As Good As It Gets?

I haven’t written about anything from over the Christmas New Years period because I have been working on something which fascinates me.  When I went home to the City I’m from I finally worked a big issue out, well if not out completely at least along.

There is a line in “Eat Pray Love” where Julia asks her mother “what age were you when you accept the life you had as the life you were going to have?”  Scary thought for me.  I’ve always strived for something better, the thought that one day I will just accept what my life is, is very confronting for me, but I have been practicing it, anyway to see what it feels like to just accept things.

When I used to live in my old city I would always have this feeling that life was wonderful and that wonderful great impressive things were about to happen, just around the corner.  Then I moved to Sydney and this awe and wonder gradually left.  I was very happy and excited to be in Sydney but things started not working out the way I hoped they would and I found myself needing to get away every weekend just to regenerate and de-stress from the busyness of the city.  Admittedly I was living in Kings Cross in a shitty little dark apartment, so that was a big part of needing to get away from the agro and constant stimulation.   When I was back in my home city for Christmas I felt that same wonderful “life is great” feeling but for the first time I saw through it.  It always feels as though something is going to happen because it’s so quiet, nothing is happening.  It’s easy to feel something great is about to happen when there is nothing going on, the only way is up.  If I hadn’t been careful I could have gotten trapped there like other people do.  It’s fine if you’re happy there, but to think that one day things are going to happen and change in a small city, it has taken me to now, age 30 to see that it probably never will.  The economy is so much smaller there are just so few opportunities compared to a big city.

I had so many good memories from my home town, and great friends, much nicer people than I have met in Sydney, that I always felt I had a dual identity, I couldn’t let go of my past home easily, because I never ran away, I moved to Sydney for a better life, not because life was bad were I was leaving.  I now live in Newtown which is about 6km out of Sydney CBD and just far enough to have the perfect level of stimulation and peace and quiet for me.  I live most of my life in Bondi, Paddington, Surry Hills and I work in Mosman, so as I read somewhere, we need thresholds in our life every day, so it’s good not to live one’s life all in one area, but to travel around, so that when we come home, our mind switches to “home time”.  I have never once felt that “my life will begin sometime” since I moved to Sydney because I have felt like I was living from the time I got here.  It’s really wonderful to not feel like I’m waiting for my life to begin.