taking stock amidst the settling dust...

some months ago i stared at the blank screen of my Eee and realised i couldn't fill it. my fingers jabbed at the keys for a while and a trickle of incomprehensible uselessness chased the cursor what i sat on the Ausabout bus until i gave up and stared out the window and watched the Austrian countryside slide by. over the next month i opened the text editor a few times and it returned my blank stare with an impassionate LED-backlit glare until i time and again admitted defeat and went off to do something else. the words didn't want to come so i left them where they were and moved on.

tonight i found myself staring up into the matt-grey sky and felt the falling droplets evaporate the moment they touched my skin while i wondered where it all went wrong. but they didn't go wrong. or right. they just went their own way and i let them carry me on while i waited for something to happen.

pulling back into Canberra was like waking up again after a longer-than-normal dream, Shadow standing at Canberra Airport looming like a brick-shithouse wrapped in teddy-bear fabric with a grin on his face wider than the sky over the desert, Sandra dashing up the stairs in front of the house and hurling herself at me for a tackle-hug. the old town hadn't changed and to be honest i'd expected nothing else. i couldn't remember the names of some of the streets, but i could remember the way without having to think about it. some people i caught up with couldn't believe i was standing in front of them again. some people had barely noticed i'd left. a week after landing i had a car and a job and a place to sleep and in the 3 months since i've been pretty much just rolling along in a semi-aimless fashion, waiting for something to happen.

nothing in particular, mind. anything.

i've had a couple of trips to Sydney - one at the behest of my new employers, one to meet up with the Grey Man who'd come back to Oz for the xmas break. i got through Perth and watched my kid brother get married. i passed through Melbourne and saw friends i'd not seen in 5 or 8 years. i'd gotten everything that would require me to be Not In Canberra done and out of the way so that i could focus on sitting around and doing fuck-all for a while, all planned out so that i could get my feet properly on the ground and put some roots down.

of course, it took not even 2 months for me to start going stir-crazy, pulling up lastminute.com.au every once in a while and having a speculative glance at how much flights would be to Wellington or Hiroshima or Cairns, pondering how the remnants of my Bike Fund would last if i put off getting back onto two wheels for another year and burned the cash going somewhere. fucking anywhere. see, while the old girl's exactly where i left it, the people in it are moving on faster than laksa through an octogenarian and i can't help but feeling that i'm just one more wedding away from being a dusty shadow fading in the rear-view mirror. my friends had been in the process of settling down, getting married and having kids (in no particular order, mind) for a while, but when it's happening in front of your eyes you tend not to notice so much. fuck off for a year and the progress becomes far more pronounced. when yet another friday rolled round where everyone was "having a quiet night in with the missus" or "looking after the kid" i gave up and buried myself in my room with a bag of salt & vinegar chips and the latest role playing game on my laptop, or sitting outside staring at the stars while the backlight from the screen flickered with Facebook updates and pictures of motorcycles i couldn't quite bring myself to take for test-rides.

i've found myself stuck in a limbo of my own construction - settling down and building a nest means i can't easily schedule trips to interesting parts of the world, fucking off to travel means i can't easily settle down and doing either would feel too much like admitting defeat so i've wound up in a holding pattern while i try to decide whether to land or to chase that bright spot on the horizon. it's all well and good being a confirmed bachelor when you've got plenty of other single friends to enjoy it with, but when it's down to you and the sad lonely sons of bitches who've been single about as long as you've known them... well, it's time to face the fact that you're hairy, ugly and generally undesirable and should probably just give in to the inevitable dingy bedsit filled with comics, computer parts and cats. there's only so far being the funny, well-travelled guy will take you and after that you're back to staring into another blank screen while the Lynx deodorant fades beneath your own personal eau de desperation.

the thing is that nothing went wrong - i got in and my life reconstructed itself around me... it's just that the old comfortable coat doesn't fit so well anymore. after months of grovelling and begging for work in London the job market couldn't employ me fast enough, but chasing the career just isn't exciting me like once it did. hanging with the old crew has been brilliant, but i just can't get enthused about buying a house when my head's still elsewhere.

there's one thing that constantly resolves out of the static, but it's like smoke, dissipating when i disturb the air by trying to get close, fairy-gold fading to dust in the morning light. there are no answers to be found there and it gets me no closer to understanding what i really want to do with myself long-term. 10 weeks through Europe, then a week in London, a couple of days in Hong Kong, a week in Perth and then another in Melbourne - not a day was wasted in over 3 months, so every day i spend going through the motions here feels like my life is slipping away from me, falling through my fingers... until i remember that this is what most of life is - those boring, unproductive days where you wake up, go to work, spend 8 hours doing something before going home, entertaining yourself before you fall asleep to do it all again tomorrow. i should probably get used to that if i'm to avoid going batshit-fucking-bananas.

so, of course, my survival instinct has given me plenty of buffer before i have to actually make a fucking decision. i'm off to the US in September this year for Shadow and The Boss's 20th wedding anniversary. i can sit tight with the excuse that i'm "saving for the trip" when really i'm really just avoiding laying down tap-roots until something gives me a nudge in the right direction, whatever that happens to be. either way, for the time being i'm trying not to think about it too much, in as much as that's possible for me. it really is a case of "look at the shiny-shiny!" - the more distracted i get, the happier i am. how long i can keep that up? well that remains to be seen...