Forget Bliss. Follow Your Napoleon’s Nose

N.B. Magnifying glass may be required to read this post.

I live in the city of Belfast. Northern Ireland is not worldly known at first tell by it’s natural landscapes, rugged coastlines or fabulous lakeland even though we have all of these. More often we have come to be known as that place of ‘the troubles’ where people have been murdered and blown up and where politicians are more likely to be heard using the tried and tested political strategy of ‘stirring the pot of hatred’ than say, forward thinking, inclusiveness or indeed even conservatism, liberalism or whatever.

Well all that bores me witless but like the people working in our beleaguered tourist profession I have come to know and appreciate some of the natural landscapes that are unique to us. One of these is Napoleon’s Nose – a rocky outcrop of basalt that edges the top of one of the hills, Cavehill, surrounding Belfast. It is so-called as it is meant to bear a likeness to Napoleon in profile and well, he was known to have a bit of ‘hooter’. The story goes that the image of Cavehill inspired Jonathan Swift to write Gulliver’s Travels.

On my daily walk I can see Napoleon’s nose and this morning it seemed to be looming at me out of the clouds. Here is a pretty wick photo of it that I took this morning – it didn’t really come out too well (looked much more dramatic in reality, honestly) but if you are really clever you can just make it out if you follow up from the little red roof in the centre of the photo to the top of the hill in the background and then just a little to the right. That is if you can find/see the little red roof, not the bigger one to the left…(you’ll probably need to click on each photo :()

In this second photo the ‘nose’ is actually lit up by the sun just to the left of the green bush in the foreground.

Same view taken on a sunnier day…

In this one if you look really really hard you can even see the iconic yellow Harland and Wolf cranes of Belfast’s Shipyard that have come to symbolise Belfast. No really they are there, look again. Use the magnifying glass. They stand close to the dock where the world famous Titanic was built. To the right is the mouth of Belfast Lough.

Okay clearly I am not a photographer (these were taken with my iPhone and I am about 10 miles away from Cavehill)) and the point of my post about following your nose is just that. I am not a photographer so I must be something else. Advice about changing our working lives into one we feel more aligned with is much and varied. It seems a widely held and learned view that our next employment opportunity is at least likely to be allied to the field we have experience in, a certainty I would say if you are thinking of becoming self employed.

I enjoy thinking about symbols and meaning and problem solving. I love helping people to work through problems, issues and I love to help them find the information they need and I know about the benefits of group work, of sharing problems and learning from others. I love to design training materials and to deliver training and so looking at Napoleon I’m thinking this is where my future employment is going to be. Not really a million miles away from what it has been in the past. I am completely fascinated in the why’s of people’s behaviour, find myself a most interesting case in study and when my self obsession gives way I can be a great support and coach to those who surround me. I think I need to follow this lead.

The thought of completely reinventing myself at this stage of my life development seems almost as daunting as climbing Cavehill of a morning and so my landscape is telling me I need to build on what I already know and enjoy. I think what I am missing more than anything in my state of unemployment is people. The interaction with people. This is very important here in Northern Ireland and for many years it added to the political stalemate I alluded to earlier. The problem was you kept meeting the same type of person here, over and over again. That is different now. We have become so much more ‘Cosmopolitan’. And our ability to access news and other information and interact with a greater amount of viewpoints via the web has been well, an enlightenment really.

And so my question to you. Answers on a postcard please for suggestions of suitable employment for this blogger. I have already ruled out Short-Sighted Tourist Guide so you need to be more original than that. Thanks. Oh and my dad used to say that I looked like Nefertiti, the Ancient Egyptian Queen, because a little replica iron bust he had of her that used to sit on our fireplace showed quite a big nose in profile.