When did it happen?

I wonder when I got "old". Was there a line I crossed over, a form I signed, a box I ticked, a passage I went through, a birthday I had?

I can't help but peg it on turning 30. Something really did happen to me. Don't get me wrong. I don't at all identify as "being old". I resist being told to "grow up" or to, this is the one that really gets my old granny whiskers up, - "act your age". I want to always remain "young at heart" which to me means to always have curiosity about the world, to yearn for and embark upon adventures, to act impulsively and always want to learn and grow.

But something has still happened. Yeah, I want to act impulsively, but not all the time, and I also now want to plan a little more and have a little more solid ground beneath me feet. Yeah, I want to embark upon adventures, but maybe not ones that take two years, and I maybe want to make sure I have, I dunno, money. Yeah, that's it. I think I have passed the point of being willing to throw in a job and take off with a pack on my back, spend every dollar and come home with nothing. But is that just about money, or is it security or is it both and more?

And there is more. I don't feel like going out every Friday and Saturday and sometimes Thursday night, just because it is a weekend. In fact, there has to be a really good band or a really good friend waiting for me to entice me out now.

I need to stretch and warm up and cool down properly now before I exercise, or I tear or break or hurt something. I reflect more. Pause more. Plan more. This could all be labelled "getting old". But it could also be labelled "growing". Labels (or 'tags') can be powerful things.

The other thing that is interesting is that these are all internal shifts rather than imposed changes. In my 20's I was a 30's sceptic. I thought I would continue living the way I was and I would NOT change just cause society told me I should. I criticised friends in their 30's for deciding they were too old to party, for instance. I thought it was lame. Now I see it from the 'other side' (heheh).

On that note. Here's a whinge (and what I set out to write about in the first place): Just before I got married I was getting my hair done and talking to the hairdresser about my wedding (cause that's what hairdressers like to talk about). The hairdresser was 18 or 19 at the very oldest. After the expected questions about what I would be wearing and where the wedding would be, came an unexpected one that just about knocked me to the floor to roll about with all my cut-off hair.

"Is this your first wedding?"

And then, when I did not respond to this, she tried to change the topic (perhaps misinterpreting my silence as proof that it was my tenth wedding and I was embarrassed about it).

"Do you have any kids?"

Here's to blogging it all out

I have been away for a while. The shock of being thrust out of travel mode in to limbo land and then in to work has meant that I have totally neglected this blog. I got married somewhere in there too, which was a phenomenally huge focus. But, I have missed this thing... and I want it back. So Here I am!

I was recently chatting with my friend Heather, and life has also kept her away from her blog, which she likewise misses. We decided we were going to play a blog version of the old word game where you write a paragraph and then fold the paper over and give the next person the last word. We are going to do that with our blogs, and when we get the last word from the other, we need to start a new entry with that word. (And not allowed to read the most recent of each other's posts first). Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Here's to blogging it all out!

The silly season

In a less navel gazing tone, how very very sad is this: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/11/29/2433277.htm?section=justin

When we get to the point that we will literally KILL each other to get a bargain, I hang my head in shame. Consumerism has consumed us.

Being back home

It's a strange thing, getting back home after so long away.

Initially you still feel like a tourist as all the little old sounds, sights and smells you had forgotten about come flooding over you as though new. The wonderfully laid-back Australian accent with its rough edges saying words like "g'day", "mate", and "no worries". The birds. Oh my god, the birds! How I missed them and didn't even realise. So many birds making so many sounds and splashing the sky and ground and trees with so much colour! Driving on the left hand side of the road. The beaches with their beautiful stretches of either white or golden sand, depending on which bit of the coast you are on. The wild dancing grey-green Eucalypt trees. The cicada's. The smell of tea tree blossom. The flies. The heat. The storms. Coopers beer. The intensity of the light. The surf and the breeze that carries the promise of surf and the surfers. Kangaroos. Echidnas. Snakes and spiders and insects... all these things have a beautiful familiarity and novelty at the same time.

As the world economy is collapsing around my ears and I find myself without a job or a house surrounded by questions, do I have any regrets?... NUP. Wouldn't change a thing.

fire in the belly

I have fire in the belly. Perhaps it is something I ate. Acid. But it feels more like a butterfly. A butterfly of fire flapping its wings to keep the fire going going going. I feel like I need to be doing something with all of this energy though or it will burn me up.

Today, my smile is real. My energy is not forced, and I have to make an affort to not launch off the ground with every step. I love feeling this way, and I don´t think it has happened for a while. I feel like my travel has finally breathed life into the smouldering coals of me.

Life is such an adventure. Every day we wake up not knowing what we will be doing, how we will be doing it, who we will meet, what we will say, what we will learn, or think or eat or hear... even if we plan, we will not know the details. We will wake up not knowing how we will feel. Not knowing who we will be. Every day I am myself, but every day I am different. I love to be surprised, though sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be the same every day. Is it possible? Can anyone be the same every day? Philosophy aside, as I know all the arguamnets that you can never step into the same river twice, that we are made up of molecules that are forever moving in and out of us, that every second we are a second older etc etc. BUT there are some people who SEEM like they feel the same about life every day. Not too happy not too sad, maybe they say just right but to me it is just wrong. You need to have up and down to have motion and you need motion to get to new places. Boats bob up and down but have balance. I love it I love it I love it.

Ode to the road

Ah, the sweetness of travelling and unravelling. While my clothes ravel up in my packpack, I unravel. People say that when you are addicted to travel, you are running away, but I don´t feel that way. I think you learn more about yourself when on the road. When in a rut, it is easy to develop tunnel vision. A rat in a rut, running a race for someone else, chasing a light that will never be. By removing yourself from your comfort zone, and placing yourself in a foreign surrounding, you see the contrast instead of the grey.

But I guess some time I will have to return, just hopefully not to grey.

Not a game

Someone that I worked with at MEC died on the weekend, from an ice climbing accident. I am wondering whether writing it will make it seem more real. At the moment, I just can’t make it real in my head. He was there one day, healthy, young, happy… and now he is not. The human mind really has a hard time registering this kind of news. We somehow seem to fool each other and ourselves that everything is permanent, and it is not. Paul’s death is definitely a reality check. It is also a reminder of the dangers that exist in climbing. A reminder that it is not a game. But then again, neither is life.