And so New Years Eve 2018 has hit. I'm at the kitchen table on a borrowed computer typing this post at 11pm. I have a nice chilled white wine at my elbow though, and that's good enough for me.
I should have some deep insightful post to share, but everyone has them. Everyone also seems to have a list of great things they'll achieve. My final observation for 2018 is (on its face) a little macabre but also perhaps the best of recent times.
I imagine most of you (I'm assuming I have actual readers) know I have a history with depression. The recent years of unstable (often demoralising) employment and still more frequent unemployment have taken a psychological toll too. At some point I took to keeping under my bed a rope tied in a noose. During that miserable job in Mooroopna I started carrying it in the boot of my car. I wasn't actively planning to do myself a mischief. I just found it reassuring (for want of a better adjective) to know that I could make the bad feelings stop if I really wanted to.
Yes, it's a noose.
Now, this is usually where people leap in with a variant of "are you OK" or "you should talk to someone". I am not a fan of doing that, at least where it concerns myself. To me, this feels like too heavy a cross to ask someone to bear on my behalf. It doesn't help that one of the greatest of exponents of RUOK Day I know is also a relentless virtue-signaller. Besides, I haven't felt like that since I got my life back on track, so it's kind of academic.
Which brings me to today. Oldest Sister Economist has her dog with her on this visit. She's been loving having the whole farm to roam around on, and she even enjoys paddling in the dam (the dog, that is). Well, today she was roaming a bit too independently and then, when she was coming back, decided to go for a paddle where she got stuck in the muddy bottom of the dam.
Dog, bogged
The dog was cajoled to make the effort to un-bog herself, but it was decided that a little time being tied up might be a good thing. And what seemed to be the best piece of rope for the purpose? The one in the boot of my car. It was with no regret at all that I broke the hangman's knot and untwisted the rope. What knots took their place? Good, simple workmanlike ones. Ones I used in my general rescue training. Ones that (as part of a broader operation) can be used to save lives and alleviate suffering.
To secure the rope to a post in the garden, a reef knot (right over left, then under; left over right, then under) -
Reef knot
And to secure the dog, a bowline (form a loop in the rope, then "out of the hole, around the tree, back down the hole and away goes he") -
Bowline with Solomon Islands dog
This year has been the most incredible roller coaster. And this seems to me the best conceivable way to finish it. To break the nodum informis leti and convert it to a simple tool to keep man's best friend safe? That looks pretty good to me.
Regular readers will remember that I can't remarry and that a decent whack of my energies in 2018 went into making peace with that reality. It shouldn't have been a problem of course. There was an incident at the start of the year that purged me of carnal desire for quite a long time -
Considering things over the long view, I find there are four particular advantages to the way I live
1. You appreciate happy families more
There are three family bloggers (should I say mommy-bloggers?) I regularly read -
I always wanted a family: a wife 2.6 kids, a white picket fence and a basset hound. That, clearly, will never happen now. I find it makes me happy to know that someone else does have it.
2. The friendzone is just fine
I've never been good at making friends, and most of those that I have made tend to be women. Instagram gives a good idea of the numbers -
As a result, that side of my life basically resides in a permanent friendzone. And I think this is a pretty good thing. Why should a man object to having friends of any sort?
3. It alarms the right sort of people
In a booze-fuelled and slightly surreal moment this year, a certain fellow enthusiastically claimed that a mutual acquaintance wanted to go to bed with me. With the candour that alcohol brings, I replied that it would never happen and I explained why. His genuine bewilderment - indeed, near horror - left me feeling remarkably powerful.
4. It obliterates the future
This one is a silver lining. Once you know that you'll never have an orthodox family and will probably die alone, the future stops existing and you stop being overly worried about it. Time, or at least your life-time, becomes essentially a very long "now". You want to enter a race in Sydney? Can you afford it? Then do it! Feel like a beer on a Sunday afternoon? Nobody cares when you get home from the pub. Want to put long hours into becoming the best lawyer you can be? There's work for the asking.
Christmas has passed, and now I enter one of the best stages of summer: the span of days between Boxing Day and New Years where you can evaluate your life and your year and consider what comes next.
This year has been positively heavenly for me, with new friends and a fantastic job and a chance to make my own life again. I'm in an SES Unit that I like serving with. The only restraint on my fitness activities is the number of hours in the day.
A diary is the gift you give yourself. What does mine tell me? In my diary entry for 3 January 2018 is this passage -
In the afternoon I was already stressed thinking about SES. Then driving to the Blood Bank about 4pm I saw a 'pylon' sign outside O'Brien's Glass and this made me think about work. I found my chest getting tight and my heart felt like it was beating very heavily. Lying in the chair at the Blood Bank I felt like my whole ribcage was visibly shaking. The nurse assessed my heart rate at 67 bpm and blood pressure at 134/82.
The other great asset of a diary is reading it knowing what you didn't know at the time of writing. On 22 January 2018 - the day before I was fired from Goulburn Valley Signmakers - I wrote about being sent to Melbourne to work with Nathan Sali, one of the bosses -
First job was to remove signs at KFC Wallan (easy). Called by Claudio while driving. After discussion they sent me on to Dandenong in Sali's ute with tandem trailer to get stock while Sali did job at Ravenhill. Noted that Claudio said "he'll crash your ute for sure" (referring to me). Naturally I drove very carefully and strapped load down very very carefully. Was late because of this. Sali annoyed.
The next day I was fired. Diary notes that on that day I was sent on errands to get cigarettes and coffees for the bosses, to buy hose, and to install signs at the various entries to Shepparton. And then I mistakenly stripped some vinyl off a sheet of perspex, leading to my dismissal. I noted that Dad was visibly disappointed that I was unemployed again.
And within less than a month I'd had two job interviews, attended my first barre and yoga classes, moved to Brunswick and started my new job as a lawyer. I have a hard time believing life could have such a rapid reversal of fortune.
It's a trite learning, but there's a lesson in not giving up: hard work and good luck can mean a reversal of fortune is just around the corner.
For the linkup: how has 2018 treated you? Well, or harshly? Are you on the way up, or weathering a storm? And how do you think 2019 will go?
I wrote this a few days ago, but I'm only just posting it now. Sorry!
I’m here in my preferred watering hole having a quiet beer and planning.
Nothing more at peace than a man drinking alone
I’m officially on summer break. The office formally closed on Tuesday and I worked the balance of the week in the office catching up on things. I think things are ok for the summer. It’s hard to feel sure, because I remember with much pain the debacle in 2013 that saw me fired from Thomsons Lawyers. The scar remains.
Today has been challenging: SES callouts from 0830 in the form of a cat trapped under a house and a tree limb down in a back yard. The first of those was the more challenging and required us to cut a chunk out of a lady’s kitchen floor. The things we do for love of cats.
Post callouts I came down to the Barkly Square shopping centre in Brunswick to tackle Christmas shopping. I’m at one gift per adult and multiple for my uncle’s kids (basically the same age as my daughters). It’s not really enough, I feel, but then again adults are hard to buy for. Me? My wants are simple. Wine is enough. And books.
Speaking of books, I saw a good book shop near where I was shopping. Huge selection of Camus, Hemingway and Faulkner, but ruinously dear. $5 for a very battered copy of Road to Wigan Pier? I don’t need it that badly.
I’ll be at the farm for much of the break, although I hope to do a couple of races at Geelong and Point Nepean and Semaphore. Hence my initial comment: planning. We’ll see. The Goulburn Valley is great but I was still glad to leave.
Having wanted to leave the Valley makes me wonder if the ex was right to cut me loose. Would I have been happy in small town Louisiana? I thought I would have been. But maybe she was right to doubt. I don’t know anymore
I’m
starting this post on the train from Euroa to Melbourne. It’s been a
pretty incredible few days.
The most striking part of the weekend was Friday night. I’d planned to get the
train from Southern Cross Station to Euroa to spend the weekend up country.
The weather had other ideas; they looked like this -
Storm cells, Melbourne, 14 Dec 2018
When
I saw the map of those storm cells I decided I’d be more use turning out with
my SES unit than having dinner with Mum and dad. I caught a tram through
a deluge of rain and then drove over to Northcote LHQ.
Oranged up and ready to roll!
The
unit received about 40 requests for assistance and I was sent out in Rescue 3
with Thao and Gabriella. Thao was crew leader and I was driver. Our first
job was repairing a roof from the inside (replacing a tile, which I’d only done
from inside a roof in training). The second job was essentially structural
damage to a roof and way beyond our ability to fix. We assisted the
households to take steps to mitigate the damage. By this stage it was
getting on for 2300, which meant food and coffee were in order.
Northcote Rescue 3 at Northland McDonalds
This was followed by one more job, sandbagging a garage which was likely to
flood in another downpour. Operations wound up for the night. We returned to
LHQ and were dismissed. It was a strange feeling to be on one’s way home
and to see people drinking on their patios or on their way home from a night
out. One had the odd impression of two entirely different worlds existing
in tandem without much touching each other. This, I suppose, is the case
with much emergency response.
I
was in bed by 0200. I knew I was still probably needed at the farm and so
I was up again about 0620 to get the 0700 train from Southern Cross to Euroa.
All credit to the V/Line conductor who understood why I hadn’t been on
the previous nights train and didn’t require me to buy another ticket. It
seems silly to say it but buying breakfast from the trains buffet felt kind of
glamourous, even if it was merely coffee and an egg and bacon roll!
Dad
picked me up from Euroa and we headed out to the farm. They’d had perhaps
an inch of rain up here, which won’t go astray at all. First job of the
day was feeding out to cattle and tracking down some kind of damage to the
backhoe. As the day went on I couldn’t help but monitor the storm cells
hammering Melbourne. Towards
the end of the day Dad and I headed over to the new property at Nagambie.
It’s a fertile looking place with good soil and water storage. All
being well we’ll get cattle on there in the next fortnight or so.
I was stunningly tired by evening and crashed into bed by 2100 and was asleep
by 2200. And I slept well. All the way up to 0055 when my goddamn
pager went off! I was of course far too far away to be any value, so I
turned over and went back to sleep as well as I was able till about 0830.
The
rain came back this morning and so today has been on the quiet side. Rain
meant that drenching cattle wasn’t an option, and so the highlight of the day
was a couple of hours FaceTime with Grace and Rachel who are all geared up for
Christmas. I love how natural communication by technology has become for
them. I’m sure that they’d prefer to have a normal home life with a
normal dad, but since that not an option, well, Dad is a face in a screen and
that’s how it is. They know I love them and I’m as much “there” as I can
be.
And
now? I’m on the train for town (just passed through Broadmeadows). This
is the last week that the office will be open before Christmas. I will be
busy; and hopefully all will be well.
Regular readers will have noted that, for some reason, I've been thinking back to my marriage a lot lately. Not to events, exactly, so much as to what went wrong. I've found myself googling things that lead to fights between the Ex and I, with a view to trying to see the situation from her perspective. I'm not sure why I'm doing this. That ship as long since sailed. Regardless, it's a puzzle my brain seems to want to explore.
The questions I'm asking are ones I imagine she feels she should have asked before she married me. The necessary implication of framing the matter this way, of course, is that I was an unsuitable husband and the failure of the marriage was my fault. I'm content to assume both things for the sake of this discussion, and indeed for most other purposes.
Something that I think she would, in hindsight, have viewed as a red flag was my distinct shortage of friends before we got married. The picture I gave when we were courting may have been unintentionally misleading. A good number of the people I thought were friends turned out simply to be "coworkers" or "blokes I went to uni with". I did not know there was a difference. If she had had a clear picture, I expect she would have been less willing to marry me. I do not think I would have blamed her.
I have proved amazingly bad at hanging on to friends over the years. As of 2007-2011 I was only in the loosest contact with people from my school or university days (we might catch up once a year). I worked too hard in my first decade as a lawyer to have time for a social life even if I had desired one, which I didn't. This meant that our marriage had a shackle from the start: I well recall The Ex saying sadly how she missed having a social life like that of other young couples. She might fairly have added that it'd be nice to be with someone who could be at a social event without looking like his wisdom teeth were being extracted without anaesthetic.
Based on this experience, I offer you ten things to consider before getting involved with a man with no friends.
First: ask yourself how long they've been solitary for? The reality is, if it's been a few years, the habits of living alone and thinking for one are going to be well-ingrained. You'll have only limited leverage by threatening to leave. After the shock and sense of betrayal has worn off, the response is likely to be "ok".
Second: Your wedding day will be out of kilter. You'll have bridesmaids
and a maid of honour and the like. He'll have a best man he barely
knows and groomsmen hired through Airtasker. If that's not a good omen I
don't know what is.
Third: Fundamentally, most of his social contacts are transactional.
Going to someone's house to help them fill in a claim form or to borrow a
lawnmower is a perfectly normal thing to do. Going to someone's house
to drink tea and make small talk will seem as absurd as tattooing
"buffoon" on one's head. Suggesting it will have him look at you like
you're speaking Norwegian.
Fourth: You'll be socialising alone a lot of the time. I recall once waiting a long time outside the Ex's work and declining her invitiations to come and drink at the Prince Patrick Hotel on a Friday evening because by that stage of the week I couldn't face another person. She felt guilty about that. I had a book to read and didn't mind in the slightest.
Fifth: Sometimes he'll be no fun at all. I recall a lunches, dinners, pub trips and one football game where I was counting the time till I could leave and (at one lunch) became more and more unpleasant and shocking because it was the only entertainment on offer. We weren't invited back.
Sixth: Despite anything Google will tell you, don't try and treat his nature as a problem to be fixed. Doing the things recommended here will be really. fucking. annoying. I speak from experience. Fish are not made to run. Turtles are not made to fly. Some people are not meant to be sociable.
Seventh: The place you live is neither yours nor his, but belongs to both of you. So if he's driving home from work on a Friday, and you text him to say a half dozen friends (and remember, they're basically your friends) are there and can he get a couple of buckets of KFC, don't expect him to be happy about it. From his perspective, it feels like a non-violent home invasion.
Eighth: You'll probably fight after any social gatherings you host. Because he doesn't much like talking, and because sulking is childish, he keeps busy. This means he'll spend much of the time mixing drinks, cleaning up, washing dishes, plating up food and so on. You won't pick up on this, because you have a social nature and will be enjoying the gathering. At some level, your friends will see you as the Host and him as The Help. He'll pick up on this. And he'll resent the fuck out of it.
Ninth: The relationship won't last forever. You're too different. Perhaps you'll leave. Perhaps he will. It won't matter. Either way, the final word will go to Edgar Allen Poe -
"Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door! / Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Tenth: On the bright side, when you break up, you'll get to keep all the friends. He'll be just fine with that.
What do you think are the things to know about being with a loner?
I almost asked someone out today. Well, I kind of did (I know, I know: I
feel a touch of guilt about it, and I’ll seek absolution before next
Mass).
India Pale Ale, Lomond Hotel, Australia
She batted the offer away. And almost as soon as she did I was relieved.
Why?
She’s a Ph.D. candidate, and that means she’s already more successful
than me with my little ol’ Bachelors degrees [B.A. (Hons); LL.B.]. I’ve
already been with someone who was more successful than me, and
who earned more than me, and who always seemed to remind me of both facts when the caused the greatest humiliation. I remember the crushing feeling of knowing I could do nothing about it, because I would not abandon the promises I made at the altar.
I never want to feel so caught in a bear trap of someone else's contempt again.
It struck me afterwards that because I can’t repartner, I’ll never feel like that again. Never ever. So now I’m sitting solo in
the beer garden of the Lomond Hotel with a pint of India Pale Ale
thinking that marriage is the emotional equivalent of adult-onset
chicken pox. Mercilessly contagious, and miserable as hell when you get
it. But once you’ve gotten over the infection, it can’t strike you again. You’re free. Free forever.
