The best years of a womans life

There is an old joke I like: Being 29 are the best years of a woman's life. I trot it out often, but usually it doesn't result in the gales of laughter it so richly deserves.

Age is a touchy subject in society. I remember thinking that the pressure of sitting school certificate and university entrance examinations would be unbearable, but that the day was so far off that I could defer my anxiety (it's easy when you are eleven and have a buffer of four years before D-Day).

As a 19 year old punk the prospect of turning 20 seemed like a betrayal of the punk ethos - but even Johnny Rotten is an old geezer like me now.

By 30 I had reached my goal of being the youngest creative director for a multi-national ad agency in New Zealand and was in the process of wondering why I should work for anyone else and began my first company - Milk Moustache - branded communications since quarter past two (being infantile is a characteristic I'm comfortable with).

Being in my forties I have to say has been a doddle. Jung describes middle age as a time for individuation: Jung called this final step self-realization-- “We could therefore translate individuation as “coming to selfhood” or “self-realization” - in other words, this is who I am, and if you don't like it I am OK with that too, now - excuse me I have a blog to write. Aside from a little extra weight, zoom lenses in my glasses and monumental blood pressure I feel pretty mush the same way I always have...

Anyway, so far so good.

I came across these images of from Paris vogue (via Picdit) Using just make-up and styling the same model is transformed from a 10 year old to a sixty year old. Slightly creepy on one level, but nicely done.

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Ze Frank thinks so you don't have to

Ze Frank appeared on my radar when I saw his presentation among the excellent TED Talks videos . This morning I was reading Russell Davies planning blog in which he referred to a clip by Ze Frank - Where do ideas come from. Here's the transcript: "...Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima [sic] writes, "Are you ever gonna break into song again? Are you running out of ideas?" Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima, that's a good question. I run out of ideas every day! Each day I live in mortal fear that I've used up the last idea that'll ever come to me. If you don't wanna run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do 'em right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you'll get to later. Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer they wait, the more they convince themse...

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St...

Why billboards must go.

The problem with billboards and advertising in public places is they are an invasion of privacy. Unlike magazine, tv, radio (etc) advertising you cannot choose to turn it off or avoid it. Nor does it offer anything in return. It is a medium that offers no benefit or advantage to the person it is inflicted on. At least television ads subsidise the programming. Without doubt some billboards are entertaining - I thought the anti GE poster for short lived MADGE activist group was particularly good. But most are rubbish. Literally. Badly executed. Nothing important to say. The debate has led to a great deal of hysteria - mostly from people with a vested interest in perpetuating the deployment of hoardings. Perhaps the idea that the issue at stake is 'property rights' is the creepiest. If you own a building you have every right to plaster anything you like on its external surfaces. Is that an antisocial point of view? I think so. In the UK you could have an ASBO slapped on you for si...

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