Larger than life

My friend Michael Yiannakis.

Pinpointing when you were happiest at work is a tricky business. Satisfaction waxes and wanes depending on so many factors, from the nature of the work itself to the boss you had or when you became one, the money you made or didn’t, or the friendliness of colleagues. Besides, can a career really make you happy?

Ordinarily, I’m the first to argue it can’t—a job is a job, and it won’t keep you warm at night. But that would be a dodge. Because I can absolutely say when I was happiest at work, and it was from 1999 to 2001 at The Australian Financial Review. And the biggest factor in that—by far—was my friend Michael Yiannakis.

That I was at the Fin Review was a minor miracle in itself. I’d written a cold letter to its editor-in-chief, Michael Gill, that happened to land right at the moment the newspaper’s media writer headed out the door. I happened to have been covering the media sector for News Limited, the great rival of the Fin Review’s then-parent company, Fairfax. Bingo.

I found myself on the Companies desk, where Yianni was the deputy editor. We became instant friends, establishing a bunch of daily brief escapes to vent, gossip, and generally recharge for the nightly deadline push. Our favorite was heading downstairs every mid-afternoon to Darling Park’s subterranean depths to “shake our bon bon”—code for inhaling a couple of Maxibon ice creams.

Over the course of two years, Michael and I were tight. We nicknamed a colleague “the Red Barron” for his habit of shamelessly lifting ideas from Barron’s newspaper. I heard about his beloved Andreea, a fellow journalist, and he heard about my fledgling love life. Michael was looking to buy a house so we scoped properties, driving to look at a place in Avalon, on Sydney’s northern beaches, to the crooning of Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music’s namesake song. And no one was happier or more effusive in his praise when I was named the newspaper’s New York Correspondent.

Here in the States, we stayed in touch. Email was up and at ‘em, so we wrote. Now living in Hong Kong, Michael would visit and we faked a Sydney-style coffee at Bluestone Lane in New York City’s Financial District (the store, at 30 Broad Street, is long gone). A highlight was taking a few days to travel to New Orleans and drive up to Memphis: between hanging out in small bars, eating soul food, hitting Sun Studio, and marveling at the gaudy abomination that is Graceland, it was peak Yianni. He even grabbed a Yankees game on that trip—it’s the picture that accompanies this post.

In the meantime, he and Andreea lived in Hong Kong for more than a decade before returning to Sydney with their daughters. We emailed as long-distance friends often do, choosing infrequent notes jammed with months worth of news. Three months ago, we swapped emails as a note to wish him a happy birthday—Michael was born, entirely appropriately, on Valentine’s Day—morphed into a discussion of my separation and future plans. It ended with him saying “happy to get on the blower any time you want to talk.” Naturally.

We won’t be having that phone call. I was in Joshua Tree for three nights last week with the group of friends who have done so much to help me navigate these past 18 months when I received a message from Andreea saying Michael had died of a sudden heart attack. I couldn’t help but think my brothers in arms were playing the exact role Michael had for so long—friends you can laugh and cry with, who help you worry about life a little less and enjoy it a little more.

You hear a lot of people described as “larger than life.” It’s true in this case. It’s not only an accurate description of the man Michael was, but it captures the very real impact he had on so many. I’ll cherish my memories and, in doing so, that will mean he’s not truly gone; a least not for me.

I’ll miss you, mate.

A note about whatever this is …

After writing a few thousand articles for newspapers and magazines, I spent a long time trying a bunch of other stuff. I guess I figured what came (relatively) easily must by definition be less valuable, so I wandered in the corporate wilderness, becoming increasingly frustrated and doing work that felt increasingly lousy.

Sometimes with age comes wisdom, and I’ve realized finding something (relatively) easy ain’t a bad thing. So, this is a space where I’m resurrecting writing for myself, on topics weird and wild and wonderful.

Posts will appear when the mood takes me, but I do try to be consistently inconsistent—sometimes it’ll be a couple of days between drinks; sometimes a week. But if you subscribe, you’ll get a email letting you know I’m ranting. Again.