FINDING THE DOT - EPISODE 2
THE BASTARD GETS THE LAST LAUGH
Tim Cox. Incurable cancer. An incurable addiction to meetings. And one final act of spectacular bastardry.
First, a massive thank you. ❤️
To everyone who has donated, shared, supported or even considered helping our mate Tim, Kylie and their three children — you're bloody legends.
But we're not finished.
THE NEXT DOT — $75,000.
And before Tim establishes a fundraising governance committee, appoints a chairperson, resurrects Karl Marx for his views and schedules fortnightly progress meetings, allow me to explain. Because there's something about Tim I've never quite been able to understand.
Tim bloody LOVES meetings. Not casually. Not recreationally.
Clinically. Pathologically. Romantically.
Give him a whiteboard, six unsuspecting colleagues and an agenda he creates on the fly, and he'll enter a state of professional ecstasy. I'd rather staple my eyelids to a moving forklift. Add Tim's undying devotion to Karl Marx, whom he somehow used to underpin every conversation and act, and how our comradeship endured such fundamentally incompatible philosophies remains one of life's great mysteries.
THE DOT. THE BLOODY DOT.
Tim and I spent years, in our various pursuits, helping folk find the point. The purpose. The outcome. The DOT.
A simple concept. Tim would explain the dot. Someone would misunderstand. Tim would explain it again. Someone would suggest a workshop. Given the disruptive impact, length and sheer frequency of said impromptu "meetings", I'd begin questioning whether solitary confinement might actually be a lifestyle upgrade. Then some magnificent professional specimen would announce -
"Perhaps we need to revisit our understanding of what constitutes a dot."
Oh, sweet Jesus.
Tim's eyebrows would rise. His voice would change.
The whiteboard marker would become a weapon of mass clarification.
Meanwhile, I'd sit quietly. Observing. Silently trembling with anticipation.
Occasionally asking something entirely innocent.
"But Tim, are we absolutely certain we're looking at the right dot?"
Silence. Tumbleweed. Then, a twitch. A visible deterioration in his faith in humanity.
Absolutely magnificent.
A CONFESSION. DON'T TELL TIM.
I secretly loved those meetings.
Not all seventeen running back-to-back by 9am, occasionally simultaneously, across what felt like entire geological periods, with coffee supplies approaching humanitarian-crisis levels.
And certainly not the meetings themselves. Christ, no.
But watching Tim become increasingly incandescent while otherwise intelligent adults attempted to reinvent the circle?
Better than Netflix.
Sometimes I'd deliberately introduce another dot. A complete and totally deliberate decoy. A total red herring. He never knew, until he reads this article.
No relevance whatsoever. Purely scientific, naturally. Although, admittedly, something of a highly competitive sport. The resulting combustion could probably power a small South Island township.
And beneath all that intellectual warfare?
Two ideologically opposed muckas. Different approaches. Same(ish) values.
Enormous respect.
Although I maintain that 94% of Tim's meetings constituted crimes against productivity.
The remaining 6% were probably organised to discuss the other 94%.
THE ULTIMATE BASTARD ACT.
Now comes the bit where the universe demonstrates its spectacularly defective sense of humour.
Tim has incurable pancreatic cancer.
He's endured chemotherapy and radiation. His family is exploring overseas treatment that may extend his life. No cure. No guarantees.
But hope.
And just when I thought things couldn't get more ridiculous, the ruddy git delivered his greatest professional ambush. He's asked me to speak at his funeral.
HIS BLOODY FUNERAL. FFS.
The man who's spent years dragging me into endless meetings has now organised the one meeting I can't decline. No calendar invitation. No decline button. No ability to set up Outloook to reject all meetings from Tim and his possy of Dot-ites. No agenda. No escape clause.
And he's appointed me guest speaker.
At a meeting where he doesn't even have to defend himself. Think about that.
The ultimate delegation. He's arranged the audience, assigned me another action item and intends to lie there while I do all the bloody work (nothing new there actually).
THE BASTARD HAS FINALLY FOUND A MEETING HE CAN'T BE INTERRUPTED IN.
And you just know he'll be having the last laugh.
"Right, Graham. Let's see you talk your way out of this one."
Well, Tim, I've got news for you, mucka. For years I've tried to get you, and everyone else, OUT of meetings. I've even tried to rig the system to send you all in circular meeting creation/invite loops (yet, given it [the system] was so faulty it faulted at that).
Now I'm asking this part of the world to help keep you around long enough to attend thousands more. The irony is frankly offensive.
But I'd sit through every bloody one.
(Or remote in. Let's not get completely carried away.)
Even the workshops about planning future workshops. Even the meeting to define the dot. And I'd still ask the occasional deeply irritating question.
Because watching you get wound up is one of life's most great pleasures.
AND I'M NOWHERE NEAR FINISHED ANNOYING YOU WITH MY DECOY DOTS.
So, regarding your final meeting invitation -
I'M DECLINING.
Not forever. Just for another twenty or thirty bloody years.
Because for all our arguments about dots, there's one I've absolutely no interest in finding. The full stop.
THE NEXT DOT — $75,000.
Thus, here's our mission.
Not another workshop. Not another consultant or silver-bullet-system.
Not another PowerPoint entitled Our Journey Towards Sustainable Dot Alignment.
TIME.
Time with Kylie.
Time watching his three children grow.
Time for laughter, love and all those gloriously ordinary moments that matter most.
And, God help us, time for more meetings.
We're asking everyone who can now help us reach $75,000.
Every donation helps. Every share matters.
Because beneath all the ridiculous arguments, ideological warfare and strategically deployed decoy dots is something very simple.
A bloody good man. A much-loved husband and father. And a mate we're not ready to lose.
❤️ HELP TIM GET MORE TIME
PG
Your mucka, professional antagonist and unwilling lifetime member of the Tim "Karl Marx" Cox Meeting Appreciation Society.
P.S. Tim, I've scheduled a meeting to discuss your funeral arrangements. Three hours. Mandatory attendance. No apologies accepted. And I've invited everyone who has ever misunderstood the dot.
P.P.S. I've also introduced seventeen completely irrelevant dots to the agenda. Just to keep you alive with Tim-grade dot-rage.
COMING SOON
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