Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His daughter. His son. His other daughter. His dog. Coffee. And the Internet. He is the pastor of City South Presbyterian Church, a church in Brisbane, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of his pre-ministry-as-a-full-time-job life working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online. He can't believe how great it is that people pay him to talk and think about Jesus. If you'd like to support his writing financially you can do that by giving to his church.

Two Week’s Notice

By / Consciousness / 2 minutes of reading / 6 Comments

No, I haven’t quit my job, or my house. Today marks the second week I’ve been in Townsville. Time flies when you’re having fun. So this week I made my first corporate trip back to Brisbane. I had been hoping to take Friday off and stay down there for the weekend, but the realities of being a proper worker hit and I was called back to Townsville for a visit by the Chief Executive of Tourism Queensland. Turns out Media co-ordinators need to co-ordinate the media. We had all the local television networks here and I managed to be filmed sitting in the meeting. I guess this makes me an E-Grade local celebrity (that’s a joke I’ve used before for my time spent on Briz 31. I realised the other day I only really have three funny jokes that run on a rotation policy). Actually, on that bracketed note and an irrelevant tangent, I was talking to my friend Michael the other day (Michael is a Brisbane Dentistry student who’s up here on 6 months prac – he MC’d a QYC with me) and we were talking about small talk – the nature of conversations we force new people to have when we meet them. We’ve decided we’re sick of giving the little spiel on why we’re in Townsville. From now on I’m going to lie and tell people I’m a prisoner from the local prison on day release for good behaviour. Actually I won’t. But the point is – I think there are probably more effective ways to get to know new people. Why not ask random questions about circus acts, or something entertaining. Rehashing the same message over and over again gets pretty boring.

Anyway, I went to Brisbane to attend a meeting of Tourism Organisations and Tourism media outlets. We pitched Townsville to the Great Outdoors and other funky travel shows. It went well. I got free coffee and danishes. A nice change from the serving coffee and danishes in my old law firm job. I think that’s been the biggest change from the support side of an office to the professional. That and the business cards.

I got home to find that all my worldly possessions had arrived in Townsville. So now my house feels like home.

Tomorrow night I get to go on a cruise. Be jealous.

One week

By / Consciousness / 3 minutes of reading / 2 Comments

Well, I was going to do my song title challenge today but in an annoying technological hiccup I lost my entire post just before it saved. The internet is stupid. Word thinks internet is a proper noun and should be capitalised and normally I’d comply, but today I don’t think it deserves proper noun status.

I’ll list the songs that I had picked out for my post and challenge you to figure out where they fit:
One Week – Barenaked ladies, Better Man – Pearl Jam, Better Man – Robbie Williams, Better Man – John Butler Trio, Today – Smashing Pumpkins, Rocket – Smashing Pumpkins, Fake Plastic Trees – Radiohead, Creep – Radiohead… actually I won’t list all the songs but there were bits of comedic gold in there featuring songs from Weezer, Gomez, The Whitlams, some old musical soundtracks, the Beatles… I pulled out all the stops, and commas, (and brackets) – in fact I pulled out all the punctuation! – only to be thwarted by the internet gremlins.

The gist of my lost post was that things here are going well. Work is hard in a good way. Cyclones are bad for tourism. Townsville is good for tourism. Work for a tourism organisation has fantastic perks. There’s the summary now here’s the detail…

As it turns out Cyclones that miss where you live can be bad for where you live if they only just miss where you live. The impact of a cyclone threat is felt by tourism businesses in the entire region even if they aren’t actually damaged themselves. Starting work for the local tourism organisation the week of a cyclone isn’t something I’d necessarily recommend unless you want to throw yourself in at the deep end to see if you’ll sink or swim. To continue the watery cliche – I’m currently managing to keep my head above water as I madly churn out press releases to combat the plethora of cyclone destruction images floating around in the southern media. At the same time I’m trying to get a handle on the intricacies and nuances of the Townsville Enterprise juggernaut and trying to learn the names and functions of my various co-workers. I’m also dealing with the media both local and national, organising interview opportunities, accommodation and the like while trying to get my head around all the tourist attractions in the region. Tomorrow I go on my first work trip. I’m head to Magnetic Island to experience all it has to offer. In April I get to go on a three day trip to a resort on Orpheus Island where I get a 7 course meal. Life is hard. That was sarcasm. Well actually some of it is hard. In a good way. I’m enjoying the challenges my job offers and even the discipline getting up at the same time every day offers.

You can read my press releases in the media section of www.townsvilleonline.com.au if that’s something that excites you (mum and dad).

I apologise for the unworking links in the side column – but I just don’t care enough to fix them. Do your own internet surfing. Actually don’t. Maybe if we don’t surf the internet it will die. Then all the badness will go away. I guess my blog would go away too but I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Happy as Larry

By / Consciousness / 3 minutes of reading / 7 Comments

I think I’m now officially a North Queenslander. Not only did my first weekend in the tropics include a trip to a Cowboys game (well it was really a trip to a Manly game but who’s counting) but I also managed to survive my first cyclone scare. Tropical cyclone Larry managed to cause all sorts of mayhem up north and even though it didn’t hit Townsville it managed to postpone my first day of work. Well, it at least put it off until lunch time. I arrived in the office at 2pm in a fairly exhausted state having spent the previous night watching cyclone updates on TV. I wasn’t particularly worried about Larry as I have no valuables up here other than my car which is fairly comprehensively insured. Larry passed us by, leaving winds and rain in his wake. Many stupid local residents braved the killer jellyfish to experience a rare bit of swell at the beach. I was not one of those people. The prospect of being attacked by the killing stroke of a jellybean sized ocean dwelling monster doesn’t appeal to me at all.

In other news up here… The Cowboys beat Manly in a scrappy game which featured some dubious refereeing. I went to the football with an old friend of mine from Maclean, it was cool seeing someone I haven’t seen for many years and even if he is a Broncos supporter it’s nice to have someone else up here who isn’t in the grips of Cowboy fever. Football is like a religion up here.

I’ve found a permanent abode, I’m living in a house next door to the church up here. My housemates are Tim, a marine biology/science student who was president of the AFES group up here the same year I was president of QUT Christians, and Dave, A graphic designer who works from home. Dave is clean, Tim is messy and I’m the happy medium. Tim is also a wrestling fan. Those of you who have plotted (as in observed on a graph, rather than planned) my descent into wrestling fan status over the last year will probably be currently sighing or making disapproving clucks. It turns out wrestling fans have this different level of conversation that other people just can’t appreciate. Words that are foreign to others are now commonplace. It seems jargon is not restricted to the church. It’s nice to be part of another social subset.

Other than cyclone excitement things up here have been surprisingly smooth, new city, new house, new job, new church, new friends, new appreciation of fruit… someone once told me changing all these were amongst the most stressful human experiences. I’m not feeling it yet. In the wake of the damage to banana farms up here I went out and bought a kilo of yellowy goodness just to beat the price hike.

Kudos must be given to some commentators on my last post – Kutz for his grammatical prowess and my cousin Miriam for her cyclone pun.

I’m at work at the moment so no musical eliteness (or should I say 1337ness for you internet geeks) this week. However next post I aim to use song titles as many times as possible throughout my text. So that’s something to look forward to.

My very first post

By / Consciousness / 3 minutes of reading / 7 Comments

Welcome.

For those who came in late… to steal a well worn line from a comic book hero… here’s some information about the creator of this blog:
My full name is: Nathan Macleay Campbell.
I’m 22.
I like stuff.
and things.
I guess you can read more about the particular stuff and things I like on my profile.

At the time of writing I’m two days out from beginning the next adventurous stage in my life. I’m about to move 1400kms north to Townsville where I begin my life as a fulltime worker.

In order to cash in on the tradition of great Hollywood D-Grade movies like Ernest Goes To Camp I’ve decided to put the words “goes to” in between my name and my destination in the title of my blog. I’d like to think my adventure north is at least on par with Ernest’s trip to summer camp. I hope my adventures will be at least half as wacky as his were. I’d also like to think that reading about my adventures will be less painful for you than sitting through an Ernest movie. If you haven’t seen an Ernest movie you’re not missing out on much. They’re basically as painful as fingernails being scraped along a blackboard for an hour and a half.

There’s a lot of things I like about reading other people’s blogs that I’ll aim to recapture here. There’s a lot of things I don’t like about reading other people’s blogs that I’ll try not to include here.

So here you have my thoughts on my impending departure: I am simultaneously excited and nervous (I’m not sure what the adjectival form of the word trepidation is but I would have used it there, maybe trepidated?) Until last Sunday night I’d been pretty cool about the whole moving away thing casually farewelling friends with the knowledge that I was about to make a new beginning somewhere else which, at least in my mind, isn’t all that daunting. I’m really looking forward to starting my new job with Townsville Enterprise, who you can find here. I’m looking forward to meeting new people. I just didn’t think it would be that hard to say goodbye to old people but on the upside it’s not like I’m dying and there’s always me in blog form if you miss me too much. It’s much harder for me to be cool, calm and collected when other people are displaying their emotions. At the moment my emotional compass is pointing more towards the excited end of the spectrum but it fluctuates depending on what I’m doing with my time. I think making huge life changing decisions is like eating Pringles, once you pop, you can’t stop. To explain that analogy and further explain how i’m feeling I’ll use another analogy – you can’t get off the rollercoaster in the middle of the ride, you just have to sit back and enjoy it. There’s no pulling out now so I guess there’s no place for second thoughts even if I was considering having them. Which I’m not. But if I was I wouldn’t be any more because that analogy explains everything. I am clearly wise beyond my years. Or not.

So now to my favourite part of other people’s blogs the bit where I show just how good my taste in all things aesthetic is. The bit where I record for the ages what I’m listening to, watching, wearing etc. I’m going to restrict it to what I’m listening to this time round but if I find good websites I’ll put links and stuff.

This post was brought to you by the band MUSE and the album Absolution.

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