This was published 8 years ago
Pondering life in the age of doing more for less
Time to hit your straps and go full on down the career path with laconic charm, writes Jonathan Rivett.
By Jonathan Rivett
BENIGN TO FIVE
If you grew up in the late 1980s and early '90s there are two things I know about you for absolutely certain: You're ready to really hit your career straps (if you haven't already).
Bush Tucker Man Les Hiddins.
You grew up watching Bush Tucker Man and reruns of Ask the Leyland Brothers.
As a child, I remember thinking of these two shows as fierce rivals, even though they weren't contemporaneous and only shared passing similarities. I was always being lulled into a false sense of possibility that maybe tonight would be the night the Leylands would actually do something interesting and be as worthy of my enraptured attention as retired Australian army major Les Hiddins' fascinating adventures.
It never happened. The Leylands were going for a different aesthetic and working with a different budget to Bush Tucker Man, but even as a seven-year-old I could tell they were producing something altogether less interesting, thoughtful and ambitious.
Today, we live in a Leyland Brothers world, constantly asked to "do more with less". Mediocrity is applauded. Unrefined work is often varnished with euphemisms like "real" and "raw". But you and I are ready to hit our career straps and I'll be buggered if we're going to spend these important years fiddling around in figurative goat farms and faux castles, doing figurative stilted voiceovers and filming on a figurative Super 8.
No, we should be aiming for upper-echelon expertise in one or more interesting areas, excellent but unpretentious production values (read presentation), and monumentally high levels of laconic charm and wit. If we truly want to excel professionally, we should be going full on Bush Tucker Man.
Jonathan Rivett sometimes gets lost in the blogging wilderness at haught.com.au