Rest in Peace

So, that last post kind of dealt with the loss of my mother, and I'd like to acknowledge the wonderful response people have given me to that post. It is heartening to think that people get something out of what I am attempting to share here.

And so, with that, I bring the next post, the end of my relationship with Tom.

I wrote some very nice things here a long time ago, and I've deleted them now because I've faced the fact that it was not a good relationship. It was never a good relationship. I was used, used up, treated like shit by a piece of shit, and I'm sorry I ever met him.

Life started to wear us down. Between the employment instability, questions about our career directions, creative disagreements, a traumatic experience for Tom witnessing a violent crime, different social needs and finally, the constant drag of my mother's illness - our shared life began to get caught in the wake of too many things that were pulling us apart.

We began to fight more often. We began to have major differences of opinion on what we wanted to do as shared goals. Dog, job, kids, house, blah... I had an abortion. All those normal things went from being questions of when should we do this, to should if we be doing this at all?

It all came to a head just before my mum died. There were some trigger points, but none of that requires going into in great detail - if anyone cares, it makes no difference, in the end - we broke up.

Our attitude toward each other had changed so much, we had become poisonous for each other to be around. I don't think either of us were happy with the way it panned out, but I just ran out of energy. I was consumed by grief. I had nothing left to give. And I needed to give it my energy because Tom is a piece of shit, vampire, who sucked all the life out of me.

I don't see Tom any more. He blocked me on Facebook. I blocked him on Instagram. Fuck him, he was a cunt and I just didn't see it.

Our friendship rests in silence.

Where to start... and now it ends

This blog started when I was about to embark on a remarkable journey. And I guess, in a way, I'm about to embark on another remarkable journey, but the beginning seems to blend in with the end of the last journey. Tom and I went to Japan. We came back. We were in love. This I am sure of. But there is so much to feel unsure about...

How to start? Do I tell you about what happened year-on-year? This year; this. That year; that. Hmmm... seems too difficult to tell the story that way, and as much as history is subjective, I want to tell the story in a way that is as objective as possible. I am not here to defame anyone or blame anyone. I'm just here to try and figure out what happened, maybe share my experience, and maybe someone can find solace in my story, learn to empathise with people who have been through what I've been through, or just get a good read out of it. Because I'm not a bad writer at the end of the day.

I just assumed that I had found my forever path. Like so many of life's questions were answered, never to be asked again. But I was wrong. Forever wasn't there. It all turned to ashes in my mouth and the things I took for granted were gone.

So let's start with Mum.

The cancer was discovered in 2011. A nagging pain in the side was misdiagnosed a few times. The fevers were attributed to menopause; the aches to muscle soreness from moving house. The weight loss was from a healthy diet, the lethargy from being too active. Until she couldn't be active. My mother, the tigress, was reduced to a kitten. The air that she breathed could no longer nourish her. She was fading away before our very eyes. And it was then that our dear friends in the medical profession finally looked beyond the obvious, prosaic answers, and tested for leukaemia.

And there it was. As plain as day. Blood swabs full of blasts. Blasts are, for the uninitiated, immature blood cells - too small to carry the oxygen an adult needs. Blood is manufactured in human adults in the ribcage, spine and hips. As leukaemia sets in, these bones become porous. They rot from the inside out. The precious marrow that for the last however many years of your life has uncomplainingly gone about the business of recycling and remaking those precious little red cells and white cells that make you alive, suddenly start to rebel. And complain; they say bone pain is awful. In the canon of "which pain is most awful," chronic bone pain is considered to be one of the worst, and with leukaemia there is no flood of hormones and adrenaline to carry you through, like with a broken bone or childbirth. All that you have is a growing ache that comes alive as your bones die from within you. And then you die.

My mother faced this news with grim determination, single-minded in the idea that she would fight and she would win. End of 2011, I jumped on a plane down to Hobart, little knowing that this would be the first of many, to see my mother in hospital as she received her first round of chemotherapy. I was beside myself. After seeing my father fade away from cancer so quickly, from diagnosis to death within three months, I was on full panic stations. My mother seemed so hale and hearty, growing into her old age with more grace than I had ever expected. I was ready to see her bounce the children I was planning with Tom on her knee, and tell them all the things that grandmothers yearn to tell their grandchildren. I wasn't ready for her to die. And she wasn't ready to die either. She had plans. She'd just retired. She was planning the next thirty years, and now we didn't know if we had thirty months or even thirty days.

The doctors were cagy. They gave us very few prognoses at the outset. They just threw all the chemo they could at my mother. And the chemo made her ill. Very, very ill. This is fighting poison with poison, just hoping that neither of them killed Mum in the process. A dangerous game with bad odds, played by well-meaning medical professionals who are balancing an innumerable number of variables, that ends up playing out with a bucket of drugs, one after another, to cover up the side-effects of the last one.

I went to the GP and got a referral to see a psychologist. Dr Sonia. She really helped calm me down in those first few months, to help me prepare for the eventuality that this cancer was playing for keeps and my mother's chances of survival in the current medical environment were slim to none. And I quickly came to a sense of peace. That the key to life is not doing things you will regret, and that the only regret I could have is to not have a good relationship with my mother when the time came that she would pass away. And our friendship grew so much stronger with the two of us using this as our guiding light. Petty fights never boiled up any more. Disappointments were handled with a sad smile and a hug. Where there used to be fire in our relationship there was now calm waters. We came to accept each other and our fate very early in the piece, and I think we were healed quite deeply by the way that we faced those final months.

The first round of chemo quickly led to a second, there were some small wins, the cancer seemed to shrink away, but my mother was so weakened by the chemo that they put her on some low-dosage chemo that just kept her ticking away - not well enough to do much, but not unwell enough to be bed bound. She shuffled around the house in her slippers for a while like that, with many midnight runs to the hospital with fevers from almost constant opportunistic infections. For a while it felt like the infections might be the thing that would finally finish her off. But they didn't.

Mum tired of the low-dosage chemo and told them to go for broke. Her attitude was to go down fighting if she had to go at all. So she went into St John's Hospital and they blasted her with the strongest thing they had for leukaemia that they had. That was October 2013. And I sat in the hospital room a couple of times with her. She was so bombed out of her mind on pain killers she could barely listen to other people talk, let alone speak for herself. A strange little child-like version of my mother... the tigress, reduced to a kitten once more. The pain drugs were strong. Really strong. This was hospice/palliative care, not curative medicine, just an attempt to make my mother comfortable for when the time came. I don't think the hospital thought she'd make it, and that this was all folly, throwing good chemotherapy drugs after bad.

But then it worked and my mother came back to us for a while. She awoke from that strange childlike opiate slumber and rubbed the crust from her eyes. And weaned herself off the pain drugs and went home for the first time in months. It was summer. She was able to enjoy the garden and the sunlight on her skin. It was a precious, surreal time, playing with the sheep and the fish in the pond. She wasn't the same strong bodied woman who had started this journey, but she was happy. It was really lovely.

Then the cancer came back, and the chemo stopped working, and finally, my mother downed arms. There was no more that could be done if we couldn't find a bone marrow donor. And a bone marrow donor couldn't be found. I wasn't suitable, Rowan wasn't, none of the sisters, all of the extended family (right back to England), no one could match her bone marrow.

I guess it finally proves, she was a true original.

Between April and June 2014 I spent most of my time with her in Tasmania. I would bring her hampers of foods that she loved so she didn't have to endure the hospital slop. We played cards. I got her to tell me stories of her childhood, and I wrote them down diligently. Pictures from a childhood in Claremont, three marriages of varying quality, great love for her kids. It was like I only got to know some parts of her in those last weeks and I wonder how much more we would have gotten to share had our time together not been stolen from us.

On Friday 13 June 2014, she died. And I was not there. And that, is another story for another time.

Life trauma

So, I'm back.

I had to walk away from the mindless microblogging of facebook. So easy to do, but so unsatisfying. Does it give you time to reflect on your journey? No. It just allows you to shout into a cupboard and have a flurry of little thumbs come up in your wake. Does it give you perspective? Does it give you strength? Does it extend your writing skills?

No. No. And no.

It's a fool's paradise where you can feel connection without having any connection. I've been so lonely, I was beginning to lose all perspective on what I was doing.

Since my last post so much has happened. And I think it has been such a terrifying and awful time that each of these years deserves some rumination on the stuff that has happened.

Good stuff:
- Released Vermin to the Earth.
- Recorded Aokigahara Jukai.
- Released Aokigahara Jukai.
- Toured Japan with the band.
- Got a permanent job.
- Got an awesome secondment.
- Got some great job experience.

Bad stuff:
- Marion died.
- Grandmere died.
- My Mum died.
- Tom and I "broke up."
- I "left" Thrall.
- I lost my house.
- I had to do a property settlement in which I lost all access to the recording equipment and amps.
- I almost went mad from employment stress.
- I had a pregnancy that didn't work out.
- Tom went on our holiday to the USA when I was stuck in the hospital with my dying mother.

I will write something more in the coming weeks. I'm moving house this weekend. There's a long story to be told, and I think I want to tell it.

CAN. NOT. BE. BOTHERED. BLOGGING.

Ah, this was so much easier when we lived in Japan... to give you all little titbits of interesting. Now-a-days, it's a bit more of a struggle. But that said, it's still worthwhile to reflect on the journey, and to give those of you who don't want to play facebook an opportunity to follow the life and times of Em and Tom.

But I really can't be bothered going into too much detail, so I've decided to write some dot points.

Job

• Tom's got a job now. It's an admin support role. It pays well enough and it's for 6 months, so we're pretty stable.
• I finished my first contract/trial period for the Executive Assistant role. I'm now doing a 6 week contract as a Policy Officer in a different work unit of the same department. After I finish that, I'll go back to the Executive Assistant role. I'm feeling pretty blessed and happy, because I got to have the opportunity to do something more challenging, but I also get the security of going back to my old job. Life is good.
• That said, both Tom and I find our admin roles pretty annoying. People do not treat their admin support staff very well a lot of the time, and take the piss asking you to do things that they really shouldn't ask you to do.
• We both got through to the shortlist from the Victorian Public Service Graduate Intake Scheme. Very pleased with ourselves, and we hope to be employed full-time as a grad by next year. If not, it's back to the job hunt for me.

Thrall

• Mixing for Vermin to the Earth is completed. We're just waiting for Arts Victoria to get back to us about a grant we went for to help us pay for the mastering process. I hope we get the grant, because it will give us an opportunity to put together a very cool package for the next album, and get some new promo photos done and ask Janssen to make us another one of his awesome film clips. If we get the grant, we will be mastering in July. If we find out we didn't get the grant, we'll master sooner.
• We played a show at Bar Open. The show was OK, I suppose, but not one of our greatest. Just felt like the wrong vibe for us that evening. I think it might just be better if we kept our focus on doing one or two good shows rather than doing lots of shows.
• I have booked the venue for a Sydney show with Creeping and Erebus Enthroned. We're thinking of adding one other to the bill. It's going to be rad, and I'll start promoting it as heavily as I can as soon as I have the Melbourne show sorted out (which is proving to be a bit more difficult to sell our pulling power to potential venues).
• Black Jesus and Thrall show in Tassie at the Brisbane. Will announce that shortly too.
• We have some labels in mind for Vermin to the Earth. Shan't say too much, but it's going to be gooooooood!

Everything else

• When we drove back from Sydney after that 40ºc day, the car sprung an oil leak. I topped up the engine oil on the drive back. What I didn't realise was that it wasn't the oil wasn't coming from the engine. It was coming from the gearbox. The other day the car just fucked out and wouldn't go into gear. Had to get towed. Need a new gearbox now. Expensive times...
• I cut my arm on the edge of a mirror in the bathroom and had to have stitches. Don't worry, it's healed well, the stitches came out last week, and it was not near any nerves or major arteries or veins or anything. So, all in all, it was merely expensive. And just when I didn't need any more expenses.
• I bought Tom a dolphin swim for his birthday, because it was the most rare and unusual gift I could think of. I also got him the Hellhammer/Celtic Frost book "Only Death Is Real" because I'm a real nice wife.
• Tom got some new jeans and they look really good on him.

OK, can't be bothered writing more. Tune in next time for the continued adventures of T + E...

Uncertainty and certainty

I've not posted for some time now. I suppose it's the nature of where I've been at for the last couple of months. Day in, day out, day in, day out... even when there are things worth reporting, my heart has been in a bit of a low ebb. Just not feeling the joy. I miss Osaka a lot of the time, and I miss Tassie... Melbourne's been grinding me down a bit. 6 months in, it's almost time to find out how I really feel about being here.

So, the job I was offered just before Christmas came through (yay!), and I am now working as an Executive Assistant in the same government department as before. I guess they must like me. No end date means I can rely on my income being fairly stable (given that I'm paid by the hour and don't get paid on public holidays). It's good. I've applied for one permanent full-time job recently, but if I don't get it, I won't be too worried. We won't die.

But Tom's not been working much, and I've been having to pay double rent. It's a strain. And I've managed (though fiscal discipline) to pay off the credit card that got run up when neither of us were working over the Christmas break, but it's left me in a sort of pessimistic kind of mind-space. Working and not feeling like you get to enjoy the spoils is pretty depressing. On the weekends I have been having trouble even getting out of bed. Just feeling lethargic and negative.

I often think of the nature of place, and I wonder if I'll ever find a place where I will feel like I can thrive. Is Melbourne going to be that place? I'm not convinced.

So, things other than my refusal to move on weekends:

- Tom's been swimming and doing weights whilst job hunting and has whittled himself down to a very fine profile. I have been doing "trial offers" at a whole bunch of gyms. Annoys the hell out of the gym sales staff when they realise that they'll never be able to turn that into a full membership, but hey, you want to do a trial offer, you've got to expect some tyre kickers.

- We went to the zoo the other weekend. I saw lots of cool snakes and fishies and monkeys. I liked the lesser panda. However, whilst I was taking a photo of some giant tortoises having sex (funny!) a rather large insect landed on the hand that was holding the camera. And so I had a reaction to flick the insect off my hand, and accidentally threw my camera quite forcefully on to the pavement. The insect was unharmed. The camera, however, did not survive. Goodbye camera #3.

- We played at the Sydney Armageddon Festival.

It was rad.

We got pulled in when Arkheth were unable to play. We didn't get to be on the colourful poster I'm afraid. However, we got to meet some really interesting people, make some good connections for future shows and so on. Lots of people attended. It was a pretty big show. I didn't think we played especially well. The mix didn't seem to work very well for the first couple of songs, but the mixer got it toward the middle of the set and we thrashed it out well enough. We made enough money to cover our transport and still have $2.50 each at the end of the day. Which, considering we're independent musicians, is a fucking miracle.

Sydney fucking loves its black metal. Who would have thought?

Leigh flew to Melbourne on the Thursday night and we took turns driving up to Sydney on the Friday morning. We drove back on Sunday. The car's not been running as well as I would have liked it to. Annoying. On the Saturday during the day it was 40+ºC so we went snorkelling. I saw some cool urchins and little fishies and big fishies. It was great. If I lived in Sydney, I'd go to the beach all the time. Melbourne's not got enough beaches, and it sucks.

We're sort of unsure about being here - if the money's not coming in, it kind of defeats the purpose of living in Melbourne. Melbourne's got gigs to go to, and art to look at. Melbourne's got fashion and shopping and whatever. But if you've got no money then all of that means nothing. If you're not able to afford to go to the gigs, what's the point of living in a city that has gigs?

I think Tom and I want to live here for a few years, save some cash for a house and move back to Tasmania. I miss being able to live among the trees. I've been doing some sums to try and figure out just how much we can throw into our savings when we're both working again. See how it all goes, I suppose. If I live in a shack in the bush, at least I can enjoy the bush. And maybe get a dog. I'd really like to have a puppy.

That'll do for now

OK, I felt last time I posted like something had got to give. And something gave. I'm not over the moon, but I'm not under the train. Christmas time, and we give thanks for small miracles and pray for those bigger miracles to come. Another year over, a new one just about to begin, it is an easy time to reflect on the accomplishments of the last year. We were in Kanazawa this time last year, driving around in the snow. We played those last three shows in Japan, worked at ECC for the first few months, flew back to Sydney, then worked in Hobart for those months, mid-year, moved to Melbourne in August. Played shows all along the way, went to New Zealand for our first overseas tour in November, played multiple shows in Melbourne and Hobart, and here we are. No wonder I'm weary. It's been a big year.

So, New Zealand! Wow, what a beautiful place! Just flying over the South Island, I felt the power of the landscape deeply, volcanic rocks thrusting skyward, cool air tumbling down the snow capped mountains... my Tasmanian soul identified with these extremes. Green fields, rich soil, fresh air, clean water. Christchurch felt like Hobart - be it, with earthquake damage. An inviting, quaint little town with a decidedly English feel. We wandered through the gardens, and strolled around the streets. The weather was pleasant and sunny on the day we arrived, but on the day of the Thrall show, sleet and rain set in, and the cold weather proved an adequate deterrent to keep a fair few potential punters at home. We met Marko, James and Scott of Creeping at Al's Bar fairly early in the evening, and my oath, those guys are cool fun. I would gladly hang out with those heads any time. The show went well, Tom and I played hard, fast and loud. Got a few new friends from the experience. Those that did show up had an awesome time at the show. It wasn't a big show, but it rocked hard, and everyone who made it to the show seemed to dig our vibe. I'd be happy to do it again. Any time Christchurch, any time...

Creeping and Thrall got on the plane the next day for a snoozy flight to Auckland. Maria and Sarah met us at the airport, and we quickly got about catching up for the last five years. Maria was a superb hostess, and plied us with delicious home marinated olives and excellent beers. We then headed down to the venue for the show, The Whammy Bar. Wicked venue! Awesome organic dark beers galore, friendly staff, laid-back vibe. Totally loved playing there aside from an annoying pylon in the middle of the stage.

One major drawback was that Pacific Blue lost my kick bag on the way over. So I had no sticks, no kick pedals and no merchandise to sell at the shows. The bag turned up the day after the Auckland show. Apparently they'd delivered it to the wrong address the day before, and if they'd got the address right, I'd have had my stuff for the show. Instead, I ended up getting to carry it around but not use any of it. Nice one, Pacific Blue, you pack of wankers.

Verdict: Playing gigs in New Zealand is COOOOOOOOOL. I'm of the opinion that Thrall will be returning to NZ in the summer of 2012... yessss... we'll try make that happen, yeah. Any time Creeping want to come to Oz, we'll line it up on this end, yes-sireee! NZ/Tas

We came back to Australia, and I went straight into a new job. Executive Assistant to the General Manager of the area I had been in before. I felt like I was just starting to get my head around the job just when I finished it up, but those three weeks were pretty cruisy, so I was happy enough to just get some cash. I lined up a couple of weeks of work with Fiona for Tom and I to work at the Energy and Water Ombudsman just until Xmas to fend off the poverty, but going back to a call centre based position was just a reminder that we don't want to do that kind of work any more. But some happy news happened whilst we were there. I was contacted by the guys I'd been doing the Executive Assistant job with, and they wanted me to come back to an Executive Assistant position on a longer term basis. Like, a review date, yes, but no end date. So that means that next year, I don't have to look for a new temp job every couple of months. So I'm feeling like the pressure is off a bit. It doesn't start until the second week of January, so I have to be careful with my spending a bit until then, but it does mean that I will have a job next year. I'll apply for the 2012 graduate intake in the Victorian public service, but that will take some time to happen, and until then, I'll just sit in and grow some moss around my toes. Sounds like a nice thing to do for a while.

After we came back from New Zealand, we felt like we were walking on sunshine with the band. It's so nice to headline and be the out-of-towners. We then played the worst gig of our careers at the Lithuanian Club, a gig so disastrous that we lost $66 per band. It was a truly miserable state of affairs. Then we did another gig at the Espy the next week, which was a benefit gig. At least with the Espy gig, we didn't expect to make money, but we weren't especially chuffed at paying to play for two gigs in a row. That kind of malarky for two gigs in a row is enough to put our little band in the red quite quickly, and we need to pay for some new merch and mastering Vermin to the Earth soon, so we're quite keen to do some proper paying gigs and piss this paying to play shit off, for good!

(For the benefit gig: to the kids in Haiti, I don't begrudge you your orphanage. Sleep tight, kids.)

Other than that, Thrall's going OK. We're not selling anything much at our end. But we've run out of M size t-shirts so that tells me that someone must have been moving. We're writing the Aokigahara Jukai EP that we'd been planning, and my ex-student Kunihiro translated a poem for me to do as a spooky ghost in Japanese. It's gonna be creepy as.

Somewhere in that time we had dinner with Dave Scully in the lightning and rain with his nice lady and her nice kid. Retrieved the banjo Dave had been looking after for me for a few years. Went off and sold it a couple of weeks later and used the money to buy a work desk. I like the desk way better than I liked the banjo.

We also had dinner with Zoe and Michael just before they moved out of the old house and into the new. Fun times, also.

Had fun times with Monte Pemberton getting drunk in the park and being eaten by mosquitos. We swung on the swings, and swang on the monkey bars. Parks are awesome. I recommend them for drinking fun any time in the dark when it's not raining. They're not so fun in the rain. Saw Tsui Chan the next day at the house of Haig. T'was fun.

Went down to Tassie for a show on the 23rd of December, and dovetailed that with seeing the family down there for Xmas, which was nice. I got a cold for Xmas, but even that didn't manage to dampen my spirits too much. The show was an awesome success on several levels. Tom played fill-in bass in Ruins. Lots of cool old heads turned up from many years ago, I saw Dan Cross and Mark with red hair in the street, Chris Arnou-Clark, Luke Ray, Matthew Barnes, Andrew Tanner, Duncan Robinson, Miles Brown, Stewart Lawler, Nathan and Sooz, Leigh and Elissa, Dave Scully, Sam Greener, Ingrid and Alex, Byron Wardrop, and lots of other cool people who I've probably forgotten to mention. Had a nice chat with Gibbo and Casey at the far end of the bar in the afternoon, and felt happy that The Brisbane continues to be a venue that not only exists, but always seems to be improving. Keep it up fellers.

Other than the show, I got to have fun times with Gwen and Marina, Tom's Granny and Grandpa, Winnie the sister-in-law, some randoms from Dodges. Proper meals were enjoyed with Leigh, Elissa and the ever increasing in size Archie, and Jess, Sam and the sleepy Lucas. So many babies. At least, a lot more than I remember there being about a year ago. Rachel and I went wading along the beach but it was too cold for a swim. Then we went to Ziggy's Smallgoods and bought fists full of delicious Polish chocolate and Rachel read me all the names and told me what they meant. Had Christmas lunch at my Great Uncle John's house. Rowan and Cassie got married on Xmas eve. Had a sleep in the car at the top of the mountain. Had a barbecue at Marina's. Very busy days.

Back to Melbourne now, hanging out with Tom and Dave, we're a funny household without the girls. I slept off my cold pretty quickly. I like to hibernate when I'm sick. Dave, Tom and I tried going to the zoo today, but found out it was $24.60 to enter per-adult. And that just seemed a bit too steep for us. So we went and bought a moderately priced carton of beer and saved at least $20. And I think we might grill some meat and have a beer this afternoon. Nice.

It's been raining non-stop this November and December. The grass has been growing faster than we can keep it mowed, and the days where it doesn't rain are one in five, or maybe one in seven. I've never seen Melbourne so wet in summer. It's quite peculiar, and I wonder if it has anything to do with that climate change I've been hearing about so much.

Anyway, that's what we've been doing for the last couple of months. Next year I'd like to: (a) get the car serviced, (b) go for a drive down the coast with Rachel, (c) get into the graduate program, (d) buy a new drum kit, (e) make enough money to pay my taxes, (f) master Vermin to the Earth and have it put out on a cool label, (g) watch Tron 3D, (h) buy a new computer for the studio computer and record Aokigahara Jukai, (i) buy some new shoes for work.

That'll do for now. That's a lot of writing, and I'm getting distracted by the box of beer. Hope that you're all having a good time this holiday season, and you get to watch Tron 3D or something like that in the New Year.

Permanency

I don't want to sound like the typical Generation X-er, belly-aching about getting a raw deal, but I gotta say, I can't help feeling like if I had been born 30 years earlier my life would have been easier. The prosperity, high employment rates, career stability, real estate prices, blind self-belief in relation to parenthood, unfettered access to welfare support, and vertical manoeuvrability that the Baby Boomers enjoyed. I would have liked some of that. I really would have.

Sometimes it's hard to tell which parts of my life path have been chosen by me or for me. Being born in the year I was born to the parents I was born to, I am not eligible for the UK passport that most of my cousins enjoy. Europe was an unattainable dream. To this day, I've never been there. Moving out of home at 18 so that I could attend university, digging myself into debt through the Student Supplement Loan so that I could afford to live in housing that was of an acceptable standard. I didn't do as well at university as I could have. Looking back, for the first two years of university I didn't really know how to study properly. My study habits were sporadic, undisciplined, and unfocused. By the time I had learned how to study, I already had earned myself two years worth of average grades when I should have been excelling. My father died, and the ensuing self-destructive depression that accompanied my mourning took years to come through. I acted like a jerk, drank too much too often, but I didn't know how to access mental health services that would have helped me through that time. My honours year was a debacle, unhinged by an unsupportive supervisor. Upon finishing university (and I think this happens to every student to an extent) I was directionless and lost. I tried getting government jobs, but had no luck. Turned away by graduate intake programs, I ended up debt collecting in Melbourne. When that job threatened to do my head in, along with the floundering relationship that I had come to Melbourne to pursue, I arranged to go to Japan the first time. I wasn't running to Japan, I was running away from what had happened to me. Japan is the only place where I have had a stable income, a stable job... and in many regards, I think my great affection for the place is based largely on the economic stability that I enjoyed there. It's the only place where I have ever had the opportunity to make plans and know that I could go through with them.

When you go through university, there is this tacit idea that you are setting yourself up for a career. When that career doesn't eventuate, the anger and bitterness starts to set in. When you end up working in administrative support for people who did the same degree, but just had luckier upbringings: stable households, supportive middle-class parents, less financial stress - sometimes it's hard not to feel like someone's rubbing your face in it. Raw talent is nothing without perseverance and focus. Learning how to focus and persevere is a lesson that I feel like I am continually having to learn.

Six years after my first flight to Japan, twenty temp jobs later... I'm tired. I'm tired of feeling like I'm stuck on the outside looking in at the prosperity and happiness of others. I want permanency. I want the opportunities that come with being able to plan further into the future than one or two months. I want this craziness, all this, to end.

Look, I'm sorry about this post. But I just don't feel like I can do happy faces today. Applying for jobs always makes me miserable. I've applied for at least 50 full time permanent positions over the last six years, and I just don't know what I'm doing wrong. If I put in for jobs that are too low for my experience level, I don't get them. I assume it's because they think I'll leave. If I put in for jobs that are a bit above my level, I don't get them either. I assume it's because they think I won't be able to bridge the gap. And you can never really anticipate what the rest of the field is going to be like. In Tasmania, an over-abundance of over-qualified people applying for mid-level jobs created a paucity of opportunities for someone like myself. The employment market in Tassie is awful. But even in Melbourne, nothing seems to match my experience and education level. How can you succeed in life if there's no avenues of opportunity? I've done my best, given the resources and experiences I have, and I've got nothing to show for it except an accumulating sense resentment and alienation. It's gotten to the point now where I am starting to experience anxiety symptoms, especially at work. I'm easily upset and cry at the drop of a hat. And that's no good. No one wants a temp that keeps having to run off to the bathroom for a little sob. The pressure of perceived expectation and reputation building adds to the overwhelming pressure and feeds back into the anxiety loop. Sometimes I feel like I'm cracking up.

The list of things that I can not do because of the lack of stability in our incomes is long and sad. I can't buy real estate, or get a mortgage. I can't get a gym membership because I don't know if I will be able to afford it next month. I might have to cancel my private health insurance. I can't offer my potential children a life. My savings may soon be gone, just paying the rent and eating. I haven't been able to afford to go to the physiotherapist for the last month, and so my knee injury is worsening again. I can't take my car to get serviced (it doesn't need to be serviced until February, but I'm concerned that I won't be able to afford to get it serviced then either). Living from week to week in a cycle of job applications and rejections, it has started to get into my head, and destroy my self-esteem. I feel timid and unworthy. I haven't been able to stand up for myself when I should have, I have been saying "yes" with my mouth, when my heart has been saying "no." The anxiety worsens...

I need a lucky break. I need to start making my own luck. But in a negative cycle, it's hard to get out. There is a certain amount of optimism required just to apply for a job, and after so many rejections, the well of optimism begins to run dry. Every hope that you pin on an application is a disappointment waiting to happen. It's hard to keep committing scarce resources to an avenue that doesn't seem to be bearing results. It's hard to keep submitting yourself to a process that seems destined to fail. It's hard. Sometimes I just want to give up.

Sometimes I think about my situation and remind myself that my lot isn't so bad. My friend Belinda lost a child last year. A little baby. I don't know the details, but Belinda's little girl had been pretty unwell since she was born, and was in and out of hospital for the entirety of her short life. I only know from watching the facebook status updates. And one day she just passed away. So unfair. After Belinda and her husband had fought so hard, the little baby they'd cherished so much and sacrificed so much for was just plucked away. No reason, no rhyme, just plain unfair it is... I think about their struggle, and I feel like such a douche for complaining about my lot in life. I've not suffered at all compared to what they've lost. They're often in my thoughts, even though I haven't seen them in the flesh for a very, very long time. It's a reality check. If I know anyone who deserves a lucky break, it's Belinda.

Maybe this is the only permanency we will ever really know in life: the permanency of death. The death of loved ones and the absence it creates. From my father, to Belinda's baby... only never is forever.

People say glib shit: "life only throws at you what you can handle." I'd just like to say: that's bullshit. Life throws stuff at you that no one should ever have to deal with. Life is unfair and asks too much of some people, and nothing of others. People say glib shit: "you make your own luck." That's bullshit too. Sometimes your luck makes you, the person that anyone becomes is partly born from the circumstances they find themselves in. People say glib shit because they don't want to hear it anymore. They're busy with their own problems. A heightened level of interconnectedness between people results in an overload of emotions, people screaming into the Web 2.0 void. We are all too much for each other to bear.

Trying to find a path in life that is not dishonourable and soul-destroying - trying to find a path in life that is fair... stuck between letting life wash over you and trying to make your own destiny: what is a good way to live your life? What should you do when it feels like there is no point? These questions... there's no easy answers... I wonder what life is like for people who don't think about these things? It must be nice to be ignorant sometimes...

I'll tell you about New Zealand and Thrall and other stuff in another post. For now, I'm just going to go back to looking at job websites and try and find those last little bits of optimism to throw at these potential employers. I'm sorry to be a big whinge-bag, but sometimes life gets you down. And you know, it's all part of being human. It's a long and winding road, and sometimes you find yourself in a place called "here" in a time called "now" that you hate. The next step in the journey is the question; and after feeling like so many steps have ended up being the wrong steps, it takes a lot of courage to make a decision about what to do next.

I'm going to go have a cup of tea with my friend Fiona this afternoon. Maybe that will supply some solace, clarity, and perspective? Tea often helps.