Friday 8 February 2008

Life goes on

I feel like life is moving too fast at the moment. Not in my usual depressing way; it doesn't overly concern me i don't think. I am just starting to realise that I probably won't have time to do all the things I want to do. I don't mean here. I don't mean in 2008. Just generally. I have lots of ideas - Wellington, South America, Easter Island, living on a farm and riding horses on the east cape, Antarctica, retirement in luxury, Kamchatka, Japan, writing a bestseller. Those are just the ones of the top of my head. Until I started really looking at the years I have left and the realistic time these things take I just imagined there would be plenty of time to fit it all in. But now I am hitting the realism that I probably won't. Should I prioritise and plan? I don't like plans as a rule. I don't like rules as a rule either. I like to rock up in Tibet and bumble my way across a mountain range. I'd like to end up in Easter island and hitch a ride to Santiago. I'd like to know it's all going to happen but not how it's going to happen.

Work has been hard work and has kept me far too busy. This summer has been the best on record as far as the weather and number of murders go. The two may be related - I vaguely remember a panorama that showed violence increases with temperature. But sat in the office I'm protected from both. I did eventually manage to get to a beach on Waitangi day (the day that celebrates or recognises, depending on your point of view, British sovereignty over the Maoris). And I got down to Napier to see Luke, Becs and Becs's Mum for a bit of Hawkes bay wine tasting yesterday. The five hour drive down on thursday evening was fun. They put massive long stretches in place to help you drift off and then throw in a switchback corner in front of a ravine at the end to wake you up. Fortunately my little Hyundai was aware of the danger I posed and gave me very little in the way of acceleration but plenty in the way of braking. Great weather, great wines and a great day which just reminded me that I meant to move to Hawkes Bay at some point. I wonder why i haven't.

I feel settled when I come back to Auckland. I'm meeting Dad's friends Roy and Gaynor tonight for dinner. They have been here for three months and it's pleasant to hear that they would like to live here, or at least could live here. It's reassuring that it isn't just me, that there is something better than what I had, that I haven't just been telling myself I made the right choices. I have some good friends here now and I'm making new ones even just last week. And all these things help make a place a home which is what New Zealand if not Auckland is starting to become. But on the flip side my regular chats with people in the motherland remind me that it isn't. More intriguing is Lauren. You may remember her from a previous post. She hated me when she first met me apparently. I persuaded her with unnatural amounts of charm that I was in fact a nice guy and that was that, but for no real reason we started chatting again recently and I find myself missing someone who I really only knew for a week, a couple of weeks? something like that. I don't know what that means...perhaps she has interesting stories, perhaps she is my soul mate or perhaps I'm just lonely. Whatever, I'm just enjoying it for whatever it is.

But I'm trying very hard not to really think about things too much. The breathing specialist I see tells me my irregular breathing is due to anxiety. I wasn't anxious until she told me that. But now I see anxiety on the horizon frequently and I have found a few simple ways to deal with it, like slowing my breathing and not thinking about anything important. The gym, contrary to what I initially thought, helps and I always feel better after a session. I don't think it is the training so much as the focusing my mind on what I have to do in that hour which means forgetting about all the other stuff. I still have to stop thinking about things more, but I'm getting there. The next step may be yoga. I just think the anxiety of being the only guy in the class may do more harm that good.

It's a busy week ahead of me. I think I'll be sleeping or working and that will be it. Hopefully I can get a day off the week after and get stuck into my writing - another thing that helps the anxiety.

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