Egoboo

I'm realistic enough to be aware that my various careers to date have been relatively mediocre. I have an entry in Wikipedia based on the fact that I have some books with proper-sized commercial print-runs, which is one of the standard criteria they use over there. I also have an entry in Who's Who in Australia based on totally different criteria relating to my work in labour relations. It's not as if I've been world-beating in either field, though I did do some good work as a fiction writer and also as an industrial advocate. Ironically, what I think may be my best and most important work - the large body of substantial articles on public policy issues published over the past decade or so, mostly in Quadrant but also in Meanjin and more recently in refereed journals - would not be enough to cut it in either of these places.

What provokes these reflections is that I received an invitation overnight from the international Who's Who to provide my details. I'm not sure how that came about - e.g. did someone who knows me submit my name, or do they scour publications like Who's Who in Australia, or what? I spent most of the morning filling in the on-line form, which made a helluva lot of demands on my memory. This doesn't necessarily mean that I'll be appearing there, but, oh well, we'll see what comes of it.