Well, I’ve spent a relaxing couple of days in Sydney, and yesterday I arrived here in Coffs.
Staying here with the friend I mentioned earlier – with the front door open I can hear the waves crashing on the beach (which is ~200 m away, if that) 🙂
Very relaxing 🙂
Just for the night. I’ve got a spa suite but it’s 10pm and I doubt I’ll be using it.
I’d forgotten how good Eagle Boys pizzas were.
Rather a boring day really – but that’s fine by me 😉
Well, here I am. It’s been interesting to go for a nostalgic tour of the old haunts where I grew up. However my father is already driving me completely insane.
That’s a parent’s perogative I guess – I probably drove him insane for 18 years or more, and now he’s just getting his own back.
I am so damn glad to be leaving here on Sunday (one day to go. One day to go. *Deep cleansing breaths.*)
Oh well, better go. Apparently we’re off to play golf at 8am tomorrow morning. On a Saturday.
There goes any possible hope I had of a sleepin 🙁
Well, I had an interesting day yesterday – it seemed like I spent a lot of it in the car…
Wandered around Melbourne with a friend, eating and shopping – I bought Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (which I totally SUCK at – although that’s not surprising) and then went over and visited a friend who just got out of hospital after an operation.
Then jumped in the car to leave Melbourne, but didn’t get out of town early enough (due to lack of direction and my general tendency to pissfart around trying to find my own way instead of consulting the map) and ended up staying in a motel in Preston overnight.
Had a great dinner – met a couple of blokes in the restaurant who were already half smashed and very chatty, and much laughs were had for a little while.
Today I left Melbourne and drove to Wagga – went and visited the shop where I used to work and said g’day to the staff – so many memories. I’ve been here since 2:00 pm or so, but decided I couldn’t be bothered driving any further today so I’m holed up in a motel for the evening, ready to head to Canberra tomorrow, where I’ll spend the weekend.
Then on Monday it’s off to Dubbo, then Sydney Tuesday, then Coffs, then possibly Brisbane – man, I’ll be sick of driving by the end! 🙂
Oh well, it’s all fine in the end. I’m still not feeling entirely myself though – I’m visiting places and all I want to do is stay inside and play with techno stuff instead of going out and seeing people and doing stuff. Kinda like how I am at home, really.
Tomorrow is another day!
🙂
Before I get in the car, drive to Devonport, and get on the boat.
I’m already nervous.
Tomorrow (well it’s after midnight, so I guess you could say tonight) I leave for a holiday. Almost 3 weeks back in mainland Australia, and off this island. Hooray!
The thing that’s scaring me the most is that I haven’t planned any of it. Not accomodation, not things to do, not nothing. Sure, I have some idea – a couple of dates, a few people to visit in my travels, but that’s about it. It sure should be interesting. This is the first time I’ve ever really done anything like this – I’m sure hoping it’ll have some positive effect (other than draining my bank account.)
There has to be a way of getting myself out of the current depressing frame of mind that I’ve been in – learning to know yourself and what makes yourself tick is sometimes harder than learning it about other people, I think.
There’s really no reason that I should be depressed other than the fact that I’m alone and don’t have many what I would consider close friends – certainly I have friends I’ve met through work, and through the internet – but they’re the sort of relationships that I feel would probably disappear if that common interest stopped.
If I stopped logging on to the internet, would anyone I know from that circle of friends contact me? If I resigned from my job, would anyone that I’ve met through the last 4 years of working with this company ever get back in touch?
The sad thing is, that the answer to those questions is almost certainly no. (I hope that none of my internet friends will take offence by this – if you honestly feel that it’s not true, then by all means comment and say so!)
It’s a lot like the Breakfast Club – we’re all wrapped up so much in our own cosy little lives that we connect with people, but only on a really superficial level.
It’s sad -it really is. I notice it in myself all the time. I want to become closer to people, and more caring and less selfish – but it’s really really difficult.
Which of course is probably a big part of the reason why I don’t draw people to me, and tend to be a loner.
Why I’m single. Why I don’t enjoy spending time with even my family very much. Somehow I need to find some more joy in the more positive things in life, set some goals, revel in achievement, laugh more, joke more, sing more, dance more, be less self conscious, heck, don’t be self conscious at all, just have no shame, appreciate what you have, be compassionate towards others, care more about other people and the issues….love yourself!
Compared to feeling emotionally dead, it’s an incredible contrast.
Actually that’s not entirely true – it’s very easy to make me cry lately.
Anyway – not to be too depressing – this is a blog, after all. Sometimes I feel woefully inadequate, when I read people’s blogs and they’re full of insightful political and current affairs commentary – with smatterings of humour, regular readerships that love to interact with the author, and a creator who obviously has passions that run very deep about whatever the subject is that they choose to blog about the most.
This blog was never meant to be one of those blogs that lots of people read and enjoy, but at the same time, it’s like the old bear shitting in the woods analogy – if nobody’s reading it, what’s the point? I may as well by writing in an antique leatherbound lockable diary and keeping it under the bed.
Anyway – enough from me now. Hey, I just had an interesting thought – a few weeks ago while I was cleaning out my garage I discovered something a wrote quite a few years ago – almost what I’d call my life story, if you will. Something like 16 A4 pages of handwritten text, written when I was at the last low, low point in my life, when I was living in a one bedroom housing commission flat in Canberra, doing drugs every day, surrounded by criminals and junkies, and wondering what the hell I was going to do with my life. I might type it all out and post it here one day, for my own reminiscing, if nothing else. Maybe someone will read it and get something out of it, who knows.
Sometimes I look back on that time now and realise how lucky I am – but in reality, I’m just as sad as I always was. Now I just have more money and possessions.
In other news – my DVD burner has finally turned up. DVD Shrink ROCKS. The ute now has been panelbeated back to its former glory, and has custom number plates to boot. Work seems to be getting better – the staff still don’t seem to feel that I deserve their respect, but I think I can change that given time – but I need to be extremely positive, enthusiastic and empowering when I’m at work, and it’s damn hard to be that 100% of the time. I hope this little holiday will give me the opportunity to clear my head and get the passion back.
I’ll be visiting 2 of those aforementioned internet friends when I pass through Melbourne – look forward to seeing you guys 🙂 Then I’ve got family to visit in Canberra (who don’t even know I’m coming yet) and quite a few work friends to visit in various towns along the way.
Finally, culminating in a visit with the one person in my life who I don’t consider in any of the above categories. Sure, I met her through work, but she ceased to be simply a work acquaintance a long time ago. Tears are coming to my eyes as I type this, which is just a realisation of how much she still means to me even though time, distance, and both our emotional circumstances have conspired to keep us apart. Hopefully some more healing can happen before I come home.
Better go. Next post will be from a motel or an internet cafe, so if you feel interested enough to listen to my ramblings, stay tuned (and hopefully some photos will be forthcoming too) 🙂
Internode’s DNS cache is still pointing at my old IP – it still hasn’t updated itself to reflect the new nameservers. So I still can’t access the site using it’s TLD unless I use a proxy. Bah humbug!
I’ve spent the last day or so testing out Mambo Open Source for another site I’ve been playing with. It’s great! If you haven’t tried it, then give it a go now, I urge you! I’m not really qualified to say that though – I’ve never used any other CMS, not even PHPNuke or anything like that. Still a newbie.
W00t 🙂 Now if only my fucking DVD burner would arrive, I’d be a very happy man.
Well, I’m rather proud of myself. Last night, on a whim, I decided to register a couple more domain names to play with (more on that at some point.) I then decided, on a whim, to actually buy some hosting instead of hosting sites on my poor old 512/128 Internode adsl connection.
So, I was left with a dilemma. How do I migrate my existing blog from my debian box here at home onto the new box?
After a very quick google, it turned out to be as easy as pie.
This post is an attempt to see whether it works. Then I’m going to have a bourbon.
May I say thanks to the good people at Hostcentral for hosting the site. So far things have been really smooth and painless.
OK, and as a footnote to that – the site is a bit rooted at the moment. I think a lot of the links in the site are hardcoded into it, and the DNS isn’t quite propagated yet (another day or two and all will be fine.) As a result it isn’t picking up the style sheet.
Hopefully things will look better soon, then I can crap on some more (and hopefully find some more interesting things to crap on about).
In the meantime, I’m going to get pissed. 🙂
It’s been an interesting few days. Friday was an interesting day at work – I have a new area manager, who’s a good guy. He’ll be pretty handy to have around, I reckon.
Then yesterday I get a phone call, outlining a couple of job opportunities elsewhere. Now I’m sitting here neglecting all the other things I’m supposed to be doing, and mulling over this decision, which I have to supply an answer to tomorrow!
All the pros and cons are starting to annoy me – but it boils down to two things really – money, and future opportunities. One offers much more scope for getting involved in other parts of the business in future, but my cost of living will increase substantially, and that isn’t something I want. The other offers cheaper cost of living, but is further away from the aforementioned opportunities.
In the end though, I figure if I want to get involved in these other parts of the business, I should be able to do some of it from elsewhere anyway.
Where I’m at now financially is probably slightly more important than the job that I’m actually doing. If that makes any sense.
Blah. I’m rambling. Sometimes I just wish that there was someone else here to make these decisions for me. She who shall not be named will be getting a phone call from me tonight, just to bounce things off her. I have to decide by tomorrow! Still getting over that part of it.
Anyway – must stop neglecting those things that I should be doing on my day off. This blog will hear the answers to my pondering soon enough.