KEEP IT IN THE PHAMLY

Hobbies are for people with time and money. It's something that came up with us Phamlings while dating and now in our relationships because people we dated didn't understand why we didn't have hobbies. What do we do when we're not at work? Free to air TV - it's FREE! Sports cost money, arts & crafts cost money, even TV costs electricity but thankfully Mum Pham was good with budgeting and would keep the power on even if it meant eating rice and lettuce for a while.  

Now that the Phamlings have well paying jobs and disposable incomes, we have upgraded to Netflix. A shared account with Little Sissy, of course - we signed up when we lived together and even when it was $6.50 each instead of the wild $8.50 each a month it was kind of a big deal. We committed very reluctantly.

Phamlings didn't have hobbies growing up because we didn't have much money being on welfare. We watched a lot of television, I'd read library books, and write and draw on scrap paper that my cousin brought home from work mostly with grey lead pencils 'cause I didn't want to use up the colour pencils unless it was a particularly special picture. We didn't get fancy art supplies unless gifted from our relatives. My point is - if you can afford a hobby, you're doing alright. 

Little Sissy Pham would list TV and doing online surveys for rewards as her hobbies if she had bothered to fill that question in on her dating profile back in the day. Sub online surveys out for reading / writing and you've got me. Sub in video games and you have Big Brother Pham. 

I know what hobbies we would have liked to pursue if we had the funds. I used to do circus training once a week for $5 until Mum Pham told me we couldn't afford to keep it up. Little Sissy Pham and Big Brother Pham played tennis through school and really got into it. Big Brother Pham really excelled and was offered a scholarship with a tennis school but we couldn't afford the equipment and didn't have a car to get him to the classes. It's not like we chose to not have hobbies - life just worked out that way. We did what we could within our means. 

Next time you ask someone about their hobbies, don't be so quick to judge if it's not sports that all cost money and time and logistics, or a craft or an art which also all cost money for supplies. Some of us only got hobbies once we were older and had disposable income. 

Holly Ransom spoke about moving out of your comfort zone into your courage zone at an SMB Digital virtual conference in 2020. This concept has stuck with me even though I didn't put it into practice while I tried my darnedest to stay in my comfort zone through COVID-19. After two years of daily changes, then weekly changes, then monthly changes, it started to feel like the worst of COVID disruptions are finally starting to ease (famous last words, right?). I found myself pondering ways to move into my courage zone after that week of devastating floods in Brisbane 'cause it felt like I finally had time to breathe.

I've kept this screenshot of a slide from Holly Ransom's talk on my desktop and revisited it every now and then. I haven't taken a big risk or tried things I've never done before or felt vulnerable in years. If anything, I've been the rock collecting stability and safety during the pandemic at home and at work. Sure I pitched an idea to set up a Project Management Office in my previous role but it was to help the organisation do more of what I'd spent the previous half decade doing.

Last month, I started a new role in a global organisation in an industry I've never worked in. I'm going to be a beginner, doing things I've never tried before, feeling vulnerable, asking questions (because I won't be the person in the room answering everyone else's questions!) and trying my best to be bold.  It's a little scary and a lot exciting to jump feet first into my courage zone after years of living in my comfort zone. Wish me luck!

I half jokingly wrote about planning for chaos at the start of the year, and to teach me a lesson Chaos smacked me right between the eyes, and suddenly it's April and I haven't written a single blog in 3 months.

Normally, in retail life Jan/Feb quiet down after peak Xmas and holiday trade. Me? I jumped right into another round the clock workload and just as things started to let up in March, Dad Pham spent a week in hospital with fluid logged lungs (he's OK now). And of course, I was interviewing for a role I really wanted the day after Dad got out of Emergency. Somehow my sleep deprived brain managed to not say anything that got me axed by the panel and - oh, hello! I start a new role in a whole new industry later this month!

It's always tempting to stay in your comfort zone and do what you know you're good at and enjoy. But, lately, I've started to wonder what untapped potential I may have. What more can I contribute? Life has a funny way of nudging you in the right direction when you're ready to listen. A recruiter hit me up out of the blue about a role in healthcare, and it turns out I can contribute to people's healthcare experience through technology projects. I feel very lucky to have this opportunity to try something new and contribute to my community in a different way.

I've been at the same retail company in various project roles for 6 years, 6 months and 26 days. It had been so long between jobs, I looked up how to resign in case HR guidelines had changed. I've had the greatest time with some of the best people I've ever met (including the Work Pham and Boyfriend Pham!), but a chapter must end in order to start a new one. I'm looking forward to the next chapter of my life.

The Xmas Eve feast that cancelled Xmas for the extended Phamly.

The first full week I've had off work all year and, of course, the very first event I go to on my very first day off on Christmas Eve had a relative who tested positive to COVID-19. I am writing you from Day 3 since close contact, Day 2 of isolation because I didn't find out until Christmas night I had to isolate and get tested. Boyfriend Pham and I went to get tested the very next day. Being Boxing Day with all bar a few testing centres open, the queue was hectic. We got to the drive-through testing pop-up just before it was set to open, and it was a 5.5 hour wait from start to nose/brain-poke. We were prepared for the long wait, and brought our books, snacks, and water to keep ourselves from getting stir-crazy inside the car.  But it was still a bit trying in the Brisbane heat and trying not to kill my car's battery with the constand stop/start.

While we wait for test results, we are reliving our daily routines of the original 6-week lockdown. Home quarantine is much more pleasant in a 3-bedroom townhouse with courtyard overlooking luscious green trees, than a 2-bedroom apartment with balcony overlooking a busy street. Still, Boyfriend Pham is one of those people who is constantly doing something and can't be still for too long so the most challenging part of this 4-day quarantine is keeping him busy. [Edited from 7-day to 4-day: Originally thought we had to stay in for the full 7 days and take a second test, but because we weren't seated at the same table at family feast, I only needed one negative test result! Which makes me question the logic of casual contacts testing on day 1 and getting negative results by Day 3 if the incubation period is 4-5 days after exposure. But oh well - it's what the rules say. I'm free!]

Me? I can sit and read or write or death scroll or binge-watch my days away. With him? I need to get up and do morning yoga, coffee and reading on the balcony / cat enclosure. Tidy up the house. Play with the cat. It's nearing lunchtime? Great, time to cook lunch. Half way through the day now. Afternoon is spent doing at least one productive chore - be it, cleaning, baking, study, research, gardening - otherwise Boyfriend Pham will feel his day has been wasted. Play with the cat. YouTube break! Pre-dinner workout in the lounge room, followed by dinner and then it's time to relax on the couch and watch our latest TV show or a movie. Play with the cat. Bedtime. 

Not the relaxing, movie-going, massage-having, good-food outing holiday I had in mind but, such as life, hey?

You know that feeling when you first download a new app and you're trying to puzzle out how it works? Or you’re a Mac user trying to navigate a Windows machine and vice versa? That confused feeling when tech illiterates can't get new technology working in their favour is how my immigrant parents felt when they fled home turf and wound up in wildly different countries to the community and culture they knew.

I was too small minded and inexperienced in my angsty teen years to respect my parents had risked their lives and left all they knew and loved behind. Instead, I found it frustrating my parents needed help navigating Australian society and that we were disadvantaged children of poor migrants, who didn't know how to make the system work in our favour.

Neither of my parents worked once we got to Australia. In Germany, Dad Pham was in the workforce until schizophrenia crippled his ability to hold down work, and Mum Pham was bullied out of a pharmacy by racist colleagues and customers. In Australia they went on the pension, and so didn't learn anything about the working environment to pass onto us kids.

It took my boss sitting me down and asking me what I wanted for myself a couple of years ago to make me actually think about career. I'd worked with him for years and he pointed out that I have exceptional achievement drive when it comes to my work, but zero achievement drive for myself personally. My immediate response was my parents are Buddhist, they raised us to appreciate what we have and to not want. Wanting things is a very Western culture thing. Though, I suppose, I live in Western society so I went away from that meeting and had a think about what I wanted for myself.

I've never had career development as a personal goal. My personal goals have always been things like being kind, finding positive ways to view life challenges or mundane things, learning from every experience. Career development is something I thought people with career paths did. You go to uni to study a thing, then you do the thing, and progress to more of the thing. I've been jumping all over the shop from high school math/science to creative uni studies to journalism then digital content then ecommerce then miscellaneous projects. 

I went back to my boss and told him I enjoy the project work I do, I am good at willing things to happen, and to develop my career I wanted to do what I do but for the whole company in a more official capacity. It took 18+ months to make it happen, but you are now reading the blog of a Project Management Office (PMO) Manager. Not too scrappy for a kid raised on Government handouts who went to a public school in low income area, where I got voted most likely to succeed which sounds positive until you learn parts of my peer group dropped out of high school and others had to be coaxed, pushed and prodded across the finish line.  

I am learning lots in my new role, and have lots more to learn, but it's exciting to have direction and focus. I wish I had personal career direction before my 30s but, hey, it's never too late to start. I'm proactively coaching the younger people in my life to be more progress driven, prepare themselves for growth and better opportunities - basically, teaching them how to work the system in their favour. I'm hoping anyone reading this will ask themselves what they want, and have a think about how to get there. If you want to talk it through, hit me up.

I was very happy and very glad to make it to Melbourne for a whirlwind trip in June this year. I was there for 48 hours and made zero other plans (sorry any Melbourne friends reading this) besides the 90th birthday and conspiring with my cousin to surprise my Aunty on my one free night. 

I stayed with childhood bestie, B (back when I used to have best friends, now you're either a good friend or not a friend) in her mum and the Birthday Boy's house in inner-city Melbourne. Their glorious two storey old Victorian home is where I spent most of my time when I wasn't at school or at home. The sights and smells brought back nostalgic memories of many years in my child to teen-hood. I hadn't realised until I stayed here again (this time in the guest room instead of B's bunk bed... partially because I'm an adult but mainly because her bunk bed is no longer around) that this house was my childhood sanctuary. The feeling of calm and nurturing that little me would have been too oblivious to observe and appreciate did not go over my head this time. 

Kitchen where I spent many hours of my youth

Birthday Boy was like surrogate father to younger me. He'd take care of us after school, made sure we did our homework and had snacks. When we got to high school because neither of my parents drove or had a car, he'd carpool Little Sissy Pham and me to school. He was always generously looking out for us growing up. I didn't clue on to the fact he needed us kids just as much as we needed him. 

The Maritime Union of Australia hosted Birthday Boy's big bash. It was a momentous occasion where they acknowledged the wrongs of the past that saw Birthday Boy ousted from the union and no longer employed. The timing happened to align with B bringing home a few kids from school who Birthday Boy took under his wing as part of his full-time stay at home dad duties. 

I was honoured and humbled to get an invite to his birthday, along with a function room full of other guests he'd positively impacted over the years. I wouldn't risk a COVID-19 lockdown and quarantining for many people, but Birthday Boy and B are extended Phamly. Worth the trip. Wish I could have stayed longer but I had a postponed 2020 wedding to fly to Cairns for. That saga will be another blog post. 

The always well-stocked fruit bowl from where I tasted nectarines and peaches for the first time