Lesson 6: The Professional And The Personal Are A Messy Ball Of Yarn. Don’t Try too Hard To Detangle
Written by Amira Aleem
While in London in 2014, Andy had been working for a specialist finance company called Investec. He had taken a sabbatical from work earlier that year, to help regain some focus and clarity in the aftermath of his wife’s death.
He hadn’t been back at Investec long, he was in a new role that he enjoyed, and Andy had found himself settling into a comfortable rhythm in a new place to live and things were going well. He had family and friends come to Europe to visit when suddenly everything changed.
“I got a call from my brother one morning,” he says, referring to 12 May 2014. His brother Sam told him his mother wasn’t well and wouldn’t be able to visit him in two weeks’ time for a trip to Europe that she had planned and which she had been dreaming about for years.
There’s a poetic beauty to this: the day before the phone call, it was Mothers’ Day in New Zealand and coincidentally, it also happened to be Andy’s mother’s birthday. Soon after the phone call, Andy went to New Zealand for a week to visit his mother. He had needed to see her with his own eyes.
A month after he had returned to England, in a spontaneous decision, Andy had taken the day off work. He had travelled down to Surrey, found a bed and breakfast and spent the day clearing his head.
On a park bench that morning, Andy had settled down to write down everything swirling around his mind and what was going on in his life — the project at Investec, helping his friend buy a shop, everything he was learning in his new role at Investec — just to make his life make sense to himself on paper. Nowhere in that was any mention of New Zealand.
But the following morning when his sister rang to tell him that things had really taken a turn for the worse and that his mum would need more support, Andy knew that New Zealand is where he would have to go. The conversation with his sister was one that would ultimately lead Andy unexpectedly home to New Zealand, after nearly a decade away.
“Not many people know what it’s like to just turn up in your hometown having no idea what is going to happen — but under a sense of obligation.”
Andy’s mum had suffered from a series of small strokes. The impact had been substantial and she was finding it harder to manage everyday as she no longer was able to do her job as a nurse, a job she had enjoyed and flourished in for the last forty years.
Andy spent a month with his mum, speaking to the medical professionals and doctors and being present for the difficult conversation with her employer about options for her to continuing to work. Ensuring that she wouldn’t have to do those things alone was important to Andy and he was able to support her as she navigated a new life in the wake of the illness.
A few weeks after things had been arranged it was clear that his mum would need less on-going support than he and his siblings had first thought, and it meant Andy was left questioning what to do work-wise next.
“I suddenly found myself in a situation where I wasn’t needed and I didn’t handle it very well. I didn’t have a reason to be there as such.”
Looking back on it, he says he can’t help but think it may have been worth asking his employer, Investec, for some time off instead of ending his employment. But like so many of the lessons he’s learnt — “It only makes sense all these years on”.
“Just picture this scene,” he says to me. “I got back in the middle of winter and I had been back for four weeks. Wellington is a small city and at that point I hadn’t lived there for nine years. It was Saturday night and New Zealand was playing Australia in a big rugby match.
“In my 20s I would have watched that game with a few of my mates. I thought to myself someone will call and I’ll go round, but the phone call never came. In the end I watched it with my mum and my brother Sam, and I remember thinking to myself ‘if this is what life’s going to be like here, I’m not sure I can do this’.”
With that thought and having sold his flat in London and with cash in the bank, he told me he almost felt he owed it to the world to try live differently. In October 2014 he was back in Bali, the place he has spent the most time during his sabbatical, the year before.
Making decisions on a spectrum between the personal and professional have led Andy on a series of adventures, all with their own challenges and successes. But he has always understood the importance of managing his personal life alongside his professional one.
It’s led him to take decisions that have had an impact socially and to reach out to people when they have needed him. “I think I have always had an inner desire to be a bit more than normal”.
He now is firmly of this view as we enter the age of transparency: there is no separation between personal and professional. They are one and the same.
Andy concludes on: The Professional And The Personal Are A Messy Ball Of Yarn. Don’t Try too Hard To Detangle
Over the summer of 2017, I was back at my old company and I immediately felt safe and ‘at home’ again. And so I decided to start sharing with some of my colleagues about my struggles with alcohol — the same people that had helped get me hired again.
Some close friends told me it was risky, but I believed that because of the trusting relationships I had with my colleagues, my honesty would be appreciated. I see it very clearly now: you simply cannot be the best version of yourself at work if you try to have two personalities.
Eventually you’ll be found out, and only the harshest of people will punish you for being honest. And as 2017 came to an end, my honesty and openness has led me to my work colleagues taking active steps to protect me from sliding into a bad mental space.
