Even after 2 years, the memory is strong. The dream lives on, growing, changing, adapting to the newer perspective. I want to reach out and grab it, to hold it tight until it becomes real, or it truly dissipates. Regret and desire all mixed in with a hint of words unsaid.
Imagination, dreaming – they all serve their purpose.
Occasionally, melancholia hits, and you just can’t sleep.
There’s still days when I think that this is it, and from tomorrow, it’s back to university, I’m done pretending, or that the alarm clock is going to go off and I’ll wake and it’ll still be February 6th, 2006, and I have yet to turn up for my first day, or it’s May 21st, 2005, and I’ve got to fly to Sydney today for my interview. After a year and three months, I’m still not sure if it’s real, that what I’m doing makes a difference to someone’s life and all that money in my bank account is there for a reason. I’m still younger than the new grads this year, by a year or two yet, and I’ll be younger than the grads next year too (though they’ll be closer). I’m ahead of schedule, dammit.
And I’m not sure if I’ll ever shake the feeling, at least until I’m leading or delivering a reasonably large project. Am I alone? From the sounds of it, not really, but is that a symptom of the job or of the expectations we have? If I were to look critically at myself, I’d see that I do have skills that I didn’t have when I turned up that fateful Monday morning, that I have this body of knowledge and an opinion that is value, even if I occasionally have too big opinion of it (I’m working on it, ok).
It’s real, and it’s bloody terrifying. Stay at uni as long as you can!
A night of wine, women and song on the water, the middle of the harbour under the stars and surrounded by old friends and new… Well, that may be exaggerating a bit, what with less wine and more vodka, but ’twas a wonderful night. And now another year begins…
It’s strange to think that nearly 10 years to the day, I moved to Sydney from the countryside. Year 7 would start in a few weeks, and in many ways, I was in transition. Nearly 6 years ago, I moved to Melbourne, no longer the country boy but equally lost and in transition. Each time I have moved, I’ve grown in more than just the physical sense, gaining abilities to adapt I believe serve me well. Last year, it was fiscal responsibility and discipline that I had to learn, along with a host of survival and organisational skills.
2006 all up was a good year, there’s no doubt about that. I never set resolutions because I react far more than I plan, but I always set long-term goals at regular intervals, and 2006 had me filling in many boxes. So, my list made in 2002 has now been by and large fulfilled, and within my schedule too.
Thus, I must ask myself: What now?
I find myself at something of a crossroads. It would be easy to settle in here and let life take me where it would. But that would be passive, too straightforward. I must set my goals again, renew my commitment to those last few left unfilled and create new stars to reach for. Push the sky, the upper limit on my capabilities so that I continue to grow.
But most of all, I must thank you all once more for being there in 2006, not to mention for being there in the years before. Knowing you have a social network to count on is everything once you leave the controlled environments of university or school, and I’ve got a great bunch of friends.
Onwards!
The suitcase was put away today, the contents having found their way to the spin cycle. I’m still not out of the traveller mindset completely, with many things scattered across my bedroom awaiting proper organisation of some sort. Jet lag appears to have waited for a day, finally catching up yesterday and delivering a right thumping to my ability to stay awake at work.
So much has happened over the last 10 weeks at work; while it’s not totally unfamiliar, it’s certainly something of a reset from the comfortable groove I had found myself in before I left for London. I’m re-learning all those little shortcuts that you invariably pick up over time. A couple of faces have gone in the (relatively) short time I was away, which is a little sad. The sun is still up when I leave work, which is awesome, but feels somehow wrong.
Home is no less different. Dad’s been living up here in Sydney for the most part, and he’s brought his touch to the place. The whole house has been painted afresh, the garden is suddenly looking a lot healthier, and things are slightly moved or reordered. It’s home, but then again it’s not quite, which puts me back in that traveller’s mind. I’m flying to Melbourne on Thursday night, for the weekend and the party, which also reinforces that.
My boss more-or-less said, first thing when I came in, that I can probably drop plans to go to New York for work next year – a more useful and challenging position is likely, and that’s in London from April. I almost wanted to walk out the door and start packing again, rather than getting used to home for another 6 months.
The sense of not-quite-being-there is also evidenced by this post, which has taken nearly 3 days to write anything marginally cohesive and/or coherent. William Gibson once described the condition of jetlag as “soul-lag”, that basically your ‘soul’ doesn’t travel at the speed of an aeroplane, and so it’ll take a long time for your soul to catch up. I find that particularly insightful at times. Being stuck in a metal tube for nearly a whole day which is seemingly forever static and forever awash in white noise makes a person more inclined to believing such things as ‘soul-lag’.
Or maybe it’s just me.
I want out. I’m over this whole training program, I’m over London, I’m over waking up each morning in that hotel bed, over catching that same over-crowded tube every morning, over this little niggly things that get to you when they build up some steam over time.
I’m over the taste of the water, which is crap. I’m over the crap food. I’m over the old buildings. I’m over the lack of good options for lunch. Over autumn in October, over talking platitudes all the time, over the grey skies and tiny streets and the sheer quaintness of it all.
I just want to get home and sleep in my bed and watch my familiar TV and play my familiar games and eat my familiar food. I’ve never missed mum’s food like I do now. I’m waiting, waiting waiting to be back home, back with the family, back with my old friends, habits ever unchanging. I want to get back to my car and drive down to the beach and jump in the water and enjoy the sun.
And yet…
Living in a different country is something I’ve always wanted to do.
And when I’m not feeling like I just want to go home and lie down, I’m loving the fact that I am here, that I have so many people around who are always willing to get out and about and have fun, that I am so centrally placed in a large city with a comprehensive transport network, that all this is basically a holiday and the last chance I’ll really get to learn new things in a classroom-esque environment (though I never feel that I could return to study). It’s like I’m bipolar about it.
And I really know that all I need is some good food from mum (and all the things that go with that) to solve the problem, dammit.
One week off. I promise myself that, once a year. I don’t know if I’ve already taken it off this year, but it seems like it’s about time for it.
I’m going to deaddictify (real word!) myself from the net, focus back on other things. No blogs, no IM, no… no four hours in front of the computer, because you can’t find something else to do. Distance, Perspective, something else.
Be back next week, probably.
Some days you’re up, and then some days you’re down. Thursday and Friday were good days, but I woke up on Saturday morning with my throat hurting and a distinct sense of crap running through my head; Sunday morning bore it out and it appeared that a full-fledged cold had struck.
Now I’m not blaming anyone – it was my own damn fault for forgetting so readily how cold Melbourne actually is at this time of year, and not packing appropriately. But come work this morning, all that postiveness and relaxation I’d aimed for, and even partially achieved, were totally wiped out, negating completely the value of taking a few days off. All I want to do now is take some more days off.
I did however carry away some valuable conversations, and some insights, however brief, into life, the universe, etc. It’s those things that you reflect on later as showing your signs of maturity approaching, of growth on an emotional level instead of merely phsyical. Occasionally, because of all the wonderful people that surround me, I feel wise beyond my years, and I don’t think I thank people enough for sharing their world with me.
It is perhaps appropriate that Monash University’s emblem has the words “Ancora Imparo” on it, because it really does apply, even beyond university – “I am still learning.”
Honesty exists in the moment. Afterwards, whoever writes the most convincing story determines ‘history’. The word even has ‘story’ in it.
It’s funny how, with some people, you can start again right in the middle of a conversation. Once you get the pleasantaries over, it’s back to being right there, where you were in when you left. The intervening time adds nothing but new experiences to discuss, or new perspectives on old prejudices. You nearly forget that there’s been time in between.
And yet with others, it takes an effort. An effort to connect again on the level you’d strived to reach before. You know these are friends, and there’s a reason why you’re making that effort to connect again, but none the less an effort you have to make.
You invariably want more friends of the first type, but you know they’re a rare breed, people you’ll only find a few times in a life time, people you need to cherish, your soul-mates in the sense of friends. But the other type, you need them too. They fill the gaps between the soul-friends, they provide that safety net, in a sense. Even if you have to make the effort, the payoff is there.
The terrible analogy you’ve just come up with is that the first type are like DVDs – you can get right to where you were fairly quickly – while the second type are like old VHS tapes – lots of scanning and effort to find the right place.
You think you’ll end it on this note, and grab some sleep. Tomorrow’s right back to that grindstone.
The old scepter rises again. You’ve had your patience tested and emptied before, but over time it builds up again, and you, in your forgiving nature, forget that it happened before. It’s the easiest way to live – in the moment rather than the past – but it does catch you unawares at times, like now. Easy to let things slip and make the same mistakes again. “Only a fool does the same thing twice and expects a different outcome”, the pertinent saying goes.
You don’t want to deal with it today, not right now. You’ve got work and that should keep you busy enough. But you know it’ll be on your mind all day, unless you force yourself to banish it. But not completely – remember the lesson, and hold it close to your chest this time. The sense of betrayal, of being used & discarded, is too great to suffer again.
It’s a fucking grey day. Wait for that blue sky.