the end may be just another beginning, but it is an end nonetheless...

i like drama. i like to put on a show. our lives are so pregnant with opportunities for joy and action squandered out of poor timing, misspent chances and down-right lack of vision that if i can bring everyone together with a word, who am i not to? we all want to feel that we're part of something bigger than we are, but which we still own a part of. with this is mind, i was was still overwealmed by the response i got when i posted the following on Facebook on Friday morning:

"Peter Raven just bought a house."

over the next few hours my phone beeped almost constantly. i'm amazed the battery didn't go flat. 2 days later, the counter has stopped at 49 likes, 34 comments. that doesn't count the phone calls and SMS's that have come through since, either. now, i have a rule that i don't allow my Facebook Friends list to rise above 200. my theory is that i'm unlikely to actually care about any more than that, so each time i get up there i cull a few of the people i no longer talk to. this means that at least a quarter of the people on my friends list have commented on that, even if just to post the word "Congratulations!" - an overwhealming outcry of wellwishing. the sheer volume of it all became quite confusing after a while. why? why the sudden outpouring of emotion?

it's taken the last couple of days for it all to sink in. no, i'm no excited... not in the way that most people think about it, anyway. after 2 years, i've reached the point i was aiming for (overshot the mark, as it happens), gone forth and found somewhere that suits, negotiated and agreed to buy it. it's... the next step, and far from the last, in a journey i started when i got back to Australia from Europe nearly 3 years ago now. i planned it, took some detours on the way, and now after accumulating the resources i needed i've finally picked up the enormous hammer i built for myself and used it to make one of my problems go away. i'll admit it's fun though - the amount of cash i've put together is fairly staggering... from my perspective anyway, and getting to finally use it is immensely satisfying. the budget i'm working with just for improvements and fitout is enough to make me shudder. i could travel around the world for 4 or 5 months with that portion alone. the deposit i'm laying down would keep my feet from touching the ground for easily a year.

i think this is a crucial element of why everyone's so excited - i've been extremely fortunate that i've been able to do this. i have an above-average income and i've been living rent-free with my Parentals for the last two years which has saved me thousands. it's been becoming increasingly hard for people to actually buy a house without pushing themselves into a massive hole of debt, especially single people. i know a lot of people who are paying off mortgages at the moment and more who are working up the funds to be able to, but i also know plenty who just can't, and will be stuck renting for the foreseeable future.

then of course there's the social pressure in our society that to be a proper and valuable member of society you need to get a job buy a house and have a bunch of kids. ignoring that i'll never actually achieve all three of those standards, achieving this is something that brings hope to everyone you - the thought that if one of your peers can achieve what you want to do, so can you.

lastly, and the easiest thing to forget, is that i've been talking about this for years now. i've celebrated my milestones on the path in little ways, kept myself going with the constant mantra of "no, i'm saving to buy a house". now i've done it, of course those near to me are going to celebrate it with me. its been such an fundamental part of my life for so long that's taken so much of my dedication, and my desire to move on to the next phase has been so strong that it's natural that they'll cheer me along. that's what friends do, and that's one of the reasons why mine are awesome. we support each other and through communal effort we ease the burden for everyone.

so here we are - one long wait is finally over. the situation has been carefully structured and balanced. i've bought a place that's on the cheaper end of the spectrum that i can afford easily - to the point where my repayments will be only barely more than the potential rental income. i need to live in the place for at least a year to qualify for the $7000 First Homeowners' Grant, but after that i should be in a position where i can rent it out for roughly what the repayments will cost, which effectively means that i can ignore it and let it pay for itself. once that happens... i'm free. free to travel the world, work as a professional diver, or simply wander, with only the obligations i choose.

and for once, just for a moment i'm allowing myself to feel like it might just be all downhill from here...

i am a tourist...

i was lying in bed just now, about to switch my laptop off and check in for my nightly trip to la la land when i noticed on Spotify that MCG has been listening to Death Cab For Cutie again - a song i didn't instantly recognise, which made me curious so i clicked on it and let it play for a moment, streaming off that vast treasurehouse of knowledge that is the internet and washing over me like, waves in the way that Death Cab tends to, sweeping me out of my sleepy reverie and dumping my mind back in a place i've not been for some time.

sitting on a creaky wooden chair with an oversized mug of coffee at a table draped in a dirty cloth listening to the Transatlanticism album writing thousands of words that i'm about to cast dejectedly into the aether.

on the right hand side of a bus as it rolls its way out of Austria and into Italy while i sift through the dim recollections of the pub i was in three days ago and ignore the snoring tourists behind me.

sitting in a darkened cafe late at night with my 3rd mug of dirty flat white with canalphones blocking out the hum of the hipsters while 30 Seconds To Mars get existential in my ears and i try to put my thoughts into words and the words into order.

it is the nature of life that it exists only in flux. there is no such thing as a static existence and all good things must end eventually to make way for something else, but i can't help but feel like i managed to trade blue skies for pain, hot ashes for dreams, hot air for cool breeze. when i visualise my life of late in my minds' eye it resolves into an image of me trudging through mile after mile of wasteland, flat and featureless out to the sides with amazing scenes behind me and a haze of dim, ever-receding potential ahead of me. it's melodramatic and bullshit and this i know - i'm surrounded by people who are falling other each other to be near me but if i stop focussing they become ghosts in my foreground.

i wonder sometimes whether i'm trying to force myself into a mould that just doesn't fit. the permanent job, buying a house and settling into this fucking shithole of a town, trying to find peace in possessions and stability... and all i want to do is book a flight and jet off to Seattle, or Tokyo, or Helsinki. i search my unreliable memory, trying to rememeber the last time i felt as peaceful as when i'd just got back to Canberra after spending a year in the world, and i can't find it. i don't know if it's this city that i react so poorly to, or if i'm just trying to shoehorn a size 12 Life into a size 10 Compromise.

the last couple of months have been ok - the challenges of a new job and a happening social life have kept me distracted and inoculated, but i can feel myself slipping into a sullen malaise again where i can't help but flick this lighter on and off again, dreaming of watching it all burn so that i have the excuse to walk away and fuck off into the distance again. i find myself wringing the throttle of my bike like the neck of a wounded pheasant, pouring self-directed rage and impotent frustration through rubber tyres and into the pavement while i try to reconcile what i want to be doing with what i've somehow decided i will do instead.

so if distractions are becoming less and less effective, and i've failed to find an answer in 6 months, does that mean it's time to look somewhere else, from a different angle?

or maybe just broaden the scope...

calm blue ocean...

i've been listening to a lot of Instrumental Post-Rock of late; sleepmakeswaves and God Is An Astronaut mostly. on one hand it's hauntingly beautiful, on the other it's a multi-layered Wall of Noise, drifting keyboard progressions leading into complementary guitar rhythms, Pink Floyd Meddle-era bass intro folding smoothly and seamlessly into a growing string riff via a crunch-guitar transition stolen from The Butterfly Effect. head-filling but not head-drilling, it's a soundscape that sits nicely in the realm where it takes you away but doesn't overwhelm. unconstrained, but naturally restrained. it's fucking genius.

it also matches the mood i've been in lately. over the last few months i've noticed that i've been calming down a lot. not so much more focused, but more relaxed about the world and my place in it, watching as the seeds i've planted over the last few months have sprouted and grown. in an odd sort of way it's very much as if, having lined up my trajectory and performed the pre-flight checks the only thing remaining has been to throw myself off the platform and fall on target and the trick to hurting yourself as little as possible in these situations is, as always, to Accept The Fall. i can never stress this enough - most people, when falling, never get past the flailing "Denial" phase of the whole thing. you can't "Plead" with it and getting "Angry" about it will not help you. waving your arms around is a recipe for a broken wrist. please go straight to "Acceptance", do not collect $200. the outcome of this scenario is inevitable - you will hit the ground and it will hurt, so do what you can to make sure that you land in such a way as to spread the force over as much of yourself as possible and that your impact point is something other than your hand or head. this goes for life as well - sometimes things just get fucked up and there's nothing you can do about it. Accept The Fall and focus on what you can do to effect positive change to the situation.

and so it has been - after floundering around looking for a path, i backed the fuck off, accepted my situation for what it was and moved forward. in a lot of ways it was a lot like Giving Up all over again - giving up on the things that i simply couldn't have, giving up on what wasn't achievable, picked from the remaining options a path with the best available outcomes and then went out looking for ways to colour it Awesome.

and so it has been and so it has continued.

i'm currently on the way home again, Thailand, and then Singapore falling behind at the end of a trail of jet exhaust. it's been, for the most part, a pleasant and entertaining trip. overly-tiring, and the weather caused a few issues in the second half of the proceedings, but that's not why i'm looking forward to getting home. for once, what's going on at home is more interesting than what i can be doing in other parts of the world. two years i've been sitting around getting the deposit for my home loan together and it's sitting in my savings account right now, earning roughly $10 in interest each and every day. it will have accumulated around $210 while i've been on this trip, and it's burning a hole in my pocket. i'm sick of waiting - i want to get this mission underway. before i can get properly cracking, i also have a new job to start. for Job #18 i had a couple of different offers to juggle - both with pro's and con's. it was a hard decision - join a hungry little start-up and build a new division of the company for them from the ground up with serious rewards for achievement, or hook in with a more established firm, build and head up their brand-new Perth Office. after much deliberation and soul-searching i accepted the latter - the rewards were less, but so were the risks. it was a strategic decision because i think it'll put me in a better position a year or so from now, with the added bonus that the first thing i need to do on my first day on the job is to fly to Melbourne and meet the new boss, so around 33 hours after getting back to Perth from my holiday, i'll be heading out again with a freshly packed bag.

as much as i'd like to be chilling out at home for the next few days, i'm pretty stoked about this little turn of events. i've been meaning to get over to Melbourne for about a year now and i keep not making it. i was supposed to go in January but i wasn't in the mood so i went to Vanuatu instead. i was arranging to head across over Easter, but Canberra sung to me and i answered with peace in my head and joy in my heart. now i get to go for free without expending any leave - net-worth to me: ~$1000. boojah.

it's odd, really. it's been years since Real Life was particularly interesting to me. it's been like a more epic version of "Live for the weekend" - i've been living for the next trip, the next adventure, counting the dead time in between as "Preparation", or "Resource Acquisition". now Real Life has become so interesting that all i could think about for the last few days of this trip was getting back to it. like i said: odd. i am, however, calm about the whole thing. i can see my path laid out ahead of me and i know what i need to achieve to get where i'm going.

usually the calmest i get is when i'm on the back of my motorcycle at 100kph+, or neutrally buoyant down around 12m under the surface of the ocean. there's nothing i've found that's quite like the razor-sharp sense of purpose i feel from going really fast, or the cool serenity of cruising through an underwater garden and then, later, bobbing around on the surface like a cork, BCD inflated with my fins waving in the air waiting for the boat to arrive and pick me up. it's lovely - like a post-coital cigarette (cigarettes being a pleasure that i have not enjoyed in 4 months now as it happens).

this isn't that, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's overall a pleasant place to be. i just need to get Melbourne out of the way (and the requisite running around that being there will entail - obligations and visitations to discharge) and then... then i get to start a whole new adventure. we'll just have to see how this Real Life thing pans out...

moving forward on greased wheels...

i wish i understood better, could keep track of events and my actions in reaction, how exactly i came to be here, in this place, at this time. i can recount the words spoken into what ears, the acts of kindness and malice, but... were i to try to do it all over i couldn't guarantee that things would have worked out a well as they have and of this i am certain: my existence has been charmed in recent history. 5 months ago i'd been back in Perth for a matter of days, gutted and raw from the couple of days i'd just spent in Brisbane, only to walk blindly into the blow that tore my throat out and brought me entirely to my knees.

in a word, i was fucked. in an acronym, i was FUBAR. in a string of metaphor, i was shattered, fried, burned ashes crackling as they cooled in a hearth wrought from iron cast from the meteorite of my downfall.

but, as it has the habit to, life went on. there were times when it nearly didn't, but as with all things these times passed. days became weeks, became months, and gradually i got better and as i did i found my eyes opening by degrees and the world became less clouded with impossibility and more and more full of potential.

i understand that this must be somewhat shocking - this flood of positivity and good humor and the general lack of angst, cynicism and hatred. don't misunderstand me - it's still with me. it's just that gradually but perceptibly things have started to Work. where earlier in the year everything i tried seemed to fail and lead me further and further from anything that resembled a win, suddenly little things started to go my way. i successfully quit smoking after a decade and two previous, unsuccessful attempts. my savings grew as i worked extra hours to distract myself from the general lack of entertainment in my life, inching towards the goal for the deposit for my house until, after 19 months of careful saving, i finally reached it. i started getting out more; i organised a regular meetup on Sunday afternoons at one of my preferred cafes that's become the highlight of my week. the people i invited were a hodge-podge of folk i knew from various different circles and i took great joy in the weeks that followed the first event watching them all find each other on facebook and become proper friends separate to their connection through me.

and now i'm sitting on a flight to Singapore with an old friend i recently reunited with, kindled a friendship with and decided to take a punt and join on a trip to Thailand. we'd run into each other at a party back around the end of February and started hanging out when, one evening in March, she turned to me and asked:

"Do you want to go to Hawaii?" yes! wait, why Hawaii? "Because I want a warm getaway in the middle of winter and I've never been." that sounds cool - i kinda wanted to go... but how about Phuket or something? it's cheaper...

and so, after some research and bouncing between locations as far ranging as New Caledonia, the Philippines and Hong Kong, we booked ourselves some flights and off we went.

spontaneous madness - just the way i like it.

meanwhile, the people i've been working with for the last 6 months have put up with my mood swings and edginess while i rid myself of my nicotine dependence. i nearly took a permanent job with them despite the junior nature of the role but the money wasn't there... so they kept me around until my holiday and gave me the time to find a new gig. they consistently treated me better than i deserved and it's been a long time since i've experienced that sort of kindness in the workplace.

the new mob i've signed up with look interesting; they're flying me over to Melbourne on my first day for a couple of days of meet-and-greet. seeing as i've consistently failed to get to Melbourne in the last 2 years this fits with my plans nicely... not to mention saving $600+ from my Travel Budget.

this isn't to say that there haven't been casualties. i'm no longer on speaking terms with LFV - after finding myself demolished and suicidal after every contact with her i told her in no uncertain terms to go about her life leave me the fuck out of it. it was far from the optimal solution, but i've been happier for it and that's what's really mattered. she can look after herself - she's good at being happy. i had to make the choie to look after me and i've had far less practice.

i've also not had a lot of contact with the Sunshine, although that's changing. when i left Brisbane i told her that i'd be out of communication for the foreseeable future, and apart from the occasional ping back and forth we've not really spoken a great deal until recently. we're still not talking in any great depth or frequency, but the tone has at least been warm.

there are people i've found i have less and less time for, people i don't bother to try calling any more, people i've been quietly avoiding. the usual Brownian Motion of an extended social circle and for everyone i've lost i've gained someone else who's enriched my life in far more interesting ways.

i still haven't picked up my guitar, but i HAVE learned to control a Power Slide on my bike and i'm gradually getting the numbers together to go for my Dive Master qualification.

so, for now, it seems that things are moving along on oiled wheels. being in a state of existence that i understand is referred to generally as "happy" is a foreign country for me, full of interesting people and exotic delights. it's been so long that i've felt that i was firing on all cylinders, in full control of my faculties and possessed of an unassailable confidence that the sensation when it struck me was dizzying. the perception of achievement and actually getting things one is something i've felt i was missing for far too long. now i'm on holidays again, heading out of the country with a solid job to come back to and plans afoot for my return... i finally feel like things are actually working out and that i have all i could ask for. now i just need to see how much further i can extend my reach, and how much more my hands can grasp...

some things i learned this weekend...

just being in a different place can give you a different perspective on things. your location forces you to look at your life from a different angle, even if that just means fitting more of it into your field of view. sometimes it's just a matter of talking to different people. folks who live in Canberra have a subtly different way of thinking to people who live in Perth, to people who live in Melbourne, to people who live in Los Angeles. people who've BEEN to all these places have a different perspective still; all men may be created equal, but that doesn't mean that they're equivalent, after all. then there are the flashes of inspiration that come seemingly from nowhere. last Wednesday i was on the way to Canberra, sitting in Sydney Airport waiting for my connection, having an email conversation with Dr K and something in the phrasing of what she said said brought me to a realisation that bore no relevance whatsoever to the conversation. it was the first thing i learned this weekend.

1) Friends vs Family

for years it's bugged me, that quiet, niggling thought, a reaction i have that just doesn't make sense, the reasons behind which you can't fathom, that makes no sense but is, regardless, true. reading through an email where i was discussing Work/Life Balance, it struck me like a hollow-point bullet; entering quietly through my eyes and ballooning inside my head:

i have Friends in Perth, but my Family is in Canberra.

this statement requires some explanation because i'm using words emotively rather than factually and to properly understand it you have to understand a critical part of my thought process. it's all about Choice.

since about a year after moving to Canberra i've thought of it as Home. it took a while before it took the mantle away from Perth, which is where i grew up and to this day i've spent more of my life, but by that time i'd built a comprehensive life there - work, love, friends, a feeling of sanctuary. it's been a long time now since i really felt comfortable in the town i grew up in. too many bad memories, too many reminders of old failures. whenever i went back i wanted to get out again, and it helps that Canberra's always been good to me - every time i've come back it's given me what i needed. the sensation of reassurance this understanding provides is perplexing, yet palpable - knowing that when things go bad you can always Go Home.

the most important thing though, i think, is that it's the town i chose. you don't tend to have a choice about where you grow up; what city, what house, the people you hang out with at school. you might feel comfort in the old family home, but i've always found that the place i think back to is the place i lived when i moved away from my Parental Units. the same goes for the car i inherited from my Old Man - that was just a car. it's the one i went out, found and bought for myself that i think back to fondly.

so it goes for the Town i Chose.

this extends to biology as well. you hear phrases again and again about how blood is thicker than water, that it's always family who'll stand by you and so on... but then, i look at my Great Aunt who tried to screw her siblings out of thousands of dollars of their inheritance, i think of the friend who was interfered with as a child by her grandfather. hell how about, Joseph Fucking Fritzl? (if you don't know who that is/was, look him up because i don't care to go into it) Cane was Abel's brother, but that didn't prevent the Bible's first murder, so how much of a difference does it make, really? don't misunderstand me: i love my brother, for example, but that's because i like who he is, and i really do question how much the bond we've developed over the history we've shared has to do with our genetic similarity. isn't it more important that people stand by you because they choose to, love you because they want to, rather than because they feel obligated to?

this isn't to say that i don't have close and valuable friendships in Perth, or that i don't care about my Parentals and so on, but the distinction explains too well why i've felt and reacted the way i have all these years.

this explains perfectly why i feel such an emotional connection with Canberra that i just don't do with Perth. i used to go back to Perth to see people and always be relieved to get back Home afterwards. it explains a lot about why, when coming back into the country after living in the UK, it never even occurred to me that i'd go anywhere other then Canberra, why it's where i head whenever i need to rebalance myself and get back on track.

2) i'm Unlikely To Be Moving Back Any Time Soon (not for another 18 months, anyway)

for the first 48 hours after i got back Home on Wednesday afternoon the phrase (or variants thereof) i heard the most was "So when are you coming back?", and the answer i found myself parroting was along the lines of i'm not sure, but it's unlikely to be soon.

unfortunately, while there are a number of good reasons to uplift and move back, none of them are adequately compelling to counteract the reasons i left. it's true that i took a Leap of Faith in LFV, but that wasn't the only reason i picked up and moved to Perth nearly two years ago, and while LFV has been removed from the picture those reasons haven't gone away.

for starters, the social background radiation in Canberra was beginning to fall below acceptably comfortable levels. i need a decent amount of social activity to avoid getting bored and i'm never happy when i'm bored. my old crew had been quietly partnering off settling down and spawning descendants for a few years before i got back from London, but it was especially pronounced when i hit the ground again. it's not just kids that had people dropping off the social scene. back in the day when we used to go to the pub every Thursday, Friday, Saturday... Tuesday (and likely meeting up for a BBQ and more beers on a Sunday as well) we were all in our early-mid 20's. we had junior roles in our careers, working regulation hours where overtime was something to be remarked upon. we had the manic energy of being young, dumb, and full of enthusiasm for staying out late and drinking too much. spin forward to the present and we're in our early 30's. not only are we older and don't have the energy we used to, but none of us can quite bounce back from the hangovers like once we could, so we don't go out on the piss anywhere near as often as once we did. add to that the career progression that has us in more senior roles, sometimes middle-management and where once we'd work the basic 7.5 hours a day, many of us are working extra jobs, or regularly pulling 9-10 hour days, often running around after kids as well. the facts of life are that other things take priority.

take Phrancq and El Hools - they're out the door by 7AM. El Hools drops Phrancq off in Woden, then their son in the Deep South, before heading back to Civic to work her 8 hour day. When she's done she does it all in reverse. they generally don't get back home until just before 7PM, at which point they need to feed everyone, put Master Bruce to bed and sneak an hour of cleaning, TV or, just maybe, Quiet Time in before they pass out in preparation for doing it all again. they really don't have the time (or on the rare occasion they do, the energy) to come out to the pub on a Saturday, let alone a Thursday, and i really don't blame them. they explained this to me as a reason why they weren't going to join in the choir of people singing for my return. how could they ask me to come back when they might have the conjunction of time and energy to hang out (maybe) once every couple of weeks?

i don't know that i can properly express the admiration i feel towards them for looking at it from that perspective.

it's not all doom and gloom - Dr K was having the same problem as me when i came through town for a visit around this time last year, and seems to have succeeded in rebuilding her social life where i failed, but then this was made a whole lot easier by being happily married. i know from experience how much of your life is happily subsumed by having someone special in your life, and it really makes up the difference between feeling lonely when you don't get out more than a couple of times a week, and a couple of times a month.

Perth is just that more active. being 4 times the population helps a lot. the weather, too. as much as i hate the heat and incessant, oppressive sunshine, it's a lot easier to be social when the entire town doesn't go into Winter hibernation for 4-6 months of the year. the settling-down trend seems to be coming later, or at least striking differently, there, as well. possibly it's just that there are more people who are single floating around. either way, i have more opportunities to get out and be around people where i am than where i was.

the last piece of this particular puzzle is that leaving now doesn't fit with my ethos of Going Places For A Reason. if i left Perth now it would be because it pisses me off, but it's not so abominable that i'm going to go through the effort of packing and moving again just because. it's odd, really. packing and moving there seemed like no effort whatsoever when the motivation was right. perhaps it was the thought of what i was going to have when i got there that made every box i loaded into my car lighter, every hour of driving pass so easily, the goodbyes taste less of sadness. the idea of doing it again in the other direction just doesn't seem worth it. i don't have that beacon on the horizon beckoning me on.

it also helps that where i'm working is really quite a good place to be. the specifics of my role aren't the most exciting, but the conditions are good, the location is convenient and my boss is stellar. i'm currently contracted until the end of April there and while they haven't specifically agreed to the salary i've told them it will take to keep me, they've also not declined it. i made the decision a while ago that if they give me the cash i can get elsewhere i'll take the Perm and stick around for a while. if, on the other hand, the stars fail to align i'll throw my fate to the four winds, apply for jobs in four different cities and go to whichever offers me one first. that at least gives me an excuse to move on. the job i do is important to me; it needs to be something i enjoy and it's been a while since i've been as content in a workplace as i am at this one. leaving it without a good reason would be a crying shame, if for no other reason than that it may be a long time before i find somewhere else as good and having been as miserable as i have in some previous jobs, a place that's survivable is more valuable than water in a desert.

so i'll see what happens in the next couple of weeks and reassess from there.

3) So It Looks Like I'll Be Buying A House In Perth

signing up for a Perm with the mob i'm currently working for effectively signs me up to stay where i am for the foreseeable future... which for me means the next year. it may be considered sad, but for me the idea of "short-to-medium term" means 3-6 months. "long term" means this time next year. the future is too cloudy beyond that for me to predict. it's an artifact of the agile lifestyle i've led for the last four years now that i value having the ability to grasp opportunities out of the air and run with them too much to let myself get into a position where i'm too tied down to react. there's one and only one exception i can think of to this rule and whoever she is, she'll have to be fucking amazing.

that said, for the last two years i've been saving cash, slowly, but surely, with the aim towards buying a house. this may sound like a contradiction of what i just said a couple of centimetres above, but the distinction is an important part of the strategic plan i've been weaving since coming back from London.

i love Traveling and i love being able to do Cool Shit. these things are important to me - they mean that i have stories to tell from where i've been while i plan where i'm going next. it makes me feel like i'm actually doing something that i value with my life. the problem with that lifestyle is that i still need to have somewhere i can recover and and rebuild in between missions. four years ago i wouldn't have an issue with that being somewhere i rented, but one of the plans i had with LFV was that we'd get a place together when we could and start building a life. that meant that i needed to start saving in a serious way so that we'd have the cash to do so. spin forward a year or so and we'd gone our separate ways, but that didn't make the cash sitting in my Long Term Savings Account any less substantial and after the effort and sacrifice i'd gone through to put it together, i wasn't going to waste the opportunity it presented. i still have the chance to set up the base of operations i'd dreamed about when coming back from London, or at very least an investment into a potential property empire. housing is expensive to buy in Australia, but not as much as it is to rent, making a property you can rent out to be a very valuable commodity indeed.

so i've kept putting cash aside, spending a little bit here and there in ways that amuse me (flights, books, petrol and booze, for the most part) and after two years i'm sneezing-distance from having enough to start thinking about going shopping. you need a 20% deposit in this country to avoid paying a slew of penalty fees and insurances and i'm so close i can smell it. this is a good thing because i really do need to move out of my Parentals' house.

i moved back in with the folks when i moved back to Perth. this made sense - things were still uncertain, and the situation wasn't yet right to get a place with LFV, and anything i spent on rent was money not saved towards buying a house. my Old Man has been badgering me ever since i first move out of home at the wise and cynical age of 18 to move back in and save my money, and finally the situation was appropriate to do so. that was nearly two years ago and it's getting about time to move on. they need the rear end of their house back and i need some space of my own to do what i want to do and start playing with projects that need more room than i have available at the moment. i could have kicked this off six months ago and i'd still be OK financially, but the more of a deposit i have available the lower my repayments will be, so the more i'll be able to pay down the mortgage and the easier it'll be for me to get out and still do Cool Shit. all this planning, all this preparation, all of this in accordance with the strategy i laid out years ago. the tactics have changed a few times and the colour is a different shade but the basic shape and structure remain the same. being agile means being able to respond to changes in the situation so you can still get a result that works for you, even if it's not exactly what you originally wanted... most likely because you don't really want it any more.

so if i the circumstances of my life have put me in Perth at the time when i have the facility to buy myself a place of my own, then in Perth it shall be. i only need to stay in it for a year, remember. while the First Home-Owner's Grant the Australian Government so generously provides to help people buy their first place requires you to stay in it for the first 12 months after that there's nothing to stop me from leaving, renting it out and (if i'm lucky and i've paid the mortgage down sufficiently in that time) be making enough rental income to cover the majority of the mortgage repayments.

or so the theory goes.

one more year in Perth - enough time to find somewhere to which i have a good reason to go... and you never know what might happen in a year. i may have even found a good reason to stay.

4) If A Change Is As Good As A Holiday, Then The Reverse Is Also True

as recently as three weeks ago i was a miserable bastard. after the failure of one job and two relationships i'd invested a lot of my hopes and energy into, i was a wreck and the road to recovery was months-long. i'm not sure whether it was booking in my holiday that improved my mood so dramatically, of it it just happened to coincide. if nothing else, one thing that's certain is that the Me that i finally found that i could like after years of self-loathing, the one with the easy smile and the quick joke, the plans and the ideas, the care and the attention, the inspiration and the motivation, the clever analysis and the insightful remark, was back. he woke up again somewhere between meeting the Wifey at the airport and sitting around drinking tea with Shadow, dusted himself off, took the helm and without blinking we were flying again.

there are times when you need to reassess your life, work out what it is you're doing wrong and fix it, and then there are those where you need to wake the fuck up and get back on track. i can't claim absolute certainty at this stage, but my instincts tell me that i'm finally on the right track... at least for now (and right now is what's most important for the time being. i'll worry about tomorrow more when i'm sure i can survive today). i'm always tracking the horizon for the next opportunity, and i don't set anything in stone until i absolutely have to. this might sound like i lack conviction or that i can never make up my mind, but it works for me. if there's nothing else i need to remember, it's that while what's Right for the person sitting opposite me can be as different as we ourselves, the reflection they cast back at me can be as important as the air we breathe, and the best people in your life love you enough to look beyond their own prejudice and preference to What's Best for You when you ask their advice.

and so i can once again finally look to the horizon and move forward, sure of my footing and the path ahead... and if it can survive the return to Real Life and the month that lies between where i am now and the next Cool Thing i have planned then i may finally have recovered from 2011 and all that occurred therein. you just need to remember sometimes that if your Family will always stand by you, then the ones who always stand by you must be your Family.

wipe the slate clean?

i was chatting with ML earlier this evening when a thought rose out of the murky morass of the back of my mind, took on form and solidified into a shape that i could inspect from all angles - a singular, made thing, wrought in whole-cloth from the ethereal fabric from which thoughts are born. this happens some times to us all - ideas that you know have been floating around in the back of your mind for weeks, months; concepts unconceived, craving creation and calling to come clear of cloudy concealment. you know it's been there, it's influenced all the thoughts around it, but like undetectable dark-matter it hides in plain sight, appearing when ready as if they've sprung fully formed from your mind.

why NOT move to another city, delete all the numbers from my phone, close my Facebook account and start a new one. discard all the trappings of the life i've built over the last decade or more and start completely anew.

ML seemed a little shocked at the idea:

"Sounds rather nihilistic. And you're not even German."
erm... we HAVE met, right?
"Starting a new FB account just seems rather extreme. What's wrong with just trimming the dead weight?"
i'm moving in the direction of being in the mood for extreme

the thing is that i went through and trimmed the "dead weight" a few weeks ago. removed the people i never speak to, or who never speak to me, or who i added because they asked me, all glassy eyed and desperate for connection in a hostel somewhere and who'd never notice their friends list drop from 483 to 482. i cut LFV because while i'm glad she's happy in her life, i don't want to have to see it, and because i don't didn't want to be broadcasting my general anguish knowing that she'd be watching. i cut out the people who i think i'll be better off without, and those who'll be better off without me. the thing is that when something weighs nothing, how can it be "dead" weight? what burden do you bear in having an extra dozen, score, century of friends?  it turns out that it weighs more than you realise.

to properly explain that, i need to explain a little of my life in the last month or so. back when i was at university, if i was looking for someone to hang out with i'd paint a map in my head of the Greater Perth Area and scan through it, marking the location of the people i knew, working out who was geographically convenient for whatever it was that i wanted to do. then i'd go through my phone to see if there was anyone else i hadn't already thought of who might go for a midnight drive. then i'd make some calls. now i lie in bed with Facebook, Gtalk and sometimes Skype open and see who's online. if they're online, i figure, they're home, and relying on people happening to be online adds a element of serendipity that pleases me greatly. oftentimes i don't get any bite, but every once in a while the stars will align and i'll wind up having a really pleasant evening, often bearing no resemblance to my design. how is this relevant? well, the more people you have linked across our various social media sites, the more chances that someone'll pop up online and be there to answer your hail. 200 people makes for 200 chances, which any serial roulette player will tell you beats 100.

to see how this can be a problem, you need to think of your social connections as possessions, and remember your Fight Club; because the things you own end up owning you. when you already have 100 people you can call on, why would you go out and meet anyone else? i've had a very similar mentality to that since i moved back to this gods-forsaken sandpit; i figured that i had enough friends to be going on with and precious enough time for those i had. when LFV and i went our separate ways and i suddenly got a whole lot more time on my hands i realised that if i were to say fuck off, i've got enough friends i'd have been lying. sure, i know a lot of people, but only a limited number of these are what you'd call "socially available". let's face it - i'm closer to 40 now than i am to 20, and when you find yourself at this age still living the life of an upwardly-mobile bachelor you begin to notice that an awful lot of your friends are getting married and having kids (in no particular order these days) and that suddenly the list of people who are up and want to go grab a coffee at 11PM, or head to the pub on a thursday night, or sit around gass-bagging for an evening is getting shorter and shorter... but they're your friends, right? you don't stop liking them because their priorities have changed, so you call them up every once in a while, they come up in your browsings for companionship, and you take it with grace when they turn you down for the 8th time in a row because... hey - it's no slight against you that they're busy, right?

it takes a special change of outlook to realise that you need to get out and meet some new people. it's not any reflection on the friends you've had for years, but they're moving in their direction and you in yours and you have needs they can't fulfil any more. with this in mind, a few weeks ago i got back onto Meetup.com (where i met such infamous souls as Adnan, The Canadian, Stiltwalking Jacq and Nick The Playwright back in my London days) and had a look at what people where doing in Perth. next thing i know, i'm hanging out with a bunch of Ducati riders, wasting large amounts of fuel, riding around the place for no better reason than that it gives us all an excuse to get out of the house and hang out with some different people. they're completely unconnected with my existing circles of friends (although for how long that lasts is another question) and while on the surface of things we have nothing more in common than motorcycle ownership, they're a pleasant crew. so if i can forsake my Perth crew and start building a new one, why not go to the extreme and take the Scorched Earth approach?

first things first, you'd need to honestly and fully cut all ties with your past life. a name change would help. a different country would be even better. moving to a different city, where you knew no one or next to no one, would be the least you'd have to do. the phone number you've had for 13 years? change it. email addresses need to go. no forwarding addresses for your snail-mail - people will try to find you and you can't just make it hard for them. you have to make it impossible. then, when you get to where you're going, you need to start anew. it takes years to build a proper social network from scratch. i know. i've done it from a single link. the thing is that the first one is the hardest.

then there's the betrayal. what i'm proposing here involves writing off everyone you've ever cared about, or (and this is arguably more important) has cared about you. imagine if someone you knew just disappeared off the face of the planet without a word, their phone number suddenly silent, their email addresses bouncing back,  Return To Sender on all post and no one you know the wiser? is social suicide any less selfish than the mortal version? and do you want that on your conscience?

the thing is that i'm tempted. we all have our Weapons Of Last Resort, and i can't help but think that if the reasonable and rational approaches haven't worked and i've tried everything else i could think of, that if not now then when? with the mood i've been in for the last few months, i've felt very much like i wanted to watch it all burn down around me then sit an enjoy the quiet stillness of the falling ashes. the feeling of wanting everyone else around to share and understand the fury and misery that you've tasted in every thought through every waking moment. the apex of the mentality that says "if i ain't happy, ain't nobody happy". when you can't help that every time something good happens to someone you know that it's somehow intended as a personal insult.

because maybe, just maybe, when you can see yourself turning into so much of a cunt that it's time to withdraw gracefully and silently, just to spare them from it and use the time you've sentenced yourself to as an opportunity to sort your shit out and get your head on straight so that by the time you do meet new people to hang out with you'll be ready to be civil.

for now it's just a thought that i'll be turning over in my hands for the next little while before i throw it at the wall and see whether it sticks...