function I couldn’t hold it in any more. While talking to the franchisee, Laura Stokes, I became a blubbering mess. Laura sat me down with her mum, Mary, and I bawled on the shoulder of this kind and caring woman for a long time.

The event and evening was a catalyst for me, something I had desperately needed to get myself back on track. Meeting Laura and her family, Emma and Margo Gibbs, Juanita Wheeler and others too numerous to remember let alone mention gave me the push I needed. I sat down and wrote my website www.itsokaytobeangry.com and the accompanying blog http://itsokaytobeangry.blogspot.com.au/, catharsis for my bottom-of-the-pit emotions. I invite you to read these to understand just where I was at and why.

If I thought fate had finished with me then I was very much mistaken. In January 2013 my husband of 9 years told me our marriage was over and he was moving back to NZ. By mid-January I was in counselling for both my PTSD and my marriage break up, but my forward movement had started and wasn’t going to be stopped by something like that! I am living proof that mature age, no money and constant stress don’t have to stop your life.

I organized a flash mob for Eve Ensler’s V-Day event One Billion Rising, and on 14 February 2013

thirty of us danced 3 times in Queen Street Mall to raise awareness for the V-Day campaign against violence against women.

 

Through my involvement with that I joined forces with a wonderful group putting on the Vagina Monologues for the same benefit. The organisation we were supporting was DV Connect, which supports women, children and animals caught up in domestic violence situations. We raised $5,000.

In June I participated in the Ipswich CASV Walk a Mile in her Shoes . I entered into fun runs for International Women’s Day, Mother’s Day Classic, Rotary Run for Autism, the Ipswich Hospital 2013 fundraiser and Zonta Says No, the latter which was also supporting DV Connect. I attended a memorial service at Logan CASV for Joan Ryther, who was sexually assaulted and murdered in Logan. 

I participated in the United Nations “Say No – Unite: Orange the World in 16 Days” Activism Against Gender Violence, commencing on International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, 25 November, and ending on International Human Rights Day, 10 December. This is an annual event and I will continue to participate and encourage others to do so.

As well as the OBR flash mob, I joined a flash mob doing Thriller for the 2013 Zombie Walk, raising funds for the Brain Foundation. I had a personal reason to be involved in that – on 2 July 2013 I was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm, yet another thing to add to my stress and turmoil. I started another blog about my aneurysm journey, http://aneurysmaphorisms.blogspot.com.au/ because I had so much trouble getting any information about aneurysms from local sources.

My activities have not been confined to sexual assault and brain injury awareness. It’s as if my breakdown at the end of 2012 has spurred me to a greater awareness and action for many other areas where I see injustice, and I have become a vocal and active social justice campaigner. I have marched for the Reef, marched for Climate Change, and Marched in March for everything I believe is wrong with the state of our nation at this point in time. I tweet, I blog (my third blog, one that I had before the other two but which has since been resurrected as my general soap box, is not a regular blog but often just when I feel frustrated - http://aneurysmaphorisms.blogspot.com.au/ ) and I drive people nuts on Facebook. In addition, I volunteer at La Boite theatre and Eyeline Arts magazine (and at Brisbane Festival 2013) and I joined the Brisbane Feminist Collective.

In February this year, when I was unfortunately unable to make the Brisbane One Billion Rising event happen, I helped to raise awareness at a stand in Northern Rivers.

The rug is still getting pulled – in September last year I lost my job, after 7 years with the same employer – but in the last few months I have made some wonderful and very supportive friends and I cope so much better now with unexpected stresses.

I am working my way through the process of publication of my debut novel, begun entering writing competitions and started a website for my writing – www.reibus.com.au . Well, some part of life has to be purely selfish doesn’t it?

My next challenge is fast approaching. 272 days after the diagnosis of my brain aneurysm I had a call to say my surgery is scheduled for the day after Easter. That sent me into yet another tail spin, but after a long chat with Margo Gibbs, who is one of the most level headed women I know, I am feeling a lot more comfortable with the situation and I know I’ll be fine. Perhaps my only regret is a selfish one. I have been in swimming training most of this year, 40-60 lengths of my local pool 2-3 times a week, with the intention of entering an ocean swim event in Vanuatu later this year – something to check off my bucket list. I suspect that will now be put off until next year. C’est la vie.

As I have aged, and despite how much I respect so many women in public life, I never would have imagined my mentor would end up being someone less than half my age who took a chance on me in 2012. I truly believe I would not have achieved any of this without the support and encouragement and friendship of Laura Stokes and so many other wonderful people I have met through TEDxSBW. Truly beautiful people. Thank you.

 

I no longer have contact with the TEDxSB people, but I still feel very grateful to how they helped me along in the18 months before my surgery and stroke.