October is the best month
I've always loved October. As a kid growing up in the country, there was something very special about mornings in October. On the morning walk to the school bus, you would see icy shards of grass giving way to daffodils, new shoots of bracken that were fragrant and green, tiny skunks and lizards to be found in numbers if you looked hard enough on the side of the road to find them. Best of all, the magpies had stopped swooping for another year (magpies can be a very big and aggressive bird and therefore can be very traumatic when you are in grade two). Maybe I just liked it because in my take-not-give immaturity, it was the month of my birthday. Anna's, also (obviously), so she was always in a good mood too.
Sometimes, it feels like not much has changed. There's been so many great, memorable moments of my 2014 spring, and happiness has pretty much been a constant. I wish I could write about every day in minute detail, but for now I just wanted to write down some of the beautiful things that have felt meaningful and special to me.
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I'm finally getting around to catching up with a couple of people who I really admire and have a lot of time for from ANAM (my former "2nd job" workplace). The first of these was Suzie - or should I say, I had the absolute, utter pleasure of sharing a brunch with Suzie... and it was everything that a "1st catchup with someone you loved working with and wanna start becoming close friends with" should have been.
Suzie always reminds me of that great quote by Maya Angelou (and I'm paraphrasing here): where we never remember what words a person said, or what gestures they do, but we never forget how they made us FEEL. That's so true of both Suzie in the past and Suzie currently. For me, Suzie was always that colleague who makes a workplace feel like a family. In the workplace, she was always one to offer warm thanks, or a hug if you needed it, and always had a way of making you feel like even when you are stressed out of your brain, that you are actually incredibly talented and doing a stellar job.
We hadn't seen each other in about a year, but she was still all smiles and unashamedly herself. 2014 has been a year of change for her, where she's since quit her former job, and branched out to becoming a writer (lord knows, she's a brilliant writer), and starting up some of her own independent artistic ventures under the ever-supportive eye of her close friends and her dear, wonderful husband.
Again, speaking in the language of feelings, Suzie makes me feel like a writer... and I believe that our shared interest in writing forms a large part of the basis of our friendship. We talk about it a lot. Still, she's an ever-caring, ever-giving, introverted kind of individual, and those kinds of people are emphatically my kind of people.
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From one ANAM colleague-turned-friend to another, I'm catching up with Katie for 'the first time' outside of work (ie. since last year) on Tuesday. Katie's someone who I feel 'potentially close' to (note: there's that word again... ever notice that I'm enormously attune to feelings?)... especially since Katie and I became facebook friends about 6 months ago, and what ensued was an incredible outpouring of positivity and subtle wisdom, flowing from the admirable web presence that is her FB feed. I am almost a little nervous to catch up with her - which is almost a ludicrous proposition for friends, if only because I hardly know her as a person and worried in a shallow, past-ridden way that my own introversion will have me again deemed as someone who comes off far better on paper than in real life.
Still, I already have a good feeling about Katie. We share a lot of the same interests (yoga, in particular), and I sort of feel like she just might already be a very close friend in my life that I just haven't met properly yet. It'll be good to catch up.
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My weekend was big and exciting, with many memories and highlights, even if there was some exhaustion to go with it. I spent much of Saturday on a rooftop bar at Campari House, hanging out with James - one of my oldest, dearest friends, who decided a few years ago to move to London and become an ex-pat. He has changed a little, but still has his mother's-boy-charisma (which you can't help but love) and his passion for the good things in life. James was always the centre of our friend group - or any friend group - a living embodiment of Tolstoy's Oblonsky, with all the trimmings, menu selections included.
I met an unexpected new friend in James' sweetheart, Kristy, and I liked her straight away. She's a bright and bubbly, empathetic NGO worker, who sees good in people and is gorgeously affectionate to James. I remember thinking "she's one of our people", and couldn't wait for the time where she meets Dani and some of my other dearest people from that friend group. I also met Nalisha and Henry here: the former a cute, good-natured, fun-loving kiwi girl, the latter a naive and quintessential English statesman who loves his cricket as much as he loves nervously being in a distant country. I took to both of them, and shared smiley chats, a lot. I did fancy Nalisha, a little, but as Josh said (see below), perhaps I am kind of prone to falling in love, and I do know that I'm a sucker for a kiwi accent (or indeed, anything about New Zealand at all)...
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I stayed in town all day, and after a quick yet lovely dinner at Cafe Andiamo (which is fast becoming a favourite place of mine), I found myself at Diwali. Although I didn't understand much about the origins of this celebratory festival, I was especially excited by it nevertheless. For what I found was a sea of smiling people, of giggling children with helium balloons... circles of men singing ecstatically at dancers, the arms of their smiling, shuffling partners elegantly draped around their waists. I'm pretty sure there is more to Diwali than what lay in the realms of my knowledge, but at first glance it really did seem like one of those great inventions designed solely so that people may have fun, a bit like a giant, ridiculous dance :)
Diwali left me feeling creative and inspired. So I took a few photos and then headed up to Parkville to write (I'm at a point in my life where I could happily spend a few solid days just writing to people, not to mention to my journal, to this). A short detour was required - I first had to shuffle some boxes around for about 30mins for work, and a combination of the physical exertion plus the constantly heightened state of extroversion that I had naturally adopted for the day left me in a state of relative exhaustion. I managed to find my way back to my car, and tried to nap until I found that decidedly uncomfortable, and set to work on writing this post, instead.
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Come 10:30pm, I left the car and again headed for the city, but this time with purpose: Snarky Puppy were in town. I'd been looking forward to this gig for months now, and was still in disbelief that this ensemble (who I would not-so-cautiously say are the best band in the world at the moment) would actually visit Melbourne. As soon as I arrived at the venue (an idyllic riverside structure, which - contrary to my previously cynical notions towards the "pop up venue" mentality, impressed me greatly), I could tell that it was going to be one of those gigs.
Despite being perhaps more overworked that I think I've ever seen him, Chris was early (which was a relief - the idea of him missing out on Snarky Puppy kind of made me feel ill). But he was in great spirits - and after a few minutes, we found ourselves running into friends from all walks of life: Declan from ANAM, Evan from Swinburne, even our old y12 Media Studies teacher - Mr. O'Brien - was there.
Seeing Snarky in the flesh was a life-changing experience. As I was saying to Declan before the show, "I think it's going to be one of those gigs...", and fortunately it was everything that we wanted it to be. It's always hard to pick a favourite gig that I've been to in my life, what between Ben Folds Five and Chucho Valdez, The Cat Empire and Orchestra Victoria's rendition of Nabucco. But Snarky is up there with the best of the best of the best. There's very few things that I would ever give a standing ovation to - for I can be a fierce critic - but after that evening, I'd give Snarky everything I ever owned.
I think that as musicians, once your ensemble is playing so tightly and technically that you don't need to worry about the details, then there's a certain level of creativity that you aspire to get to. Very few musicians get to this point, but Snarky is certainly one of them. We had an especially musical crowd amongst us - as Chris said, "we could probably form a Snarky Puppy cover band between us, and it would be decent", and everyone in the audience was left flabberghasted and quiet come the end of the gig. Every player in Snarky Puppy is a world leader at what they do... their up tempo numbers were filled with brilliance and passion; their deconstructions were delicate and heart-wrenching.
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Saturday was a late night (after walking through the city with Chris to drop him home), but it was worth every second. Conversely, Sunday was an early start, with the destination being the pastoral, remote Panton Hill, for a community festival of the same name to be shared by Dani, Heidi and I. Despite a lack of sleep, I found navigating to Panton Hill a straightforward task, and in Panton Hill I found everything that you would expect from a country town community festival: CFA trucks, school artworks, performances by kids, and Dani+Heidi right in the thick of it all. It was a fairly lazy morning, where we spent most of it lying on a hill, listening to whoever was speaking from the rotunda - typically either some gutsy local kids doing performance, a local called Uncle Bill who enthusiastically performed a moving welcome to country, or an MC who clearly had forgotten his Panton Hill trivia and instead opted to read from his EH&S manual.
In spite of my decided lack of sleep, it was wonderful to hang out with Dani and simply spend some time together. After the festival, we headed back to her place to share stories and music and well-wishes and just company, alongside jayde and keevah and some very comfy couches.
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Other friends, too. Last week included a fun dinner with Liesl, where we both headed out to a respectable Indian restaurant and proceeded to make each other laugh for the night. Like a few others in my life, Liesl is in transit at the moment, a world of boxes - she is in the midst of moving houses. She's still got a few gripes about her work (admittedly far less than in times prior) but all-in-all she appears to be in a good place. One of the things I love about her is her sense of humor - she's always trying to lighten any situation, and she just can't resist a quick, witty pin, regardless of how daggy it is. She's synonymous with smiling. I think it's great.
A couple of Sundays ago, Josh and I went on an adventure. It all started with a message at 9:30am on that Sunday morning (and boy was it a lazy sunday morning. I remember thinking "If this wasn't Josh, there's hardly anyone that I'd be doing things for today...')... but the boy had a 'head full of ambition and no direction', so I stopped what I was doing, and drove to Ballarat to collect him. We went North.
The most wonderful day ensued. One without time limits or restrictions, just small moments and tiny places, and LOTS of stories. Looking at the former, we stopped at Blampied (to have an early lunch at the Swiss Mountain Hotel - conveniently across the road from the house where I effectively grew up), and then we found ourselves in Trentham and Heathcote and Shepparton at one point, as well some tiny towns - like one called Beveridge that had a dishearteningly hard-to-find pub.
Speaking of the latter, we shared so many stories. Deep and personal, anecdotal and crass, and everything in between. Josh and I are logistically different (I, an introverted part-athlete-turned-hippy: - vegetarian, musical, and sporty... he, a metalhead tradie with a taste for fashion, gregariousness and going through alcohol as if it were currency); but we are so very similar in many important ways: writers, libertarians, optimists (yes, I am convinced he is one), and we'll both drop everything if something has a good story at the end. Josh has been one of my closest friends this year, and we again got along like a house on fire... we hadn't even especially been drinking.
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Work continues to be a bit of a farce. on one hand, whilst I am in a unique assignment involving some 8x managers (which on paper looks like disaster), in reality, nobody really is managing me - perhaps because everyone assumes someone else is doing it... or maybe they just aren't in the habit of managing very much here. Of course, I've been using this to my advantage a little - little things like turning up late, ducking out for a lunchtime sleep or even a soccer game - I've appreciated these. Don't get me wrong, I have been working pretty hard when I've been there (I suspect that it's not hard to be seen as 'working hard' in this jaded team), but my efforts have only been because my clients are such nice and interesting people, I can't help but want to do my best for them.
And it's changing - work is changing, or it is going to, very soon. For two weeks there, life was about job applications and applying for things that'll happen largely at uni. (Namely, they're cutting 1-in-6 staff, aiming to get the numbers down from 3000 to 2500). Ironically, word on the street is that apparently some 850+ staff didn't bother with going through the 're-apply for your positions' thing, so now it looks like HR are going to have to actively redeploy a fair percentage of people who concertedly want their payout so that they can leave. This, of course, is great news for people like me, who applied for many roles and were happy with our applications.
I expect that I'll be called up for interviews very soon - but for now, work is this nice little limbo where all that is required of me has been done, and I can get on with not worrying about this stuff at all. Besides, when you have a job like mine (again, somehow these idiots decided it'd be a good idea to send me to paradise every day and pay me handsomely for it)... it's hard to worry about things.
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As you can see from my other recent post, YogaFest happened last weekend, and changed my perspective on things. I'm now doing an hour of yoga each day from home, and working hard to really improve my practice technically, as well as to embrace some of the emotional / mental philosophies (namely, in regards to letting go) that yoga teaches us. I dearly want to start learning off Tamblyn, as well as Elizabeth, and am already committing myself to some of his classes when I can.
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Dating. Dating is a big part of my life again. Not that I am dating anyone at the moment, but I am looking. As Josh said of himself: "I'm kind of prone to falling in love...", and anyone who reads my blog will know that love and emotions are a huge part of who I am. As an INFP, we feel our lives intensely...
I had a few dates recently with a girl who I thought was downright lovely. Her name was Kim, and I think I liked everything about her. We had a couple of dates which I thought were relatively successful - one of my favourite things about her (ok well there are lots) was the way that she'd stop half-way through our conversations and say "...just a minute, I want to write that down - that inspires me to write about something".
Kim was relaxed, creative, talented, artistic, and absolutely stunning. Perhaps that's a rookie mistake - liking her too much. Again, we had a couple of wonderful nights, and I was all geared up for a 3rd one, one where I was convinced I would come out of my introverted shell a little more and take some real risks with her (lord how I want to)... but at the last minute, we had to postpone via a late-night message that said "sorry, I can't make tomorrow, I'll explain later". That was a couple of weeks ago, and the last I've heard from her.
People have their different reasons, and I know that she was in a period of transition at the moment (she has been moving houses), and I'm certainly not closing the door on her - hell, I think she's wondrous... basically, I like her more than I've liked anyone in a very long time. But, who knows. I guess that's where some of this yoga stuff and the letting go aspect comes in. Maybe she met someone else, in another walk of life (which wouldn't surprise me, and by typing that I only mean that a girl that wonderful couldn't possibly stay single for long). Maybe a spanner got thrown into her works - perhaps something happened to her. Maybe I'll hear from her tomorrow. Who knows.
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I'm not sure if I mentioned, but I twisted my knee about six weeks ago. It wasn't a severe twist - I had an MRI on it (my first one!), and the scans showed that there was nothing wrong with it, but in lieu of YogaFest there's been a lot of physio (expensive but it helps), and it's now in a pretty good state.
As I was saying with Dani - when I am physically injured, I have been prone to coming a little mentally down. That is to say, I adopted the status of "injured" for a couple of weeks (with some negative connotations) and it wasn't until I could start doing light yoga again a couple of weeks later, that I mentally made the shift from "injured" to "recovering". It's not a huge problem, but I feel like I'm in considerably better step, mentally, for getting back into physical activity.
Fortunately, the knee didn't worry me at all on the retreat, and all of my teachers at YogaFest were super-good about it.
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I went through a period of not sleeping correctly; that is, of waking up at 5:30am, regardless. I think this was initially to do with daylight savings and the changes in sunlight levels in my room at that hour. It was a problem for a while (I even bought an eye mask to try and stop it - which totally failed as it was uncomfortable and awkward), and whilst I'm still occasionally waking up early, it's not as bad as a couple of weeks ago. I'm still sleeping kinda late, but nothing too out-of-the-ordinary.
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It's going to be a busy month. In addition to YogaFest, I've got Syntax coming up again next weekend - for year number eight. Again, we are a bit disorganized about it (both Chris and I - but Chris in particular - have been especially busy!), however I have a really good feeling about this year also. We get to host the thing in a free-of-charge venue for once, and in a great location - so that's a real benefit. For the first time ever, it'll be 24-hours and three days consecutive (73 hours in total), so that's a real change for us, but I think it'll work swell :)
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I watched two amazing films recently - Ironically, they were kind of similar. One was called "Cloud Atlas" - a recommendation from Kim - and it was unlike any film I'd seen before. Symphonic in its execution - I'd be lying if I said that I'd picked up up on all of the subtle plot ties in the movie, but the scene transitions alone make it remarkable. "Babel" is also a moving film about displaced yet connected characters. I loved "babel" - it's probably not as deeply entwined as Cloud Atlas, but it's certainly emotional and leaves you really feeling for the characters. I think it's probably Brad Pitt's best film, other than maybe Fight Club.
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The band will have a CD launch soon - in a couple of weeks apparently, so I'm sure that Simon will start rustling us up to get prepared for that quite soon. I am looking forward to playing with the crew again, and my piano playing has been 'on and off' lately... although it certainly happens sometimes, and I think about it every day. I'm not sure if I mentioned, but I moved my digital piano into my bedroom, and having the instrument set up in front of me goes a huge way towards inspiring me to play more. Curiously, Alex also asked me to do some jamming on organ with his reggae band - which I would LOVE to do, but it hasn't happened just yet.
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I've been meaning to catch up with Tasha for some time now, and it hasn't happened yet, but I hope it will. We have very different schedules - she works weekends and breakfast shifts, which makes it hard to find commonly-shared free time. I still really want to hang out with her and just... get to know her again, on our own terms, without needing to play host to anyone else at the same time. By the same token, she recently asked me to a picnic but I declined, as I knew enough from her social invites to know that it would have been a group situation - perhaps I was just feeling introverted but I wasn't in the mood for socializing with a group - especially when Tash and I are yet to have "the talk" that I feel needs to happen in due course.
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Just quickly, this most recent weekend involved two more things: the first was going to AAMI park with Bridget and Leah, to watch the Victory defeat my beloved Wellington Phoenix. Potentially immanent football results aside, it was great to hang out with Bridget for a bit - something I do rarely (I love her as a friend but we are POLAR opposites, and I really have to be in the right mood for her). Still, it was a lot of fun. She's recently playing with the online dating scenario also, and so it's been interesting to see what life is like from 'the other side', even if I am quietly a little jealous of the incredible success she's having with it.
And yesterday - nay, Tuesday - was a wonderful, low-key day, where I gave my last day off to my Brother and the family of my sister-in-laws. It was an adorable lunchtime day - I love those people to bits - and have a huge amount of time for Sarah and her larger-than-life Italian family. I spent most of the day hugging little Madeline, talking happily with Tony about soccer, and telling jokes to keep Pete happy and laughing. Such a beautiful afternoon.
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So, I think that's it for me and this update. Currently, I'm sitting in the back seat of my car on Pistol Club Rd (the only place near work where I have reception), it's uncomfortable but I'll be going back as soon as this is posted - it's been a late lunch anyway; again work is a bit of a farce for now... even if there are some things that I should be doing. I guess the moral of the story is that I feel like I'm at a point where things are really in control for me - like there is little in terms of the things that I 'must do' in life, and that I've finally some space to process the things that I should and want to do. Lets hope it continues. I expect that it will.
Sometimes, it feels like not much has changed. There's been so many great, memorable moments of my 2014 spring, and happiness has pretty much been a constant. I wish I could write about every day in minute detail, but for now I just wanted to write down some of the beautiful things that have felt meaningful and special to me.
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I'm finally getting around to catching up with a couple of people who I really admire and have a lot of time for from ANAM (my former "2nd job" workplace). The first of these was Suzie - or should I say, I had the absolute, utter pleasure of sharing a brunch with Suzie... and it was everything that a "1st catchup with someone you loved working with and wanna start becoming close friends with" should have been.
Suzie always reminds me of that great quote by Maya Angelou (and I'm paraphrasing here): where we never remember what words a person said, or what gestures they do, but we never forget how they made us FEEL. That's so true of both Suzie in the past and Suzie currently. For me, Suzie was always that colleague who makes a workplace feel like a family. In the workplace, she was always one to offer warm thanks, or a hug if you needed it, and always had a way of making you feel like even when you are stressed out of your brain, that you are actually incredibly talented and doing a stellar job.
We hadn't seen each other in about a year, but she was still all smiles and unashamedly herself. 2014 has been a year of change for her, where she's since quit her former job, and branched out to becoming a writer (lord knows, she's a brilliant writer), and starting up some of her own independent artistic ventures under the ever-supportive eye of her close friends and her dear, wonderful husband.
Again, speaking in the language of feelings, Suzie makes me feel like a writer... and I believe that our shared interest in writing forms a large part of the basis of our friendship. We talk about it a lot. Still, she's an ever-caring, ever-giving, introverted kind of individual, and those kinds of people are emphatically my kind of people.
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From one ANAM colleague-turned-friend to another, I'm catching up with Katie for 'the first time' outside of work (ie. since last year) on Tuesday. Katie's someone who I feel 'potentially close' to (note: there's that word again... ever notice that I'm enormously attune to feelings?)... especially since Katie and I became facebook friends about 6 months ago, and what ensued was an incredible outpouring of positivity and subtle wisdom, flowing from the admirable web presence that is her FB feed. I am almost a little nervous to catch up with her - which is almost a ludicrous proposition for friends, if only because I hardly know her as a person and worried in a shallow, past-ridden way that my own introversion will have me again deemed as someone who comes off far better on paper than in real life.
Still, I already have a good feeling about Katie. We share a lot of the same interests (yoga, in particular), and I sort of feel like she just might already be a very close friend in my life that I just haven't met properly yet. It'll be good to catch up.
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My weekend was big and exciting, with many memories and highlights, even if there was some exhaustion to go with it. I spent much of Saturday on a rooftop bar at Campari House, hanging out with James - one of my oldest, dearest friends, who decided a few years ago to move to London and become an ex-pat. He has changed a little, but still has his mother's-boy-charisma (which you can't help but love) and his passion for the good things in life. James was always the centre of our friend group - or any friend group - a living embodiment of Tolstoy's Oblonsky, with all the trimmings, menu selections included.
I met an unexpected new friend in James' sweetheart, Kristy, and I liked her straight away. She's a bright and bubbly, empathetic NGO worker, who sees good in people and is gorgeously affectionate to James. I remember thinking "she's one of our people", and couldn't wait for the time where she meets Dani and some of my other dearest people from that friend group. I also met Nalisha and Henry here: the former a cute, good-natured, fun-loving kiwi girl, the latter a naive and quintessential English statesman who loves his cricket as much as he loves nervously being in a distant country. I took to both of them, and shared smiley chats, a lot. I did fancy Nalisha, a little, but as Josh said (see below), perhaps I am kind of prone to falling in love, and I do know that I'm a sucker for a kiwi accent (or indeed, anything about New Zealand at all)...
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I stayed in town all day, and after a quick yet lovely dinner at Cafe Andiamo (which is fast becoming a favourite place of mine), I found myself at Diwali. Although I didn't understand much about the origins of this celebratory festival, I was especially excited by it nevertheless. For what I found was a sea of smiling people, of giggling children with helium balloons... circles of men singing ecstatically at dancers, the arms of their smiling, shuffling partners elegantly draped around their waists. I'm pretty sure there is more to Diwali than what lay in the realms of my knowledge, but at first glance it really did seem like one of those great inventions designed solely so that people may have fun, a bit like a giant, ridiculous dance :)
Diwali left me feeling creative and inspired. So I took a few photos and then headed up to Parkville to write (I'm at a point in my life where I could happily spend a few solid days just writing to people, not to mention to my journal, to this). A short detour was required - I first had to shuffle some boxes around for about 30mins for work, and a combination of the physical exertion plus the constantly heightened state of extroversion that I had naturally adopted for the day left me in a state of relative exhaustion. I managed to find my way back to my car, and tried to nap until I found that decidedly uncomfortable, and set to work on writing this post, instead.
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Come 10:30pm, I left the car and again headed for the city, but this time with purpose: Snarky Puppy were in town. I'd been looking forward to this gig for months now, and was still in disbelief that this ensemble (who I would not-so-cautiously say are the best band in the world at the moment) would actually visit Melbourne. As soon as I arrived at the venue (an idyllic riverside structure, which - contrary to my previously cynical notions towards the "pop up venue" mentality, impressed me greatly), I could tell that it was going to be one of those gigs.
Despite being perhaps more overworked that I think I've ever seen him, Chris was early (which was a relief - the idea of him missing out on Snarky Puppy kind of made me feel ill). But he was in great spirits - and after a few minutes, we found ourselves running into friends from all walks of life: Declan from ANAM, Evan from Swinburne, even our old y12 Media Studies teacher - Mr. O'Brien - was there.
Seeing Snarky in the flesh was a life-changing experience. As I was saying to Declan before the show, "I think it's going to be one of those gigs...", and fortunately it was everything that we wanted it to be. It's always hard to pick a favourite gig that I've been to in my life, what between Ben Folds Five and Chucho Valdez, The Cat Empire and Orchestra Victoria's rendition of Nabucco. But Snarky is up there with the best of the best of the best. There's very few things that I would ever give a standing ovation to - for I can be a fierce critic - but after that evening, I'd give Snarky everything I ever owned.
I think that as musicians, once your ensemble is playing so tightly and technically that you don't need to worry about the details, then there's a certain level of creativity that you aspire to get to. Very few musicians get to this point, but Snarky is certainly one of them. We had an especially musical crowd amongst us - as Chris said, "we could probably form a Snarky Puppy cover band between us, and it would be decent", and everyone in the audience was left flabberghasted and quiet come the end of the gig. Every player in Snarky Puppy is a world leader at what they do... their up tempo numbers were filled with brilliance and passion; their deconstructions were delicate and heart-wrenching.
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Saturday was a late night (after walking through the city with Chris to drop him home), but it was worth every second. Conversely, Sunday was an early start, with the destination being the pastoral, remote Panton Hill, for a community festival of the same name to be shared by Dani, Heidi and I. Despite a lack of sleep, I found navigating to Panton Hill a straightforward task, and in Panton Hill I found everything that you would expect from a country town community festival: CFA trucks, school artworks, performances by kids, and Dani+Heidi right in the thick of it all. It was a fairly lazy morning, where we spent most of it lying on a hill, listening to whoever was speaking from the rotunda - typically either some gutsy local kids doing performance, a local called Uncle Bill who enthusiastically performed a moving welcome to country, or an MC who clearly had forgotten his Panton Hill trivia and instead opted to read from his EH&S manual.
In spite of my decided lack of sleep, it was wonderful to hang out with Dani and simply spend some time together. After the festival, we headed back to her place to share stories and music and well-wishes and just company, alongside jayde and keevah and some very comfy couches.
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Other friends, too. Last week included a fun dinner with Liesl, where we both headed out to a respectable Indian restaurant and proceeded to make each other laugh for the night. Like a few others in my life, Liesl is in transit at the moment, a world of boxes - she is in the midst of moving houses. She's still got a few gripes about her work (admittedly far less than in times prior) but all-in-all she appears to be in a good place. One of the things I love about her is her sense of humor - she's always trying to lighten any situation, and she just can't resist a quick, witty pin, regardless of how daggy it is. She's synonymous with smiling. I think it's great.
A couple of Sundays ago, Josh and I went on an adventure. It all started with a message at 9:30am on that Sunday morning (and boy was it a lazy sunday morning. I remember thinking "If this wasn't Josh, there's hardly anyone that I'd be doing things for today...')... but the boy had a 'head full of ambition and no direction', so I stopped what I was doing, and drove to Ballarat to collect him. We went North.
The most wonderful day ensued. One without time limits or restrictions, just small moments and tiny places, and LOTS of stories. Looking at the former, we stopped at Blampied (to have an early lunch at the Swiss Mountain Hotel - conveniently across the road from the house where I effectively grew up), and then we found ourselves in Trentham and Heathcote and Shepparton at one point, as well some tiny towns - like one called Beveridge that had a dishearteningly hard-to-find pub.
Speaking of the latter, we shared so many stories. Deep and personal, anecdotal and crass, and everything in between. Josh and I are logistically different (I, an introverted part-athlete-turned-hippy: - vegetarian, musical, and sporty... he, a metalhead tradie with a taste for fashion, gregariousness and going through alcohol as if it were currency); but we are so very similar in many important ways: writers, libertarians, optimists (yes, I am convinced he is one), and we'll both drop everything if something has a good story at the end. Josh has been one of my closest friends this year, and we again got along like a house on fire... we hadn't even especially been drinking.
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Work continues to be a bit of a farce. on one hand, whilst I am in a unique assignment involving some 8x managers (which on paper looks like disaster), in reality, nobody really is managing me - perhaps because everyone assumes someone else is doing it... or maybe they just aren't in the habit of managing very much here. Of course, I've been using this to my advantage a little - little things like turning up late, ducking out for a lunchtime sleep or even a soccer game - I've appreciated these. Don't get me wrong, I have been working pretty hard when I've been there (I suspect that it's not hard to be seen as 'working hard' in this jaded team), but my efforts have only been because my clients are such nice and interesting people, I can't help but want to do my best for them.
And it's changing - work is changing, or it is going to, very soon. For two weeks there, life was about job applications and applying for things that'll happen largely at uni. (Namely, they're cutting 1-in-6 staff, aiming to get the numbers down from 3000 to 2500). Ironically, word on the street is that apparently some 850+ staff didn't bother with going through the 're-apply for your positions' thing, so now it looks like HR are going to have to actively redeploy a fair percentage of people who concertedly want their payout so that they can leave. This, of course, is great news for people like me, who applied for many roles and were happy with our applications.
I expect that I'll be called up for interviews very soon - but for now, work is this nice little limbo where all that is required of me has been done, and I can get on with not worrying about this stuff at all. Besides, when you have a job like mine (again, somehow these idiots decided it'd be a good idea to send me to paradise every day and pay me handsomely for it)... it's hard to worry about things.
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As you can see from my other recent post, YogaFest happened last weekend, and changed my perspective on things. I'm now doing an hour of yoga each day from home, and working hard to really improve my practice technically, as well as to embrace some of the emotional / mental philosophies (namely, in regards to letting go) that yoga teaches us. I dearly want to start learning off Tamblyn, as well as Elizabeth, and am already committing myself to some of his classes when I can.
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Dating. Dating is a big part of my life again. Not that I am dating anyone at the moment, but I am looking. As Josh said of himself: "I'm kind of prone to falling in love...", and anyone who reads my blog will know that love and emotions are a huge part of who I am. As an INFP, we feel our lives intensely...
I had a few dates recently with a girl who I thought was downright lovely. Her name was Kim, and I think I liked everything about her. We had a couple of dates which I thought were relatively successful - one of my favourite things about her (ok well there are lots) was the way that she'd stop half-way through our conversations and say "...just a minute, I want to write that down - that inspires me to write about something".
Kim was relaxed, creative, talented, artistic, and absolutely stunning. Perhaps that's a rookie mistake - liking her too much. Again, we had a couple of wonderful nights, and I was all geared up for a 3rd one, one where I was convinced I would come out of my introverted shell a little more and take some real risks with her (lord how I want to)... but at the last minute, we had to postpone via a late-night message that said "sorry, I can't make tomorrow, I'll explain later". That was a couple of weeks ago, and the last I've heard from her.
People have their different reasons, and I know that she was in a period of transition at the moment (she has been moving houses), and I'm certainly not closing the door on her - hell, I think she's wondrous... basically, I like her more than I've liked anyone in a very long time. But, who knows. I guess that's where some of this yoga stuff and the letting go aspect comes in. Maybe she met someone else, in another walk of life (which wouldn't surprise me, and by typing that I only mean that a girl that wonderful couldn't possibly stay single for long). Maybe a spanner got thrown into her works - perhaps something happened to her. Maybe I'll hear from her tomorrow. Who knows.
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I'm not sure if I mentioned, but I twisted my knee about six weeks ago. It wasn't a severe twist - I had an MRI on it (my first one!), and the scans showed that there was nothing wrong with it, but in lieu of YogaFest there's been a lot of physio (expensive but it helps), and it's now in a pretty good state.
As I was saying with Dani - when I am physically injured, I have been prone to coming a little mentally down. That is to say, I adopted the status of "injured" for a couple of weeks (with some negative connotations) and it wasn't until I could start doing light yoga again a couple of weeks later, that I mentally made the shift from "injured" to "recovering". It's not a huge problem, but I feel like I'm in considerably better step, mentally, for getting back into physical activity.
Fortunately, the knee didn't worry me at all on the retreat, and all of my teachers at YogaFest were super-good about it.
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I went through a period of not sleeping correctly; that is, of waking up at 5:30am, regardless. I think this was initially to do with daylight savings and the changes in sunlight levels in my room at that hour. It was a problem for a while (I even bought an eye mask to try and stop it - which totally failed as it was uncomfortable and awkward), and whilst I'm still occasionally waking up early, it's not as bad as a couple of weeks ago. I'm still sleeping kinda late, but nothing too out-of-the-ordinary.
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It's going to be a busy month. In addition to YogaFest, I've got Syntax coming up again next weekend - for year number eight. Again, we are a bit disorganized about it (both Chris and I - but Chris in particular - have been especially busy!), however I have a really good feeling about this year also. We get to host the thing in a free-of-charge venue for once, and in a great location - so that's a real benefit. For the first time ever, it'll be 24-hours and three days consecutive (73 hours in total), so that's a real change for us, but I think it'll work swell :)
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I watched two amazing films recently - Ironically, they were kind of similar. One was called "Cloud Atlas" - a recommendation from Kim - and it was unlike any film I'd seen before. Symphonic in its execution - I'd be lying if I said that I'd picked up up on all of the subtle plot ties in the movie, but the scene transitions alone make it remarkable. "Babel" is also a moving film about displaced yet connected characters. I loved "babel" - it's probably not as deeply entwined as Cloud Atlas, but it's certainly emotional and leaves you really feeling for the characters. I think it's probably Brad Pitt's best film, other than maybe Fight Club.
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The band will have a CD launch soon - in a couple of weeks apparently, so I'm sure that Simon will start rustling us up to get prepared for that quite soon. I am looking forward to playing with the crew again, and my piano playing has been 'on and off' lately... although it certainly happens sometimes, and I think about it every day. I'm not sure if I mentioned, but I moved my digital piano into my bedroom, and having the instrument set up in front of me goes a huge way towards inspiring me to play more. Curiously, Alex also asked me to do some jamming on organ with his reggae band - which I would LOVE to do, but it hasn't happened just yet.
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I've been meaning to catch up with Tasha for some time now, and it hasn't happened yet, but I hope it will. We have very different schedules - she works weekends and breakfast shifts, which makes it hard to find commonly-shared free time. I still really want to hang out with her and just... get to know her again, on our own terms, without needing to play host to anyone else at the same time. By the same token, she recently asked me to a picnic but I declined, as I knew enough from her social invites to know that it would have been a group situation - perhaps I was just feeling introverted but I wasn't in the mood for socializing with a group - especially when Tash and I are yet to have "the talk" that I feel needs to happen in due course.
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Just quickly, this most recent weekend involved two more things: the first was going to AAMI park with Bridget and Leah, to watch the Victory defeat my beloved Wellington Phoenix. Potentially immanent football results aside, it was great to hang out with Bridget for a bit - something I do rarely (I love her as a friend but we are POLAR opposites, and I really have to be in the right mood for her). Still, it was a lot of fun. She's recently playing with the online dating scenario also, and so it's been interesting to see what life is like from 'the other side', even if I am quietly a little jealous of the incredible success she's having with it.
And yesterday - nay, Tuesday - was a wonderful, low-key day, where I gave my last day off to my Brother and the family of my sister-in-laws. It was an adorable lunchtime day - I love those people to bits - and have a huge amount of time for Sarah and her larger-than-life Italian family. I spent most of the day hugging little Madeline, talking happily with Tony about soccer, and telling jokes to keep Pete happy and laughing. Such a beautiful afternoon.
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So, I think that's it for me and this update. Currently, I'm sitting in the back seat of my car on Pistol Club Rd (the only place near work where I have reception), it's uncomfortable but I'll be going back as soon as this is posted - it's been a late lunch anyway; again work is a bit of a farce for now... even if there are some things that I should be doing. I guess the moral of the story is that I feel like I'm at a point where things are really in control for me - like there is little in terms of the things that I 'must do' in life, and that I've finally some space to process the things that I should and want to do. Lets hope it continues. I expect that it will.