It’s been a month since I finished at Melbourne Theatre Company.
People keep asking how it feels and the answer is – I can’t tell because I’m on a summer holiday. The first two weeks were spent in Perth or rather Fremantle with the hottest run of temperatures since 1942, averaging about 39 degrees for 6 or 7 days in a row. That sort of heat is bearable if you:
(1) Are close to a beach
(2) Have air-conditioning
(3) Have access to a pool
(4) Don’t do very much apart from lounge around, catch up with friends and have lots of cool refreshing drinks.
Which we did.
Port Beach, Fremantle
On returning to Melbourne, the third week was spent sorting out all those boxes that I’d bought home from MTC and undertaking various Ikea projects in order to fit in the management books and the leadership research papers plus the ghastly task of trying to ensure that all the computer bits matched and worked. The biggest challenge was trying to transfer my mobile phone to a personal account with Optus. Whilst the people were all individually very helpful and pleasant, the process took over 6 weeks.
Anyway, apart from the irritating Apple Store message that pops up erratically on my iPhone and iPad using my old email and which no-one in Apple Customer Service seems to be able to remove, I am in contact with the world.
The fourth week felt slightly more bizarre. I was taking my niece, Katerina, to a music camp at the Victorian College of the Arts so every day I drove the route I would normally take to work and every afternoon I picked her up outside the Southbank Theatre. But I resisted all temptation to visit either building (yet).
Now it’s time to be slightly more focussed about how to fill my days. Projects so far include:
- Seeing some shows in the Perth and Adelaide Festivals for the Helpmann Awards
- Teaching Advanced Arts Management at the University of Melbourne
- Developing a training program for Arts Managers in Vietnam with Jo Caust and Jane Haley
- Giving presentations at various conferences
- Trying my hand at writing an arts management text book.
So if you have any interesting short term work that you’d like me to do, I do have some time (excluding mid-March to mid-April) between now and September when I plan to head north to explore the Mediterranean.