The cost of doing business... (Part III: Aphelion)

I want to use 3 Doors Down, but you know it's Enter Shikari all the way down... 

Enter Shikari - Redshift

Have you noticed that everything I say goes around in circles? Just like everything around us,
Drawn together by chance or circumstance, revolving; 
Ships in the night falling into and flying out of each other's orbit.
Points of light, dancing amongst the stars. 
Repeat after me... 

It's said that you can't cross the same river twice. The silt you kick up and the ripples you cause change it forever; it can never be the same again. Likewise, the you who crosses the next time around isn't the same person, they just remember being the person who did it the time before. 
The name of the river might be the same but the river itself has been changed by your passing, and so have you. 

Names are important; they help us to identify one person from another in the stories we tell. Our names can be the shape we pour ourselves into, or the one that grows around us as we reach our final form. Laika tipped her hat to her Russian heritage, and adopted The First Dog In Space when she declared her old name dead and buried. Jason was given a good, strong name, which he never saw the point of changing because it suited him just fine, and me... I have a name I chose to adopt because, in part, of all the people who refused to call me by anything else. Some people are born to a name, some have a name thrust upon them, and who am I to deny the wisdom of crowds when the one they formed around me fits so well? 

In Pete's Apocryphal Pocket Dictionary there's a girl with an angelic smile you might have glimpsed when you were flicking past the letter A. I never did find out what name her Persian parents gave her; I called her خواهر کوچک, but she introduced herself as Anna V----, and that was how I greeted her the day she called me at my desk to ask for some information about [Civil Construction Client]'s servers. 

"What's it say in the doco?" 
"There isn't any, that's why I called."
"Oh?" I replied innocently, but with an escalating growl, "are you sure about that?" 
"..." 
"Remember who you're talking to here. 
"Were you not able to find it, or did you just assume?" 
"Oh shoot. 
"I'm sorry, I didn't think.
"I should have checked." 

Not gonna lie, that sort of honesty buys you a metric-fuckton of my time. 

"I just looked and it's right there.
"I'm so used to [Allied Health Client]'s KB, it's so out of date. 
"I'm SO SORRY!" 
"I'll let you off," I said, because kicking puppies is the antithesis of my idea of a good time, "but it's going to cost you. 
"Your penance will be getting [Allied Health Client]'s server pages up to the same level of detail as [Civil Construction Client]'s." 
"... Oh fiddlesticks." 
"Have fun! Let me know if you need a hand..." 

Anna was a ray of sunshine sat in the middle of the Service Desk, who somehow made the whole crew better just by being there, so when Rowan and I lit our respective rockets and blasted off in pursuit of our respective launch-windows we broke the gender-parity we'd achieved in the team and filled the vacuum we left by promoting her to Lead the Team who had come to revolve around her. 

Time passed. 
My mentor Row'd his boat into deeper waters. 
Boldilocks and Michael bounced over the fence into greener pastures, and Anna was headhunted to build the Service Desk for a competitor, because Service Desk is an incubator where IT professional careers are laid, not where they hatch; attrition and churn are a fact of life. 

When I was made redundant a couple of years later I'd trained up Jake to take my place, and served out my notice period winding things up with [Civil Construction Client]. I worked it all the way through to the end, and had just hung up from TNM after apologising for running out of steam on my last day when my phone rang again, this time with Anna's name on the screen. 

She'd heard through the grapevine that the chapter of my story she'd been a part of was coming to an end after all those years, so called to check in and hear me tell it. 
She didn't call to offer help, but was there to give it if I asked. 
She knew I wasn't short on friends; she wanted me to know that she'd be one if she could, whether I needed it or not. 

So we talked about what had happened, and my plans for what what I was going to do next, and she offered to put me in touch with some people who could use a freelancer to help with their clients in Perth. The grapevine works both ways tho, and I'd heard how she'd not been well, so I asked. 

I was prepared for the ovarian cancer diagnosis she told me about, and the less-than-positive prognosis she'd been given; it was the absolute absence of self-pity and -abnegation in her voice that left me on my knees on the side of William St when I hung up the phone. 

"Man, it's like you're Wonder Woman or something," I mused, "you're not going to let anything stop you, are you?"
"Would you?" she asked, "I learned from the best." 

Looking at the blank screen of my phone, I picked myself up, finished my day, and handed my laptop and other corporate accoutrement over to Jake before dragging him out for drinks with a bunch of my other friends. 

Anna and I kept in touch, and true to her word I picked up many billable hours to invoice her contacts for. Months went by with the memory of that conversation bouncing around between the bones of my head, and an idea formed which led to (an actual) pen clumsily meeting (actual) paper, which I tied closed with a ribbon and sealed with an enamel pin I found on eBay: 

خواهر کوچک

There's not a lot of people in this world I really like, and even fewer who I respect. 
You've always been one of the few who was both. 
As I got to know you, you became one of the rarest people in my life. 
Those I've found truly inspiring. 
I wanted to send you something you could carry with you as a reminder of how wonderful you are, and what a powerful impact you have on the people who cross your path, 
and that the world has been a better place with you in it. 

.صلح

Peter Raven

In the photo I took the last time I laid eyes on her in August 2019, Anna is sat to the left of the group because she'd arrived late and needed to leave early; chemo doesn't leave you with the energy to do much, but when I came to town and got Yael, Boldilocks, Gabe, Chris (and his adorable daughters), and Michael from her old team together, she spent what she had to come and see us: 

Six months before her journey ended, three months before that photo was taken, I sent her a 'heartbeat check' message whilst on another work-trip to Melbourne, and worked out that a meeting I had scheduled in Box Hill would be finishing up around the same time as her chemo appointment across the road that day, so I did what any good Agile-minded Project Manager would do: 

I managed expectations, adjusted commitments, made apologies where necessary, and ditched the client to make time in my schedule to be waiting for her in the plaza outside Box Hill Train Station afterwards. When she joined me I was sitting cross-legged on a concrete bench in the shade wearing my royal-blue suit, and she was wearing the Wonder Woman pin I'd sent on the strap of her satchel. 

She sat down in the vacant space I'd left for her, and asked me how I was. 

"Oh, you know, building stuff, fixing shit, surrounded by incompetent fucktards, doing what I can to make things better..." 
"The usual then." 
"Pretty much, yeah." 
"You'll get it sorted out, you always do. You're so good at it." 
"I guess," I replied, taking an embarrassed drag at my cigarette, "what else can I do? How about you?"
"Oh, you know; it is what it is. One day at a time, spending what I have with my husband and son, what else can I do? 
"But," she said, looking at me critically, "are you OK, really? 
"You look so tired, are you getting enough sleep?" 
"4 or 5 hours a night, I make do." 
"You really do need to take better care of yourself," she chiled me, her sternly maternal tone belied by the smile creeping across her face, "it's not like you let anyone do it for you." 
"..."

Completing its transit, Anna's smile lit up Main St so bright it darkened the sun as she affectionately patted my arm.

"You're not Superman, you know?" 

... 

She was wearing that cheap memento mori again at what would turn out to be our last meeting. She said not a word about it, but when she arrived it caught my eye, and she caught my look, and her smile met mine in the middle. If you look closely at the grainy photo I took on my phone that day you can see it right were everyone could see, but no one else was going to notice: 

One last parting gift, as if her presence wasn't enough. 

Now, years later, I find myself sitting here, wondering. 

Because whilst I can tally up everything I've spent, and all the things I've given, the support I've received from the Laika's and Jason's and Gabe's and Boldilock's and Michael's and Anna's has been immeasurable; if I can't even count what I've received, can what it cost me count for anything? If I could say, with a straight face, that I've given everything, it would imply that at one point or another I'd had everything to give. Somehow now matter how much I give nothing is taken, yet returns threefold.  No matter how much of myself I give away, I always have more coming back at me; my cup runneth over, and what I have left afterwards is better than I was before. 

How could I possibly ask for more? 

I am not immune to Newton's Third Law. 
I am not immune to Newton's Third Law. 
I am not immune to Newton's Third Law. 

The cost of doing business... (Part II: Transit)

Somehow I just can't seem to get enough of: Enter Shikari - Pack of Thieves

Have you been listening or just watching the scene unfold, waiting for me to get to the point? 
The lede is buried between the lines; 
I could point it out but you'll learn better if you go find it yourself.
Don't worry, I'll wait.
I've got all the time in the world. 

Is it weird that I'm more avuncularly inclined towards my Padawans than I am to the memory of Younger Pete? It must seem unfair to hold them to a lesser standard, but I swear I don't; The Best Pete is the benchmark I hold myself to, and 99 times out of 10 (Ian notwithstanding; he'll always be the Paragon-ideal I know my Renegade-self can never achieve) that guy is the North Star I try to point people towards (because whilst Ian'ing is a virtue, the rest of us are only human). I won't pretend to meeting that standard myself, but he's the Ideal I'm always trying to be, the light shining tantalisingly over the hill I know I'll one day die on whilst it hangs perpetually out of reach. When I meet someone who wants to be The Best Them he's the example I offer them because (no one can be as Good as Ian, and who am I to give people a goal I know is unachievable; I'm not The Buddha, I'm just A Boy Who's Lost, just like the rest of you) the The Best Me I Can Be is easy to compare to the Me they can see. So don't mistake me for suggesting that being The Best Them looks anything like The Best Pete (let alone Ian); I've only managed to look like that guy on a hand-full of occasions, and even then it's only when you tilt your head 42 degrees and squint, but he's the mould I'm trying to shape myself into because he's the best I've got to be. I barely wanna be me, so why the fuck would I want that for anyone else? Making more of me would just give me another face I want to punch, and if there's a single more self-defeating idea than that I sure can't think of any. 

I've got no time for anyone who wants to be me, even The Best Me, but when someone wants to be The Best Them they can be... 
I've got all the time in the world. 

I still remember my first real Padawan like it was yesterday, but that isn't a stretch; I saw him a couple of months ago in Perth. If you look up "responsible young man" in Pete's Pocket Dictionary you'll find yourself peering at a photo of Jason U------- looking back with an expression somewhere between "respectfully attentive" and "if you gave the order I'd crawl on my belly through broken glass with my fly unzipped, sir". When he spotted my Facebook post saying I was visiting again he reached out to see if I had time for him to catch me up on what he's been going through, so I made damn-sure I found some. When I first laid eyes on him a decade-and-change ago he was a quiet, timid, unassuming little lamb wrapped in 6 feet of gym-junkie beefcake who seemed afraid to take up space. Over the years I've watched as he replaced timidity with self-assurance, and the humble lion who picked me up from Mother Dear's house had filled every one of those 72 inches with 'himself' in the best possible way. 

His life has gone to shit over the last year or so but that's not my story to tell, it's just the one he wanted to tell me. 
So I listened, and we talked, and there was fuck-all I could do to help, but he knew I'd get it. 
He thinks of me as a friend, and thought I'd like to know, and whether I could help or not was completely irrelevant; he doesn't need me to, but he knows that I would if I could. 

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of "leadership" lately. I could blame Ian, and I will regardless of how apropos for comic-effect, but he'd be the first to point out (if he were the sort to disagree, and not stop and first hear out your point of view, then question the evidence upon which you based your analysis later) that Leadership was one of the majors printed on the MBA that's been hanging on my wall since long before the conversations we've had since he started on his. 

There are a pile of different perspectives on what it is to lead, and how to do it best, from 'despotic' to 'transactional', all the way through to 'transformational'. In a more avant-garde (and less peer-reviewed)  mindset, Ian is fond of 'poetic' (there's only one article I've seen on the concept; he linked it to me when he was researching his assignment), whereas I favour 'transgressive' (for which there are none I can find; I haven't written one yet). He'll point to Napoleon and Patton, whereas I'll veer towards Churchill and Rommel. Ultimately, there are three (3) archetypes you can play that have been shown to work depending on your mindset and circumstance: 

1) "I'm going this away,"; 
2) "You're going that way,"; and the one I favour
3) "We're going over there. Get onboard or make your own way, but I'll see you there unless I don't."

I'm not sure if that's what Gabe S------ was looking for when she pinged me a month-and-change ago asking for advice. Beyond the occasional "I'll be in Melbourne, drinking in [this] pub if you're free after work that day," I hadn't heard from her in any meaningful way in years, then out of nowhere my phone pinged with a Message that knocked me out of my chair: 

"Hey
I was just laying here thinking how far I've come in IT
I have my first solution architecture job, which i landed by shear luck and clients loving me.

After this one I will be contracting as a solutions architect not as high as my mum but it makes me so close.

Wanted say thanks for all the training you gave me at beginning"
- 18/11/2024, 17:03

Gabe's mum was the Rockstar Solution Architect who'd been engaged on the Citrix VDI project the Company I Used To Work For was delivering for one of our clients, with a formidable rep, and a form 17 pages long. The project went to shit, but it wasn't mine to manage, or my client who dumped us as a result of our Tech Lead's incompetence, so I won't pretend I give a fuck. That hadn't happened yet when I was in Melbourne for my annual Work "Non-Denominational End of Year Celebration" Pilgrimage and Rowan grabbed me to see if I was free to jump in on an interview panel to play the Voice of Tech. When I was hired I had to go three rounds against an autistic savant from Melbourne who was driving between sites in Sydney with the GPS calling directions in the background. He was a little distracted, but did not in any way go easy on me. I found out later that he was more-than-a-little impressed, but at the time I was surprised when I progressed to the final bossfight. 

Now here I was standing in his shoes. 

"We interviewing her on her own merits, or are we sucking up to her mum?" 
Rowan made a hand-wringing gesture and dissembled, "no of course not, she's junior but she's got some experience."
"So kid gloves, or...?"
"Be fair, but work out what level she's at." 
"Got it." 

An hour or so later I was refreshing my coffee when Row approached with an empty mug and That Look on his face: 

"Remind me to give you a better definition of 'fair' next time."
"What?? I smiled all reassuring'n'shit, didn't even show teeth."
"..." 
"I went easy on her; remind me to tell you how Ken and I made this South African guy, who drew his 9mm on four armed car-jackers and killed three of them, weep in his interview some time." 
"YOU FUCKING WHAT?" 
"Not important. 
"Back to Gabe... 
"She's terrified she's only here because of her mum, it was written all over her anxiety; I didn't want her thinking this was a courtesy-interview. 
"You said to find her level, and if someone answers right you keep asking harder questions until they can't. 
"She did well, solid basic knowledge, and when she didn't know the answer you could see she was freaking out, but she said as much, kept it together, and didn't break. 
"Cried less than Paul The Killer-Saffa, that's for sure." 
"Hmm..." 
"She doesn't have her visa riding on it, and her family's safety on the line, so different stress-factor. 
"Anyway, she's got potential. Gotta work on her confidence tho - reckon we can support her in that?" 
"You know we can." 
"Golden, because by the time she spins up I'll be back in Perth and it's you she'll look to on the daily, but if we give her the opportunity to get out of her mum's shadow on her own merits she'll be ours forever. 
"You want to seal that deal, make the offer in the next couple of days, up it by $5k, and invite her to the party on Saturday. She'll hit the ground running so hard she'll barely touch it."

A couple of weeks ago I received another message: 

"Well I applied for a senior/coordinator role
Not solution architect but will give me leadership and make it easier to get one later.

They are looking for someone to lead the service desk while they focus on growing the company
So essentially I'd be the manager of service desk

Got feed back saying I was great in interview
Think I'd be great fit and knowledgeable 

The people choosing has covid so won't find out till next week but sounds like I may have the job

Any advice on leadership?"
- 13/12/2024, 15:51

"Jeez...
"Where to start...
"I mean..." 

She's going to do great (whether I have anything to do with it or not). 

In my digital memory archive there's a photo of her sitting immediately to the left of Boldilocks in a pub somewhere near Richmond; their desks were only slightly further apart when they worked together. He still calls me 'sir', but that's just his way of making me feel better. We both know he transitioned into being a 'confidant', 'Pete's Support Potato', and 'well-spring of well-good Metalcore' a long time ago, to become one of my Secretaries. Never forget that a 'secretary' was never about being someone's shit-kicker, it's derived from 'secretarius' which is the latin word for 'confidential letter writer'. Boldilocks doesn't fetch my coffee and sit on my lap to take dictation in a short skirt (OK, he does, but let's set 'recreational' context apart from 'professional' here), he's a keeper of my secrets. You never stop being someone's Padawan tho, and he lets me maintain some of the illusion of self-worth I get from believing that. Just as I like to call him Mr Fantastic, that's just the sort of friend he is. 

Ian joined a WA Government Mentorship Programme at the beginning of 2023, and spent most of it working with a young lad who needed a LOT of help. At the end of what turned out to be something of a harrowing year he told me they'd gone out to an "expensive steak place" to put a full-stop at the end of that sentence, which the kid paid for by way of thanks. I replied: 

"Welcome to 'mentoring' and 'taking on Padawans'.
"It's soul-destroying effort, encouraging them, supporting them, dragging them back from the abyss, picking them up when they fall, rubbing their noses in it...
"but then they surprise you by actually learning, moving forward, getting their shit together, becoming the best-self you imagined they could be. 
"And if you think that's rewarding, imagine what it's like when you get your first Dark Apprentice."
 - 08/12/2023, 21:07

Mine (there've only ever been two) is in that same photo, sitting second-right, goes by Michael B--------, and there's no one on this planet I've fought as hard, or as often, who I'd still shout a pint for. You know that 'uppity smart-arse prick' who's convinced he knows better, wants to hear the justification for every direction, and argues every decision, because he's convinced he knows better? 
That's Michael's shit-eating grin you're looking at under 'U' in Pete's Pocket Dictionary. 

I can't remember who hired him, but it was probably Rowan; he hired me, and he could always smell his own. The New Management who took over after Rowan moved up-and-left had more of a "just do what you're told" mindset than Row's sense-making sensibility, and by the time I received a call asking me to "take him under my wing" they'd rubbed each other so far the wrong way there was enough static in the air to give everyone a bad hair-day. Thing was, Michael actually DID know better more often than not, he'd just been saddled with Managers who couldn't see the walls of the box they were living in, let along think outside of them, with whom he'd had to go to war to get anything done so often, and for so long, he came at every barrier put in front of him fist-first. 

Sound familiar? 

He was good at his job, which was the only reason he still had one, but TNM didn't have the energy or wherewithal to keep fighting for him to keep it. They didn't not-care tho, which is why they called me in to knock some sense into the guy when he fucked up for the penultimate time. I listened to their story, read up on the tickets, did a bit of outside-the-box homework, gave him a call, and offered him a different face to take a swing at. 

"So TNM asked me to look into the Incident at [Financial Services Client]."
"<sigh> Do I really have to go over this again? I fucked up, I'm sorry, I'll do better."
"No one here's saying that..."
"TNM is."
"...but they're not here, and you seem to be mistaking me for someone who gives a fuck. If I was going to take their word on it I wouldn't have wasted my time calling you, so can we skip past the bullshit before we get old?" 
"..."
"Client's pretty pissed off tho, so let's look at that instead, yeah? 
"Now TNM sent you out at 4PM to do this install?" 
"No..." 
"The client wanted it done at 4 then?" 
"No... I just got told it had to be done ASAP."
"But you called them and made sure they'd be there so you could get them logged in and set up, yeah? Then they weren't around when you got there?" 
"No..."
"Right... but you called next morning to remote in and finish it off? I'm not seeing that in the ticket notes, but it's the only thing which makes sense." 
"No, I mean, I left the login details..." 
"... and you checked FIRST THING the next morning to make sure they found the instructions, were up and running, yeah?" 
"No... I mean... it's not hard tho!" 
"For you or me it's not, but they're a Receptionist." 
"Who doesn't know shit!" 
"No, but knowing shit is what they pay *us* for, so why would they need to?" 
"..." 
"Sounds to me like you were playing for a protest-fail and half-arsed the job to make a point, shot yourself in the foot, and you've been blaming everyone else for limping. 
"Rookie move, man." 
"No! But, I mean... fuck..." 
"Now we're getting somewhere. 
"So are you going to work with me to unfuck this mess, or should I just go back to doing the job they actually fucking pay me for?" 

Putty doesn't mould as easily as Michael did after that... for a while anyway. Not much time had passed before he felt he'd learned enough kung fu, and came at me. 

So I beat him down again. 
And again. 
And again. 
And each time it got harder, because each time he'd got better, faster, and stronger. 

"I don't know why you kept putting up with that," one of my colleagues in the Leadership In Practice unit of my MBA said when I recounted this story. 
"He'd had so many Managers who didn't know shit acting like they knew better, but really didn't. He needed to know that I really did. Challenging The Master was how he tested himself, but it also proved I was worth listening to. He got harder to beat each time because he was *learning*." 
"But what if he learned everything you knew and took your job?" 
"If he gets good enough to take my job, he can have it; he'll have earned it."
"But..." 
"But what... you think I wasn't getting better at the same time? Everything he took away from me was one more thing I didn't have to do any more, and I got to pick up something else which moved me forward. 
"Everything he took was something I gave to him, and if I can't keep up, if he overtakes me... that's on me. I've no more right to stand in his way than Moses had to enter The Promised Land." 
"..." 
"You HAVE been paying attention in this course, haven't you?" 

He actually did thank me, just once, years later. I'd re-tell the conversation, but after the ridiculous number of pints he shouted me that night I honestly can't remember what it was he said. 
I can tell you he's kicking arse, tho. 
I'm pretty sure I could still beat him, although when I saw him back in April he let me maintain my illusion of self-worth by not making me prove it. 

What is a relationship after all, but a closed system;
Nothing taken that wasn't given freely
And returned in exchange, 
If not in kind;
Because the world can be anything but. 
But we can be if we choose. 

Concludes in Part III: Perihelion...

Provenance...

 When Boldilocks arrived I took him for a walk around Braddon and Civic; he'd been on the road for four-hours-and-change, getting the city you're visiting under your feet is a great way to unclench after a long drive, and as comfortable as the 6th-floor office I call 'Home' might be there'd be plenty of time to drink in the view. Hitting Northbourne Ave we started catching up on what we've been up to since last he graced my presence in April because whilst we're in semi-regular contact and we've heard it all before, it's important not to underestimate how much better it is to hear someone's stories transmitted directly from voice-box to tympanic membrane through the vibration of Nitrogen/Oxygen/Argon than when there's an electronic intermediary, and how much easier it is to read the mind of the man who's been your friend for longer than you care to calculate, even if you still think of him as the Padawan who could never get his timesheets submitted reliably, from the twitch of the muscles in his face than the pattern of white-and-black pixels preceding a blinking cursor on the LED screen of this year's laptop. 

Turning left onto Elouera St, I started pointing out The Sights: 

"There's Bent Spoke; there are two main micro-breweries in Canberra, the other's Capital, but Bent Spoke's my 'local'. This is where Ian and I were sinking pints when I realised I'd decided I was going to move back." 

"Check out the Rainbow round-a-bout ahead - they made it even-more-inclusive a year or so ago by cutting a quarter off the Pride Flag-ring and replacing it with the Trans/Ace/fucked-if-I-know colours."
"..."
"Yeah I lose track, but it's not for us, is it? Nice that everyone gets to feel 'seen' tho, yeah?"

The story I heard was that the rainbow had been painted on the road of the Lonsdale/Elouera roundabout for Pride one year, and when a bunch of wowsers complained the Road Transport Authority at ACT Government went and made it permanent to spite them. It may be apocryphal, but my theory is that if I click my heels together and tell it enough it will become 'true'. 

"Look left? Up there is the bottlo from the 'Deadman' post where I trip because a pretty girl smiled at me."
"Blackhearts & Sparrows?"
"That's the one. We'll cruise past there later. Hang a right..." 

"Hey, remember in 'Going nowhere fast' and I talk about walking past a gym full of people running on the spot, and what both of us are doing is pointless but at least they're honest about it? 
"That's it, right there." 
"Huh. Yeah?" 
"And in the 'chaotic magnitude' post and I talk about a 'pool table in a dingy pub on a Friday night'?" 
I point over at The Civic Hotel, "that's the pub." 

I haven't been back there in years, but I've heard that they refurbished recently and replaced the pool tables in the back-room with a dining area; I could go and confirm, but I have so many fond memories of those days I'd rather keep them intact than replace them with whatever's now 'true'. 

"Oh hey, and in the 'Resurrection Deluge' when I land back here and talk about making three trips to Coles in two days, and 'keeping my feet between my face and the pavement'?" 
"Yeah?" 
"Well," I point my face south-and-east across Cooyong St, "there's the Coles," then down at my feet, "and there's the pavement." 

We cruised through Garema Place to see the Dodgy Sheep and the weird Whispering Wall thing, although the Doug Anthony All Stars plaque turned out to be covered by the astroturf at the pro-Palestine Protest. Back at my place later, the Show & Tell continued: 

"Oh! There on the wall? That's my half of the Art Project!"
"Shit, I spotted that earlier! What happened to the other half?"
"Wound up on the wall in Penpal's daughter's room, she said."
"..."
"Yeah, kinda weird, but apparently she took a shine to it and there was a vacant hook." 

"Oh! Check this out!" I say, handing him a mug with stylised technicolour double-helixes on each side. 
"What's this?"
I pull the business card out of it and show it to him, "that's Occam's Canadan Amy - she gave it to me when I saw her last in Perth." 
"Oh..."
"Yeah, she's real - that's her biz."

"Check this out," I drag him around to the desk-side of the display cabinet in the middle of the room, "see the little plushie octopus in the top-left corner?" 
"Holding a little hand-drawn card?"
"That's the one. After she read the 'It's not you... it's me' post, Bridget asked me if the 'tiny octopus' bit at the beginning was a secret reference to 'giant pacific octopus' by Enter Shikari. 
"It wasn't, but it's become a bit of a thing. 
"She's taken to keeping the side-pockets of her backpack stocked with little plushies from Ikea, gives them out to random strangers at the lights when she's riding her bike, asked if I wanted one. She had a turtle, an orca, or... so I picked that one; thought it was adorb's."
"She really is."
"Shush, you. 
"It's one of two things in this cabinet which faces towards my desk. Can you spot the other one?"
"Behold," he reads, "My field of fucks; and see that it is barren." 
"That's the one.
"Sandra cross-stitched it, mailed it to me years ago, so I found a frame and it used to hang from a vacant hook in my old office." 
"THAT Sandra?"
"The one and only." 

"But hey, speaking of ocean-critters, check this out," I duck to the fridge and grab a stainless-steel flask. 
"The water bottle from 'The thing I do for a living'? That's it."
"Damn..." he said, weighing it in his hand as moisture began condensing on the surface. 
"Yeah, funny thing; turns out I also snagged a tshirt on that trip," I say, waving it at him, "so it WASN'T the only memento I took away. 
"Ain't ret-con'ing the post tho, just sayin'."
"Nah, why ruin it?"
"Exactly. I like that bit - it was punchy." 

We pour a couple of glasses from the bottle of Chivas Regal he'd picked up from the First Choice across the road on Mort St on our way back, and I chuckle to myself as I remember the flight back from my last trip to Perth as we head out to the balcony: 

"That's The Seat I sit in when I'm writing, and over in the corner is the one I bought from a thrift store for 5$. Don't sit in it; it really is falling apart. 
"But seriously, check out the view. 
"There's Black Mountain and Minas Telstra, which is right up there as far as 'iconic Canberra' goes. 
"Over there's ANU, and the CSIRO Lab's."
"From 'Drowning in silence'."
"Yeah. Same dive trip." 
"Shit," he muttered, looking at the flask he was still holding. 
Looking to the right as he leaned against the balustrade, "oh... those traffic lights... but in the fog?"
"Yeah, from 'It's not you... it's me'. Really did happen just as I was writing that bit and it was too perfect not to include."
"Shit, man. 
"It's...
"It's a lot more 'real', standing here, y'know?"
I nod, staring into space. 
"It is real. 
"All of it. 
"The narrative might be selective at times, but not one word of it's a lie. 
"But hey," I look over and proffer my glass, "thank you for the part you've played in making it happen. 
"Throwing me music to listen to, the sanity-checks, the peer-reviews." 
Our glasses meet in the middle with a <clink>, "and hey, thanks for coming to visit." 

Does this sound OK to you?

 Musical accompaniment: Enter Shikari - Bull (feat. Cody Frost) 

I hit Publish on the last post, changed to a different song mostly at random, got half-way through it, switched tabs back and clicked on New Post. Before I switched tracks my private music streaming server told me me I'd listened to Drive by Incubus 27 times. 
Ride by Twenty One Pilots said 81. 
Bull currently says 2, which will shortly increment to 3. 

I can't help but feel that writing about writing is taking my literary onanism to the next level, like I'm reaching into the 5th dimension to give myself a reach-around which can only result in a stickily-slippery slope leading to a poly-dimensional circle-jerk, and once I start I'm going down. 

If you google "write what you know quote" you'll discover that it's attributed to Mark Twain, and that the next two pages of links will be to people raining written hate about it, which just goes to show how right Clint Mansell et al were when they re-named their band Pop Will Eat Itself. 

I think I'll listen to Ich Bin Ein Auslander next. 

I hate to rain on everyone's parade, but I'm on a roll now so I might as well get a grip. This hobby, which has arguably become my most important emotional/creative outlet, has been all about writing as a means for working things out. It never ceases to amaze me how often I start out writing down something which popped into my head not knowing what I'm going to say next, but by the time I'm done I know something I didn't when started; I wrote it and now I know, but I wrote it so how could I not have known from the start? No one knows how the snake came to suck down its own teil, but it's rolling down the road so I might as well grab it with both hands and hold tight, climb onboard, and see where it takes me. 

When I finished the journey of insploration which became It's not you (I'm giving up on), it's me... my private music streaming server told me I'd listened to Midwest Indigo by Twenty One Pilots 204 times. 
Jailbreak by Enter Shikari said 139. 
Bull currently says 22, and counting. 

Music has always been an important part of my writing; I can't tell you what other people's processes look like, but I can count the number of times something happened and I thought "y'know, I should write about that," then did, on one hand. On any given day my brain is a bubbling stew of troubled thoughts boiling in a cauldron over a gas-burning fire fed with a frenetic stream of thoughts which are being thrown over the shoulder of a sous-chef coming down off a week-long cocaine binge toiling away with a look of desperation who gave up on trying to supervise the manic-depressive prep-cooks dual-wielding at the chopping boards after that time he scored a bad batch of acid with a delivery of fish-heads and now can't quite tell whether they're actually the dangerously underqualified ex-convicts he hired or a pack of meth-addicted squirrels packed into questionably-stained chef's whites so now he's just winging it and praying that when he counts his fingers at the end of his shift he'll still have the same seven he used to roll up the fortnight-old specials menu through which he snorted the coffee-vendor's nose-candy lined up on the maitre-d's notepad. 

Calling it a "chaotic hot mess" would be a polite understatement. 

I can stare into the turmoil for hours without a coherent thought, but when I filter it through the lens of Devin Townsend Project, or Metric, or Pink Floyd, or Stone Temple Pilots, or Reel Big Fish, or Fear Factory, or Blink-182, or The Cure, or Scroobius Pip, or TISM, a pattern will emerge in the china shop of my mind's eye that's clearer than a carefully polished mirror, and brighter than a teacher's pet on the first day of class. 

On knees that won't bend... would have been stillborn without Oliver Tree's Me, Myself & I putting the idea of duality into my head. 
Drowning in silence... would have been a whiny lament about feeling overwhelmed without Drown by BMTH reminding me of an event from my last dive-trip. 
Hostage negotiations only happened because WARGASM's God of War (not to mention Mick Gordon's genius work on the Doom Eternal soundtrack) gave me a way to take the terror of an unhinged narcissist threatening my livelihood and turning it into self-righteous rage. 

A lot of my ideas emerge from the texture of what I hear, and I use it to add subtext what what I say. What that looks like and how it feels depends a lot on what I'm listening to, or what word-or-sentiment-association makes me think of at the time; the soundtrack of my zeitgeist is nothing if not mercurial. 

Without Midway Indigo and Jailbreak, It's not you (I'm giving up on), it's me... would have just been goth poetry. 

When I realised that I was planning out a piece I was desperate to ensure people understood, I looked for people I know enjoy reading my shit, and would be good "every-man" reference-points. Boldilocks and Occam's Canadian Amy were kind enough to volunteer, and over a couple of multi-hour phone calls we went over Stop; Continue... twice, in line-by-line detail. The first time I had them tell me what they heard, then the second I told them what I was saying, and over rest of each conversation we talked about how I could make sure the two lined up as close as possible. The most surprising thing I found out wasn't how often they don't listen to the links I include, which are so pivotal to my process, but how little that actually mattered. 

See, when I'm putting these things together, a lot of the tone comes from the music I was listening to when the idea popped into my head. To keep it consistent I wind up listening to the same one on repeat for as long as it takes me to push that idea out of my head through my fingers. When your mind is huge, but the conduit you have for it to flow though is small, it means listening to the same thing A Lot. Key words and phrases from the songs will get fed through my brain and out of my fingers to connect what I'm hearing with what I'm saying, and wrap the two experiences around each other. Sometimes the songs will be the a voice you hear the words in, sometimes it's far more subtle than that: 

We all read different things in a story, just like everyone hears different things from a song, which is why I made a point of not using my usual "Musical accompaniment" trope in "It's not you (...) it's me...". Instead, I threw together the "Trailer" posts from my conversations with Boldilocks, an idea inspired by my reference to the Fight Club trailer way back in Sandra... I was pulling a lot of references from that, with her steering me away from the ledge at the start, then returning to that ledge alone at the end; having a "Trailer" which had no immediate bearing to what was going to happen in the Main Feature was just too cute to not use. Using music in the Trailers which didn't show up in film was an idea that was hanging my head from the 300 reference I made in Stop; Continue... because it had always stuck with me how perfect Just Like You Imagined was in the trailer for that film, but wasn't on the soundtrack. I was a way of providing the intended soundscape, but at a remove so that the text would stand on its own, and have confidence that it would work because my sample-group had been doing that anyway. 

More directly, I used the Trailers to send two messages: 

#1: I was going to take you on a journey, and hit you right where you live by kicking you repeatedly in the amygdala; and 
#2: I was absolutely not going to leave you with a positive spin at the end. There was going to be no affirmation, no silver lining, and certainly no hope; the "good guy" gets shot in the face and dies meaninglessly in a car park. 

Yeah, I know it's contrived, but it's my arty and I'll wank if I want to. 

Midwest Indigo is a sad song with a bouncy tune, which I used in the first half to give it a whimsical tone whilst I bounced the narrative around. Key lines like "reaching out on my way home, you can be so cold, I'll try again" and "you make me sad and second-guess myself" speak to how inaccessible I've been over the last few years (but keep trying), and forebode the crisis-of-confidence which comes later. In the second half the repeated line "now I'm lying wide awake" provided an allusion to my long-running insomnia, the long nights I've spend sitting on my balcony writing, and just how aware I've been of the state of my mental health. When I pivot to running down that hill I used its frantic pace (163 BPM to Midwest Indigo's 116) to accentuate the elation of "inhuman success", then make 9 months of downfall feel like free-fall. When it all draws to an end your heart-rate is elevated, in direct contrast with the quiet stillness of my fog-draped balcony, and the only way you can see is down. The photo is absolutely real, taken as I was writing that section, as if the weather had decided it wanted a walk-in role; who was I to deny it? 

But underneath all of that, when you're reading how I let myself get beaten down, in the background you can hear (if you're listening) Rou from Enter Shikari saying 

So, yeah, question everything
Including your own beliefs
And especially your own beliefs about yourself
Inside of you, there's a revolution
Waiting to happen if you pick the lock of your cell block
And just breathe, breathe

and the repeated chant

I hope I leave hope intact
I hope I leave hope intact

Because, you see, whilst every word I wrote was true, I was lying to you, and I was wide awake when I did it, but you'd only know that if you were listening. No word I wrote broke the promise I made when I told you it was going to be miserable, full of gallows-humour, and I wouldn't be leaving you with a glimmer of hope, but underneath I had other things in mind. I didn't know I was going to finish it with a Pandora's Box reference until I'd written the final word, and my finger was hovering over the bottom right-hand corner of my keyboard. In that pause, a number of ideas connected, I saw what I was about to do, and in an action which was more Muninn than Huginn, I hit backspace four times, rewrote that word with a capital-S, and my ring-finger moved up a row to end it with a semi-colon. 

I looked at the bottom of the page and breathed out "Oh Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck..."

Tab-switching back to my private music streaming server, it tells me I've listened to Midwest Indigo by Twenty One Pilots 212 times. 
Jailbreak by Enter Shikari says 166. 
Bull us up to 39, although by the time I'm done editing this all of those numbers will be larger. 

But that's a story I'll Continue another day; there's no point being a prisoner to the past, or letting The Room in your mind be a prison cell. 

Jailbreak just ticked over to 167; don't repeat these words after me, let's sing it Together...  

JAILBREAK! JAILBREAK! 

Trailer #2: It's not you (I'm giving up on), it's me...

Backing track: Enter Shikari - Jailbreak 

 "You know with how with most of these I don't really tell you what's actually going on, but you can get a pretty good idea what I'm going thru...?" 
"That sounds pretty accurate."
"... and mostly it's pretty miserable, and full of gallows-humour, but I'll almost always throw in a glimmer of hope?"
"Not so sure about that last one," Boldilocks demurred after a brief pause. 
"Y'know, stuff like 'I keep reminding myself', or 'I keep fixing it in my head', that sort of thing." 
"Oh, yeah, I get you. Yeah, that tracks." 
"Right. 

Well this ain't that kind of movie." 

Trailer #1: It's not you (I'm giving up on), it's me...

Backing track: Twenty One Pilots - Midwest Indigo

 "OK, so on a scale of 1 to "oof" how do you rate this bit?"
"Geez..." Bolidlocks calculated, "about a 7 or an 8. Yeah, an 8."
"Yeah? Huh, alright, what about this one?" 
"About a 5 or a 6."
"Really? Odd. When Ian sent me thru his review-notes that was the one that he found worthy of note. They're both gut-punch moments, but what was it about the earlier one that landed for you?"
"See, you've always been someone I've had a great deal of respect for, even admired..."
"OK, so first thing: thank you. 
"And second thing: Thank You. 
"But third: so when you read the 'in failure what the fuck worth have I?' bit..."
"Yeah."
"Shit man, that must have really hit you where you live."
"Yeah." 

"Shit.
"Yeah, OK.

"Fuck."