Working Wonders

Hello, reader!  How was your weekend?  I hope you’re feeling well-rested and ready for your Monday.

Today I’d like to pay homage to colleagues.  In the working world we have no way of knowing what kinds of people we will end up alongside, or how much their company will influence us throughout our lives.  I have been lucky enough to work with some truly brilliant people, and I hope that you have, too.  Here are a few examples of co-workers we could all do with:

The Boss You’ve Accidentally Turned Into
Classic example of my first boss’ standard behaviour: I turned up to work one day with no make-up on and, as sod’s law dictates, I ran into an ex-boyfriend on my lunch break.  My boss’ response was pretty straightforward: “It’s your own fault, girl.  Why do you think I’m always dressed up, even when it’s just to come to this place?  You’ve got to be prepared.”  Wise, wise woman.  I can’t claim to be as savvy (or as well-dressed) as she was, but sometimes I find myself using her turns of phrase and management tactics, which can only be a good thing.  We all resist turning into our parents, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with turning into our favourite bosses.

The Friend Who Keeps You Going
One of the only things that I miss about my last full-time job is the girl I sat next to in the office.  Over the weeks and months we discovered that we got on extremely well, and that we had some fairly important things in common.  When the job started to go sour and I was feeling pretty down about things, it was this colleague whom I confided in, and whose support was invaluable to me.  I hope that you never have a job that makes you sad, but if you do, I hope that someone in your office can make you smile.  Those people are godsends.

The Cool Kid You Randomly Get On Really Well With
I recently did a stint as a front of house supervisor type thingy on a large-scale kids’ show.  My second in command was absolutely brilliant, but here’s the funny thing: I remember sitting next to her in the group interview stages thinking “dear God, this girl is so cool.  I bet we have nothing in common.  And she’s just given a really good interview answer.  Bollocks.”  It’s nice to look back at that and realise that yes, she is insanely cool, but she’s also really good fun.  Not judging people based on first appearances turns out to be particularly important in the working world.

The One You Keep Hold Of
One of the weirdest aspects of leaving a job is that you can go from spending all of your time with a group of people, getting to know their habits and coffee preferences, and then suddenly not see them for ages.  In certain cases the friendships that you strike up with your colleagues can traverse job hopping, geographical relocation and even months of no contact.  It’s strange to look back over my employment history and see how many ex-colleagues have ended up being good friends, and where our lives have taken us.  Harry is a perfect example: we started out working together in a box office, and now he effectively runs my theatre company.  I’m very glad I kept hold of him, and I hope that you’ve got people from your working life who’ve stuck around for your real life.

I also hope that you have an amazing Monday, and that you get to listen to your favourite music on the way to work.

Smells Like Team Spirit

Hello, lovely reader!  How’s your week progressing?  Getting through your to do list at a pleasing pace, I hope?

“Team work” is one of those phrases that fills us with dread and fear.  This is because we secretly think that “team work” means “unable to think for yourself”, “willing to let others do your work” or, horror of horrors, “always up for those God-awful trust exercises that supposedly break the ice, but actually make everyone feel cripplingly embarrassed”.

What you discover very quickly in working world (particularly when you work in the arts) is that when it actually happens, team work is flipping brilliant.  Of course we should all have independent approaches, unique ideas and confidence in what we bring to the job as individuals, but we should also enjoy the many advantages that proper team work offers.

As you might remember from previous posts, I am currently working in a front of house team on a large-scale kids’ show in London.  The job is difficult and the show is not really aimed at my demographic, but the experience is ace.  As they say in The Lego Movie song, everything is cool when you’re part of a team.  Here are a few lovely things about team work that might dispel some of those trust exercise (shudder) memories:

In jokes – weeks, months and even years after the event, in jokes can help a team to feel connected to one another.  In jokes are also a good way to just have a bit of fun at work when the chips are down.

People understand why you’re stressed – if you turn to a colleague and go “aaaargh” (or something slightly more articulate), nine times out of ten they will get what you’re on about.  Not having to explain your stress and still managing to get sympathy is pretty darn efficient.

The play’s the thing – working with a whole bunch of people who care about the same project you do is brilliant, because you are constantly reminded that you are all working towards something bigger than any of you.  This can be scary and inspirational in equal measure, but it is always a motivator.

Down time – it is so nice to unwind in the company of people whose day you’ve shared.  There’s a sense of mutual achievement and good humour when my colleagues and I get the train home from work together, even though most of us have at least an hour’s commute ahead of us.  Stopping at the amazing frozen yoghurt place on our way from work to the station helps, too.

Going crazy – work can sometimes take over our lives a bit, and when it does it’s nice to know that the people you work with are going crazy at exactly the same rate, in pretty much the same way and for precisely the same reason.  For instance, the kids’ show I’m working includes some very distinctive music.  Surprisingly, it’s actually very cheering to hear my colleagues humming it all day long, because it means that I’m not alone.  The one time that it’s good to crazy is when you’re in great company.

Have a delightful Friday.

10 Things All Theatre Types Do

Hello, you lovely thing.  How’s this week treating you so far?

Firstly, I should apologise for the fact that I might not have time to blog every day for the next few weeks.  I’ve just started working on a kids’ show in Greenwich, and I will essentially be eating, sleeping and breathing children’s theatre for a while.  I will do my best to keep up with you lovely people, but please do bear with me if I don’t quite manage it.

Today’s blog is (predictably) a theatre-based list of stuff that happens to everyone when they start working on a new show, particularly in a front of house capacity:

1) You work out very quickly who is going to make you laugh during the nightmare shifts – look out for the people who tend to mutter witticisms under their breath during briefings and people who are good at pulling silly faces.

2) You remember how much fun it is to use radios – you’re basically getting paid to play with walkie talkies.

3) You make a new best friend – in my case, one of my fellow supervisors has already “claimed” me as his latest fag hag.  I feel so honoured.

4) You end up working with someone you already know – I love this about theatre.  Nine times out of ten, we end up reconnecting with a friend or ex-colleague in a wholly unexpected context, and that really helps us to relax into new working situations.

5) You find a fittie – don’t look at me like that.  Everyone does this.  We’re not proud of it, but we all like to work out as early as possible whether there’s going to be anyone in our team who is nice to look at.  Just look at, mind.  We’re professionals, after all.

6) You know the show off by heart within two shifts.

7) You are insanely bored of the show within three shifts.

8) You passionately hate the show within three and a half shifts.

9) You find and immediately set up camp in the nearest decent pub.

10) Cheesy as it sounds, you fall in love with theatre all over again.

Right, I’m off to Greenwich to bring joy to hundreds of children.  You have yourself the most enjoyable Thursday of every Thursday ever.

Are You What You Want to Be?

Hello!  How are you this morning?  Yeah, me too.  Nearly the weekend, though.

Today I would like to ask you a question: are you what you want to be?  There are three possible ways to think about this question.

Firstly, in physical terms: are you fit and healthy?  Do you like your hair colour?  Are you happy with your height and weight?  If you can honestly say that you are what you want to be in terms of your physical appearance, then good for you.  I think your pants might be on fire, though.
No one is ever totally happy with how they look, which is a massive shame (and almost entirely a result of the Western media), but I have good news regarding this.  Firstly, there are things we can change if we really want to: we can dye our hair, we can take up exercise and we can drink more water.  The second piece of good news is that how you look does not make you who you are, so let’s not worry about that.

The next way to think about my question is in terms of achievement: are you in the right job for you?  Is your career progressing the way you hoped it would?  Do you feel that you’ve achieved significant things?
This one is tricky because it’s something that we decide by comparing ourselves to our peers, and that only ever ends in smugness or despair.  Once we leave school, the structure that kept us all on the same trajectory as our class mates is non-existent, and what happens to one of you no longer necessarily happens to everyone else.  Don’t waste time being jealous of other people’s success, or feeling superior about your own: just get on with what you want to be achieving.
This one is slightly more important than the physical one, but it’s still not the key way to answer my question.

So, the third and most important way to answer my question: are you what you want to be in terms of personal attributes?  Are you kind, are you patient, are you polite?  Would your mother be proud of you?  What do your friends say about you?
I am not suggesting that the way other people see us is more important than how we see ourselves, but after all, the people who love us aren’t sticking around because of how we look or what our job is, are they?  (They’d better not be, anyway.)
This one is the hardest of all to change if we don’t like what we’ve got, but it can be done.  If you want to be less prone to losing your temper you have to practise staying calm under pressure; if you want to be more assertive then you have to speak up when you’re intimidated.  The best thing about this one is that it tends to be the one that your friends and loved ones are most willing to help you with, so you’re not alone with it.

Have a truly cracking Friday.  Definitely treat yourself to a muffin today.

P.S. The title of this blog is a reference to this song by Foster the People.  Good, ain’t it?

Gloria Gaynor is Rooting For You

Good morning!  How are you doing?  I hope you’ve got nice plans for your weekend.

For those of you who read this blog regularly (ish), you may be wondering why I haven’t yet written a post about what it was like recording Pointless.  There is a very good reason for this, and it’s a very serious, grown-up, intellectual reason: um…we haven’t been to the studio yet.  Due to numbers and other unpredictable things, we’ve had our studio dates postponed for a couple of weeks, but we are assured that this is a good sign and that the production team don’t usually bother providing people with alternative dates.  So that’s nice.

The other potential problem is that my house mate has an acting job in Salisbury that week, so she might not be able to attend one of our new studio dates.  I really hope that there’s a solution to the clash, but if not, we might not be going on Pointless after all.  Sniff.  It’s fine..all this revision for nothing…hours wasted on Sporcle…poring over QI books late into the night…but it’s fine.  I will survive, as per the wishes of Gloria Gaynor.

In general, human beings are capable of surviving all sorts of things: bereavement, break-ups, Soho on a Friday night.  Some things are more difficult to survive than others, but you are more than capable of coming out of an emotionally draining situation with your head held high.  Here are a few things that I think you should do to secure your survival in any emotional hardship:

1) Look at the long term

So difficult to do, especially if you are very angry or upset, but picturing yourself in a few years’ time can be really helpful when you’re trying to recover from a nasty situation.  For example, in a few years’ time you will be completely over your break-up.  In the future you might run into your ex from time to time.  Everybody wants to ‘win’ a break-up by being physically fitter, more successful and preferably going out with someone better-looking than the ex.  If you want to ‘win’ this break-up, it’s better to go to the gym than stay in bed eating ice-cream, even though it’s what you really want to do right now.  Put down the spoon.

2) Talk to nice people

Well, obviously.  Talking to nasty people is no fun at all.  What I mean is, it’s ok to be struggling with something and want to discuss it, whether you want practical advice or need a bit of a vent.  Choose your confidant wisely and make sure that you know what you want from the exchange.  I’ve made the mistake before of going to one of my clear-thinking, super-practical friends with a problem.  I just wanted a bit of a moan, and he sent me away with a colour-coded to do list and a Gantt chart.

3) Be kind to yourself

This covers all sorts of things: eat healthily, sleep at proper times, drink lots of water.  I know it sounds boring and mumsy-ish, but there’s a reason why people say weird things like “at least you’ve got your health”.  Having your health is important because it sets you up to cope with everything else in life.  And seriously, put down the ice-cream and go to the gym.  You’re not winning this break-up yet!

4) Use it

As those of you who read my blog post about The Hard Man the other day will know, I firmly believe the best thing to do in a bad situation is find a way to use it to your advantage.  Sometimes that’s not possible straight away, but if you’re looking for silver linings they don’t come any shinier than discovering a way to make a crisis into a success.  For example, losing my job didn’t feel like such a good thing at the time, but now I’m deliriously happy because I get to write all day every day.  Sure, a regular income would be lovely, but I’m doing what makes me happy, which is so much more important.

5) Aim for happiness

Don’t aim for survival.  Aim for the top.  Work towards your biggest goals, your most cherished ambitions and your ideal situations.  If you don’t quite make it you will at least have tried, and you’ll be somewhere between happy and surviving.  If you aim for survival and you fail, where the heck does that leave you?

The other thing about being happy is that it’s the best possible revenge against someone who treated you badly.  Most importantly, you deserve to be happy.  You’re lovely.  Gloria Gaynor and I are rooting for you.

Have a splendid Thursday!

All You Need is Love (and Cheese)

As a single girl, there are three sure-fire ways to deal with Valentine’s Day:

• Dismiss the entire day as a consumerist charade that turns love into a grotesque corporate pantomime.
• Take the opportunity to celebrate love in all of its forms, even though EVERYONE else seems to be focusing on the romantic aspect.
• Pull a full-on Bridget Jones: slump on the sofa, wear pyjamas, drink wine and sob uncontrollably, preferably whilst watching Bridget Jones.

I have tried all three in my time (let’s be honest – we all have), but these days I tend to go with the second method.  Love is love.  Ok yes, it would be nice to be able to share this day with a man who likes the fact that I’m incredibly sarcastic and unable to boil an egg, but if you don’t have a love life to celebrate, celebrate the love in your life.  I may be single, but I have a lot of love in my life that I’m very grateful for.  Here are a few examples:

1) Towards the end of 2013, my brother was very ill and in hospital.  My brother is one of my favourite people in the world, and him being ill is the stuff of my worst nightmares.  This was a very hard time for me and my entire family (who all dealt with the situation amazingly well, as did my brother’s girlfriend and closest friends.  Super proud of and grateful for them all).  I knew for certain that he was going to get better on a particular day about two weeks into the nightmare, when he’d been sort of awake for a couple of days, and had just about started talking again.  I had bought him this postcard: 

and when I gave it to him, he looked at it, looked at me, looked back at the postcard and then said “I love you more than cheezex?  What the hell is cheezex?!”  My first instinct was to call him a git, but actually I felt so relieved that he was capable of being a cheeky little sod that I nearly cried.  I think he knew, even though he was so unwell, that I needed to hear him say something silly.

2) When I was in my third year of university, I had a very unfortunate and slightly scary situation with a guy who wouldn’t leave me alone.  One night, after a particularly unsettling conversation with this guy, I called my oldest friend Evelyn and literally sobbed down the phone at her.  I couldn’t even form the words to being to explain what had happened.  The conversation went something like this:
Ev: “Vicks, what’s wrong?”
Me: “He…I..aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah”
Ev: “What happened??”
Me: “He…aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah”

And so on and so forth.  No sense was made.  What did Evelyn do?  She put down the phone, got into her car in Surrey, drove to where I was in Canterbury, put me in her car and drove me back to her flat, where she fed me and hugged me and let me cry out the problem.

3) Yesterday, knowing what a tough week I’d had, my friend Julia drove down from her university in Northampton to surprise me at my flat.  She is incredibly stressed and busy right now, what with being in her final year and having a gazillion things to do, but she found the time to visit me, go out for dinner with me and some of our friends AND have a boogie in the kitchen to Robin Thicke.

4) My lovely house mate Ais is the most wonderful friend anyone could ask for.  She is the best person to have around when you need looking after (Irish genes, obviously), and also the most fun person to go on adventures with.  She thinks of ways to show people that she loves them all the livelong day.  For example,when I woke up this morning I found this outside my room:

5) When I lost my job on Tuesday, several people called me to tell me how sorry they were, how angry they were on my behalf, and how much they loved me and believed in me.  It is overwhelming to feel so cared for by so many people, and if this day is about love then it should really about them, because they all took the time to show love to someone who was truly in need of it.

Thanks for reading; I hope you have a lovely Valentine’s Day, regardless of your marital status.  You deserve to be loved no matter how single/married/divorced/prefer not to say you are.