WHO CARES? 

My dear, dear friend Tracy has started to blog and I didn't even notice!  Actually, she isn't blogging she is  blethering. Blethering, as anyone from north of Watford knows, is a little like mithering or blathering but, being from USA, it's a term Tracy has learned from a Scott called Scott, who is Tracy's husband.  I don't think I have ever heard Tracy blether in her life. She's a NY 'career woman' (though also with two children and a husband) who runs massive accounts like Kraft for digital ad agencies. Or at least she did before she went on a summer career break. Now, much as Tracy may love her husbands Scottish way of talking, I love Tracy's American style. I love the way she casually tosses out the term 'career break', as if it is so easy to wander away all summer from a high-powered and high paid job in NY to look after her two children, when we all know there are implications and choices are not easy.  I take my hat off to her for it. It is so much easier to get "career breaks" the way that I do -  when they're imposed upon me. Next time I'm casting about for work I will tell everyone I'm on a "career break", including myself. So much more positive. One day my career will break so many times the wheels will fall off it and then I shall say I am retiring.

Anyway, I recommend Tracy's insightful latest piece, who cares and I do care about her for a million reasons to do with how incredibly dyamically she manages to have that elan and savoire faire in life that probably really does come from a who cares attitude in all kinds of subconscious ways. She also really, really cared for me. Without her support when I was facing not ever, ever being a mummy I doubt I would be one now. Tracy scraped me up off a cosmetics shoot in Malaga in a jibbering mess when even enough valium to slew a horse could not get me to relax ( I kid you not, the doctor in the hotel said that he had already given me enough to slew a horse ), and she flew me back to the UK and got me into the Florence Nightingale hospital when I thought I would die from grief of childlessness. Drama queen, or what? This left Tracy, inconveniently, to pick up the pieces of the job we were doing together. In my defence, I would like to say that the pre-production is the biggest part of any shoot and caring too much not too little was probably my problem, even with work. Sometimes it is impossible not to care but take it from me, displacement activity only works when it is not used as slow suicide by exhaustion. I reckon Who cares? is often a great motto for a working woman as well as one on a career break.


PS: Just realised this post will  probably mean I will never get a job on a shoot ever again. Oh, well. Who cares?