AutobiograCV
noun
A portmanteau of Autobiography and CV.
Chronological life highlights as they relate (in some cases loosely, I’ll admit) to on-the-job skills.
Please enjoy the following meander through my memories of peripatetic childhood, adventures in adulting and indulgent reflection on 20-ish years of experience in and out of the creative industries.
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Honestly, I don't remember much about it.
I figure this is a blessing.
1982
1983
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Focus … we're talking about me.
1984
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(for best results, please apply a golden hued, glittery mental image filter before proceeding)
coarse damp sand … digging for treasure (dad's empty nicorette gum blister packs) … dappled shade … pittosporum, croton and asparagus grass … extrusion roughened concrete breeze blocks … triangular views to the neighbouring backyard… lost in small child flow
1985
1986
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… still talking about me.
1987
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Mum chooses the school because she likes the rose garden, and my relationship with the importance of aesthetics begins.
This is also the start of my career attempting (and usually succeeding) to be the teacher's favourite.
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After a year of doing both, I'm given the choice between Ballet and Gymnastics.
I prefer the technical physicality and relative minimalism of Gymnastics to what I feel is the baroque persnickety-ness of Ballet.
(Obviously this is upon reflection. What 6-year-old is aware of the existence of minimalism or baroque as stylistic movements?)
1988
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I jump off a painter's trestle because it seems wobbly.
Dad assesses my broken wrist and sends me to school until my teacher asks him to get a second opinion or an x-ray.
In his defense, he had asked me to flex my wrist to move my hand up and down and I did, because I like to give people what they want.
1989
1990
1991
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Dad gets a job for the Royal Flying Doctors Service in Mt Isa.
My siblings and I take turns flying out with him on the eight seat Lear jets and even tinier four seat "bug smashers" to the remote communities where he does clinics on weekends.
My favourite clinic is Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria because the property owner's wife is a wildlife carer. I spend hours cuddling and bottle feeding orphaned joeys till Dad's ready to go home again.
1992
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I break both the bones in my arm attempting an unspotted back layout at gymnastics training.
I remember the way my wrist made an interesting U shape, the funny triangle of foam in the splint to maintain the U shape on the way to hospital and the nurse in the emergency department sticking the painkillers into my thigh through my bike shorts.
Dad doesn't feel comfortable with the Orthopaedic surgeon at Mt Isa hospital who, while simultaneously flipping through what looks suspiciously like a textbook, says he's willing to "have a crack" at resetting my arm.
I'm flown down to Brisbane and after surgery, spend several weeks at my kindergarten best friend's house going to her school, but am unable to do school work due to the full arm, right angle of a cast I have on.
1993
1994
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The primary school and junior high school are on the same campus.
I make a wavy, neon pink, acrylic ashtray in manual arts and during our cluster on Papua New Guinea, we make traditional clay cooking pots. The pots are fired in the school kiln and we cook chicken curry in them on camp.
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Boarding school is not my favourite.
I spend a lot of time on weekends reading sci-fi and fantasy novels in my dorm room.
I continue my gymnastics career being just good enough to be selected for the school's lowest grade gymnastics competition team. I'm placed in D2, based on my performance in tryouts and training, but during a practice competition, I perform "too well" and must be moved up to D1.
I begin to understand that I work best under some kind of pressure.
1995
1996
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At the end of grade 10 I decide I want to be an Architect.
I figure it's nicely central in the Creativity / STEM Venn diagram. I feel scratchy and irritable when I'm not making things and I like Maths and Science because I enjoy iterative, process-driven problem solving.
So I choose Maths B because it's a prerequisite for Maths C. I do Maths C and Physics because I figure there's enough crossover that they'll be almost the same subject anyway. Then I round this off with Art because I like it and it's the closest I can get to Graphics at my school and Chinese because Dad promised if I did it for 5 years he'd cough up for the field trip.
1997
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Aside from basic greetings in formal Mandarin, I can tell you I love you, say thank you … and swear at you using an embarrassment of four-letter words.
A wise ex-pat Aussie kindly explains to us that obscenity is the fastest way to deal with swarms of hawkers who are trying to sell cheap souvenirs by blockading any stationary bus containing tourists. We experiment gleefully.
1998
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I talk about getting a job at McDonalds, but don't actually do anything, so Mum employs me as a junior receptionist in Dad's practice.
1999
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At work I enjoy model building, laying out awards presentation boards in Corel Draw and my building mastery of AutoCAD.
I develop a myriad of systems that allow me to efficiently complete the repetitive tasks delegated to baby architects. I can simultaneously co-ordinate the A1 copier as it reproduces multiple sets of construction drawings, collating the sheets while continuing to read my latest novel. This skill is not particularly appreciated by the office manager.
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I am working three days a week and on campus for classes the other two.
I love the creativity of university projects, but seem to have missed the part where they explain how to tackle semester long design projects in a way that avoids multiple consecutive sleepless nights prior to the submission deadline.
2000
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Our new design lecturer has recently moved up from RMIT and organises a field trip to Melbourne.
We're walked through civic and residential buildings with the Architects who've designed them. We visit the Fed Square construction site, sit for a lecture in Building 8 at RMIT and have the design dialogue between the freshly opened Melbourne Museum and adjacent Royal Exhibition Building explained to us in detail.
I am entranced by the diversity of the architecture, the size of the inner city, the smorgasbord of food choices and kaleidoscope of creative opportunities and vow to move here from the backwater I have deemed Brisvegas as soon as I can manage.
2001
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Mum strong-arms me into going halves in a unit in Taringa.
The repayments feel terrifyingly huge.
2002
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We meet in a sports bar in Brisbane.
Neither of us should be there. I am avoiding a major design assignment that is mostly incomplete and imminently due and the nurses his RAAF mate arranged to meet in Ipswich didn't show.
2003
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Future Husbandit is into plants and landscaping stuff. I imagine a tiny business where I design and he builds. I have not discussed this plan with him.
I have enjoyed the way that working in the industry teaches me a wealth of practical things that uni doesn't seem to bother with (like how AutoCAD or Photoshop works!). So I apply for a student role and convince the partners to take me on before I've been accepted into the Landscape Architecture course.
2004
2005
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I can tell you the genus and species of the majority of bulletproof native trees and shrubs used regularly on roadsides throughout Queensland.
I've purposefully forgotten how to calculate the drainage levels for your golf course project.
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We purchase a tiny worker's cottage.
It has floors like the rolling ocean and is on possibly the smallest residential block in Ipswich. We proceed to rip the back off in the middle of winter. We have a tarp for a back wall and our kitchen is a plastic bucket and an electric frypan.
This is the beginning of my impulse to collect all of the neglected heritage buildings and save them.
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I'm awarded the HASSELL Prize for Landscape Construction and the Landscape Architecture principal presenting the certificate headhunts me at the award ceremony.
2006
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We want an intimate event.
Dad sensibly suggests we elope, but Mum's playing the role of angel investor and I've drunk the bridal cool-aide. So we end up with a biggish guest list and I get to schedule, plan and organise all of the things, which is another of my favourite activities.
It's pre-Pinterest. I buy all of the bridal magazines, arrange all of my tear sheets with a meticulousness that would make a serial killer weep and then brief the vendors, trusting them to do their thing.
2007
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The studio is looking for a Midweight Graphic Designer, but I apply anyway, and I interview well. I’m employed as a Junior Designer, which is more in line with my level of experience.
I love working here, and when my probation review rolls around, I'm thrilled to be offered a level up to Midweight Designer.
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Seeing as Husbandit has not embraced my future business plan (see Gamble McKinnon Green) with open arms, I use our honeymoon time constructively to convince him that maybe Graphic Design is a more practical career for me to pursue. “I can do it from home when we eventually have kids”, I say. He skeptically agrees that investment in the expensive, intensive 12-week course I've selected is worthwhile.
I love it.
When I'm done I research the ten most interesting studios in Brisbane and proceed to politely hound every one of them repeatedly until one of them gives me a job.
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Husbandit's brother has purchased an enormous block with two houses on it at auction.
One of the houses has been moved there illegally by the previous owner and the council has made it clear that completing the renovation ASAP is a condition of sale. In line with my desire to rescue all of the derelict Queenslanders, we purchase the block's original house so he can afford to get cracking.
I decide that none of the hand basins on the market fit my vision for our bathroom fit out and take a ceramics class at night to build my own. While it is partially an effort to save money, by the time I've convinced the teacher to let me make enormous (by her standards) basins, I've probably spent an equivalent amount on materials and firing fees anyway.
2008
2009
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For some reason, I have convinced myself that staying home with small humans who are utterly dependant on you for everything and don't keep normal sleep hours will be more fun than paid employment.
2010
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I take on logo, website and book design jobs for select clients who I find through my addiction to Instagram.
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My maternity leave is about to end.
We realise with some horror that our precious firstborn will spend more time with other people than she will with us and all of my wage will be eaten by childcare fees if I return to work. We also discover that Husbandit's recent promotion to Sergent comes with a compulsory relocation to Wagga, which we really don't want. So he jumps ship to commercial aviation, excitingly his new job is in Melbourne.
The 2011 floods have just happened and property prices in Ipswich have tanked. We become involuntarily interstate rent-vesting landlords while we wait for sale prices to match the credit card debt we have accrued doing renovations.
The weather in Victoria is initially fascinating, but quickly becomes hermit-making and we don't enjoy the closeness of the suburbs. Particularly the ineffectual renovation sounds that emanate from our neighbour's house on weekends.
2011
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He eats and sleeps whenever we suggest it to him, only yelling at us when regularly scheduled mealtimes are delayed.
We smugly decide we're good at parenting.
2012
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I decide I want my own hashtag on Instagram because all my Insta-friends have one.
While coming up with a worthy photographic project to go with the aforementioned hashtag, I accidentally reinvent myself as a process-based photographic fine artist.
My Instagram addiction pays off when I'm invited to have my images featured in the launch edition of an online botanical magazine. Friends of the founder are interior stylists and they commission a series of my work for their art print side hustle. Though the side project folds after 18 months because of pressure from copycats, I have a body of work and a pretty good idea of what people will pay for prints.
You may snoop here.
2013
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This kid clarifies our parenting hypothesis for us in the negative.
From him, we learn deep patience, top-level diplomacy and terrorist negotiation skills.
It doesn't help that one month after he arrives we buy a 150-year-old former church with 1.5 bedrooms. The larger small humans get the real bedroom and Husbandit and I sleep in a mezzanine area above a miniature home office that is the third born's bedroom.
Because Husbandit works shifts and invariably wakes the baby at 4am when he gets home, I spend a lot of time getting the smallest human back to sleep in the dark.
2014
2015
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I don't realise I have too much time on my hands.
I resent the fact that every form I fill out now seems to subtly classify me as unemployed. I channel the excess energy into becoming the bestest domestic goddess in town. My kid's lunchboxes are performance art (for their teachers) that they rarely eat and dinner is restaurant quality that they also rarely eat. I cook bolognese sauce that a woman in my casserole club says is better than the one she ate at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck.
That soothes the sting a little.
2016
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Husbandit finally convinces me we are not and will never be Victorians.
Our exit strategy involves selling the novelty house, moving in with my parents on the Sunshine Coast, finding a new house in a good public high school catchment nearby, and Husbandit employing his staff travel to maximum effect FIFOing to and from work every four days. Because naturally, there are no jobs at Brisbane Airport.
We commence the process of patching, painting and presenting the church.
2017
2018
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We're back in our natural habitat.
The humidity feels amniotically cocooning and comfortingly familiar in a way that the dry Victorian air never did. Also, people aren't weirdly obsessed with AFL.
2019
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We're not sure if Husbandit's job still exists for a while there, so I pick up predictably steady paid work where I can.
The Crossing Supervisor is a lesson in holding in my opinions about people's bad driving, illegal parking and ridiculously unsafe road sense with small children in tow. The Tuckshop Convenor is the hardest I've ever worked in my life for the least appreciation and remuneration.
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Oh you know, just a once in a 100 year pandemic.
We decide that now we're Queenslanders again, the kids should do nippers, we don't consult them and choose Sunshine Beach based on the newly completed architecturalness and conveniently located brunchiness of the surf club.
My Dad and I sign up to do our Bronze medallion so we can help with water safety, but it turns out the ocean at Sunshine Beach is notoriously super scary so the kids are all traumatised and collectively hate it. By the time we're qualified, the smalls have teamed up to make it so painful for poor Husbandit to take them to sessions and coax them to participate, that we agree they've beaten us and call it quits.
Dad and I didn't realise we were also signing up to be active patrolling members, but now I know how to perform CPR, use a defibrillator, deliver therapeutic AND resuscitation saturations of oxygen, crew an IRB and paddle a rescue board halfway out to sea, so it wasn't a complete waste.
2020
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I try to work out how to get back to Architecture, but I can't get the required postgraduate study to work around Husbandit's FIFOing and our kid responsibilities, so this morphs into a plan to train myself in Architectural 3D Visualisation and Rendering. As I research possible courses, I notice that no one really offers them, but I also notice that Photography courses are heavily subsidised as part of the government's roadmap to economic recovery post-Covid.
I remember that I have always wanted to learn how to do more with a camera than I am now, plus who isn't a fan of being able to legitimately justify the purchase of cool and expensive electronic toys … I mean tools?
2021
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I’m absolutely obsessed with the cleverness of my own branding (ask me about it, I promise it’s very clever), but finding clients is extremely difficult when I refuse to sell myself on social media, my heart does not enjoy cold call rejection and I’m still a built environment tragic.
So I do our personal realestate photography and plan a bunch of really cool long term photo projects that are doomed to fail because again, they don’t fit around the FIFO husband and three kids.
2022
2023
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The Husbandit snags a job in Brisbane!
So now (if we just sell our house, successfully relocate our three kids into the most highly competitive catchment managed schools in Brisbane at short notice and find an apartment that will let us have a dog) I can go back to uni and finish my Architecture degree!
I apply and am accepted.
(insert mental image of frantic arm waving and running about.
audio note: benny hill show theme)