Closure

There's a lot to do when you're packing up your life. When I left Melbourne I had about five months from knowing I had the job to departure. Now I have a matter of weeks.

The hardest thing is saying goodbye to people. Thanks to everyone in Canberra who I have spoken to recently - you've been lovely and you're making leaving far for difficult than it would be otherwise!

Nevertheless, it feels right. And as of tonight, I'm able to leave on civilised terms with everyone in this town (to the best of my knowledge) and that is amazing.

This is my last week at work and then I have a few days to pack up before I leave. I've also decided to wrap up this blog as of this post. It's been a fantastic outlet, but I won't be able to continue it in my new job and now is as good a time as any.

Thanks to all of you who have read this blog and been supportive over the last eighteen months.

Goodnight. And good luck.

Categories: Miscellaneous
Tags: closing-time

Harbour city dreams

The news has come through and it looks like I'm going to be making the trip up the Federal Highway to Sydney to start my new career. What's my new career, you may ask? I'll give you a hint - it's going to be a conflict of interest to keep this blog running under it's current name.

I suspect things are going to move very quickly indeed, which is just as well. It's hit me hard in the last 24 hours how absolutely wrenching it's going to be leaving this place. When I moved to Canberra from Melbourne three years ago, I was determined to make a proper go of things and make a life for myself up here. It would be oh-so-much-easier if I had failed. Many of my best friends from my time here have already left, but there's a long list of people who make my life better by their presence - and I am going to miss them terribly.

Over and above the sense of loss and sadness is the guilty feeling that comes from knowing how it feels to be the abandoned one - the person left behind. I have to let that feeling go or it will drive me mad. But today it has overwhelmed me.

So with a heavy heart I start to make serious plans for my future.

Categories: Old Sad Bastard Music
Tags: leaving; new-life; old-life; sadness

Waiting room blues

Five or six weeks ago, I applied for a new job. A new job in a new town. It seemed like the kind of thing I would have a chance with and it was worth testing out further. I figured it would be a long process and I could just put it at the back of my mind and get on with things. Of course it never works out that way.

Tonight marks the end of a period of limbo. I've spent the past month at least putting my life on hold and avoiding new commitments and involvements. I feel like I'm abandoning everyone and everything in my life and I want to get away from that feeling. There are people I just can't see at the moment because of the questions they ask me that I can't answer.

To date I've made it through two rounds of interviews, psychometric testing and a mock presentation and the field has narrowed to me and one other person. By all reports the company is having trouble splitting us. We're very different but apparently equally suitable. I can imagine them meeting this afternoon and flipping a coin to settle it.

My housemate described it as being like Schrödinger's Cat - the idea that if you don't know the result of something, you're in two states simultaneously. She's exactly right. Some time this afternoon a decision was made and right now I'm both leaving town and staying here. I'm ok with all this. But until I know the answer, I don't know how to behave.

Categories: Old Sad Bastard Music
Tags: limbo; schrodingers-cat

LCD Soundsystem Is Playing At My House

James Murphy is cooler than you (yes, Danelle, even you). He lives in Brooklyn. He has produced some of the most hipster-friendly tracks of the last ten years. His friends are cooler than your friends. His record collection is cooler than any record collection you have even seen. He writes ironic songs about how cool he is. He is that cool.

So it's easy to dismiss his own "band" LCD Soundsystem as a hipster vanity project. Just one guy making little in-jokes about how cool he is. About how he likes Can but doesn't take it too seriously.

But you'd be wrong to do that. Because the new album Sound of Silver is amazing. The first couple of tracks are dancefloor stormers, sporting some great falsetto work from Murphy and some killer beats. Then there are the emotional epics "Someone Great" and "All My Friends" - beautiful cigarette-lighter-wavers for indie kids. Then three ironic, funky tracks and a showtune finale in the form of "New York I Love You".

Murphy is taking the piss most of the time, but not all of the time. In the end, he's just a thirtysomething dude making records that sound like the ones he listens to when he's home on his own. And there's no shame in that.

Categories: Indie
Tags: lcd-soundsystem; too-cool-for-you

Sooner or later, everyone passes through this town

Tonight I ended up stopping by a supermarket on the other side of town to me - not my normal haunt by any means - and when I was walking down the toiletries aisle, I saw this girl who looked familiar.

And it hit me that it was this girl Caroline who was in my class in Year 8 and 9 at a high school half a country away. And I knew it was her immediately, because while I've grown nearly a foot and started wearing glasses, she looked exactly the way I remember her. Or not exactly, more in the way that people from your teenage years age in your memory to keep pace with you, so somehow they're simultaneously 14 forever but also 25.

I didn't say anything, because what can you say? Do you strike up a conversation based on a acquaintance from over a decade ago? Do you mention mutual friends who you know even less about what they're doing now than the girl you're talking to? Do you bring up the stupid schoolyard taunts you were both subjected to? Do you try and work out what kind of person she's become in the intervening years?

So I kept walking and got my groceries wondering whether she was thinking exactly the same thing. And wondering just how it is that you try so hard to keep some things in your life and other things just recur by chance.

Categories: Old Sad Bastard Music
Tags: recurring-characters; teenage-flashbacks

Australian country towns

When I was a kid, my parents would play this song that had a chorus about thanking God for Australian country towns. And my parents would feel that way for the most part - they've voluntarily lived in enough of the places! Me on the other hand - well most people find it hard to believe that I've ever lived anywhere smaller than Canberra.

I've got a love-hate relationship with small towns, I suppose. Nothing too unusual about that. A lot of my best friends have been from similar backgrounds and most of us choose to live in larger towns. Knowing everyone is great, but not connecting very well with those people you know - not so great.

Just this weekend I've had a road-trip out to visit my parents in Echuca-Moama - an eight hour drive across the flat Riverina plain. You get to see a lot of small, and some less small, towns. Including that hallmark of the country: Target's rural cousin.
On my drive back today, I stopped off an old-fashioned tea-room in Lockhart, about half an hour out of Wagga Wagga, and as well as feeling like I was stepping into a time-warp, I felt like I shouldn't have been there without a letter of introduction from my grandmother!

Occasionally I muse about moving back to the country, but I'm kidding myself. I'd die in a couple of weeks. But maybe, just maybe, as I get older I might change. And maybe I'll retire to the bush, hopefully somewhere with a Target Country.

Categories: Old Sad Bastard Music
Tags: australian-country-towns; target-country

Bridal bingo: part 2

Went to a lovely wedding yesterday for some friends of mine. It was a great opportunity to catch up with some people I hadn't spoken to in ages and generally a fun day.

Of course, it wouldn't have been a wedding without a game of Bridal Bingo - and I have to say this one scored quite highly.

We had Pachelbel's Canon, 1 Corinthians 13 ("love is patient...") AND shiny bridesmaid's dresses (the colour of Turkish Delight wrappers).

Truly a special occasion.

Categories: Ladies; Miscellaneous
Tags: bingo; all-my-friends-are-getting-married; turkish-delight