In July 2008...

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Below follows a post I wrote in July 2008, when I realised I was falling in love (I could not say it specifically, as I hadnt told him yet) and how good my life was becoming.
Now in 2009, as I settle into studies, work, and couple-dom, I wonder why the Earth has suddenly decided to rotate on a different axis. Why there are suddenly speedhumps forcing me to slow down. And why I cant sleep anymore.
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I can feel the dynamic shift under my feet. Every day I wake and the earth has changed, the energy shifts and moves like a tidal river, and I want to capture it. I want to know what moves me in this ebb and flow.

July is a beautiful month, we roll towards summer sunshine, the cusp of winter defeated, and my life falls into place. I don’t measure my life by the things in it, rather by the way I feel every morning when I awake. Today Im Happy. Perhaps content? Though I doubt I will ever be content, for which I am grateful as it is my discontent with settling that drives me to find change, to take pleasure in the experience of the new. July fills my life and bestows apon me a richness that Ive lacked for an immeasurable amount of time. Surely what I have now, I have had before? Indeed I have. But the impact these have on my life now gives me great strength, a power that I can finally tap.

Today a friend commented that she had expected a nervous breakdown of grandiose proportions from me. She produced her highly expressive hand and counted on delicate manicured fingers, the changes she had seen occur to me in the four weeks of July. It saw my triumphant return to university study, and the confirmation that what I believed I was truly passionate about, remained true. It saw a new home, a new housemate and a new suburb, and the exploration of these things to identify new paradigms and relationships both inside and around my new sense of place. July allowed the development of an incalculable bond that has developed between two strangers that began as a night of debauchery on the momentous occasion that was my one year anniversary in Melbourne, and did not end but instead continues into something very special. It saw a foray into a new culture of excess and enlivenment and the introduction of my nature to a bevy of eclectic characters, personalities that shine in their industry, and of which I am now a part as I join the festivities each night I work at the bar. July also allows me to take the one constant in my life since my Melbourne move, my role at the firm, and turn it into a career I can be proud of. A role of my own creation that I take great satisfaction from growing as I reference the saying ‘if you take no risks, your doings may be perfect, yet you will do few things’. I have effectively doubled my employment scope, boldly accepting responsibility for new tasks in an already time-poor and challenging role. I truly believe that I will become incredibly efficient and therefore have learnt an infinitely valuable tool, or perhaps I shall burn? But every wind is a bad wind if your ship has no rudder.

As her fingers ticked off those things that would mark such a meaningful and somewhat daunting period of my 2008, I realise that I have taken it all in my stride. These things have come, and these things have found their place. Like boats on the harbour they move with the tidal flow, and each morning when I awake, they float peacefully awaiting the next movement, that dynamic shift. No undercurrent will take them away for they have their place of docking. They belong.
As I write, I begin to realise that I will never capture this energy, that what I am eternally seeking is actually the movement itself. That it will, and does, change. That life is not a constant, and that I thrive on its vacillation, and if I so choose, I will lovingly undock the boats from their mooring and release them, allowing the tide to bring me a new life as it has done so before.

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I love this piece, and I try to come back to it as often as I can. I have to remind myself that the uncertainty and movement of my life is in fact, what I cherish. And that no matter what happens, I can always regain control. It is I alone who makes the decisions on what stays, and what I allow to 'float out to sea'.

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