Obviously the solution is to ignore the problem...

I realised too late that I'd made eye contact with my worst fucking enemy, and the battle of wills was on. 

I've stared down CISO's. 
I've made corporate sociopaths blink. 
I've had colours-wearing Outlaw MC bikers pull along-side at the lights, nod, say "Nice bike, mate!" and let me go first. 
I can out-stare my cat, and he's a proper dyed-in-the-wool narcissist. 

This fucker's an indomitable son-of-a-bitch tho, and I've been off my game lately, so reaching for the "break glass" option I grabbed the present by the lapels and offered him the gift of "surprise!" by way of the time-honoured Liverpool Kiss. 

Bastard damn-near made me shatter the mirror with my forehead. 

Senses reeling, looking back in the glass, I took a moment to remember who I was, and that the horrible cunt I was staring at was me, and did a quick inventory whilst I took stock. 

A few weeks ago I closed off my second project (in the spare time left over from the one I was originally engaged to run), increasing my lead over any other Project Manager in the org for "Successfully Delivered Projects" to 2. 

Today I received the Purchase Order from my company's largest client confirming the next contract extension; the value beat my previous-best annual salary-equivalent rate by a good couple of thousand dollars, which was nice. It was only a 6 month contract tho, which is Fucking Ludicrous. 

Even more gratifyingly, when I caught up with Rick a couple of Sundays ago he observed that the walking I've been doing has been paying off because I was "looking pretty trim mate, way better than when I saw you last in Perth."
"Yeah? Nice of you to say, mate."
"Yeah, you fucking looked like shit, mate. Now you just look a bit like the north-end of a south-bound cow." 
"... Thanks?" 
"Hey," he said, tipping me last of his pint before tipping it down his throat, "reckon you must be doing something right." 

Although I'd be fucked if I can put my finger on what exactly. When people praise you for the matter-of-fact stuff like Doing The Job Properly and Taking It All The Way Through To The End, but are "meh" about your most challenging achievements like Getting Out Of Bed Every Day and Keeping Yourself Alive For The Last 1000 Days, sometimes it's like up is down and black is white. 

"Yeah, I'm so good at what I do that I keep getting told 'Nah, that'll never work' long after I handed over the As Built, and I'm pulling in cash hand-over-fist, but in more important news did I mention I slept six hours straight last night? I even managed to stop and eat lunch three days in a row! 
HOW GREAT IS THAT??" 

One of these days I'll accept that I'm an outlier and stop trying to sit in with the cool kids, but it's hard to not feel left out when they keep saying you're not right even after you've proven them wrong. 

Meanwhile, I'm finding myself in a state of gradually accumulating encumbermence, with my feet frozen to the ground on a cold white plane, with no reference point, and no light to guide me. I keep shaking off the snow falling on my shoulders, only to watch it fall in an ever-increasing mound around my ankles. I have four drafts in varying states of ideation; things I actually want... even feel I need to write, but no matter how much marble I carve off, the blocks stubbornly refuse to reveal the Davids inside. Every time I heft my hammer I make less and less of an impression, my chisels shattering like glass, whilst the flakes rise up towards my knees. Eventually you get so cold you stop shaking. 

The other day, after much ineffective faffing around the edges, I reached for my hammer and it refused to come to hand. 

Whinging about my inversely-proportional dysphoria when it comes to success earlier this evening at Amy, who seems to have distilled the concept of "uncomplicated pragmatic optimism" into a cocktail I've come to call Occam's Canadian, replied: 

"Just keep writing...
Ok I have to go hang upsidedown off a pole now! Cya!"

So I wrote this, which is what it is. 
Make of it what you will. 

i am a tourist...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

or maybe just broaden the scope...

some things i learned this weekend...

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

1) Friends vs Family

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

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

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

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

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

so it goes for the Town i Chose.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

or so the theory goes.

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

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

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

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

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

wipe the slate clean?

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

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

ML seemed a little shocked at the idea:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

holding patterns...

motivation is such a tenuous, yet powerful thing. of late i've had little of it, and none of it's come from me. i've got out of bed in the morning, gone to work. on the weekends i've managed to shake myself into motion because i know that beyond the veil of my bedroom door there is coffee. i get up for the coffee - a ritual habit that gives me some structure to the days that are actually my own. pull on some clothes, stagger into the kitchen, fill the kettle with 500ml of water and set it to boil while i add two dessert spoons of instant brown grit into one of my tall, elegant white mugs and add two tablets of artificial sweetener. the water's generally boiled by the time i've put the makings away. pour. add milk. take it out the front and look at it steam while i have a cigarette i don't really taste and read the morning's news on my phone. it's not much, but it makes me get up, move, survey the day before me, the world around me and their combined potential for myriad wonders.

it's easier during the week. from 8:30AM until 5:00PM my time is not my own and for the time being i'm happy enough for it to be that way. 5 days a week i don't have to think about what's to come next, and i'm usually so exhausted by the end of the day that it doesn't bother me that i don't really do much with myself in the evenings. talk to people online, read the news, watch whatever tv show i've been downloading of late, play a video game, read my book, sleep. wash, rinse, repeat. same shit, different day. it's easier than facing the grim reality of being completely and totally fucking clueless. tonight i spend half an hour playing with a toy aeroplane, transforming it into a robot and back again, just because it took my mind off how much precious time i've been wasting going nowhere.

for the last couple of years, now, i've been waiting for whatever's to happen next. 2 years ago yesterday i landed in Canberra with a couple of bags, a hard drive full of photos and a head full of memories with people to see and a life to rebuild, and proceeded to get on with the business of doing those things that people do - work the week, save a bit of cash each fortnight, go for drinks on Friday, then through random circumstance i met the Green Faerie and suddenly had something to Work Towards.
for three months i was in Canberra and she was in Perth, but that was ok because i knew exactly when and how i'd be fixing this problem. the rest was just patience and logistics, and these are things i've had a lot of practice at.

so the day came and so did i, across the continent to the Old Country and the reunion was sweetness and light but the warm, happy glow of Arriving faded over time, as it inevitably does, and once again i settled in to Wait. Wait for her to get things sorted so that she could move on with her life. Wait for me to get the finances together so that i could have the cash to help us start building a life. Waiting for this, Waiting for that. we'd agreed that plan towards buying a property each with the general view towards renting out one and living in the other, which meant that i needed to rebuild the slush fund i spent through in Europe and to achieve this i needed to earn it, save it, then earn some more. and Wait. so i put my other plans aside for the time being so that i could focus on this goal for the time being which wasn't a horrible thing - i had a girl to love and share my time with and beyond that i'd lost track of what other aspirations i might have had along the way. my 5 Year Plan finally came to fruition 6 months before the delivery date - i finally got the Team Leader job i'd been working towards for years, and after a brief celebration i looked forward looking for the next set of goalposts and saw... nothing, so i Waited, figuring that something would show up soon enough.

spin forwards a year and the Faerie and i went our separate ways amicably after agreeing that some differences of opinion are just too profound to ignore or gloss over, and i found myself still sitting in the wilderness with a blank horizon in front of me. having a high-pressure job meant that my career was happily looking after itself, and having the Faerie around meant that i could keep myself busy helping her to achieve her goals while i waited for the time to come to kick off the next stage of mine. now i didn't even have that to occupy myself with - just time on my hands and a lack of motivation. i'd started learning guitar before i left Canberra and continued when i got here, but it's sat in its case for over a year now untouched. i'd started learning German at about the same time, but apart from a few choice words i've not progressed at all. i've really done nothing that i'd consider of any value in all that time - flying around and around in circles looking for a place to land. i'd had a good enough time of it all - i went to the US for Shadow and The Boss's reWedding. i went to Cairns with Matthias (see Berlin: Don't Mention The War) and dived on the Great Barrier Reef. i flung my poi around at the Southbound Festival surrounded by half-naked women dressed as faeries... but i don't feel like i've progressed at all. all i really have to show for it is an amusing photo collection and a Big Fucking Stack of Cash.

a couple of amusing statistics, because numbers amuse me sometimes - if i were to convert it all into Australian Dollar coins and stack them all one atop the other the pile would be roughly as tall as the third highest skyscraper in Perth and weigh 5 and a half times more than me which, if dropped into a swimming pool, would displace 63 litres of water.

it's a fair whack of cash.

and as you'd expect, the having of it provides me with absolutely no joy whatsoever. the important thing is that it's a moderately large hammer with which i can make certain problems go away. if i want to take a week off work and head back to Cairns, for example, i can. my car needs new tyres? sorted. i want to take a friend out to dinner and they don't have any cash until payday? not even a concern.

so i have to ask - what the fuck is the point of having it if i have no fucking clue what the hell do do with it? the Responsible Adult i'm supposed to be by now says i should stick with the plan and Buy A House - that HAS been the goal all this time... but bearing in mind how trapped and tied down i've been feeling for so long now, do i really want to shackle myself to this place for another however many years? i've been feeling the wanderlust building for a while now there is a serious temptation to go and chase the Sunshine. of course, that raises yet more questions. it seems that for the last few years i've followed, rather than led. i followed the Faerie across the country, then followed Matthias to go diving after following Shadow to America, so i wonder whether i really want to hand the steering over to someone else again but... i also don't have a fucking clue what the hell i want to do with myself and i have to admit that this has led me to some extraordinarily interesting places over the last couple of years. if i'd not wound up in Australia's Sandpit pursuing a girl with big brown eyes i'd not have reconnected with Matti again, and i'd not have wound up in Cairns, let alone been invited back.

i wonder if i'm looking at this wrong - am i really relinquishing control, or am i diverting in order to fly alongside a while? and do i really give a fuck, as long as it keeps my life Interesting? because i have to admit that Give A Fuck is a resource that i have in incredibly short supply. for better or worse, i've still not done anything i couldn't walk away from and i can't contemplate doing any different now. i seem allergic to permanence, addicted to transience. i think i'm just about ready to accept that as being part of who i am, rather than something i need to fix.  now i just need to find the motivation to actually do something rather than just Waiting for it to happen...