STRUGGLE STREET


I'm not sure why I'm writing this, I rarely get deep and personal on here. Yet I think by venting it will help me push forward. The problem is that my life has come to a cross roads of sorts. At the start of the year I moved almost 4000 km's away from the only home i've really ever known, apart from a year living in England and Italy. I moved because I fell madly in love with an amazing girl. That part (the love bit) is fine, all good there, I'd move countries for this girl so opposite coasts is nothing. It's the rest that is causing me problems.

In moving I left my home, my friends and my career, yeah okay my career was probably about to divert anyway, but I left the foundations of my career in archaeology. Now I find myself in a city that is foreign to me in many ways. The climate is something i've never had to deal with before on such a scale. Perth is perpetually sunny and warm, Ballarat is perpetually cloudy and cold. It's depressing, the sunlight that I took for granted really shaped my mental state of mind. Sunlight is energy and without it it's a struggle. Constant rain hampers what you do, the whole lifestyle over here is inside focused, rarely do you get the opportunity to go lie in a park and read a book or stroll down to a cafe and sit outside with a cold drink, these things are somewhat lost to me now. It's the little things that get to you.

It's difficult for me in that while I may often be the life of the party guy I'm massively insecure around groups of people, I just hide it well, but it's hell on the inside. Plus it's easy with my friends, I feel comfortable with them. I'm not comfortable with the 100,000 people who occupy this place. Not yet anyway.

I've chosen to study this year, making it a fully transitional year. I'm not sure I chose the thing to study that I should have. But I'm almost finished so soon that will be over. Then I need to get a job, but that's not looking so great, there really aren't a whole lot of job openings for an archaeologist with a Grad Dip in Museum Studies in this town. I tell myself I'll be happy with whatever I do, but deep down I really want to continue with my passion for archaeology, or at least with something similar. Time will tell on that one.

Then there's the big one, friends. God I miss my friends, I miss calling them up and going down to Northbridge for a quick cheap bite to eat over a nice bottle of wine. I miss inviting them over to my place for dinner on the deck watching the sun set over the city. I miss hanging out with them at their place, at their birthdays, bumping into them in the street or at the shops. Catching a movie with them or grabbing a cold beer of three down at the Rosemount on a warm Saturday afternoon. I miss that life, I really do.

So now I have a new place to live and I need to lay down some roots here, I need a home home, I need some local friends other than my partners friends. I need to make those friends naturally, in my own way, not by being introduced to someone because someone else thinks we'd really get along. That's not how it works, friendships, not with me anyway. It's an organic process that rarely gels. But when it does, it's forever.

So, this is what I'm gonna do,..

  • I'm gonna finish this stupid university course
  • I'm gonna get a job that I like
  • Through that I will no doubt meet people with common interests and sense of humour and make some new friends in the process
  • I'm gonna buy a house
  • I'm gonna unpack all of the boxes still sealed in the garage of the rental were living in now
  • I'm gonna reclaim some of my old life and re-establish it here in this new place
  • I'm gonna grow old here with the girl I love 
  • and I'm gonna start enjoying life again
I just need to get through these last 4 assignments, god they suck.


Comments