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Hats Off
Paul Fairweather 2020
My father wanted to be an archaeologist but was given no choice but to follow in his father’s footsteps and study engineering. After retiring from a successful career as a local Government Engineer, he completed his Masters in Archaeology. He also took up painting and writing. He continued to volunteer for Local Government Engineers’ Association and Vinnies, but he never let any of those things define who he was or was not.
Paul Fairweather 2020
On the Common Creative Podcast this week, Chris Meredith and I interview Camille Woods, a young, social media entrepreneur who successfully mixes a career as an accountant with being both a yoga and meditation teacher. She explains that this unusual combination helps balance her mind, her body and her soul. I am inspired that she has started out in a very traditional career but has not let it defines her. What is great is that Camille has found a career that balances Mind, Body and Soul.
Paul Fairweather 2020
As well as being inspired, I am also envious of Camille and others of her UV-XY+Z Generation. A good friend of mine has two adult sons. One did an accounting degree and after a few years of compliance and audit in a well respected national firm, he launched a successful startup. His brother,
after completing his law degree and securing a position with an international law firm ahead of hundreds of applicants, then turned down an offer for full-time work to establish his own startup.
The working world that these young people have entered is so different from the one that I started forty-odd years ago, which was in some ways already evolving from the world that my father and previous generations had experienced. In my father’s day, you had one career, and maybe two or three different jobs at the most. What you did define who you were.
Now in the world of fluidity, not identifying with this or that or every other thing, younger people are career and work-fluid, and flow, seemingly effortlessly, from one to another and combine multiple streams
of ‘work’.
