Writer’s Lives Measuring up to What They Write
In an earlier post I promised to let you see if my life measured up to what I write. I’m starting with employment.
I began my career in the year Marilyn Monroe died.
The juxtaposition of two facts above is simply to make the first more interesting, a technique I’m sure a lot of writers use in order to have their lives sound less mundane.
I worked for 43 years in various jobs in the New Zealand Public Service. ( If that had been in the USA, I would have been a federal administrator).
The working environment in the early years was very repressive. I learnt to fit in better by being non-descript rather than colourful, to use passive rather than active language, and to have absolute respect for authority.
Above all, a public servant wasn’t allowed to make mistakes so, if one did, it was always a desperate struggle for a plausible excuse or for a way of letting others share the blame. I picked up the art of covering my ‘ass’.
My taste for thrill and excitement was also smothered along the way. I did not find it exciting to be lost with a park ranger overnight in the wilderness on the Mamaku Plateau (with no shelter, food or water) or, with another park ranger, to sit in a boat watching the water gush in after the bow struck a rock on Lake Tarawera.
I can’t say it wasn’t a thrill, though, to set foot in the crater of an active volcano on White Island or to visit the teeming wildlife on Snares Island or to fly around outlying parts of New Zealand in the Sub Antarctic on a Royal New Zealand Air Force patrol.
All the same, in public service, I lost my true self. I have regained something like it since I started writing and promoting my books.
My early career was not all bad. I had work experiences that some might find glamorous – like giving oral and written policy advice to government ministers, or being an expert adviser for Parliamentary Select Committees in law-making, or working on settling treaty grievances with indigenous people, or playing a part in establishing new protected natural areas and historic sites.
In my latest book (Green Expectations) there’s more of my past working life than in the earlier ones.
I began my career in the year Marilyn Monroe died.
The juxtaposition of two facts above is simply to make the first more interesting, a technique I’m sure a lot of writers use in order to have their lives sound less mundane.
I worked for 43 years in various jobs in the New Zealand Public Service. ( If that had been in the USA, I would have been a federal administrator).
The working environment in the early years was very repressive. I learnt to fit in better by being non-descript rather than colourful, to use passive rather than active language, and to have absolute respect for authority.
Above all, a public servant wasn’t allowed to make mistakes so, if one did, it was always a desperate struggle for a plausible excuse or for a way of letting others share the blame. I picked up the art of covering my ‘ass’.
My taste for thrill and excitement was also smothered along the way. I did not find it exciting to be lost with a park ranger overnight in the wilderness on the Mamaku Plateau (with no shelter, food or water) or, with another park ranger, to sit in a boat watching the water gush in after the bow struck a rock on Lake Tarawera.
I can’t say it wasn’t a thrill, though, to set foot in the crater of an active volcano on White Island or to visit the teeming wildlife on Snares Island or to fly around outlying parts of New Zealand in the Sub Antarctic on a Royal New Zealand Air Force patrol.
All the same, in public service, I lost my true self. I have regained something like it since I started writing and promoting my books.
My early career was not all bad. I had work experiences that some might find glamorous – like giving oral and written policy advice to government ministers, or being an expert adviser for Parliamentary Select Committees in law-making, or working on settling treaty grievances with indigenous people, or playing a part in establishing new protected natural areas and historic sites.
In my latest book (Green Expectations) there’s more of my past working life than in the earlier ones.
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