So long 2013. It’s been emotional.

Hi everyone,

So here I am with my New Years Eve wrap-up on 2013.  Those of you who are regular readers know it’s been a big year.  I’ve drafted and redrafted this post a couple of times in my head today.  For want of any better ideas, I’ll hit the high notes in a quick recap and then see if I can extract any lesson or pearl of wisdom or whatever.  Does anyone know what the sequence of keystrokes is for a Brief Insightful Observation?  Ctrl-Alt-O maybe?

So, this year: a chronology somewhat unreliably and completely arbitrarily prepared from memory…

January

Disaster struck: one morning I woke up and was completely out of cornflakes!

In other news, within the space of seven days I was fired from my job and my wife served divorce papers on me.  You’d think the starting January out like that would be kind of for the best: “get the year’s disaster’s out of the way” and everything.  Truth is, that really doesn’t make you feel that much better.  What does make you feel better is the way everyone in your life who you needed to rally round does rally round.   In this regard, special mentions to my sisters Kate, Jennie and Fran, my parents, and my dearest friends Heather, Kris, Donna, Darlene and Giselle.  I couldn’t have made it without you.

February

Not a significant month: I looked for a job (work had given me eight weeks notice) and discovered the legal job market was something of a wasteland.  On the plus side, one of my contacts in New Orleans referred me to a lawyer, Mr Brett Bonin, to protect my interests in the divorce.  I can’t recommend him highly enough: exceptionally acute and incredibly … the only adjective that fits is ‘gentle’.  When you’re at your lowest, he’s the guy you want in your corner.

March

My eight weeks notice at work ran out, and having nothing to hold me in Melbourne I shifted to the farm at Shepparton and kept looking for work.  One opening showed up with a certain plaintiff firm and I went to an interview with them.

In running news, I did one of my first very-long-distance runs.  One evening at about 7pm (after a ferocious freak storm had rolled through!) I set out on a 50km run from the farm to Shepparton and back.  I was struggling - and more walking than running - by the end.  I finished at about 1am.  I can say I was proud and a little ‘incentivised’ by this: Doing that, you come out feeling a little bit less breakable.

April

Job market was still crummy.  I went to a second interview for the job I mentioned before … on a Sunday … at a pub in a town 200 kms away.  After some nagging I was then asked to go to a third interview in Melbourne for the same firm.

In this month I did the first of the foot races that I think appeal to me most: a race against a machine.  This was the Puffing Billy race - a 14km race against a steam train through the Dandenong Ranges.  There’s something incredible in racing against steel that can’t feel pain and an engine that doesn’t get tired.  I know, I know: “Marshall versus The Machine”!

May

There was still no word on the job I’d been interviewing for and I was beginning to go a little crazy for want of a job to go to.  Unemployment doesn’t just suck: it’s incredibly tedious.  I started sending enquiries about jobs to firms in my area essentially at random.  As it happened, I sent one to a certain firm on the same day one of their personal injuries lawyers said she would need maternity leave.  It was a match made in heaven: they needed a short term lawyer, and I needed a job to get some money in, give me a reason to get out of bed, and give me a chance to work out what my next step in life would be.  One interview later they gave me a date to start!

This, I should add, was just as well: I was about two weeks away from applying for a job as a slaughterman at the local abattoirs on the strength of their ad saying “no experience necessary”.

June

The most blessed month of the year for me: I was able to head over to the USA to see my darling daughters.  As only so much time was available to see them (and as time was something I had a lot of) I took a couple of days going across to explore Los Angeles and Dallas.  This had two corollaries.  One: I’m pretty sure Santa Monica answers my idea of heaven on earth.  Two: I made a new friend in Dallas - Lori, a friend of a good friend there.  One can never have too many friends!

Time with Grace and Rachel in Louisiana was … divine.  I had not seen them except on skype for 18 months, but they knew me and were as loving and beautiful as only your own children can be.  Things might not be easy living like this, no indeed, but for such children no sacrifice is too much.

July

I started the new job, back being a plaintiff lawyer.  I have loved being back on this side of the fence, and made a new friend in the form of my assistant Renae - the sort of dear friend you can trust with anything.

August

Life continued.  I think it was in this month I completed my first official marathon - the Shepparton Marathon - which I entered on the spur of the moment and for which I did nowhere near enough training.  I finished in a fairly crummy time upwards of 5 hours.

September

I cannot remember this month in any great detail.  I think it was about this time that I found I could run in the lunch-hour at work and have a shower and be back at my desk by 2pm.  Wonderful discovery!

October

Epic running month: one weekend I did the 10km “Run the Maine” in Castlemaine (largely because I needed to go there anyway to see a client).  The next weekend, the Melbourne Marathon.  This time I had trained properly and equipped myself to match, finishing in a respectable 4:30-odd.  The next weekend, another machine-race: the “Sweat versus Steam” in Echuca, racing a paddle steamer over 13kms.  For this last, sister Jennie and her husband and the parents came up to make a morning out of it, and I was very pleased by that.

November

An old and dear friend - Jane - came back into my life through the magic of Facebook.  There are many things that make a man happy, but few more so than a friend you thought had slipped away reappearing unlooked for.

December

The festive month.  Not much, I suppose, to share for the first few weeks of the month.  I had a beautiful Christmas skype with Grace and Rachel and they loved the presents the family and I here had sent to them.  All I need to do is figure out how to top this for their birthdays!


Lessons?





Can I get a lesson from all of this?  Yes.  It’s that friendship, and kindness, and love, really are what matters in one’s own world.  I know, I know: it’s nothing that countless writers haven’t said before.  But it’s an insight for me because there are other things in this year I could also be proud of if I wished - being offered two jobs in a crummy labour market with a sniff of a third.  Or a bundle of publications of greater and lesser significance.  Or not slumping back into strong depression again.  None of those things especially matter to me, save perhaps the third.  What matters is the bonds you have with people.

With all this in mind, I am very ready for 2014 to begin tomorrow.  Quod bonum tenete.