It's going to be hard to leave home...
Rainbow was nothing short of amazing. Except that I really felt it was just an elaborate excuse to hang out with the DMF crew again (the people I hung out with on NYE). Seeing as I saw almost none of the acts that I wanted to see, spending more of my time at our camp, “Kupptopia” or deciding sleep was more important but feeling like I didn’t miss a thing is a further testament to how much this group means to me.
So before I go on a “why I heart DMF so much” love-in, let me first explain how I felt in Vancouver.
I know everyone. I know too many people. I have lots of varied interests and so therefore run with lots of friends groups. I used to say that I preferred it that way because people from any one group would never be able to satisfy all of my needs. I would just get bored of them too fast, or I would be upset if I wanted to go do something but it wasn’t what anyone from the group wanted to do or feel too insular, etc. Sure, I do enjoy knowing lots of different kinds of people, and they have all helped to form who I am today. However, the problem with belonging to so many different friends groups is that no one group feels that I am their responsibility. I get invited to everything, but disappoint no one by not showing up because it’s always a scheduling error; whatever I ended up doing was with some other group and it was fun. This also makes me feel largely insignificant though and more difficult to access emotionally, because people have this perception that I’m just “too busy” for them all the time. Only a few select people try to reach me anyway and they were the ones that saw me the most.
During my twenties, I so very badly needed to prove to myself that I could be popular, that people really wanted to have me around. After nearly killing myself in high school (quite literally), and after finally meeting people for the first time in my life that I “clicked with” at Organix and Sanctuary (simultaneously believe it or not) I learned that it was never a problem with me, it was a problem of beating my head against a wall wondering why I didn’t fit into the “mainstream”. From the beginning I was always the weird one asking too many questions, the one that could spend all day theorizing about random science shit or questioning beliefs or behaviour patterns, that’s just who I was.
This led me to seek out several different social circles. I was very much interested in the people that were attracted to club nights like Organix and Sanctuary, I was very much interested in the people in the rave scene, and the people who called themselves “Burners” and the people that were the far gone hippies. All of it was fascinating to me and I had common bonds with all of them for different reasons. Perhaps it was because I could see too that they were all “weirdos that could not fit into the mainstream” and so accidentally it seems I was conducting my own lifelong sociological study. As I’ve delved into these groups more and more, they continue to reflect me and as I got older, I became better able to identify which groups offered a better reflection of me, and which people and personality types would be most appreciative of what I could have to offer.
Where this all left me was feeling quite empty handed. I continued to drift along from group to group and never really get a chance to stay put for very long. It also hugely affected the quality of my friendships with people, as I never really got a chance to get close to anyone. Again, this led me to getting shafted from more intimate invites, but kept me “in the loop” enough that I found out about all the bigger events. People feel like they know me so well because I don’t hide anything and am not the least bit shy in speaking about how I feel, or rather, in communicating how I feel, but there is so much of me that seldom gets shared. I feel like I don’t really know anyone at all most of the time. It also makes me feel fucking exhausted. I like being busy but I don’t like to spread myself so thin. I’d rather be at fewer things at be 100% present than be at everything but always thinking about another event or another group of people. I see so much and yet I still feel like I’m missing out. I hate that people like to say so many things to me and not follow them through with actions. Again, I only notice this happening to me largely because as I stated above, I don’t feel like I belong to any one group.
And so here comes the love-in with DMF. I am this strange Canadian girl that popped up out of nowhere and got introduced to the group in the least common of ways: I had met a few people through my friends from Vancouver that got here a few months before I did, and from a few events here and there, but I largely felt like I hadn’t made any friends in Melbourne yet. I revived my Meetup.com profile but still never went on any Meetups. I also revived my OkCupid profile and starting messaging people on there. I was surprised that so many people mentioned electronic music in their interests, as that is an extremely niche thing in North America, and so that was a common conversational topic with a lot of people. I messaged a fellow named Brendan because his profile was interesting and I said something to the effect of: “It seems like you and I would really get along, too bad I am not into the poly thing so much.” And his response was something like “Yeah it does seem like we’d get along. I took a listen to your mixes (that I have linked on my profile) and I have been listening to them on my tram ride to work.” We added each other to Facebook and then I get another message from him later saying “Hey if I could get you a gig, would you do it?” I said “Fuck yeah I’ll DJ anywhere!”
About a week or so later, I get a friend request from a girl named Sarah. I don’t know this person (yet) and I ask her why she added me. She says to me “Oh I’m Brendan’s girlfriend, and I heard you were new in town and hadn’t really made any friends yet. I know how hard it is to meet people and so I thought I’d say hello.” Sarah and I talked some more and I actually met her before I met Brendan at the set they both organized for me, and Sarah and I hit it off almost instantly. She invited me to a NYE camping party, where her and a bunch of her friends (the DMF crew) were renting out a children’s camp so that they could have their own facility. Apparently the DMF NYE parties were getting so popular and well attended that no one’s house could be big enough! (Sarah is now my closest friend here!) :D
I had to contemplate this very carefully. I really wanted to make more friends here badly and this seemed like the size of event that I would be satisfied with (about 40 people showed up in the end). My other options for NYE were two big events where I would only know a few people at each, and I really didn’t want to be dependent on a couple people for all of my entertainment at a big crazy festival. Also, knowing that I was going to Rainbow Serpent and Maitreya (two future events happening early in 2011), I would already get my big festival fill and so all signs pointed to going to the event Sarah invited me to. After spending more time with Sarah and her dragging me to Birthdaypalooza (an event in December where 12 or so of the DMF crew had all their birthdays around the same time of year), I got a chance to meet more of the people that would be going to the NYE party. And so it was decided, I would attend the DMF NYE party.
I clicked with DMF so well that things started to change quite quickly. NYE was amazing. So much so that I was getting compliments like “You fit in so well with us that it’s like you’ve been at our events this whole time!” or that I managed to hook up with someone that as I write this, I’m still going out with. :) (my Vancouver peeps know how that doesn't happen to me very frequently) Now I was getting invited to everything. Not just big parties, but the DMF camp at Rainbow Serpent, the volunteer list for Maitreya, birthday parties, housewarmings, movie nights, you name it. For the first time in my life since meeting the “cool kids” at Organix, I felt like coming back to camp at Rainbow was like coming home. I like only belonging to one group. I do still have other friends outside of the group, but they are not whole entire other groups of friends. I much prefer it this way. People that I just met at Rainbow from the DMF crew expressed sadness that I was going to be leaving at the end of April. That’s how quickly I’ve affected people! I never would have expected to change so many lives so quickly, nor have mine change so quickly and dramatically too (in a good way!). It’s so much easier just associating with one crew, and yes I very much realize that a lot of it is because I am new and because I haven’t exhausted all of their resources and because I am leaving to go back to Vancouver that everyone is putting their best foot forward, and everything will always have that “new car smell” to it. The grass always seems greener on the other side.
I just wish that I could return to my actual home and be happy about it. If I didn’t have to come back to finish my degree, I don’t know that I would so quickly. And I do have to come home to finish my degree. I am getting by here okay with the work I am doing, but I am a casual worker that works less than 20 hours a week. The next time that I go travelling, I need to land a full-time job that makes a real wage. Remember I last spoke about how I wanted to go to France, and then Switzerland, and then Germany so that I could use as many working holiday visas as I could before I turned 35? Well, after coming to learn that most of the jobs I want wouldn’t be available to someone that could only give a one-year commitment, it’s looking more like Germany could be the only feasible option, simply because they are the only country that offers a one-year extension on top of the working holiday visa (so does Australia, but you still can’t keep your employers for more than 6 months each). Also with my degree and experience, I could come back to Australia if I got a work permit sponsorship from an employer. Something that is much more difficult to do if I’m just some casual personal trainer intending on only staying 6 months. My bosses want me to stay, my clients want me to stay, and my new friends want me to stay. I want me to stay too, but my life in Vancouver has to be completed and returned to.
There are things I do want to return to in Vancouver: WRECK BEACH, my beloved bicycle, the cheap and great party favours, and believe it or not I actually am downright excited to be getting back to my old apartment. I have a new appreciation for living on my own and having my own space that I lacked before coming to Melbourne. I don’t miss being a student but I do miss my school and I do miss my old job at the fitness centre and I do miss my co-op coordinators. And of course I miss my friends like crazy, but I also have to remember that I am missing the best of them. I am conveniently forgetting how abandoned I felt when none of them ever called me up to hang out, or how I eventually only started to get invited to things more out of the place I occupy in the social hierarchy than them actually wanting me to be there (yes people befriended me because they recognized I was “big” in the group - not because they wanted anything to do with me). I only started to get invited to more things because I was leaving Vancouver! I am tired of it. I don’t want it to be so complicated. I want to come home and feel home. I want my friends to do more than tell me they missed me, I want them to show me through actions that our friendship truly matters. I want my friends to be the friends that I was to them. I know that’s a lot to ask and I very much realize that friendships don’t ever actually work out that way. It’s something that I am taking much less personally now after going through counseling last year. She told me that I have to “learn to be okay with disappointment”. What that meant was that I need to realize that people aren’t saying no to me because I am not significant in their lives, it just means something else was going on. Everyone has their own shit to deal with. It’s not to be taken personally. I, of all people, should realize that, as for every event invite I say yes to requires me to say no to another 5. I can only be in one place at a time. And I do realize that I have been a lousy friend to some people too. I am not without blame in some of those situations.
I always knew that travelling taught me heaps about myself. It was my epic fail of a journey to Rio de Janeiro back in 2006 that taught me what I needed to do with my life back in Vancouver with regard to my career. I got that shit sorted out like nobody’s business. It was that epic fail that also showed me what it was that I needed to do to get everything I wanted to out of this trip to Melbourne. This mission has been successful and I am still learning. The best part is that I am well-loved and that people here have gotten to experience the latest release, Stephanie V.3.0 that I was working so hard on after finishing my counseling last year and during the summer in Vancouver. I’m sure there will be a V.3.5 by the time I return to Vancouver. I just never expected that coming home would also mean I was leaving home. *sigh*
So before I go on a “why I heart DMF so much” love-in, let me first explain how I felt in Vancouver.
I know everyone. I know too many people. I have lots of varied interests and so therefore run with lots of friends groups. I used to say that I preferred it that way because people from any one group would never be able to satisfy all of my needs. I would just get bored of them too fast, or I would be upset if I wanted to go do something but it wasn’t what anyone from the group wanted to do or feel too insular, etc. Sure, I do enjoy knowing lots of different kinds of people, and they have all helped to form who I am today. However, the problem with belonging to so many different friends groups is that no one group feels that I am their responsibility. I get invited to everything, but disappoint no one by not showing up because it’s always a scheduling error; whatever I ended up doing was with some other group and it was fun. This also makes me feel largely insignificant though and more difficult to access emotionally, because people have this perception that I’m just “too busy” for them all the time. Only a few select people try to reach me anyway and they were the ones that saw me the most.
During my twenties, I so very badly needed to prove to myself that I could be popular, that people really wanted to have me around. After nearly killing myself in high school (quite literally), and after finally meeting people for the first time in my life that I “clicked with” at Organix and Sanctuary (simultaneously believe it or not) I learned that it was never a problem with me, it was a problem of beating my head against a wall wondering why I didn’t fit into the “mainstream”. From the beginning I was always the weird one asking too many questions, the one that could spend all day theorizing about random science shit or questioning beliefs or behaviour patterns, that’s just who I was.
This led me to seek out several different social circles. I was very much interested in the people that were attracted to club nights like Organix and Sanctuary, I was very much interested in the people in the rave scene, and the people who called themselves “Burners” and the people that were the far gone hippies. All of it was fascinating to me and I had common bonds with all of them for different reasons. Perhaps it was because I could see too that they were all “weirdos that could not fit into the mainstream” and so accidentally it seems I was conducting my own lifelong sociological study. As I’ve delved into these groups more and more, they continue to reflect me and as I got older, I became better able to identify which groups offered a better reflection of me, and which people and personality types would be most appreciative of what I could have to offer.
Where this all left me was feeling quite empty handed. I continued to drift along from group to group and never really get a chance to stay put for very long. It also hugely affected the quality of my friendships with people, as I never really got a chance to get close to anyone. Again, this led me to getting shafted from more intimate invites, but kept me “in the loop” enough that I found out about all the bigger events. People feel like they know me so well because I don’t hide anything and am not the least bit shy in speaking about how I feel, or rather, in communicating how I feel, but there is so much of me that seldom gets shared. I feel like I don’t really know anyone at all most of the time. It also makes me feel fucking exhausted. I like being busy but I don’t like to spread myself so thin. I’d rather be at fewer things at be 100% present than be at everything but always thinking about another event or another group of people. I see so much and yet I still feel like I’m missing out. I hate that people like to say so many things to me and not follow them through with actions. Again, I only notice this happening to me largely because as I stated above, I don’t feel like I belong to any one group.
And so here comes the love-in with DMF. I am this strange Canadian girl that popped up out of nowhere and got introduced to the group in the least common of ways: I had met a few people through my friends from Vancouver that got here a few months before I did, and from a few events here and there, but I largely felt like I hadn’t made any friends in Melbourne yet. I revived my Meetup.com profile but still never went on any Meetups. I also revived my OkCupid profile and starting messaging people on there. I was surprised that so many people mentioned electronic music in their interests, as that is an extremely niche thing in North America, and so that was a common conversational topic with a lot of people. I messaged a fellow named Brendan because his profile was interesting and I said something to the effect of: “It seems like you and I would really get along, too bad I am not into the poly thing so much.” And his response was something like “Yeah it does seem like we’d get along. I took a listen to your mixes (that I have linked on my profile) and I have been listening to them on my tram ride to work.” We added each other to Facebook and then I get another message from him later saying “Hey if I could get you a gig, would you do it?” I said “Fuck yeah I’ll DJ anywhere!”
About a week or so later, I get a friend request from a girl named Sarah. I don’t know this person (yet) and I ask her why she added me. She says to me “Oh I’m Brendan’s girlfriend, and I heard you were new in town and hadn’t really made any friends yet. I know how hard it is to meet people and so I thought I’d say hello.” Sarah and I talked some more and I actually met her before I met Brendan at the set they both organized for me, and Sarah and I hit it off almost instantly. She invited me to a NYE camping party, where her and a bunch of her friends (the DMF crew) were renting out a children’s camp so that they could have their own facility. Apparently the DMF NYE parties were getting so popular and well attended that no one’s house could be big enough! (Sarah is now my closest friend here!) :D
I had to contemplate this very carefully. I really wanted to make more friends here badly and this seemed like the size of event that I would be satisfied with (about 40 people showed up in the end). My other options for NYE were two big events where I would only know a few people at each, and I really didn’t want to be dependent on a couple people for all of my entertainment at a big crazy festival. Also, knowing that I was going to Rainbow Serpent and Maitreya (two future events happening early in 2011), I would already get my big festival fill and so all signs pointed to going to the event Sarah invited me to. After spending more time with Sarah and her dragging me to Birthdaypalooza (an event in December where 12 or so of the DMF crew had all their birthdays around the same time of year), I got a chance to meet more of the people that would be going to the NYE party. And so it was decided, I would attend the DMF NYE party.
I clicked with DMF so well that things started to change quite quickly. NYE was amazing. So much so that I was getting compliments like “You fit in so well with us that it’s like you’ve been at our events this whole time!” or that I managed to hook up with someone that as I write this, I’m still going out with. :) (my Vancouver peeps know how that doesn't happen to me very frequently) Now I was getting invited to everything. Not just big parties, but the DMF camp at Rainbow Serpent, the volunteer list for Maitreya, birthday parties, housewarmings, movie nights, you name it. For the first time in my life since meeting the “cool kids” at Organix, I felt like coming back to camp at Rainbow was like coming home. I like only belonging to one group. I do still have other friends outside of the group, but they are not whole entire other groups of friends. I much prefer it this way. People that I just met at Rainbow from the DMF crew expressed sadness that I was going to be leaving at the end of April. That’s how quickly I’ve affected people! I never would have expected to change so many lives so quickly, nor have mine change so quickly and dramatically too (in a good way!). It’s so much easier just associating with one crew, and yes I very much realize that a lot of it is because I am new and because I haven’t exhausted all of their resources and because I am leaving to go back to Vancouver that everyone is putting their best foot forward, and everything will always have that “new car smell” to it. The grass always seems greener on the other side.
I just wish that I could return to my actual home and be happy about it. If I didn’t have to come back to finish my degree, I don’t know that I would so quickly. And I do have to come home to finish my degree. I am getting by here okay with the work I am doing, but I am a casual worker that works less than 20 hours a week. The next time that I go travelling, I need to land a full-time job that makes a real wage. Remember I last spoke about how I wanted to go to France, and then Switzerland, and then Germany so that I could use as many working holiday visas as I could before I turned 35? Well, after coming to learn that most of the jobs I want wouldn’t be available to someone that could only give a one-year commitment, it’s looking more like Germany could be the only feasible option, simply because they are the only country that offers a one-year extension on top of the working holiday visa (so does Australia, but you still can’t keep your employers for more than 6 months each). Also with my degree and experience, I could come back to Australia if I got a work permit sponsorship from an employer. Something that is much more difficult to do if I’m just some casual personal trainer intending on only staying 6 months. My bosses want me to stay, my clients want me to stay, and my new friends want me to stay. I want me to stay too, but my life in Vancouver has to be completed and returned to.
There are things I do want to return to in Vancouver: WRECK BEACH, my beloved bicycle, the cheap and great party favours, and believe it or not I actually am downright excited to be getting back to my old apartment. I have a new appreciation for living on my own and having my own space that I lacked before coming to Melbourne. I don’t miss being a student but I do miss my school and I do miss my old job at the fitness centre and I do miss my co-op coordinators. And of course I miss my friends like crazy, but I also have to remember that I am missing the best of them. I am conveniently forgetting how abandoned I felt when none of them ever called me up to hang out, or how I eventually only started to get invited to things more out of the place I occupy in the social hierarchy than them actually wanting me to be there (yes people befriended me because they recognized I was “big” in the group - not because they wanted anything to do with me). I only started to get invited to more things because I was leaving Vancouver! I am tired of it. I don’t want it to be so complicated. I want to come home and feel home. I want my friends to do more than tell me they missed me, I want them to show me through actions that our friendship truly matters. I want my friends to be the friends that I was to them. I know that’s a lot to ask and I very much realize that friendships don’t ever actually work out that way. It’s something that I am taking much less personally now after going through counseling last year. She told me that I have to “learn to be okay with disappointment”. What that meant was that I need to realize that people aren’t saying no to me because I am not significant in their lives, it just means something else was going on. Everyone has their own shit to deal with. It’s not to be taken personally. I, of all people, should realize that, as for every event invite I say yes to requires me to say no to another 5. I can only be in one place at a time. And I do realize that I have been a lousy friend to some people too. I am not without blame in some of those situations.
I always knew that travelling taught me heaps about myself. It was my epic fail of a journey to Rio de Janeiro back in 2006 that taught me what I needed to do with my life back in Vancouver with regard to my career. I got that shit sorted out like nobody’s business. It was that epic fail that also showed me what it was that I needed to do to get everything I wanted to out of this trip to Melbourne. This mission has been successful and I am still learning. The best part is that I am well-loved and that people here have gotten to experience the latest release, Stephanie V.3.0 that I was working so hard on after finishing my counseling last year and during the summer in Vancouver. I’m sure there will be a V.3.5 by the time I return to Vancouver. I just never expected that coming home would also mean I was leaving home. *sigh*