Work 2.0 - Season Reboot

Return with me If you will, to late October, to a secluded beer garden in Norwich, The Lamb Inn to be precise, in the early evening. 

I had lost my job earlier in the week and had decided to spend half term week in East Anglia with Vince at my dad's place while he's working there.

He was minding Vincent for the night so I could go out and explore the city a bit more and gain some perspective on a tumultuous time.

I clutched my pint in the heated garden at a corner table and in the movie version would have made immediate plans to be successful, get another, better job and generally be confident, stupid.

The reality of course was that I was a frightened 40 year old, out of work, living in the most depressed area of the country, my home, with seemingly least demand for my nuanced and specialist set of skills.  To rub it in, social media specific jobs were growing on trees in every other major city, America too which we'd left six months previously to come back to get Vincent into a good English school, which we did.  His progress and joy was the main anchor at the time as the swell of uncertainty was threatening to swamp what little optimism I still kept.

Fast forward four months to the same pub, same time and day and everything has changed. Like swapping a red filter for yellow, everything really does look better.  I start a job on Monday within 15 miles of home, in my field, doing whatever it is I do well and with the kind of companies I've done it well for before.  It's more money than I was on previously and most crucially, is over the pernicious minimum income requirement in order to sponsor Stacey's visa.  

Uncertainty, doubt and fear have now been supplanted by assuredness, regained confidence and expectation. Even the clouds above the garden cleared sufficiently to let me see Orion in all its glory, my touchstone constellation that I could always see from Teesside, Oxfordshire, Atlanta and back. You might almost say the stars aligned again.

The return to the working world will mean saying goodbye to the pattern of living I'd adopted, systematic job hunting online in the mornings, tea by the boatload, Maury, Bargain Hunt & Dickinson's Real Deal now become names in the TV guide and not milestones of the day.

My four months at the sharp end, including Christmas, have opened my eyes to the realities of life down here and its as far away from the tabloid version of an easy life of plasma screens on housing benefit as ITV2 is from BBC4.

Nobody is here by choice. You can exist on support if you make specific choices but I'd argue strongly that you can't live.  I wouldn't call it benefit either as that implies a positive outcome. This is the bulwark against further poverty, destitution and homelessness, not a lifestyle choice.

I've got more to say and it's best in another Blessay but you can't, in all conscience, sanction or cut support until the jobs are available and they pay sufficiently well to make them a clearly better option than the alternative. Minimum wage should not be a starting point - until it's raised to £10 an hour.

So I'm back into the world I know best and it's as a tougher, wiser and probably happier Guy. I wouldn't have chosen the last four months purposely but as Douglas Adams observed 'I haven't always got to where I wanted to go but I've nearly always ended up where I'm supposed to be.'

A Curtain or A Wall? - Thoughts on Online Personal Boundaries

I've been doing a lot of thinking this week following my previous post.  

Primarily about this blog and what it's for and also the wider issue of where the boundaries in your lives are, whether they are solid, moveable or exist at all. 

As a Social Media Professional (don't laugh), I have attracted a cult following (as in small and crazy) on some social media channels like Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ who expect me to post links and ideas on Social Media, new ideas, platforms, tactics etc. and how they can best use it.  I use Facebook primarily to catch up with and communicate with friends so I have already compartmentalised my social media consumption thusly. 

How have I reacted in the past when other people's boundaries start getting blurred and their real lives have intruded into their professional online persona's?  I follow a lot of social media and tech bloggers and I admit, I become more intrigued and interested when the realities of everyday life come over, because it personalises them more.  

I'm a big fan of the writer Gretchen Rubin and her Happiness projects. An attempt to lifehack and reprogram/force yourself to be happier in all aspects of your life.  Her books are an enthralling read and full of background reading, information and examples from the lives of philosophers, statesmen, spiritual leaders and other inspirational characters but the most compelling parts for me are her interactions with her husband, kids, friends and family and what happens when the rubber of her theories meets the road of reality. IE, what happens when you become a real person, not an esoteric author. 

It reassures me to know they are a real person with real life problems and not a digital avatar sat on a silicone throne pontificating on Pinterest Pages from on high, removed from the everyday digital and detritus we all have to deal with.  

Of course there are limits, WH Smiths has a tragic life story section now for horrendous memoirs so I do like them to go back on topic occasionally but the fact that they are willing to share their own experiences somehow makes them a more real writer and authentic voice than before.  

I thought about this very carefully before writing about our current immigration travails. I know the blog is different, especially this one, as it is meant to be a filtered mirror into my life back in the UK, and this problem is currently weighing me down significantly, so if I didn't make mention of it then I think I'd be doing the reader a disservice. You're here for a couple of reasons but primarily I guess, it's to hear from me.  Guy Bailey the person, not the social media enthusiast and expert, or the writer or the PR/Comms freelancer. 

I link to my blog on LinkedIn, where maybe the personal stuff should be kept to a minimum, and on Facebook where the professional stuff should be put on a leash so I apologise if I let light in on magic by lifting the corner of the curtain, but ultimately, no matter why people follow, read or connect with you on Social Media or even offline, it's because of you. 

Your knowledge, opinions, thoughts, prejudices, ideals, humour and ideas are all facets of you and while some filtering and a process of segment marketing your personality are in operation every minute you're awake, maybe it's not such a new idea. Before the internet it used to be called a conscience.

So I'm not going to make any more apologies for keepin' it real.  You're here (or on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Vine or someplace else) to hear from me, and even though I know a bunch of stuff about a bunch of stuff, none of it means anything without the filter of life and living to give it the human context.  

Unfinished Business

If you're looking for a word to describe my relationship with the great northern city of Manchester, it's unrequited.  True, I graduated from Manchester University (class of 96) but the three years I spent were mainly in Warrington, 12 miles to the west as this is where our faculty was based.  I visited on many occasions and had a great time in the early Britpop years, and made great plans for a triumphant return after graduation.

I was working at a shipyard in Middlesbrough (who's got blue collar credibility?) and was saving up for my return. Every day when we worked into town for lunch, I saw the Manchester Airport train idling at the station, seemingly letting me know it was ready whenever I was and in January 97, I made the move back.  I got a room in Didsbury, the leafy suburb of choice for the young professional, had friends in town, and even landed a job at a business ratings company in Old Trafford, a stones throw from the cricket and football grounds.  Life was going to be great.

And it was until I broke my leg playing football as a ringer on my cousin's team on a Friday night and spent the subsequent six months in plaster up to my thigh. I had to let the job and room go and convalesced at my parents.  During the intervening 16 years, I've had a couple of other close calls about going back, jobs that weren't right, or I wasn't right for then, ,as John Lennon sagely observed, life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. 

This week however, saw an unexpected but welcome opportunity to revisit the old place for a job interview.  I took the train in from Darlington and was trying to conserve my battery as I thought I might need the map navigation when I got there. Ridiculous because as soon as I came out of Piccadilly Stations impressive glass fronted atrium, I could find my way around blindfolded through Picadilly Gardens and the new Arndale.  This is a city of warm memory for me - I had my stag do here, Stacey and I have had some great nights here going to the Lowry and cavorting round Deansgate.  It was here I met my old BBC pal and fellow Boro fan Paul for lunch at the Moon Under The Water, formerly my favourite pub in Manchester and scene of some delirious celebrations in 1998 when Middlesbrough contrived to win 3-2 against Manchester United.  In the days before mobile phones, my friends were worried they might not be able to find me in one of the biggest pubs in Europe.  They told me they could hear me singing as soon as they set foot in the door later. 

After a pleasant catch-up we parted and I made my way up Oxford Road to my Alma Mata, the University of Manchester, to the old Quad where we graduated on a rainy June day back in 1996.  It was having expensive refurbishment work done but it is always pleasing to read of the achievements of other notable alumni such as Anthony Burgress, writer of A Clockwork Orange, Alan Turing, father of modern computing and Ellen Wilkinson, first female Minister of Education and MP for Middlesbrough as well as being a great socialist.  My interview was here - at my old school.

It's a situation worthy of further consideration. I want to stay close to my friends and family in the North East but new media jobs are hard to come by in our enclave of The Far Corner, the title of Harry Pearsons' seminal 1994 book on North East Football, so I might find myself commuting farther afield.  Driving in Atlanta has given me an appreciation for the longer commute that most American workers take forgranted.  Manchester would previously have been off limits but there are some calls you really must take - and one from your old school, in the industry you love in your favourite city is one.  

Manchester and I have always had unfinished business and while I've been cautious about pulling on the loose ends of the tapestry of my life lest it begins to unravel, my link to Mancunia feels more tethered than most.  

For one reason or another, I may not end up back at the University but I at least have opened up another possible route back into employment and enjoyment and removed another self-imposed limit from my outlook and my life.  I've already done as Horace Greeley and the Pet Shop Boys once advised, 'Go West!', so maybe we'll end up doing it again and achieving a British manifest destiny of our own. 

How Refreshing...

So back home with contacts to make, work to find and also new friends to make - preferably who 'get' what I do, especially with Social Media, and unlike the guys in the Job Center, don't think it's something to do with computers. 

Refresh Teesside is a group that I began following when I was in Atlanta, and is a young, hip, group of creative gunslingers dedicated to improving the lot of their business on Teesside, helping each other out and generally having a good time in the process. So completely unsuitable for me.

With that in mind, what else is there to do on a rainy Thursday in Middlesbrough when the Speedway isn't on?  They meet at Sassari's Italian Restaurant on dear old Linthorpe Road and at first I wasn't sure I had found the right place - Linthorpe Road having undergone a facelift since my last visit some four years previously.  I did spot a large crowd of young people wearing expensive glasses, smoking outside so correctly realised this was the place. 

I'd spoken to James and Chris, the brains behind the operation, who were charming, friendly and intrigued to hear from me, even more so when I volunteered to give a five-minute quick-fire talk on my social media time in the ATL at the meeting.   It served a useful purpose for me too - as well as keeping my presenting and networking skills sharp, it is more efficient to stand in front of a room of 100 plus fellow professionals and let them know that you know what you're talking about, rather than walk round the room, meeting everyone individually!

It went really well, despite totally overrunning and the laptop not playing my first Vine video (see above) - I made a lot of new friends, got a lot of Twitter love and more importantly, will be allowed to come again. 

Despite being a solo-operator, actually meeting people, talking to them, swapping war stories and passing on any hard-won experience you may have is an undervalued and essential part of being a Social Media professional. The clue is in the job title. We had a Social Media Club at Kennesaw State, our own little haven from the outside world where we could meet and bleat about the demands and misunderstandings and assumptions of our trade and that's what Refresh Teesside feels like - a welcoming, new media clubhouse. 

I usually veer away from organisations and societies that will have me as a member but like Teesside and my career/life trajectory - I've changed. And it's welcome.