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

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

Enter Shikari - Redshift

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"I'm so used to [Allied Health Client]'s KB, it's so out of date.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

خواهر کوچک

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

.صلح

Peter Raven

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You're not Superman, you know?" 

... 

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

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

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

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

How could I possibly ask for more? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now here I was standing in his shoes. 

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

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

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

A couple of weeks ago I received another message: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sound familiar? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Concludes in Part III: Perihelion...

The cost of doing business... (Part I: Perihelion)

 Musical accompaniment: Enter Shikari - The Last Garrison

I used to think I was playing the lead in my own story, and... you never know I may even have been right, but as the days roll by I find myself haunted by the idea that I've quietly transitioned to playing a walk-on role in other people's. It's easy to mistake the part we play for 'titular' when it's really 'supporting' after all; our perspective of the events we participate in is recorded from our own (statistically) binocular PoV, so when you're focused on wearing down your teeth chewing the scenery it's easy to forget the BLOCKCAP advice the Director included in the footnotes on every page of the script you skimmed, which read: 

REMEMBER: NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU.

I've been wading through the endless-seaming river of my professional life with my feet in two very different streams of consciousness. On one side I've been working hard to keep my existing clients happy, or in the case of Marine#2 frantically keeping them from getting too pissed off (they eventually signed off on the VOIP solution I sold them, and everything that could possibly go wrong subsequently has). On the other has been an ongoing struggle to convince someone in Canberra to let me solve big problems for them for big money. Whilst time-consuming, neither of those activities have come close to utilising the complete range of my skillset, so in the middle of the two there's been a lot of room to put some of the other tools I keep handy to use. Some days it's felt like I've brought more of those resources to bear, and exerted more effort, for other people's benefit than my own. I could pretend to a perspective of Zen selflessness and talk about that being OK because we all know there's only one of me, and I am Nothing, but then I'd be skipping everything in the other half of the story to create a false-perception of depth. Whilst spending the coin of my knowledge and experience brings me nothing but joy, I can't actually say that with a straight face because each of those coins is two-sided, and on the other defaced side there's an aspect of me which still yearns for recognition. Every bit of credit I have to spend cost me a piece of myself to acquire; whether the currency was opportunity, or my finite energy, an eigth of a pound of flesh, or one irrecoverable moment of my time, I paid a price for everything I have and there's a bit of me that wants something in return. 

But who the fuck am I to ask for it, when everything I built myself from was given to me by someone else? When your boot is sitting next to the thimble, roadster, and terrier on Go with an empty board in front of you and a pair of dice in your hand, the play money you start with had to come from somewhere. 

As we walk our own lonely Road of Bones, the only road that we have ever known, it's too easy to forget that we walk on the the clean-pecked scapulas and clavicles of giants to whom we can never repay the favour; we owe it to the next set of calloused feet to make sure that when we fall ours rest as tall as Phlebas, and provides a higher perspective. 

Backing track: AViVA - Sacrifice

My phone rang a couple of weeks ago at 12:47PM with the name of my 2023 Padawan on the screen. The time of day told me something was up, but that wasn't the half of it: 

She was calling me. 
On the phone. 
Laika's a member of the emergent generation for whom a "phone" is a pocket-sized internet portal, who consider the bit where it can be made to ring because someone wants to talk to you using their voice an insufferable affront to social decency. 

I remember being taught how to use a rotary-dial phone, the numbers you entered sequentially came printed on a kilo of dead-tree each year, or were written down carefully by hand in an alphabetised notebook, and calling across the country was an expensive extravagance.
Now we call numbers we can't remember and talk to people we'll never meet on the far-side of the globe for the fun of it, and for free. 
Yeah, I know, I'm old; Laika's young enough to be my daughter. 

And she was calling me. 
On the phone. 
"What the fuck?" I thought, "what's gone wrong...?" 

Turns out the answer to that was 'plenty' but that's not my story to tell, it's just the one she called to tell me.
But she wasn't calling me because she wanted to ask for help, she was calling because she needed to tell someone who'd get it without needing to have 'it' explained.
She needed a friend who'd answer the phone when it rang, who wouldn't judge her for what she told them, who'd help if they could without being asked. 

I plead guilty on both charges, Your Honour. 
I do what I can, and there are a lot of things I can do. 
I throw myself on the mercy of the court. 

I've been taking on Padawans for a long time now, and it's a thing I can say, without prejudice, that I take pride from. I can't tell you when I started exactly, but it's a truth universally acknowledged, that a no-longer-young professional in possession of a good knowledge of The Job, must want to show the colleagues more junior to them how better it might be done. One day you turn around and realise that the earnest kid you're performance managing isn't just taking your workplace lessons to heart, they've started emulating you in their personal life as well, and if that doesn't leave a mark like Bruce Lee kicking you in the face whilst wearing sneakers with "RESPONSIBILITY" moulded into the sole, you don't have one. 

Call it a messiah complex, call it inferred generational debt, or my nascent paternal instinct, call it what you will. I decided a long time ago that I was never having children of my own; I've been told countless times that I'd come to regret my decision "one day", but just like 'tomorrow' and Godot that day has remained stubbornly on the other side of the horizon, and never seems to arrive. I'm fairly certain I was born to be an uncle - all care and no responsibility, gone the moment a nappy needs changing, and long before bedtime. The thing we all need to remember is that no one is born knowing everything they need to know. Some people are preternaturally quick on the uptake (which comes with its own dumpstats) but for the rest of us, unless we're just going to repeat the same old mistakes we need to learn from someone else. There are many from whom I learned, and there are a growing, happy few who've learned from me. 

I have exemplary credentials, I'll have you know; I've made a LOT of mistakes. 

Being an 'uncle' means getting to choose your level of involvement; when you should stay, and when you should go. 'Deadbeat dads' notwithstanding, parenthood is a "Hotel California"-style life-choice, and I've stubbornly refused to relinquish my right to leave the moment I decide to check out. If you think that sounds selfish and irresponsible, I'll say to you the same thing I said to my father when he denounced me for refusing to sacrifice my existential autonomy in the name of progenitating grandchildren to carry on his name: 

"Yeah, nah, go fuck yourself." 
I know what I'm good at, and there's a lot of good I can do. 
But playing the role of "consistently positive role-model" ain't one of them. 

I hold parents to a pretty high standard; my father never met it, and I'm far-too-much my father's son. "Mother," according to Thackeray, "is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all children," but it's also true that fathers are their own flavour of role models, so if your father bails what does that tell you? "You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you." 

Not being that guy is not the worst thing that can happen. 

I was never going to be anyone's 'forever-father', but 'dad-for-a-day' is something I can pick up and run with. It's the sort of relationship no one asks for directly, and no one accepts, because you fall in and out of it naturally. There's no application process, and no one gets an invitation to apply, although there've been exceptions... 

Like the conversation I had with young Andy, who looked at me in awe when I was talking one day about some difficult shit I'd been dealing with at work. 
"I just... you have now idea how badly I want to be like you."
"Seriously dude? You... do you have any idea? 
"I..." quoted Perry Cox, "only barely want to be like me?" 

Adoration may taste like heaven, but that moment was one I didn't want to drink; it tasted like acetone, and as I fled for the nearest horizon so fast my boots barely touched the ground I felt quite alone. 

Laika took what was offered, and that seems to have been enough, because she picked it up and ran, leaving me right where I belong; alone in the dust of her wake. 

Does that sound like a tragedy? It's not. 
Because it ain't over yet. 
If you haven't worked it out, 
Let me tell you what: 
Watching them de-rez into a b1t on the horizon
Is the p0int. 

Continued in Part II: Transit...

Looking back/out/forward...

 Musical accompaniment: Enter Shikari - Stop the Clocks 

Existing in three places at once is a strange way to live. It's as if you've one foot in the grave, the other in the cradle, and somewhere in the middle your nuts are hanging over a pool full of piranhas. It feels like you're living in a dream; not the one where you're giving a speech in front of the whole school and suddenly realise you forgot to put on pants, and not the one where you show up to a job interview and suddenly realise your cock is hanging out, not even the one where you're trying to coordinate your own going-away party but the gearbox just fell out of your bike and you have to crawl through the garbage-pile under the mechanics-shop you were stopped at because fuck-knows-why to collect all the cogs and bearings from amongst the rusty old Holden-branded Kingswood parts then ride back to the party with it all piled up on the end-cover sitting on your tank because apparently your bike is magic and who the fuck even needs gears anyway because you need to sort out the people who showed up to help load the shipping container with all your possessions and your bike and its gearbox and your little dog too before the train leaves and there's no time to waste and no time to lose because Gillian Anderson is the Conductor and she's looking at her fob-watch with a look on her face which you know means the train's leaving with or without you the moment the low-nitrile glove she's pulling on goes *snap* and don't even start because she's done with you and your shit. 

I may be feeling a little exposed right now. 

"I don't remember my dreams particularly often," I said, "and when I do they just leave me confused," 
and you said "that makes two of us." 

It seems like I'm living in sequential deja vu, like I'm Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica, because all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again, and maybe I died, and maybe I survived the explosion, and maybe I'm an angel, and you just know that whether the showrunners throw in a kludgey ret-con, or just leave it mysteeeeeerious, you're going to feel unfulfilled when the credits roll regardless. 

Either way, I keep finding myself looking back at the ghost of Younger Pete when he was going through an earlier iteration of the same shit, thinking about what I'd tell myself if I could: 

"A'ight shithead, for starters don't date her. That was tragic," I tell myself. 
"I get to date *HER*? She sounds amazing!" 
"Oh, yeah, she is, but it all ends in tears." 
"How so? Does she screw us over or something?" 
"No, see... look... don't get me wrong, but you're a dick. You just don't know it yet."
"..." 
"It's all on you, but you learn from it eventually, if that helps any?" 
"So what you're saying is if I just don't be a shit-heel I get to be with the dream-babe?" 
"No, see... look... it's the fucking up that you learn from, right? 
"Plus she goes on to be with someone great, and they wind up really happy." 
"So you're saying I *should* date her, because it works out better for everyone?
"Or for her, at least." 
"..." 
"Sounds to me like it's going to be worth it, and you're still a dick, just sayin'." 
"No! I mean... true... but... OK, now I'm proper confused," 
and he said "that makes two of us." 

There's a tap on my shoulder, and the clocks stop. 

"A'ight shithead..." 
"Jesus wept, this is starting to feel like some Xmas Carol-shit right here."
"Fuck you, you insufferable twat-nozzle. Listen well, because there's shit I need me to know..." 
"What, like how to avoid some horrible thing I'll only learn from by doing, fucking up, and won't get to be you if I don't?"
"..." 
"Been there, tried that, bought the t-shirt, remember?" I tell myself, pointing to the shirt I'm wearing which reads 'I TRIED TO VIOLATE CAUSALITY AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY PARADOX'. 
"You forgot the black eye." 
"What blac...?" 

<SUCKERPUNCH> 

"Not as smart as you thought you were, huh?"
"Yeah yeah fine, you smug-faced cock-womble, you got me," I reply from the floor, chuckle, and continue, "man, I've always wanted to do that. 
"So glad I get to. 
"Can't fucking wait, not gonna lie." 
"..." 
"This is bullshit tho, we both know it. You KNOW you only got to be better than you were because I fuck up again. You were there, you saw it. 
"We're too fucking arrogant; the only way we learn is from our own mistakes. 
"Speaking of which: back atcha, cunt," I say, jabbing two fingers hard into my already-swollen eye whilst I watch myself grimace through the other. 

"Go fuck yourself; I'm doing the best I can." 

I look myself in the eye and say, "that makes two of us."