There is a good (yes, it is, honestly) ad on Oz tv aimed at women. It goes through all the contradictory advice that people get about good health, happiness etc - don't eat too much, eat little and often, etc. The advice gets more insistent and contradictory, and the pictures are flipped faster and faster until the scene changes to a woman lying on a massage table, relaxing. However, the ad isn't that good, because I can't for the life of me remember what the product is that is being advertised. Mainly because I get fascinated by the way the woman in the last part manages to talk as if she is chewing a mouthful of very chewy toffee. She does some strange and unnecessary manipulations of her face, mouth, etc which do not in any way help me to focus on what she is saying.

So, as a penance for me for indulging in thread creep I suppose I have to offer my tips for success.

1. Do what you love and the money will follow.

2. Spend nearly 5 decades trying to figure out what you love most and how to make money out of it when you find it, and meanwhile spend 3 decades working for the government in its various forms being told what to do by mindless, anachronistic bureaucrats.

3. Never believe that casual work will magically transform itself into permanent work with sick leave, annual leave, and all the other conditions and benefits that we unionists have fought for all our lives and thought we had achieved - that is until the business owners and their political buddies ganged up on us and invented casual/temporary labour schemes which benefit the labour hire companies (i.e business owners) and screw the workers. (Whew! Rant switch - OFF!)

4. Life is a lot better with someone to share it with you. Friends, family, your partner, your workmates, fellow musicians and music lovers.

4. Without a plan you are just a tourist AND If you don't much care where you are going then it doesn't matter which road you take.   

So make some life plans, set some goals, work out what you need to do to actually achieve them, work out some manageable steps to take, starting is 9/10ths of the work, and just go for it.

I'm sure I'll come up with some more later.

Helen