Remembrance Day...

Spiritual accompaniment: Twenty One Pilots - Backslide

 A year-and-change ago Bridget was familiarising herself with my blog, and I expressed to her the idea I'd had around taking the Deadman post I'd written many months before and re-writing it from the perspective of how "nice [it was] to wake up and throw my arm over someone who nuzzled me back." 

I'd made a start on it, but not got very far, when the year ended and I got distracted. 

Then along came Xmas morning, and I found myself receiving a thoughtful gift wrapped in seven layers of paper, in the middle of which was an envelope, wherein I found a card, enfolded within was a letter. 

I have something of a history when it comes to gifts, which is to say:
I'm shit at them, and I'm almost as shit at receiving them.
Bridget had been paying attention tho, and when I told her about how Kandace would buy me a gift year-on-year, each more personally apropos than the last, and every year I would accept them with visibly-demonstrated gratitude before proceeding to unwrap them with careful consideration so as to tear the wrapping as little as possible, then fold it neatly along the lines and hand it back to her so it could be re-used with a reverence reserved for the shucked-shell of the most holey, she'd been listening. 

She was good at picking gifts for me, too. If there's someone who can nail the gap between "something you didn't realise you wanted" and "but wouldn't buy for yourself", it's Kandace. 

So whenever she expressed that unique gift she has in my direction I endeavoured to return it in kind, by way of "delayed gratification" and take my time opening them to ensure she enjoyed the ride. Each year she'd stand there patiently with her trademark grin lighting up her face until the package was unwrapped, and I'd hand her back a neatly-folded piece of wrapping paper. 

I'd proceed to loudly appreciating the thing she'd given me, and she'd proceed to scrunching the paper into a ball and throwing it offhandedly, but with unerring accuracy, into the recycling bin. 

Coming to the envelope in the middle-layer of alternating-coloured paper, I stopped to read the card, and then the letter I found inside it. Seeing a YouTube link, I made her wait whilst I went and grabbed my laptop and laboriously typed in the URL so I could play it whilst reading, then made her wait some more until I finished listening to it before resuming the un-wrappening. 

Just like with Kandace I reserved my response until the end, because a gift is a singular thing regardless of how many moving parts are therein comprised. Just like one's initial reaction can only presented in that one singular moment; that gift of our time which we call "the present". 

If memory serves, I smiled and kissed her, but that memory is as fuzzy as it is rose-tinted. 

The gift still sits on the buffet next to my CD collection, and the paper was used to wrap another gift 12 months later, which took considerably longer to unwrap neatly. The kiss lingers in echoes, but that's another story entirely. The letter, on the other hand... 

After reading it I gave up on the piece I'd started writing and deleted it; I've done enough rounds in the ring to know when I've been beat, and by then I'd lost too much pride not to admit the bell had rung and it was time to throw in the towel. What I'd just read may have owed a debt to ChatGPT but it said what I'd wanted to say, from a better perspective, better than I was going to... so why waste the effort when I had a better version in my hand? 

I say that because, with her permission, I posted it verbatim just before I started writing this introduction, back-dated to the moment I received it because for all that the future in the moment I first read that letter was a mystery, and the year-and-change since are now history, I still treasure the memory of reading those words for the first time like the gift they continue to be in my present...  

... which you can find here: Bridget's Guest Post: Resurrection + bridge = Happiness?

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." 

Spaceballs... I mean Phase Shifting: The T-Shirt...

 A couple of years ago I made some art, and turned it into a blog post. 
Yesterday I took a blog post, and turned it into art. 

Sorta. 

I could weave a story about receiving a promotion code from Sticker Mule, who I use for my stickers, for a cheap custom t-shirt, thinking it would be funny to make the hypothetical shirt I mentioned in the last post into something real, sitting around with my laptop fiddling with clipart in Publisher, then enlisting Bridget's help to generate vector-images which would scale nicely but that would be... wait, no, there it is. 

That's the story. 

This, on the other hand, is the mockup: 

Beyond the references to the Looking back/out/forward... post there are a bunch of my usual tropes baked in as "easter eggs" - 3's, cycles, 42, and so on; those little things which amuse me. Plus, for AUD$14 (including GST and delivery) I can now say "my blog has merch," which I can't help but find sublimely ridiculous, because I have zero interest in selling any. 

Here's the high-resolution design for your pleasure and/or derision: 

Rituals...

Backing track: Marshmello - Alone 

 When I flew in to Perth in June, Ricky picked me up from the airport late in the evening and ran me out to my mother's house, then hung around for an hour or so before leaving me to get far-too-little sleep.
When I left, Ian picked me up after work and we went to The Kewdale Tavern for dinner before he dropped me off for my redeye-horror flight back. 
The next morning, after transiting through Melbourne, Bridget picked me up bleary-eyed on her way to work and took me home, where I collapsed into bed and slept for most of the day. 

When I flew into Perth a fortnight ago, Ricky picked me up from the airport and drove us out to Alfred's Kitchen to get a late-night feed and hang around the fire for an hour or so before running me out to my mother's house to sleep far-too-little.
On my way back, Ian came out to pick me up after work, and took me to The Kewdale Tavern for dinner before dropping me off for my cushy Business Class redeye flight out.
I was just as bleary-eyed when Bridget picked me up to take me home, then worked from my desk for the rest of the day when I crashed out in my own bed and slept through the day. 

The first two times I went back to Perth after Leaving For Good, I wrote trilogies of blog posts about my sense of dysphoria as I went; one on the flight over, one whilst there, the last on the flight back.
This time I seem to have managed to leave that dysphoria behind, so I talked about that, and the Joy Of Work instead, and when I settled into my extravagantly-comfortable paid-for-with-Points fully-reclining seat I realised there was nothing I felt the need to say, so enjoyed a glass of Chivas Regal while I read my book then found some sleep, and let the third trilogy end at two parts. 

Backing track: Pendulum - Not Alone (Calvin Harris cover) 

I can't help but notice patterns, and I'm instinctively inclined towards building seamless systems that work smoothly. I might walk a path that's chaotic, but I have routines which ensure that every time I walk out the door I'm prepared, with all of my tools exactly where I expect to find them when the next wave hits; book-ending the chaos with order helps me stay in control, and means I never leave my phone charger in the hotel room when I check out. 

My mission over the last few months has been to break the patterns I've found myself trapped in so that I can walk a new, different path, without leaving Beckett waterlogged and glowering at me from the gutter where I emptied my bath of self-pity. Mostly, I seem to be succeeding. 

"I enjoyed your last post," Ian told me over Beef Brisket Rendang and Chicken Korma, "it's a departure from your recent milieu, but the character is still recognisably 'you'. 'A day in the life' is an established literary mode and you do it well. How you banged that out while travelling and staving off sleep deprivation is impressive." 

I might be making an effort to reinvent and resurrect, but I *am* still Me; Me with my penchant for three's, and my cyclical narrative-style. Breaking the cycle of misery and cutting out the things that make you miserable doesn't necessarily mean making wholesale changes like throwing out the bathwater, and your furbaby along with it. It can be as simple as changing your approach in smol ways, like limiting your lists to two things instead of three, and using fewer semi-colons.

You can, and should, take a knife to anything that stands between you and where you need to be; yesterday's Sacred Cow is today's graven image.

You can, and should, hold on to the rituals you take comfort from when you kick yourself out your Comfort(ably Numb)-zone; we may have put down childish things when we became a 'man', but we still observe the Sabbath and keep it holy. 

The space you carve out between the two can become room for a New Covenant you make with yourself to be a You that's better, maybe even one that's more whole. 

No matter what tho, always leave room for another Special at your Favourite Burger Joint On The Planet, or this week's Brisket Special at the Conveniently Out-of-the-way Gastropub, so that when the opportunity arises you can enjoy them with your sweetest friends, who'll love you no matter what you become. 

The Thing I Do For A Living...

 Backing track: flor - Slow Motion

It's still dark outside when I roll over on Thursday morning and check my phone to find out it's 4:17AM. I've been asleep for three and a half hours, and I don't need to be up for at least two more, so after a quick bladder-drain I roll back into the unfamiliar bed I just woke up in to see if I can find them. Just like my cat in similar situations they seem to have slipped into the gloom with no intention of being found, but a short while later I hear my mother going about her morning routine in the kitchen, so I get up to say hello. Ricky picked me up from the airport when I landed just before Mother Dear's bedtime last night, so she was asleep and the house still when I crept in silently and sent myself to bed after a late dinner at Alfred's Kitchen. My maternal obligation discharged, she takes herself off to the "food rescue" charity where she volunteers a couple of times a week, and I shake myself to the shower to sluice off the film of fatigue I brought back from dreamland, pull on my corporate uniform, and sit down with my laptop and a coffee to prep for the day. 

I've a full schedule ahead of me; Andrew the Shipwright booked at least the first half of my day the moment he knew I'd be in town, and there's easily three more hours I need to spend at Marine#2. I check my email, and the tracking on the hardware shipment which I need to arrive in Mandurah by Monday to find it's expected today, so Marine#4 receive an "everything's falling into place" email to read over their tea and toast. Correspondence clear, I stow my laptop alongside the backup I carry everywhere when I'm on a work trip, check that my tools are in their relevant pockets, shoulder my backpack, push flor through my earphones, and hit the street. Mother Dear needs her car today, and Bibra Lake is not what you'd call "easily accessible from here" by public transport, so the company credit card will be taking a couple of Uber-sized hits today. That coffee barely scratched the surface of my sleep deprivation and I'm going to need caffeine today like a bee-sting victim needs epinephrine because caffeine is life, so I head towards the nearby servo. I could get the Uber-driver to stop enroute, but it's barely 6:31AM and there's no point arriving much before 8:00AM, so I might as well walk. 

The air has a cool crispness as I hi-ho, hi-ho my way north through Lathlain, and we both seem oddly cheerful. By the time I walk through the doors of the BP on Archer St I've received an affable nod from the lantern-jawed jogger with a distinctly military bearing I pass on Goddard St, a smile from the middle-aged anglo lady walking a pair of excitable pitbulls on Custance St when I go wide to stay outside their leash-radius, which is almost as embarrassed as the grinning indigenous driver's teeth are white when he waves me past after I go to give way to him just before Roberts Rd. 

By 7:47AM I'm climbing out of a Mazda CX-50 after a pleasant chat with my Nepalese driver and a smooth run down Leach Hwy just in time to catch Andrew the Shipwright pulling up on his pushbike. I reach into my backpack, crack open the first of my cache of glistening energy drinks, follow him inside, and get to work. 

First order of business is a restructure of Marine#1's Sharepoint Document Library. I've been gently nagging them for months to separate the more sensitive documents out of the "all access" library and into the Management Team location I set up with more appropriate RBAC's, and it's finally become a priority to them. A week ago I received an email from Andrew at 6:56PM his time, and I called him straight away. 

"You need this looked at now, or tee'ing it up for when I'm in town next week?" 
"God no. What is it, 9 o'clock over there? Just getting it on your radar." 
"10. Daylight Savings kicked in on the weekend." 
"Fucking hell, you're worse than I am..." 

I checked the Dynamic Groups and metadata filters before I flew out, so all it takes is triggering a Sync on Andrew the Shipwright's desktop, and showing him how to do a back-end Move in his browser. I'll set up an auto-sync Policy in Intune in a few days once I'm sure he's not going to rearrange again, but I like to run checks and maintenance on the PC fleet by hand every once in a while because it gives me the opportunity to check in with the staff, so I go desk-to-desk. I find that a lot of feedback and niggles they wouldn't ordinarily think to mention fall out when I take over their machine to give it a shake-down and get them chatting. It might sound inefficient for a half-hour task to take two, but in that time I've sorted out an audio driver problem, found a misconfiguration causing people's Word and Excel to save in ODF instead of the standard XML format, fixed the Bookkeeper's printer connection and shown her how to cache her Remote Access login, cut the Service Manager over from Remote Desktop to the more streamlined RemoteApp experience, and discovered two more members of the Management Team than we'd thought there were at 8:26AM. 

I cruise back to the Bossman's office and debrief him whilst I check over the old PC that used to run the camera control software for his timelapse solution, declare that 12 years is long enough to keep a Lenovo SFF with 8GB of RAM and a 2nd Gen Intel Core i5 CPU in service, and strip the hard disk out for separate disposal to the rest of the machine. I prefer Dell equipment for their warranty, build-quality, and overall value, but I'll be the first to agree that Lenovo build their kit as robust as Russians build assault rifles. This was a good use for a machine that had got too slow for production work, and while a Raspberry Pi could have done it just as well he didn't have one of those lying around. It's spent at least the last 6 years of its longer-than-average service life connected to a USB-to-Ethernet adapter, the pair to which was plugged into an old Canon EOS 1300D DSLR he'd mounted to a bracket overlooking the workshop which pumps out 25 twin-engine catamarans a year. The software running on the PC triggered the camera to take a photo twice a day, 5 days a week, saving it into a folder sync'd to its own Sharepoint Library that he shares with clients so they can watch their half-million dollar boats being built in real-time. At the end of the build those photos get rolled into a minute-long video, burned to a DVD with the stills, the media archived, and the process starts all over again. When I was here back in June I put my head together with the guys who manage Marine#1's security system, and set up a PoC using one of those cameras instead. There are a lot of benefits to using a security camera for this; weatherproofing copes with the the paint, resin, and solvent fumes much better than the delicate seals in a DSLR, and the polymer dust from sanding back the hull gets into everything. The workshop has a set of industrial-strength extraction fans at the rear, and they've sealed every gap with caulk to keep the entire two-story space at negative-pressure, preventing it from becoming a toxic OHS nightmare. The door to the break-room is chocked open so they can come and go, and the constant breeze flowing through it keeps dust from getting into everyone's toasties. Andrew's a remarkably clever guy, and it shows in situations like this. Even so, that old Canon was caked with white dust, and the lens constantly needed cleaning. It also needed separate power, plus the software was flakier than a fish & chip shop's specials and needed a regular kick to keep running. Security cameras are designed to take a pounding, and with PoE they only need one cable to run. A couple of months ago the security guys fitted a Pan-Tilt-Zoom model, and I wrote a script to make it point to different parts of the workshop in sequence, capturing a still at each, so now there are five timelapse sets being generated each day rather than one. It's been running without a hitch ever since, the DSLR is sitting on a shelf behind the infamous laser-cutter, and the time has finally come for the old Lenovo to go to its ultimate reward in Silicon Heaven where all the calculators go, and the iron shall lie down with the lamp. 

The SFF chassis becomes a riser for the App Server to get it off the floor, and I hand the mechanical 500GB SATA drive over to the Field Mechanics so they can give it a viking funeral. 

I'm rolling the cables up to throw in the spares cupboard at 11:34AM when Andrew the Shipwright's new iPhone 16 Pro lands on the desk I'm sitting under along with his old 14; he needed a handset for a new hire, but why should the FNG get the new hotness when the Bossman's still sporting a two-generation old model? The automated Intune deployment I built a while back didn't quite accommodate some of his customisations, and he was getting a login loop in Authenticator. I'd finished wiping, reprovisioning, and reconfig'ing the 14 by the time I worked out Authenticator on the 16 Pro was trying to retrieve the now-deleted auth token from the 14, and I need to hop into his Entra account to remove the surplus Authentication Method; I'm a little ashamed with myself for how long it took to work out, but by this point I've been on the job longer than I slept last night and it hadn't quite ticked over midday. 

I've handed the Bossman his phone back and set the new mechanic's one on the charge when my own phone rings, so I step out for a break and have a chat with the pimp I've been dealing with lately. I put in an application for a chunky-looking role a few weeks ago; one of the larger federal departments looking for an ITSM Transformation Manager to review and rebuild their IT Service Delivery structure and practice from the inside-out. She tells me they'd pulled it from BuyICT, which is why I've not heard anything since, and have just put it back up again with small changes to the requirements. The response I wrote up previously is still applicable so at least won't need a redo, but she suggests we shave $5/hour off my original asking rate before resubmitting to keep things competitive. That's still $15/hour more than the base-rate I quote for gig-work, and this is a multi-year full-time contract, so I rubber-stamp it and kept moving. 

On the way back up I stop by the comm's rack to pull the hard drive out of the Unifi Dream Machine Pro SE; I'd run a parallel PoC for the timelapse solution using an old Unifi Protect camera I had lying around, but as nice as the apps and management options are it's not a use-case which Unifi developed it for, so it hadn't been effective. I'd disabled the service and purged the drive earlier in the morning and prefer not to leave loose-ends, so I pull my screwdriver out to gank the 500GB SSD for re-use elsewhere. While I'm pottering around in the rack tidying up a few errant cables and checking the stock of spares I have stashed the mechanics are cruising through to grab their lunch, and I receive a steady stream of "how you doin' Pete?" and "heeeey, you're back!" as they go by. Spending a solid week and a half in and amongst them in June made me a familiar face, and they like me because the shit I build makes their lives a LOT easier, I always ask before borrowing tools, and put them back where I found them. Just as I'm finishing up Lukey comes by to ask for advice on recovering space on his home computer; it sounds like the main drive is full of old iTunes cache and backups, so I tell him how to move that all to the secondary disk, and make sure he has my email address in case that's not enough. He leaves with a grin, I close the rack back up, and head back upstairs at 12:29PM. 

I've just sat down to check some emails, and I'm half-way through letting Marine#4 know that the delivery has arrived at the workshop next to theirs when The Fucking EFTPOS Tech finally shows his face. They've been out to install the new payment terminal twice already, for an hour or more each time, without managing to get their shit in one sock; I'd dealt with two different gormless muppets over the phone, and had to talk the Parts Manager through getting his desktop back up and running when the last one broke his network settings on his way out the door, knocking him offline. They called to schedule the third-time's-a-charm appointment the day after I'd let Andrew know I was coming, so he set it up for the day he knew I'd be paying him a visit. I've been waiting all day for this, oh yes, so I snap my laptop closed, leave it on the charge, put on my best devilish grin, and apparate downstairs in a puff of brimstone to play Deeply Scary Technomage. 

I've just finished sending that email to Marine#4 at 1:07PM when Andrew steps back into his mezzanine office. 

"Oh, there you are. I thought the EFTPOS guy was showing up?" 
"Yep. Been, gone." 
"That was quick. Took him an hour to give up last time. What went wrong?"
"Nothing. It's in. Working, sorted." 
"..." 
"Wanna guess how long it took?" 
"... go on," he replied, a predatory grin touching the corner of his mouth. 
"10 minutes." 
"Nah, really? What'd you do!?" 
"Got him to plug it in, install his software, and growled at him whenever he tried to change anything else. Worked first time." 
"You gotta be kidding me..." 
"Yeah, if they'd just done what they were told the first time you'd have had it up and running weeks ago. They have a bullshit SOP they're made to follow, but they're still a pack of fucking clowns. 
"Oh, and I had to re-cable the damn thing afterwards. He left the power cord dangling right next to the network cable the Service Manager's doggo chewed on, so I bound it up with the rest. Pulled that out while I was at it," I say, pointing to the spool of frayed Cat-6 on the desk next to me. 
"Well we all know you're good at cleaning up after clowns, but what a three-ring shitshow. Thank fuck you were here, hey? I knew you'd sort it out."
"Hey man, it's what I do..." 

Backing track: The Presets - Promises

I still have a pile of odds and ends to do when I say my goodbyes and head over to Marine#2, but it's all mop-up and improvements I can do remotely so I load my backpack up and hit the road at 2:46PM. It's about a 15min walk, so decided to save $10 and take the opportunity to check in on Bridget who, with the 3 hour time difference now daylight savings has kicked in, should be home from work by now. It was forecast to hit 28 degrees in Perth today. Even with my hat on my nose picks up a rosy glow form the sun, and when I walk through the double-door into Marine#2's showroom at 3:02PM my feet and head are heavy with weariness, and I've worked up a sweat. 

I took these guys on four and a half years ago now. I'd been engaged by Marine#1 six-or-12 months earlier to migrate them from the cut-down implementation of Microsoft 365 which Crazy Domains peddles to people who don't know any better over to the real deal, with all the bells and whistles. A while later when Luke and Chris were complaining to Andrew about Krusty The Clown, their current IT Support, he told them, or so I heard from Chris some time later, "there's this guy Pete... he'll confuse the shit out of you, but he's real' fucking good. He'll get you sorted out." 

They sent me an email a couple of days later, I booked in a time to pay them a visit, and proceeded to spend most of the next year rebuilding their entire IT system from the ground up. Ever since I've come and gone like I'm one of team because for all intents and purposes I am, only on an at-call basis. It's been the same over at Marine#1, then Marine#3, and the way things are shaping up by the end of next week that will include Marine#4 as well. I've grown hugely fond of my salt-of-the-earth "boat folk" and their no-bullshit attitude. They just want their shit to work, aren't afraid to adjust if there's a better way to do things, and are happy to pay reasonably to make it happen. Over the years I've learned to flow in and around them like water, eroding the rough edges that used to get in their way. 

I've barely walked through the door when I'm marching back out of it again with the key to their PO Box in my hand, because AusPost decided that near enough was good enough, and left the RAM I'd ordered for them there instead of taking it all the way to the end. The first time I walked in those doors whilst on the clock I spent an afternoon going over the kit they were working with to see just how bad it could be, and it was pretty fucking bad. Krusty The Clown had a seriously dated concept for setting up an effective user environment; the under-spec'd Intel NUC's he'd sold them might have been OK if the Remote Desktop he was hosting had been decently resourced, wasn't piped down a VPN, then squeezed through an internet connection which was the digital equivalent of two rusty cans and a wet piece of string. There were more bottlenecks in his setup than the recycling bin after an undergrad end-of-semester party. I sat Luke and Chris down and laid out a plan to get some decent hardware on their desks, their email and file-sharing shifted to Microsoft 365, and a streamlined version of their Application Server migrated to some hardware we'd host onsite, staged out over the following year to make it easier to budget. We ordered a mix of laptops and desktops, enough to replace half their fleet, but with the prices of hardware at the peak of covid more inflated than a party clown's trousers I ordered them with smaller batteries and less RAM than I would have liked with a view to upgrading them in a year or two when things were cheaper. It turned out to be a solid play because they've run just fine, for much longer than I'd expected, and what would have cost an extra $200/unit in 2020 wound up coming to just over $100 for all three in 2024. 

Back in the showroom surrounded by Garmin sonars and Yamaha outboards, I go to fill up my water bottle only to find it's not in my backpack. I give Andrew a quick call and confirm that I have indeed left the stainless steel keepsake from my last ever dive trip on the desk I'd been using in his office. It's 3:38PM, I've at least two hours of work to do at Marine#2, and he's going the wrong way after he knocks off to drop past, so I'm going to have to come back another day. It's just a water bottle, but it's the only memento I took away from that trip that wasn't bad memories. I'm swearing at myself as I get on with popping the baseplates off and slotting the extra memory modules into the space I'd made sure would be ready to accept them when I designed these builds 50 months ago, clear the BIOS warning saying that the amount of memory has changed, run hardware checks, Disk Cleanup, driver and Windows updates, and hand them back to their users one-by-one. I've just started on the third-and-final when the Marine#1 Parts Manager comes through the door waving my Big Blue Dive Khao Lak flask overhead; Andrew wasn't going this way, but it turns out the Parts Manager was. 

"Marine#1 will be getting some freebies on their next hardware order," I tell myself. 
To the Parts Manager I say, "Thank you fucking legend!" 

The last thing on my run-sheet is a meeting with Luke, but he's in full-steam sales-pitch with a couple of customers weighing up engine options for the custom cruiser they're having built down the road. I squeeze in a check of the air filters on the server and comm's rack, both of which are clean, then settle in checking over a PC nearby where I can listen in. I've never had the chance to watch the man work, and it's fascinating. People browsing trailer-boats and accessories are all about the lifestyle; the tradies and professionals know what they want, so they're in and out, if they bother coming in at all. The sales patter switches between power-to-displacement ratios, the best moorings off Rottnest, digital-vs-analog autopilot profiles, and what fish are biting this month, delivered with a smooth professionally-approachable tone. The only way that man could have been more in his element would have needed us to be a couple of nautical miles west of Port Coogee Marina with his face full of spray blowing off the afternoon swell. Sadly I have a VOIP system to sell him, so our feet need to stay dry. 

He ushers his customers out the door at 5:00PM on the dot with the lure of freshly caught dhufish and maori wrasse dangling in front of them, and sits down to talk price and feature comparisons between the lacklustre system he's been receiving woeful support on and the locally-owned alternative I Partnered with a couple of years ago. Irritatingly, whilst the one he's got might be average, it's not SO BAD he can ignore the cost, and as feature-rich as my Partner's product is it's also 20% more expensive. It's a good conversation; I like being kept on my toes, although by 5:48PM I'm less "float like a butterfly" than "sink like an anchor". I plead exhaustion, a need to check bundling options, and promise to go haggle some more with the vendor. By 6:04PM I'm on the footpath out front helping lock up the gates whilst on the phone with my contact Enrico, who also happens to be their CEO. It's another 34min before I have a bundle to quote, clear my other missed calls, and finally hail an Uber to get me out of Bibra Lake where the light is fading and I'm increasingly being swarmed by flying ants. 

I have a pleasant ride in the back of the Mitsubishi Outlander, and an equally pleasant chat with its driver on my way to Bull Creek where I've completely misremembered the number of Binky's house. I've been visiting her there on-and-off for over half my life, and it's been 25 years since I had to know it, which is coincidentally the number of minutes the ride lasts. I knock on her door to find it unlocked and ajar so I let myself in at 7:14PM, landing next to my backpack on the floor of her living room with matching thuds. I take a moment to switch gears, say hello to her folks, pick myself back up, and load up to head out for dinner. 

We decide to go for steak, and both wind up getting the ribs special instead, but that's fine; it would be pretty boring if things always went according to plan. 

It's 11:17PM when I climb out of Binky's Infiniti Q60 in front of Mother Dear's house and walk down the long driveway with my silhouette cast in its headlights. I have 9.5 billable hours' worth of notes to write up and invoice, 3 unread emails which hit my inbox during dinner, and 2 quotes to do- or re-up, but none of that is getting done tonight. I've no site-work booked for Friday, so those are all problems for Future-Pete. Tomorrow's work will be completely different from today's, just like today bore absolutely no resemblance to yesterday, which is exactly how I like it. When I tell people with regular jobs, who go to work each day and do the same thing again and again, about what I do for a living they look at me like I'm mad, but the Andrews, Lukes, and Enricos, the Petes, Occam's Canadian Amys, and Sandras, anyone who's picked their own ball up to see how far they can run, they get it: 

When you love what you do for a living, you'll never work a day in your life. 
And if we didn't love what we do, we'd all go do something else. 
Because we could do that if we wanted, but we don't so we do this instead. 

The house is dark and still when I roll over to put my Kobo down and pick up my phone to set an alarm, and see it's 1:05AM. Friday has already started; the first problem to tackle today is going to be getting some sleep. 

Vapour trails...

 I've developed what I can't think of a better word for than a habit, it seems. There's a case to be made for suggesting that if "once is happenstance," "twice is coincidence," and "three times is enemy action," I could try framing my sense of unease around that, but I'm not feeling particularly combative, let alone under-fire, so that isn't sitting comfortably with me any more than I (or the fidgety young man sitting next to me) seem to be able to get comfortable in the chair I'll be sitting in for the next three-and-a-half hours. 

I'm on my way to Perth again, and we all know what that means... 

Perth music: Bend The Sky - Navigator

This is my third trip back in slightly less than a year, and by this point in the 7ish-hour "Canberra -> Somewhere -> The Most Isolated Regional Capital In The World" route I've been had to resort to using because Australia can't seem to grok the concept of "healthy competition in the airline market" is where I find I'm struggling to focus on whatever book I'm reading (The Conspiracy Against The Human Race by Thomas Ligotti, because I ran out of Culture novels and I very much owe it to Ian to read something he suggested and provide an asked-for opinion for a change), pull my laptop out, and give voice to the discomfort, dysphoria, and dread that place evokes in me. This flight I find myself staring at the screen of my laptop (as is the young man sitting to my right, I can see out of the corner of my eye. Don't use too many of the words you read here around your mum, kid. She'll thrash the fucking shit out of you, I swear) and... I got nothing. I'm scratching my head as to why, to be honest: 

Perhaps I've used up all of my wellspring of corrosive vitriol and smouldering rage? 
No, that can't be right; we might be cruising ~10km above the ground, but this is far from heaven. 
Could it be that after ~10,000 words of increasingly wanktastic self-paced catharsis my spleen is finally vented?
No way to prove or disprove that one, really; it's a scenario that's never been observed in nature.
Maybe I'm finally over hating on that ~100km-long skidmark of a town smeared along left-hand side of the map like a crusty old pair of y-fronts clinging to the arse-end of the country badly in need of a soak in sulfuric acid and ritual cremation, where the only redeemable examples of humanity dream desperately of getting out or, when precluded from doing so by fate or poor life-choices, conspire to lure me back... 

Ah Darkness, my old friend, there you are. Funny how when you lose something it always turns up in the last place you look, don't you find that? 

Sincerest apologies to Andrew the Shipwright tho; it's going to take more than a couple of new clients to entice me off my balcony for more than a week or two, but that doesn't mean I appreciate the effort any less, or that I'm suggesting he stop. 

I'd make a joke about how "better men than him have tried", but that would imply that there's an intersection of those two sets of people, and bearing in mind how vanishingly small the first group is the resulting venn diagram would be comically difficult to represent in any meaningfully proportionate way. Andrew the Shipwright didn't introduce me to the new client I picked up recently, who's new site spin-up was (only just) big enough a job to make it worth contributing to the world's carbon dioxide burden, but he DID recommend me to Marine#2, who in turn introduced me to Marine#3 and now #4;  unlike blame and effluent, thanks flow uphill. It's been quite a while since I landed a new client, in fact I've not added anyone regular to my invoice-cycle since quite a while before The Job That Brought Me Back To Canberra. Adding complement to amelioration, this one came to me on reputation; they saw what I'd done with Marine#2 and said "we'll have what they're having", so like a double entendre I'm going to give it to them. 

The west isn't my only prospect for amusement or a paycheck tho, thank fuck. I have what has every semblance of momentum building on the "fixing big problems for big money" front back home, and meetings booked for when I get back. I also have Bridget picking me up from the airport to look forward to, which is nice. No, we didn't get back together; why try to resurrect something it turns out was better off dead when you can climb aboard the bloated corpse, stick a pole with a sheet tied to it up its arse, and sail away on a wave of mutilation? Breaking up seems to be just what our relationship needed, so we're going with whatever-the-fuck-this-is because what the fuck even are labels anyway? 

Funny ol' language, English. On one hand we have words like "expiate" for a concept which seems more-than-adequately serviced in the lexicon. On the other we have this word "relationship" which we use to refer to interpersonal arrangements involving romance, lust, or (occasionally) love, but fundamentally describes any ongoing interaction between two or more people. It's all a bit confusing when you thi... 

Or maybe I'm just over-thinking something which is really, fiendishly, diabolically straight-forward; so remarkably and elegantly simple that we go and make it complicated because we can't see it without thinking "that can't be all there is to it, surely," so we miss what's right on front of us. I've been missing it myself until now, because I only just realised that both uses of the word "relationship" are actually the same, and all this time I've been using it right entirely by accident. 

How about that? 

But here I go getting all meta again. What can I say? It's a long flight, I get bored easily, and it amuses me, so don't expect an apology; I'd have thought that after all we've gone through together you'd have a pretty good understanding of who and what I am; what else did you think I use the meta for? 

Going nowhere fast...

 Musical accompaniment: Twenty One Pilots - Ride 

The gusting wind is making the 'busa rock against my outrigger-leg as we wait patiently for the lights to change, less like the rocking of a dinghy afloat a rolling swell than having very large man nodding along to a slow reggae groove whilst leaning against our right-hand fairing. The light changing from red to green sets in motion a choreographed set of movements with twenty one years of practice behind them; my right hand starts to squeeze just as the tension in our left starts to release, the outrigger pushes off, retracts, and stows itself away securely, then knees press into the tank to push our butt back to the rear-edge of the seat. Ready for take-off, there's a moment when we're sitting perfectly still on a pair of contact-patches no larger than a pair of outstretched palms, balanced on little more than intent, a prayer-given-wings, and the confidence that by the time physics stops being distracted by our sleight-of-hand acceleration and angular momentum will have kicked in. 

Two seconds later we're travelling at a speed that will see us a kilometre down the road a minute from now, my helmet is tucked behind the screen, and the buffeting is gone; with a drag coefficient resting half-way between a Porsche 911 Carrera and an Airbus A330, and a displacement an order of magnitude smaller than either, the 'busa doesn't cut through the wind like a hot knife through butter so much as slip past with a series of polite "excuse I", "don't mind me", and "thank you ever so kindly"s the rest of the way up Northbourne Ave. Leaning on the edge of the knife-edge of rubber on the left edge of the tyres we carve a line along the grippy tarmac between the slippery white lines of the pedestrian crossing onto Barton Hwy, straighten up again, turn our tail to the wind, and present it our posterior. 

Extroverting my introspection has provided me with a peculiar perspective over the past few weeks; just like someone standing in the Emergency Stopping Lane on Barton Hwy might have seen a horse-and-rider glide past in a blur of poetic motion and dopplering exhaust, had they launched a drone and set it to keep pace to starboard that same horse and his boy would have looked utterly motionless whilst the world slid past in a blur. Look at the footage closely tho, and you'll see that my feet are resting on the pegs whereas it's the wheels that are spinning. The 'busa is doing all the work; I'm just along for the ride. 

Another day, another dichotomy. 

The "Terminal Semicolon" series started as a random accident I precipitated, crossed with a random thought I had, influenced by a random episode of Red Dwarf I'd made Bridget watch so she'd get the reference I make to a joke I heard once but no one seems to remember any more. By the end I'd spent 8400 words of which only 10 were "fuck", laid two and thirty years of my historic self-hood bare, and catharted like a motherfucker. I didn't set out to pick up all the threads I'd left hanging from writing about "where I was" and weave them together to explain "what I was going through all that time" when I jotted down some notes one night about an accident caused by peripheral neuropathy borne of chronic illness any more than had I instead folded them into a thousand cranes and woken the next day to find out that the tornado created when they flapped their wings had flung an under-educated girl in an indigo-checked dress, and the house she lived in, from mid-west America on a Technicolor(TM) adventure, crushing Elon Musk to death in the process. 

Either way, when it was done I looked at the result and muttered "Oh Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck..." under my breath because I'd taken the last two years of chaos and turned them into something beautiful. I started the recently-ended phase of my life by saying "resurrection [...] is never gentle, let alone kind. You have to die before you can be reborn after all", and I keep saying that sometimes you need to destroy what's in the way so you can rebuild something better. "If you want a thing done well," Napoleon is credited as having said, "do it yourself." 

Especially when the only thing standing in your way is your self. 

I put more effort into creating It's not you (I'm giving up on), it's me... than I have into anything I've ever written; the Sandra biopic, the speech I wrote for her wedding, and Sunset & Twilight: Art made with Lasers & Maths are the only things which have come close, but all of those were ultimately for other people; this one I wrote to share, so you could see and (I hope) understand, but I didn't write it for you. I wanted to cook something of myself up, create and make-real something delightful out of a very harrowing time of my life which you could swallow, and digest, and take away with you, so that later when I'm pouring you a digestif with one hand and offering a bowl of antacids with the other, I can look you in the eye and know that you're seeing me. 

Or not. 

Maybe you'll just get reflux, make your excuses, and leave before dessert. 
Maybe you'll not show up in the first place, and I'll find myself dining alone with the void filling the chair you were supposed to be sitting in. 

(In the interest of civility, I think I'll call her "Jeremy"; that seems a cromulent name for a complete lack of substance.)

Maybe I'll get to enjoy the whole bottle of armagnac to myself (Jeremy said I could have hers; she has to drive), and eat leftovers for the rest of the week. 

Either way, I'm going to help myself to seconds. 

Backing track: Incubus - Drive 

I've been trying to reconcile the ridiculous number of things I seem to do in my day with the absolute lack of anything I seem to get done; after a while the expenses keep piling up and there's only so much you can sneak into your "Consulting Fees" and "Meeting Expenses" accounts before your accountant starts asking pointy questions because "Blackhearts & Sparrows" appears to be a bottle shop. I guess this is what you get for engaging an accountant who's good at her job, has a finely-tuned nose for bullshit, and shared a house with you back in your late-20's, but I digress. I feel like those pitiful plebs I keep seeing through the window of the gym on Lonsdale St running on treadmills when I'm walking to-and-from the local Coles with another backpack-full of the pre-packaged chemical energy I feed my failing meatsack to ensure it fails a little more slowly. I keep telling myself "at least when I put one foot in front of the other I'm a step further forward than I was before, so I'm better-off than those cunts," but it's a lie and I know it. If anything, they're more honest about it because whilst we're both going nowhere fast, at least they're not pretending; our pursuits might be equally pointless, but how much more authentic does it get than merging mouth with money, and paying for the privilege of proving it? 

I do know one thing they don't tho, because I know that what both of us are doing is futile, and the whole thing is fucking absurd. 

OK, that's two things, but who's counting? 

In the beginning, a less-hirsuite-than-average ape somewhere in what we now call Africa who'd never heard of pants looked up in wonder at the glorious firmament of the heavens above, and thought "What the fuck?" 
Some time later, another ape who'd realised that pants were a pretty solid concept looked outside themselves and thought "Why the fuck?" 
By the time pants were considered prosaic, a German ape with a Niet mousta-zsche looked down at the world around them and thought "What's the fucking point?" 
A hundred years later moustaches were out of vogue, pants had been around so long they'd started getting shorter, and a French ape who was born in Africa stood between another bunch of apes with a ball and the net they were trying to kick it into in a pair of shorts, looked inwards and Camus'd to the realisation that "... there isn't one. How fucking funny is that?" 

I used to identify as a Nihilist because in the cold, hard light of maths, there always seemed to be a divide-by-zero; it makes no difference no matter what you do. Everyone who won, and everyone who tried, and everyone who failed, and everyone who didn't, all wind up dead. Nothing we do matters, and everything we were and everything we did turns to dust in the end, so what the actual fuck is the point? Regardless, I kept moving because doing something has always felt a whole lot better than doing nothing, and given the alternative I've had nothing better to do. After a while I realised I'd been missing the punchline that whole time, because I keep forgetting that I'm terrible at maths. 

Our whole short lives we keep trying to square the circle that we know, no matter how sophisticated our calculated reasoning evolves, will always show up on the right-hand side of the ultimate equal-sign. We know, because we can prove it, but we keep trying because we need it to not be true, but that's because we've only been paying attention to the first half of the story. 

"In the setup [...] you tell a story and there's an assumption made by the listener, and what they'll find is that rug will be whipped out from under them and the assumption they made was erroneous, suddenly revealing a fact that was previously concealed, and they realise they've made a mistake."
- Jimmy Carr

I find it all existentially hilarious that we know it's pointless, but we keep trying to find a way to say it ain't so. It's all so fucking ridiculous, but that's the actual point because life is also sublime; 

It's all a fucking joke. 

So when I walk past with a wry smile on my face, it's not because I'm judging the lycra-clad ape in the window because whist paying a bunch of money to run on the spot is ludicrous, ultimately the only thing dividing us is a pane of glass and logically, if: 

I:\> $you = 0
I:\> $me = 0
I:\> $you -eq $me
True

I, riding the superposition of these perspectives, have been doing my best not to look to windward because the gusts are coming from behind me, the hurdles I might trip over are in front, and I'm trying to get my feet back where they belong between my face and the pavement. 

Besides, Phlebas is dead, and beyond caring. 

Ian...

Musical introduction: dan le sac vs Scroobius Pip - Stunner

"OK, look. 
"'You're good at this 'empathy' shit, right?
"So I want you to put yourself in the position of this guy I know."

"Alright."

"He's been dumped out of the blue, he's trying to be a good guy about it.
"He knows she's got her own shit going on, but so does he. 
"He's feeling lost, he's feeling alone. 
"He's trying to be noble, but this is hurting. 
"What would you say... 
"Fucking... 
"Can you please for fuck's sake let yourself be angry and stop trying to take care of everyone around you?" 

"I appreciate what you're trying to say and I'll absolutely take that on-board because there's a ring of truth to it and I'll certainly consider applying self-care but..."

"FUCKING MOTHERFUCKER FUCKING FUCK!" I growled, waving both middle-fingers at my webcam. 

Because no matter how much I might try to apply ethical frameworks to the world around me, Ian is the best of all of us; if you ever want to know what hill I will willingly die on tomorrow, look to windward and see where Ian is standing now. 

Because no matter how sick I am of how that guy always makes me look bad by comparison, I hope he never stops. 

Where for most people I have anecdotes to illustrate a narrative, for Ian I have only sentiment.
Where for most people I use allegory to illuminate, Ian has always been luminary.
Where for most people I try to set an example by which to lead, Ian is someone I try to exemplify so that one day he may lead us all. 

Hoobastank - Born To Lead

Not that he ever would, because whilst he'd appreciate the sentiment he'd assure you that there are other luminaries who can bring a more expansive skill-set to bear on that particular requirement and, as flattered as he is to be considered, he's comfortable engaging in a supporting role and would hate to tread on the toes of others who... 

would walk the fuck over him because their hubris was greater than his humility.  

But if there was anyone's army I'd volunteer to lead simply because I know he'd never ask, it would be Ian's. 

The story of how Ian and my lives intersected is as annoying to attempt to retell as it is to remember; we met at a party, and the rest is a history which I'm long past caring about. Regardless, I owe a debt of gratitude to Jenna for the part she played in bringing us together. Sifting my memory, a better one works its way to the surface: 

Back in October last year, Ian pinged me randomly with a link to the Good Things Festival saying, "BTW, this festival is on in Sydney the day after my conference. I suppose I may as well." 
"Hook me up, I'll meet you there. 
"I said that BEFORE I looked down and saw Enter Shikari, Hanabie... JEBEDIAH???
"DAFUQWAT?"
"Leave it with me," he replied, stealing one of my favourite lines. 
"FUCK YOU!
"Oh gods, I'm defensive. 
"How are you better at my catch-phrases than I am? So naturally?" 

He chose, wisely, not to respond, but a couple of days later a ticket landed offhandedly in my inbox by way of reply. 

After PayID'ing him, we caught up in Perth a couple of weeks later (see #perthistential crisis), and when I got back to Canberra I booked seats on the Murray's service to-and-from Sydney, as well as a place to stay so I wouldn't have to try driving there and back the same day. Then, in early December I headed up and managed to catch the tail-end of Enter Shikari, then all of Hanabie, at one end of the event before meeting him up during Sepultura at the other. As I made my way over I happened to be passing the main stage where Slowly Slowly were playing their one song I knew, a cover of a Blink 182 song I've always felt sentimental for, so I stopped and listened; leaning against the fence around a lighting rig with a stupid grin lighting up my face, it was a perfect fucking moment. 

Shortly afterwards I was sitting under the shade of one of the few trees inside the perimeter at Centennial Park, listening to Corey Taylor belt out Before I Forget, filling my sweetest friend in on the fascinating Redheaded Distraction (aka Bridget) I'd met shortly after I saw him last: 

Storytime continued as we shifted back to the left to fulfil my teenage dream of seeing Jebediah live, interrupted whenever "18-year old Pete" had a happy. 

It was a fucking sweet day out, so good even having to evacuate three songs into Fallout Boy's headline performance thanks to an incoming thunderstorm, whilst lightning cracked overhead, and getting drenched to the bone during the downpour which followed couldn't dampen my fondness; but it was nowhere near as sweet as the sorrow I felt saying goodnight later at Sydney Central Station. 

Loyalty can't exist without trust.
Trust can be earned or broken, never bought or sold; somehow I, wherefore I know not, came to find myself in possession of Ian's.
How could I not repay that non-performatively, and in kind, when undeserving as I might be he has been nothing but? 

Rare indeed are people whom I consider a peer, let alone an equal; Ian is one of the rarest kind, who'll ask "How the fuck are you, man?" before I can. 

Where most Aussie Blokes sling shit at each other as a sign of affection, we sling compliments. 
Where most men joust with their phallus, we join the dots with our pens.  
Where most would pontificate, Ian's a man who's sentiment is all-but-silent but speaks Louder Than Words. 

 - 06/01/2024, 00:52

Bridget's Guest Post: Resurrection + bridge = Happiness?

Musical accompaniment: Happiness: We're all in this together

Motherfucking... 

I sit at my desk at a client-site and find myself enthralled in some jargon-laden text from a document I've been thrown to translate into mortal comprehensibility so that "anyone" could read it when a looming presence at the edge of my vision is gesticulating the desire to be seen. I swivel, fingers still dancing across the keys, finishing the sentence that's dribbling out of my thoughts and smile to acknowledge that he’s got my eye. With the final clatter of keys, I strip off my headset, ready to plunge into the inevitable small talk. It's the usual dance of pleasantries that comprises some arrangement of the following: 

“What do you do? Who are you? I'm Peter. Hi.”

That initial exchange was brief, quickly fragmented by colleagues and the relentless routine of work. Yet, in the days that followed, our conversations meandered through shared interests and general banter. A business card, defiantly flouting WCAG standards, found its way into my hand, an artifact of our growing rapport, but secretly a way to give me his digits, drawing to a finale of "do you want to grab drinks/coffee sometime?"

3 days after that first “Hi,” and I'm spending the night outside, under a cafe table umbrella, rain drumming a chaotic symphony above. My curls fighting the straight form I fried them into whilst I try to decipher meaning from patchwork stories, heedful warnings and guarded disclaimers.  

It isn't the first time someone has caught my interest, but I know how to keep walking. I'm pretty sure that's what people are supposed to do?

As the evening draws to an end, he gets half-way through charting a course for a kiss when my hand shoots out, barricading the way. An impromptu checkpoint, halting the beat of feet along the path to my lips. I couldn't let him leave whilst I stood there frozen in nervous-lockdown. Nonetheless, seconds later I’m staring at the wet bitumen in front of my feet as I walk away and don't break my stride until I reach my car. 

"What the fucking fuck just happened," I think as, hands shaking, I drive home, pull in, get out, lock car and ride my autopilot-driven feet into my apprehensive- and sulking-dog-filled house, my hands empty my pockets, putting the contents into the dump-bowl. I reach the end of my newly-initiated runAway(); subroutine and I can't stop. Moving frantically to my room I get changed, hands shaking, heart pounding, seeking refuge under the covers, but my mind is in runaway mode, relentless, and sleep eludes me.

I am not OK, and few know that; I haven't been for 12 months, five years, eight years... Depending on which event becomes the reference point. 

In the eyes of phantom critics, this all may seem too hasty, a story accelerating ahead before the previous had ended. But those spectral naysayers don't truly exist beyond the confines of my thoughts. Adrenaline switched my head into the defiant state of alert, a stubborn 'screw you' to the idea of rest. My arms secured over my chest, fastening in my heart, curled in the fetal position, I seek an echo of security, a fragment of comfort. 

Trip Down Memory Fucking Lane welcomes you aboard flight FU23, a four and a half hour psychological, turbulent journey from the mirage of stability to the realisation of "fuck okay, that's actual trauma." We give zero shits whether you enjoy the trip, and your comfort is of no importance to our crew whatever. The in-flight entertainment will be your entire life and deepest secrets you kept even from yourself revealed to a psych who’ll provide no indication of how fucked up you really are. And Offer No Help. The meal service will commence shortly with overly salted 'healing' stew and followed by your choice of the bitterest coffee, or most traumatic tea. But until then, sit down, don't buckle up, you are in for a long trip and we don't care if you make it out safely. 

I didn't make it out safely, I still am dealing with the shockwaves from that conversation.

A week ago, I woke up in the way that was more "easing into the day with colours softly blending to create a sunrise on canvas" and less "I can't believe I have to face the horror of another fucking day". In my stirring, an arm rolls over my body pulling me closely to the heartbeat of its owner. 

You. 

Your rough fingers touch my skin and your embrace holds me as if I'm a rare and delicate treasure, with a gentle yet firm urgency, suggesting a deep fear of my slipping away, like a cherished keepsake that might vanish at any moment. Everything was alright, when you held me through the night, and I found myself thinking "isn't it nice to be held instead of clinging onto ghosts." 

Confronting my reflection, the moment of epiphany is palpable, no need for imagination. The last time I let my guard down, allowed my solitude and unreciprocated affections shift onto someone else, I paid a steep price. I had trusted and surrendered my body, only to be left with scars etched deep within my psyche. Now, as I ponder the possibility of setting aside the protective verses of the Psalm of Pete#23, there's a flicker of hope that history won't repeat itself. That this time, maybe, just maybe, I won't end up nursing fresh wounds in the seclusion of my mind. 

Nothing Lasts Forever, so should this even start? 

Finding oneself lost in the space between the familiar comfort of a dream once felt when last I felt truly safe, and the deep blue of my desire and love. In space no one can tread on your dreams. It's the friction of re-entry that burns, and only time will tell where my remains will fall. 

Is this what I get for wanting things? This life that's happened while I was busy making other plans? For things to be other than what they are, you have to give up the infinite possibilities of the deep, and allow yourself the chance to burn bright, knowing that every shooting star will inevitably burn out. But maybe this star will burn bright and long, and land with some remains of itself still intact?

Which is the way?

To experience life is to experience changes; I moved across the country only to find myself pursuing the dreams from a life before, but I insisted on running on the hedonic treadmill. Now I have a life, so it goes... 

I'm try’na wind back the clocks to before… to before I had all the things that I thought would fill up that hole, but the goal keeps receding.

Everything and everyone keeps receding, forever out of the reach of my arms. 

The thing is: I've been 'with' someone until recently, but I've been doing this life, my life, by myself, alone for some time. There's something about being close to someone who, really, remained kilometres away. It haunts you, that proximity interlaced with distance. 

Like the little conversations that happen when you *see* the same person; all the time spent on a patchworked background can't replace the connection missing from relaying stories through the impersonal screen of a handheld device. “Love is made more powerful by the ongoing drama of shared experience”. But without that shared journey, I'm just a temporary companion, hitching a ride in the middle of their story. I'm there neither for the beginning nor the end, our paths diverging before they even know where they are going. It's an incomplete experience, certainly one that wasn’t shared.

The casual comfort that comes with the certainty of seeing someone again soon. Outside of the occasional visits and a fading echo of love - a love that I watched drive away with a resigned ease - it's been ages since I've felt comfortable enough to let go without clinging. I don't know what it feels like to be okay with ‘goodbye’. 

Comfort being the operative word; that concept which defies my brain. My narrator says that either something is wrong, or something will go wrong, regardless of engineering, logic, or design. Something was wrong; saying goodbye was a warm comfort.

The months leading up to that goodbye really rammed home how much I was already alone, living with an additional 'I' on my RACI that no longer needed to be there. 

Cooking is something that never tripped me up, it was always important - and we loved cooking, creating, making something, and we had joy in sharing. But how can you share food with someone 650 kilometers away? By informing. A meal that I would have taken joy from sharing, now pasted as a .jpg on Discord to be seen, 'thumbs-up' reacted, but not shared. 

So, I find myself 2 hours away from a beach, no bottle or paper in hand, laptop at my fingertips and a page full of ramblings. I ponder, what the fuck am I trying to say with all this rubbish?

I haven't decided whether to chase the shooting star or capitulate and sink into the deep blue. 

Can I keep pretending to be okay when the touch of a man who is dead inside is enough to make me melt into a puddle? Can I lie to myself when I Know The Storm Is Coming, and the smallest of downpours will turn that puddle into an ocean?

Emotions dictated that you face your fears, lower your fists, and find a Bridget to get over it. You won't need to re-learn "dating”. It will just fall.  

With or without help from the gods.