Working Thoughts
One of the great benefits of gardening for a living is that you get a lot of time to think. Performing tasks that have been absorbed into the muscle memory through rote memorisation seems to occupy some of the lower brain functions, so that if one is in the right head space a lot of creative and productive thought can occur. More than if I was under fluorescent lights staring at a screen anyway, but maybe that works for other people. I can’t say I really thought of too much of use today, although I did have a minor epiphany regarding my mental health that will hopefully help me reestablish a healthy mental state in the wake of the chronic fatigue.
When I came out of the bipolar I attributed the almost disappearance of depression to a new medicine and years of hard work. Around the same time I also bought a business and started pushing it along pretty hard. My thought today was that having the business itself was a huge factor in the receding of the depression I had experienced up to that point. Having the business gave me lots of sub-areas to target with my thoughts as I mowed lawns, all of them united under the common goal to make the business bigger, more efficient and more successful. I could think about modifications to the trailer or the ute, about employee manuals and training, about prices, future expansion, advertising, efficiency and the best way to perform every little action, the best was to schedule the run of properties through the day, all these different areas that were all important in the greater scheme of things.
So basically my idea is that I didn’t have much time to think defeatist, depressing ideas, because my mind was always busy working towards a greater goal. I guess the trick now is that I have to replace that goal, and not only that, reinvigorate myself so that I can approach all these areas of thought with positivity. I’m not sure what I would replace the business with, I suppose the most obvious thing would be with our desire to get a bit of land, build a house and go off grid a bit. Then as far as personal glory goes I suppose stand up, funny skits, a podcast, a bit of writing would all be creative goals. As well of course would be improvements to the business to make it run as smoothly as possible as a small unit, without getting caught up in the expansiveness I did before.
So basically my mind needs a united goal, like a socialist revolution. And then I need pillars to switch my mind back and forwards between and to work on. If I can stay occupied with that stuff hopefully my mind won’t have too much room for defeatism.
I don’t know, writing today has been like pulling teeth, but thought I should have a go. I’m pretty tired from work. I want to try to include cute things from the kids that happen from time to time so I can remember them. One I like is in the shower Ellis copies me wiping water from his face. When I do it I put my hand horizontal across my face, like if I was covering my eyes, whereas he drags his hand down vertically. He does it to me to when my face gets wet and I like it.
Peace.
Feeling like an outsider
Having kids around a bunch of people the same age (around 30), who don’t doesn’t help. Went to two social events today – pretty big day for us compared to most weekends. First to a baby shower for some new friends I like a lot. Eventually I got into some conversations, a bit about fishing, guy showed me a spot in Noosa on google maps satellite view. Then some video game talk later. Before that I was just thinking what the fuck is happening here – there was about four conversations about where to buy mundane household items. People are looking for those things more online these days, and you can get one hundred meat smokers for $70 a unit on a Chinese website. Hand soap atomisers probably garnered the most excitement. I don’t know, I feel a bit bad shitting on those people. I think there was two groups that knew people within their group but not the other group, and Keiko and I completely on the outside. So maybe it takes time to build up to a more worthwhile conversation, to find some common ground. Also maybe that stuff is more interesting to thirty-somethings with no kids ergo more disposable income.
At the second event, a farewell party for a uni friend of mine we were again mostly outside the circle, standing, feeding or holding kids, trying to keep them away from puddles as the rain continued to drift down, as it had without break all day. At least at this event I did get to discuss my preferred subjects – the hardship of life. I don’t care, bad shit is what I know, so if someone asks me what I’ve done in the last three-and-a-half years since we last talked, I’m going to tell them. I’ve been eating shit. This guy depressed me a bit, I know him from uni days as well. He didn’t really say anything depressing, it was just how our lives are static now, and how the excitement and unknowing of the future is just sucked out of your life one day. So not really depressed I guess, just melancholy.
My friend that’s leaving, I’d count him as one of my two longest-standing friends. By which I mean we met a long time ago (twelve years or so), but with long breaks in between. With these two guys there was a period of I’d guess more than two years where I didn’t see them through anxiety, obsessive solitary weed smoking and drinking when I spent that time in the back room at my parents’. I remember this guy from my last year of uni especially. We had a lot of good sessions of drinking. I remember particularly being manic, actually probably hypomanic (I was heading to the launch of a short story collection I had got a story into, my only real achievement to date in that field), pissed in the middle of the day, riding down a massive hill in Toowong at the speed of sound, standing up on the bike with my shirt unbuttoned all the way.
This guy and a couple of friends appeared out of nowhere – they were heading to a pre-party up the hill. We later ended up back at that party, not before I made a drunken dick of myself in front of my parents at the event (“I loved herrr.”) Durr. We were filthy messes. He made me a sandwich comprised only of tobasco sauce while I tried to pick up the remnants of a bottle I’d dropped while flaring, slicing my fingers on the glass and adding droplets of blood to the mess. We later went back to mine, pissed off my housemate (the one I ‘looooooved’) and as they left I threw up at them in the front hallway.
We reminisced about that and other great nights plenty of times, they are fun to recall, to have someone to recall them with, to add colour to the still frames. These days the two of us have fallen apart somewhat. A lot of our relationship was based off drinking I think, and with age fun binge drinking becomes more like a not-so-fun drinking problem. So if one of us was drinking the other wasn’t on a temporary attempt at self-improvement. Alcohol-powered ships in the night.
Anyway, it’s not like he’s shipping off to the Somme, just heading off to Melbourne for a new job with his missus. Really I guess it’s more sad we couldn’t make more of what we have before he left, or maybe the sadness is mostly wistfulness for those magic years of young adulthood we left behind a decade ago. Who know. Fuck I’m a cheerful cunt.
Run and Stumble 