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...
