I don’t know

I love my wife very much. In fact, I love her more than I love anyone or anything else. I love her completely. I really do.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that I’m always very good at showing her that. I struggle with life at times and I have days where I’m down or out of sorts and I’m not the best to be around then. Even so, I love my wife then.

Nobody is perfect and there are times when my wife says or does something that annoys or bothers me and I may not react well at such times. But I still love my wife when that happens.

I love her totally.

We met in an internet chat room. That’s not such a big deal these days, but it was reasonably novel when it happened to us in the late 90s. I was hanging out being a smartarse and she swanned in capturing the attention of everyone in the room by dancing to jungle drums. She certainly caught my attention.

We got to talking about Russian literature and before we left for the night we’d exchanged email addresses. We corresponded for a while and I was completely and utterly in love with her before I knew it. It didn’t take me long at all.

After a few months I worked up the courage to ask if she’d mind if I visited her sometime. She agreed and we made plans to meet.

When I flew into her city we’d never seen each other before, not even a photo. We’d emailed each other brief descriptions of ourselves and that was all we had to go on. Even so, as I walked down the stairs from the airport arrivals gate I swear that J was the first and only person I looked at. I just knew it was her. Right from the start.

I’ve always loved my wife. And I still do.

One year

It’s my niece’s first birthday. Well actually, her birthday was yesterday but her party’s today. I bought her a giant Tonka truck. I know that’s technically not age appropriate but I don’t really care. I think I’ve mentioned previously that I’m vying with my other brother for the title of “bad uncle”. This should help me claim the crown. I got her a teddy bear with no eyes and guts that could be pulled out when she was born.

My niece is either going to grow up not being scared of anything, or somewhat emotionally scarred.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not forcing this stuff on her. I’m pretty sure her parents put that bear in a cupboard somewhere and she’ll probably never see it. Maybe she’ll find it when she’s 14 and rebellious and ask her mum where it came from. Her mum will tell her it was from me and suddenly I’ll be the cool uncle.

But that’s unlikely.

In any case, it should be a good party.

I want to ride my bicycle

Man I wish there was better coverage of cycling in this country. Don’t get me wrong, SBS do a great job with the Tour de France. They also covered the Tour Down Under this year (and presumably will again next year, especially if Lance Armstrong really does kick his comeback off at that event). In addition, we got Paris-Roubaix and highlights of the Vuelta a Espana, along with excellent coverage of the cycling events in the Olympics.

That’s not too bad. But it could be a lot better. For a start, we could do with highlights of the Giro d’Italia and a few more criteriums and classics like the Dauphine Libere and Liege-Bastogne-Liege. On top of that, would it kill them to provide even minimal coverage of the World Championships?

Look, I know that broadcasting rights cost money and there probably really isn’t enough sponsorship money in the country to pay for all of that. All I’m saying is I’d watch it. I’d watch it all, and I’d be sympathetic towards any sponsor that ensured I was able to enjoy the coverage.

Instead I’m left late at night, bouncing around the interweb trying to find live video streams or, at the very least, reasonably up to date comment threads. It’s very frustrating. Especially when you can see pretty much any other sport in the world live on free to air or cable. Why is it so hard to get decent cycling coverage? Why?

It’s just not right.

Looking for home

So, we’re in the process of looking for our first home (to purchase that is). Already we’ve been treated terribly by a major bank. Still, we’re pretty confident that we’ll be able to find something nice soon.

I certainly hope so. The place we’re renting is being sold out from under us to a developer that wants to, well develop the property. Which means we’ve got to go soon, new place or not.

So soon we’ll be one of those mortgage stressed couples you read about….. what fun.

Something else

Sometimes I’ll notice if a woman on the train is wearing nice shoes. It’s not something I normally pay attention to and it’s certainly not something I go out of my way to discover. But even so, sometimes I’ll be staring at the floor, absorbed in music or thought and suddenly I’ll notice her shoes and think that they’re nice.

I could be wrong. They might be horrible, cheap, nasty shoes. They might be horrendously expensive shoes that don’t fit properly. I wouldn’t really claim to know about shoes, especially not women’s shoes.

So there I am, noticing shoes and then…… nothing. There’s nothing I can do with that. I can’t pull down my headphones and call across a crowded train carriage, “Excuse me? Miss? Those are some very nice shoes.”

Well, technically I could, but I don’t feel comfortable doing it so I don’t.

I don’t know if it would make the world a substantially better place, but I hope that one day I can tell someone they have nice shoes without fear of reprisal.

So long

I haven’t written anything in so long that I’m not sure that I remember how. I guess it’s an inherent problem when you start a blog with no clear idea of what you’re going to talk about. I constantly run out of things to say.

I don’t know you well enough to feel like I should assault you with my opinions on subjects that matter (although you may have noticed that I feel pretty free to throw around my opinions on subjects that don’t matter – like film, music and books).

I’m too private to want to bore you and embarrass myself by discussing my personal life. I don’t really want to spend my spare time going on and on about politics, sport, history or any of the other things I could think of using to be more “topical”.

I’m much too shy to want to show you any of my more “serious” attempts at writing. I mean, I want to show you. I just don’t want you to laugh at me, and I always tend to assume that you are laughing at me.

So here I sit – bored, tired, dissatisfied and uncertain. So much to say, and yet, so determined not to say it.

If I were even slightly good looking, I’d be a beautiful paradox.

Turning a beautiful word

Traditionally it’s a “beautiful turn of phrase”, but I’m not aiming that high these days. Right now I’d settle for turning a beautiful word. I’d twist it a little, bend it just so and then curve it around the back of your head and whisper it gently into your ear.

Time management

I don’t really like to talk about it much because I feel like a bit of a wanker when I do, but I spent a reasonable amount of time during the first six months of the year laying the groundwork for a book. I don’t really want to tell you about it, hopefully one day the book will be out and you can read it then. I was also working on another writing project for a tv show. Again, I’m not interested in providing details, they’re tangential to my point.

My point is that I was unemployed, not bringing in any sort of steady income and in the incredibly luxurious position of being able to ride my bike and write every day. I could do two of my favourite things in the world every day. I can’t explain how fantastic that is, you’ll either know what I mean or you won’t. Either way, that’s alright.

Unfortunately I’m not ridiculously wealthy. I’m not even moderately wealthy. I’m not rich. I’m right smack in the middle of the middle class. This has meant that eventually I needed to find work, and I did find work. Good work with good people. I enjoy my work, my workplace and the income I receive for my work.

But the office is in an awkward part of the city and just a little bit too far away for me to ride my bike (I still hold out hope for the longer days of summer). Instead I spend an hour on the train in the morning and evening. My work day is long and I work hard, and when I get home I’m tired.

I don’t write well when I’m tired.

I miss my bike and I miss my writing.

Time is my most precious resource and I need to do some active managing of this resource.

Hurt

The problem with trying to make your way through life with gaping emotional wounds is that you never know when some unsuspecting fuck is going to stick a digit or foreign object into them. Most of the time this doesn’t happen because we bandage ourselves up as best we can and soldier on bravely ignoring the truth of our own frailties and weaknesses.

It’s not that we’re not aware of them, but rather we determine to do our best in spite of them. We try ever so hard not to let on how many of them there are or how debilitating they can be.

Unfortunately, sometimes we’re more vulnerable than others. We might be unusually tired or perhaps stressed by work. We might be physically unwell and lack the energy and physical reserves to cope with holding it all together.

We might just be in a bad mood.

The simple truth is that we’ve all got weak spots, and in spite of our best intentions and in spite of the best intentions of others, our weak spots will be probed.

Discipline

It’s an exercise in self-control. From start to finish there is a bubbling, seething fountain of outrage, emotion and fire buried under there. You don’t see it. Partly it’s that you’re not looking for it, you don’t expect it to be there, so you don’t notice it.

But more than that it’s a sheer act of will. A grim determination to repress it. To hold it in check. To protect you, to protect me, to protect us all from the raging power that struggles so desperately to break free. If you don’t have this in you, then you’ll never understand what is at stake. You’ll never know how extreme and desperate this struggle is.

The war within. It rages unabated and endless. There is no winning in this struggle, there is only the struggle.

It’s hard, almost impossible to identify where this began. It may have been in the years of torment as the poor kid at the exclusive school on a scholarship. It may have been in the twisted logic of ideology that you were raised with, even though it was never yours. It may have been in the contradiction of self that sprang unexpected from adolescence.

In the end, where it began doesn’t matter. In the end. There is no end. Not to this. There is only the struggle, there is only the raging, fiery torment of retaining control.

Control. It’s easier to pinpoint where that came from. Control didn’t appear, control was built, made, constructed. Control was slowly forged through the determination of will and the firm application of discipline.

Even today, control slips. It needs constant attention and maintenance. Without that the cracks appear more frequently and linger longer.

Occasionally the balance tips a little further one way or the other. On the good days, this is excellent news. You are vital and charming, entrancing and engaging. You are a living personification of joy.

The bad days vary. Sometimes the poison seeps slowly, like a gas leak that isn’t noticeable until the effects are felt. By then it may be too late to do anything about it. The day is lost. Sometimes there is a violent eruption. The wall takes one shot too many and crumbles in a second, allowing the raw power of the beast to spew forth. The day may not yet be lost, but it will be a day of blood.

A day like this needs to be a day of retreat. You need to retreat deep into yourself, you must climb right into the middle of the storm and begin to rebuild the wall. This is a day of work, restless and fierce. But whatever the cost, the work must be done. Without the work there is only annihilation.

The eternal struggle is not a battle to separate the two, but rather to keep them together so that a whole, no matter how imperfect, can be maintained. It’s an exercise in self-control. From start to finish. Everything’s at stake.

*Note – this isn’t self-referential at all, so try not to read things into it that just aren’t there.