You are replaceable ... mostly

An important epiphany about what actually matters.

The importance of our career is impressed upon us very early on in our lives. I remember being fifteen and having to decide what electives to choose to study as a senior in high school. I vividly recall the teacher telling us that these electives may inform tertiary study choices and eligibility requirements and we should choose carefully. I also remember thinking “how the fuck am I meant to know what I want to do at this point in my life?”

Over the years, I had a number of career goals, each of them more wildly unrealistic than the next. First, I wanted to be an artist. Now, I know we may argue that I am an artist insofar that I write and I am very musical - but I meant an artist who had at least a modicum of talent when it came to drawing. Well grade eight art snuffed the candle of that particular aspiration right out.

Next, I wanted to become a marine biologist. I believe this revelation followed a family vacation to Heron Island during which I was exposed to all manner of sea life and became deeply invested in ensuring the survival of the Great Barrier Reef. I also really loved dolphins. Alas, marine biology was never going to be my raison d’être. For a start, anything to do with the sciences was, of necessity, going to involve a fair bit of mathematics… and I just can’t … with the algebra and the logarithms. It was just never going to happen.

After I graduated high school, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do so I did what most kids my age did, and I allowed myself to be influenced by my peers. To that end, I decided on journalism. I was opinionated, able to effectively string sentences together and thought it would be a great way to earn money doing what I loved, writing. I was accepted into a Bachelor of Arts at Griffith University, and I began my tertiary education. Despite having fumbled and flailed my way through high school, at university I hit my stride and after completing my first year of my Arts Degree, I was able to transfer to a Bachelor of Media Communications, majoring in Film and Journalism.

If ever there was a place where it absolutely benefited you to spout complete bullshit, this was it. I remember producing an assignment that was almost completely based on science fiction and heavily influenced by the Red Dwarf books by Doug Naylor and somehow topped the class. I thought I had found my path. But alas it was not to be. During my second year of university, a close friend of mine passed away. She was barely 18 (fuck Cancer). It did not matter that I knew her death was coming; it hit me… hard. I became instantly aware of my own mortality to an extent that few others my age could comprehend, and this was the first deviation from my path which ultimately led to me abandoning my tertiary education and entering the workforce.

I began my current career in 2002 after spending a couple of years living abroad processing my grief. I say ‘abroad’ like it was some wonderful, boujey adventure. The reality was that it was two years in New Zealand where much of my time was spent working and the rest was spent playing Shane Warne Cricket and trying to find ways to feed myself because the minimum wage in NZ was $4.50 an hour. Boujey it was not! Upon my return, I needed to get my ducks in a row and earn a decent wicket. Brisbane was hopelessly lacking in opportunity, so I moved to Sydney.

I didn’t plan to work in financial services. It just kind of happened after I was unceremoniously let go from a job in pharmaceuticals. I answered a ‘cattle call’ for entry level roles at a Dutch Bank and then just followed the path wherever it led me. For eight years I was able to manage fine without a tertiary qualification. I’d worked the long (unpaid) additional hours, I’d established myself as a trusted subject matter expert and a natural leader and my income had steadily (yet still modestly) increased. At a certain point, I came to realise that in order to unlock the next level in responsibility and remuneration, I needed a tertiary qualification.

After spending years of dealing with all the ins and outs of property variations, I decided, in all my wisdom, that I wanted to become a conveyancer. So, in 2010 I applied to study law. Due to my motivation being fairly uninspired, initially I commenced an Associates Degree. I didn’t need to go all in and sign up for the Bachelor. I had briefly considered doing this in my 20s but had ultimately decided that it was more important to me to have a social life than to read a library of textbooks.

The Associates Degree would be fine to get me where I thought I wanted to go. I commenced my degree in 2011 with a level of enthusiasm and lofty idealism that would put most mature age students to shame. The whole degree was 24 units (subjects). The years were split into trimesters and because I was an impatient little shit, I decided that I would do four subjects per trimester. This was in addition to working a full-time job. The resulting workload was brutal to say the least.

For a while my “hell for leather” approach to study was effective. I studied for 4-6 hours every day after work. My entire degree was online, so I did not attend lectures. I listened to them in my own time. After I while, I worked out that my learning was most effective if I just followed the Study Guide and read the textbooks. I knew that my brain retained information better if I typed it out, so I would painstakingly re-type the key points in the Study Guide as well as important excepts from the texts and put them into my own (bound) revision notes. The exams were almost all open book but do not let that fool you into thinking you could just fly by the seat of your pants. Two to three hours goes by very quickly if you don’t know what information to look for or where to find it! To say I was simply organised would not do justice to my dedication to exam preparation.

As I said, this all worked for a while but then… life happened.

Life included:

• Buying a house & moving

• trying to conceive, then infertility,

• menty bs (yes, multiple),

• and (eventually) pregnancy.

Despite these significant obstacles, I was unperturbed. I knew my motivation for wanting to gain this qualification and that had not changed… if anything, it had only become more important.

What was that motivation you ask?

It was simple.

I wanted to provide for my family.

I wanted to give them a comfortable life.

So, I persisted, and I fought tooth and nail, leveraging every single form of support I could to make it through what was (but I was yet to discover) the first of two degrees.

On 13 April 2013, I graduated with an Associate Degree in law. Not majoring in conveyancing as I had planned, but in paralegal studies. Spoiler alert: Conveyancing is basically all maths (my arch nemesis returns!) and general ledgers and completing even the one mandatory subject, left me hugging my knees and rocking back and forth underneath my desk more than once. Had it not been for my friend Andrina walking me through profit and loss with all the tenderness of a parent helping their small child to cross a road, I would never have made it through that subject.

I made two life-long friends studying law, Andrina and Gidget*. We graduated together and we encouraged each other to keep going when all we wanted to do was to give up.

Graduation Day 2013. Left to right: Me, Gidget and Andrina.

In October 2013 I experienced my first natural disaster. The loss in my community was significant enough that it apparently warranted a visit from Prince William and Princess Kate, who found their way to our sleepy (mostly unknown) little suburb to survey the devastation firsthand.

In March 2014 my first child was born and the whole year was basically a complete write off. It was a blur of sleep deprivation and PND. A year later I suffered a significant back injury which had me out of commission for months and left me with chronic episodic pain.

During this absolute clusterfuck of a time in my life, I was still studying and working full time. Primarily because once I realised I was able to use 18 of my 24 credits towards completing the 36 units required for a Bachelors of Laws (LLB); it seemed a waste not to go the rest of the way and become a practicing solicitor. After all, the goal was to provide for my family, and I knew that I could make decent money as a lawyer.

However, due to all of the above, I was now lagging significantly behind my friends, and it was obvious we were not going to graduate together twice.

Gidget, being the most impatient of us, was the first to graduate. She completed her post grad and is now the principal solicitor of her own firm. Andrina graduated shortly after Gidget and, being married to a solicitor, was able to leverage his industry connections to complete her post-grad requirements and be admitted ‘into the tent’ with Gidget. Andrina was a bit older than us, and she had two beautiful school-age children whom she wanted to provide for, so she was very focused on her career path, feeling she had less time than us.

We were all very busy, so we didn’t get to catch up with each other IRL, but we were always chatting in our group chat, offering encouragement to each other as we each took the next step on our respective life paths.

In May 2018, I finally graduated with a Bachelor of Laws. By this time, I had already secured a new job with my current employer. My legal knowledge had facilitated my professional move into a massive organisation which had almost inexhaustible opportunities for upward mobility, … and I was ready to make the necessary sacrifices.

Then, on 14 June 2019, everything changed.

I was on maternity leave and about a week away from the birth of my second child (the miracle child). I remember sitting in the living room and absentmindedly scrolling FaceBook when I came across a post which, upon reading it, drained the colour from my face, sucked the air from my lungs and left me completely stunned and confused.

Wait! What?

This doesn’t make any sense.

I was just talking to her last night.

Gidget and I were just talking to her.

This must be wrong.

This cannot be real.

There’s never really a good way to find out someone you love has died, … but I think I can confidently say that this was the worst possible way. After much back and forth between Gidget and me, we discovered that our dear friend, who was a month away from her 49th birthday, had suffered a very sudden aneurysm, fallen into a short coma and then died. In a matter of days, she went from being the exuberant, joyful woman that we knew and loved, to taking her place with the angels.

One day she was here.

The next day she was gone.

A month prior to her death, she had secured a position with a very well-known, very reputable law firm. She had finally achieved what she set out to do when she undertook all that study and hard work … and one month later … she was gone.

And that’s when it dawned on me.

All that hard work.

All that sacrifice.

Despite everything she worked for … at the end of the day, she was just a number.

She was replaceable to everyone except her friends and her family.

Sure, her company would have been sad to learn of her passing, but purely from a resource and cost perspective and her job would have been advertised before her funeral.

I didn’t get closure when Andrina died. Her funeral took place the same day that my son was born. I didn’t get to say goodbye to her, but the world can be surprisingly small, and every now and then, I happen across someone else who knew her.

Her passing forever changed my perspective on what is truly important.

I no longer care about promotions.

I won’t put my company before myself or my family and I am very upfront about this.

I know my company will never tell me to stop working extra hours. I need to hold those boundaries.

I refuse to work full-time, though thanks to the global economic downturn, the difference between my part-time and full-time is about 15 minutes … but I maintain my part-time status on principle.

It’s easy to allow yourself to be consumed by your work ethic. The reality is that the work will always be there, but you may not be.

So, despite all my hard work, and graduating with a Bachelor of Laws, I never did complete the post-grad qualifications and work experience to be admitted into the tent with my friends. Outside of my drastic shift in perspective, it just wasn’t a feasible option for me and to make it so would be counterproductive to my initial motivation. It would put my family in a worse financial position. I knew that even once I was admitted, my earning capacity as a fresh-faced graduate would be severely beneath my current income.

So, I found other ways to use my degree.

It would be remiss of me not to mention my other true motivation for wanting to be a lawyer, which was to help people. So, I found a way, within my organisation, to use my degree for all the good that was intended without having to mortgage the limited time I have on this mortal coil.

I will leave you with these final thoughts:

We all have a countdown over our heads, we just don’t know how much time is left on the clock. When we look back on our lives, what will matter most to us is not the deadlines that we met, the reports we produced that have long since been forgotten, nor the extra hours we put in which effectively allowed a resource and capacity issue to be swept under the rug. What will matter to us is the time we spent with the people to whom we are not replaceable… because as far as us being individuals is concerned, there is only one of us and there will only ever be one of us.

We cannot be replaced.

Choose your priorities wisely.

_{*not her real name (Honestly, I’d be really concerned if you didn’t work this out for yourself by this point.)}