Well it's been a minute since I was last jamming pixels into this b-grade text editor and I'm certain that 2 years and 3 months ago I certainly wasn't concerned with the quality of a text editor but I certainly was concerned with what appear to be my first seemingly comprehensive existential crisis. It took me a good while to log back in to this very text editor, Seemingly a result of the data-retention goal posts changing since i was last here… something I am concerned with these days....
Swatch of the Australian Magpie/world's most epic bird
I’m sure there is a great number of things I wasn’t concerned with and in retrospect, it feels like I was driven by the very act of not being concerned, with much, or anything at all and in recent times I was led down a thought-warren regarding maturation and how my 2009-2015/16 self was seemingly existing in opposition to the idea of it, but I only feel this now, at the time I thought I was doing it (maturing). I think maturing and learning/experience are similar but exclusive as I’m of the opinion that learning/experience is something thrust upon you, by time, your self or way of culture and schooling. Ignoring the fact humans are fiercely judgemental, I feel maturity is a yardstick defined by the self, a measure that appears to have inversely proportional potency, in that more age = less concern for maturity? I don’t think it’s as simple as boiling it down to wanting what you can’t have but that universal truth is striking ever increasing chords in my emerging desire for simplicity. I was, once again, postponing my happiness, instead of working towards being happy. I’ve been very lucky in my life, to have experienced much joy but it all came very easily and I think the result of that was not knowing how to find it and also that I NEED to find it, shit doesn’t just fall in your lap, you’ve gotta sit under the asshole.
In the depths of this intrigue I began to realise I was resisting the very things that made me me, or at least the things about myself that I enjoyed most, as my naive self thought the unknown-growth I was pursuing was most quickly attainable through shedding my previous self; this very idea is perhaps founded in my habit of defining borders in my timeline as moments of change. Sure there are defining moments in life but we’re all a sum of previous instances combined and to assume that one can develop and mature by simply placing an imaginary border between two moments is pretty ludicrous. I recall my 5th birthday and how I was bummed that I didn't wake up taller, so really, I learnt this lesson 24 years ago...
Brisbane Sunset, looks like winter. Ektachrome 100vs 135
A desire to avoid specificity is implicating this rant with incompletion but to summarise, for the sake of my diary-esque desires for this journal, what’s been going on since my last post has been extremely transformative. I became reclusive and struggled with a feeling of isolation from self and the people who were close, probably resulting from the travel - which I’m now thinking might be an unconsidered/unspoken downside to travelling over a number of years. Travelling, perhaps not just for me, is a hyper-cultural experience whereby you’re saturated with intrigue and bombarded by the unknown and I’m not sure one can experience these extreme learning environments at home. As a result, it created distance between my home pals who were on their own epic trajectory and seemingly more so than ever as I was unaware of their own blissful progressions and I didn’t realise this at the time, but was probably why I didn’t like talking about trips I went on. In my own experience this was happening in both worlds, as I was on the road with a relatively consistent bunch of dudes, meaning I felt separation from my home pals and my away pals, living in a state of perpetual catch up. I guess the difference was the guys who I was roading with were living in a similar relational state of separation, so perhaps there was more solace for this struggle on the road than at home. In 2017, when I was last here (this blog), I was probably in the thick of the my doldrums and defining my life by how much time I spent thinking/doing work. Escapism probably. I was learning and growing etc etc but I didn’t feel it, I felt the opposite. I struggled with contentedness, perhaps another curse of my travelling and began resigning from the chase.
Stormy Sunset in the Lost World Valley
I definitely wasn’t prepared for the next stage of lamb life, something I didn’t realise until I was coming back up for air. I put all my eggs in other peoples baskets and only very recently realised the best basket was Mary Lou and that the best place for my eggs were in her and I feel like those eggs are hatching right now. We’re on the verge of a new epoch and it’s the most excited I’ve felt for a number of years now and this epoch will be defined by a return to simplicity, a rejection of happiness as a thing that occurs, instead it’s something that results from effort. But that kinda sounds weird, kinda sounds like work, which makes sense as I’ve spent the last 3 years totally driven by and to work. As I felt more work = more maturity (not experience or wisdom, only maturity) and managed to work alongside some very accomplished people however I didn’t realise accomplishment was resulting more from experience, than it was from the actual work, let alone capacity or capability.
Lorenzo Borri, from Italy, surveying the Flatrock Green Zone
One thing I’ve just now noted is that my time entrenched in diving fell basically within my text-based-introspective-hiatus, and as much as I found comfort in hanging with the fish, I think they weren’t the best sounding board. I’m excited by the idea of journalling some diving, and I think I need to approach this thing more lightheartedly, and less like a therapy session. As much as it helps, I think I enjoy the act of expression and writing more than I do therapy, I figure bliss is somewhere in the middle.
Fraser Island vortices.
