The Many Layers of an Onion? I'm More of a Pomegranate

I had an interesting client meeting today, someone who I've worked with for a while now. She reckons she's got me pretty well sussed — the trade background, the racing, cancer survivor. Then I mentioned, almost as an aside, a hobby I used to do all the time that I want to get back to. And her face just went, "Wait, what? There's so much more to you than I thought."

So driving home, my brain drifted and I got thinking about that phrase people use — many layers to the onion. Peel one back, there's another underneath, all wrapped around some hidden core. Except that's not really me. An onion's got a centre that everything else is hiding, and I don't think I work like that at all.

I reckon I'm more like a pomegranate.

Crack one open and there's no single core hiding under layers. Just hundreds of seeds, all sitting there, all separate, but still all equally part of the one fruit. None of them are more "real" than the others. None of them are the thing the rest are protecting.

So here's a few of my seeds, completely at random, no particular order.

I have a pet dingo. Elcee is actually my second dingo. She's an alpine dingo — totally white — if you want to get specific about it. She's not your average office companion, but she's crazy smart, very attentive and full of attitude. Elcee was a rescue as an extremely young pup, and now is so pampered she wouldn't know what being a wild dog is.

I grew up in Karratha. Not the Karratha that is the FIFO city it is today. Karratha when it first became a town. One pub, one shop, one primary school — no high school. Proper Pilbara heat, red dirt, the whole thing — about as far from a design studio as you can physically get, but still used to draw back in those days.

My first vehicle wasn't a car. It was a motorbike. I grew up with both parents riding motorbikes, so it seemed natural. I actually had my licence for it a full six years before I ever owned a car.

And the trade I actually apprenticed in — hand and machine compositing. Working shoulder to shoulder with journos on the Western Farmer & Grazier newspaper — a trade that doesn't exist anymore. Not simply "it's changed." It's gone. You can't go and learn it even if you wanted to.

None of those things explain each other. A dingo doesn't lead to a motorbike. Karratha doesn't lead to compositing. But I guess that's sort of the point of being a pomegranate. I'm not one thing with a few interesting facts stacked on top. I'm not layered with a definitive core. I'm a few hundred separate, unrelated seeds that happen to be sitting inside the same skin.

So next time we catch up and start talking about random things — as I've been known to do — just keep in mind that you've probably spotted just a few seeds. There's a whole fruit's worth you haven't gotten to yet — and it's still developing.