There’s an ad on the radio at the moment promoting NRMA business insurance.
In it, a woman describing life in small business exclaims, “It’s nuts, it’s just nuts”.
If normality is “nuts” then this week has been insane.
In my Demand Flow Intelligence business the CEO, Andy, has been working on a number of prospects for some time.
These are reasonably large (they’re all multinationals) organisations where getting projects and budgets signed off at various levels invariably takes quite a while.
A few of these prospects have been for audience acquisition for events in mid-May.
As we’re now entering the last week week of April, time (as they say in the classics) “is of the essence”.
So, last week we got the go ahead for three separate campaigns which we now need to staff and get under way on Tuesday this week.
While Anzac Day may be a holiday for most Australians, for Andy and me it’s going to be a VERY BUSY work day.
That’s just part of this week’s craziness.
As well as ramping up at work, Friday night was the beginning of Passover.
This is one of the major events in the Jewish calendar with its own intrinsic chaos.
Let me diverge briefly to give you some background.
Judaism is an eminently sensible religion – it makes behaviour that many religions frown upon and strongly discourage into a religious event.
(There are many benefits to this in terms of molding human behaviour but I won’t go into a lot of psychobabble right now to justify it.
Also there are many mystical processes going on but I’m not going there either.)
Suffice to give you a few examples:
On Purim (one month before Passover) we commemorate the attempted annihilation of the Jewish people during the time of the Persian Empire.
The Persian Empire is gone but the Jewish people are still around, so that attempt clearly didn’t work out as the perpetrators had planned.
(There’s a great deal of synergy between that and the attempt to do the same thing by the Nazis last century, with the same outcome.)
We celebrate Purim with the religious obligation to get drunk.
On Shavuot, 7 weeks after Passover, we commemorate the divine revelation at Mount Sinai (check out the Biblical book for Exodus if that doesn’t mean anything to you).
For that we are enjoined to stay up all night and eat lots of cheese.
Shabbat (or the Sabbath) occurs each Saturday.
As part of his religious obligations a man is required to “perform his marital duties”.
Intimacy between husband and wife is entirely controlled by the wife and so, in order to fulfill “his religious duties” a man needs to be especially nice to his wife (important lessons there).
On Hanuka (the eight day, festival of lights) we remember the ousting of the Greek Empire from Israel after they attempted to impose polytheism (the worship of multiple gods) on the Jews, who are strongly monotheistic (only one G-d) – are you seeing a pattern here?
That’s celebrated by lighting candles and eating oily foods.
There’s a saying that Jewish history is summed up thus: “They hated us, they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.”
As religious obligations these apply to men only (women participate but in a voluntary capacity).
Returning to the week before Passover.
The preparations for Passover require a thorough cleaning of the house.
In the northern hemisphere it’s the beginning of spring and so here we see the origins of “spring cleaning”.
Like all other obligations described (very briefly) above the religious requirement to cleanse the house falls on the men.
So, if you want a man who has been trained to do housework (as a religious duty) find yourself a nice, religious Jewish one.
This past week has been a combination of a crazy time at work combined with the pressure of preparing for the beginning of Passover.
Included in that picture of chaos, we’ve had my mother visiting from Perth.
It’s been wonderful having her stay with us, but the house we’re currently sitting is a tiny two-bedroom place with one bathroom.
One of the bedrooms has been used as an office and the other is our bedroom.
To accommodate Mum we returned the office/bedroom to her bedroom and so we ended up with the added pressure of rearranging the house.
All in all, it’s a great time and I’m extremely grateful to have Danita, who’s been amazingly understanding and supportive, but it has been NUTS!
If you’re Australian, I wish you a reflective and meaningful ANZAC Day.