The Elevator Pitch

I could have been part of the white 'stolen generation' in Australia.

Be assured I don't mean to undermine or trivialise the atrocity that was the true stolen generation of Aboriginal people with that opening statement, but a Catholic kid to a young single mother in 1971 in regional NSW might have easily been snapped up by the church to be given a better life with someone more stable, sensible and deserving.

Thankfully mum had the foresight to get out of Dodge (Dodge being the legendary petrol-powered town of Bathurst) for the latter part of her pregnancy and stay with her aunt and family in the Central Coast city of Gosford, which is where I landed in a blaze of noise. We returned to Bathurst when I was some months old, I'm assuming once the gossiping mouths had calmed down a little. I spent the next 25 years there.

I was noisy in primary school and I was noisy in high school. I always felt the burning desire to be the centre of attention. Class clown or leader? Not quite sure. A mix of both I think. In primary school I was labelled naughty and quite often found myself standing outside the classroom or getting a dose of the cane in the principal's office. Yet when it came time for teachers to choose a public speaker or ambassador for the school it was often me. With no brothers or sisters, or even cousins (until later on) for that matter, I became gregarious, resourceful and forthright. I started sticking up for people pretty early on, perhaps because I craved a sibling. We'll let the psychologists wrestle with that one...

All my school reports said the same thing; "Kyle is incredibly bright, but needs to work harder to realise his potential". Aside from a brief moment in the academic sun as dux of Year 7 at St Stanislaus College it was all downhill from there. I spent most of my high school years chasing girls and skipping class to play the piano. Assignments were handed in at the last minute and usually calculated to receive just enough marks to keep my studies in second (and occasionally third) gear.

What was the rush? I thought it was far more important to master a Billy Joel piece than learn algebra. So music turned into a career, and I continue my love-hate relationship with the pianoforte to this day.

As an aside to that, it emerged I was excelling at English by putting even less effort into that subject than the others. An absolutely awesome system was being installed in my complicated brain by osmosis (yes, I did biology); stick to the things you're really good at and it's entirely possible you might get through school without doing an ounce of hard work. Translated in adult-speak, that would be "do the job you love and you'll never work a day in your life".

The girl-chasing and the piano playing continued, and I think I can credit myself with a bit of foresight here, as it proved to be a fabulous mix in adult life as well.

The apparent excellence in English led to my first job being a cadetship as a photojournalist on the local paper. The memories of four years of extremely low pay,  insanely long hours and being completely robbed of a social life have paled into insignificance, instead replaced with the warm glow of knowing I was given an incredible grounding in skills I use to this day.

I used to head off to a job in the little newsroom Toyota Corolla, notepad and Nikon camera in hand with a hunger in my eye to get the story, get to the truth and articulate it as best I could to the readership.

How the wheel has turned.....but not really.

Those skills I learned back in 1990, from photography and developing to typing, shorthand (my own version) and writing are still with me today as a social media content creator and marketer in my own business - Manning Public Relations.

These days its an ipad not a notepad, an imac not a word processor and the internet not 'the wire'. I still have the Nikon camera (but no longer have to inhale the developer - photoshop is my friend)

So here starts the blog - born out of frustration with the realm of Facebook, where opinions can live and die, along with a little bit of your soul, one day at a time.

Expect music, literature, science, politics, social justice, the arts in general and perhaps the interaction of all these...