Seven Years A Dropout, An Anniversary Story

Seven years ago last week I was in the budget lockup, poring over the government’s financial statements alongside Australia’s top political and financial journalists.

It was one of those exhilarating yet terrifying experiences. Here I was, at the pinnacle of my career, rubbing shoulders with some of my heroes, those gallant reporters who fronted the television news every night and provided the fodder for the front pages of the country’s biggest newspapers.

My task was to trawl through mountains of press releases and budget documents trying to find the midpoint between what the government wanted the media to report and the details they were trying to hide. The press corps had a few hours to wrestle with the documents before the Treasurer would start a loud and long-winded presentation about the key points of the budget. The presentation, rather than being helpful, was designed as a distraction technique because the government is obliged to put the bad stuff in the budget papers, usually hidden in an obscure line item somewhere. There’s just so many damn papers sometimes it takes a while, sometimes a few days, to find the bad stuff.

Photo from The Guardian (ALAN PORRITT/AAPIMAGE)

For the 2007 May budget, I was part of a team of reporters and editors from Dow Jones Newswires, which fed stories to the Wall Street Journal. The pressure was intense. In financial newswires the margin for error is miniscule yet the potential for cockups huge.

Budgets have the power to move markets and so the details of the budget are crucial.

As the official Australian political correspondent, I was supposed to know what I was doing. I wasn’t sure I did. I was powered by adrenaline, anxiety and caffeine. And the knowledge that this was probably the end of my career.

The federal budget is always handed down on a Tuesday. The lockup begins at 1.30pm and ends as the Treasurer begins making his budget speech to parliament at 7.30pm. We would work to midnight and beyond on budget night, then get up before dawn to start reporting on the various budget breakfast functions around the nation and the relentless round of radio and television appearances, doorstops and photo opportunities.

Australian Treasurer Peter Costello delivering his 12th and final budget speech in 2007 (Photo from abc.net.au)

Thursday would be a little less hectic, with the Opposition getting its turn to trash the budget in the official budget reply speech in parliament. Friday was less hectic again, as all the politicians headed home from Canberra to promote their message to their electorates.

And Friday was also my last day at work. The following week I was flying to Vietnam on a one-way ticket to start a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) course … and my new life. My request for a three-month leave of absence had been denied so I’d bitten the bullet and quit. Cue freefall feeling.

I was worried I was making the biggest mistake of my life, throwing away a career I’d longed for since primary school when I first encountered the concept of people being paid to be stickybeaks. As well as the notion of wearing a suit to work. Could there be anything slicker?

Of course, seven years and two children later, I know that dropping out was the best decision I ever made. Leaving behind the stress and strain of my old job was hard because it was exhilarating and interesting and I did get to wear a suit to work. But leaving the job and leaving Australia also mean leaving behind the cult of consumerism. And that’s something that took a little while to realise I’d done.

As Westerners we’re tricked into believing that buying stuff is the panacea for everything. We’re told that to be successful you have to look successful. We’re beguiled by bling and the next big must-have thing, whether it’s a new couch, a new car or a cake from the hip new cafe down the street.

But what does all that stuff buy you? A need to keep buying. New suits, new shoes, new couches, new cars. To keep up with credit card payments and mortgage payments. A need to keep up appearances. It’s exhausting … and that’s even before factoring in kids and housework and exercise and charitable works.

I am so happy that I dropped out of that rat race.

My new life is now just my life. I still can’t believe I’m a parent. And yet I have a back-chatting trilingual four-and-a-half-year-old as well as a chubby not-quite-four-month-old that I’m responsible for. I have such a lovely life partner in Darling Man and we have managed to set up a run a successful business together.

Life is so full of surprises.

I used to have a photo pinned to my wall to remind me of my old life. It’s of me, in a pack of journalists trailing behind Prime Minister John Howard on a beach in Indonesia in 2006. Howard was famous for his morning walks but this was a walk with a purpose. His people and the Indonesian PM’s people had contrived an accidental meeting on the beach to signal an end to a diplomatic standoff over a boatload of asylum seekers who’d landed in Australia a few weeks before.

In the photo, I have a mobile phone clutched to my ear and I’m frowning. The photo was pinned above my desk to remind me how stressful my career girl life had been (even though — WHOA TRAVELING OVERSEAS WITH THE PRIME MINISTER! Not bad for a girl from a little mining town in the middle of nowhere.) And even though the reason I’m frowning isn’t because I’m particularly stressed but because my boss was giving me shit rather than taking headlines. (Yep, I do miss that guy.) And the mobile signal was bad and the static was making my head hurt.

I also kept the photo as a been-there-done-that reminder. Yes, I wanted to be a journalist and I made it – whoo! I worked in the press gallery in Canberra, attended doorstops and budget lockups and travelled to Indonesia and China with the Australian Prime Minister. In hindsight I realise is quite an achievement, even though at the time I was telling myself I hadn’t made it because I never got a job with The Australian, which had been my specific ambition. But it was a wild ride that took me to so many interesting places, allowed me to meet so many interesting people, learn so much about this interesting world of ours and write so many interesting stories.

I lost the photo in our last move, the one where everything was done for me because I was pregnant and super-tired. This photo, of me abseiling down the 30-storey Brisbane Sheraton, was always right beside the other photo, to remind me that I can do amazing things even when I’m shit-scared.

I celebrated my seven-year anniversary of dropping out of my former life with a kid-free girls weekend away in Phan Thiet, four hours by train from Ho Chi Minh City. My friend and I stayed in a $12 a night hotel, ate at teeny tiny street stalls, roared around on rickety rented motorbikes, visiting giant Buddhas and whale temples. During our three-day getaway we talked and talked and laughed and drank beer with ice in it.

And laughed hysterically when we noticed that the ice in our beers had melted into rude shapes.

Would I trade that for my old life of traveling internationally with Australian Prime Ministers? Not a chance. (Besides, have you SEEN the current PM?)

Life is good. Happy anniversary to me.

 
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By: Barbara

A career girl who dropped out, traveled, found love, and never got around to going home again. Now wrangling a cross-cultural relationship and two third culture kids.