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.
It took me 3 months for my soul to get back home. It’s not just you. We live life for each day and we our soul into the things that we love – one which is travel. =D
While I’m somewhat at home now, my heart and soul want to see the world now.