Walking my mind
When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn’t leave you.Walk with an animal walk and take in everything around you as prey.
This morning, at my new job I sat at my desk and wrote two news stories. The office was quiet and I felt nervous and not comfortable. I don’t know anyone yet and then, if someone does make a joke I feel like I can’t laugh yet because if I do laugh then that might come across like I presume to be accepted, which I don’t.
But I want to be.
It has alot to do with the fact that I am leaving job that I have been in for two years. Albeit, it was not my dream job -infact the new job, is my dream job - but it was comfortable and my realisation of how much I enjoyed that comfort and how comfortable I was, has only just hit me. And that actually scares me.
Thank god I got out, I said to myself more than once today. And that was usually in moments where I would have given my left arm to feel comfortable.
But I wasn’t completely weak and namby pamby. I wrote stories, I re-channelled my energies and pushed on through. I picked up the phone and called people when it was quiet and noone else was talking - just so they (and I) would believe that I am confident.
Thinking about what Natalie is saying today, makes me realise just how self-absorbed I was today. How did I manage to write anything when all I ever seemed to think about was myself.
Today was a pronounced coffee day. I can’t drink it every day. Well, that’s a lie because I can and I would drink it everyday only it sends me strange and it takes me hours to recover…like today. Just to make things worse I had to live through the anxiety that is me when I have skim milk (less calories, more anxiety) flat white (large, ‘cause what if small just isn’t enough), with one sugar.
However, somewhere during my 40 minute lunch break ( i couldn’t take an hour due to not really understanidng how lunch works at this place yet and I’m not really sure if people actually take an hour lunch break outside of the cushy confines of a government department) I managed to step away from the part of myself that resembled Woody Allen and take something other than the workings of my mind, in.
That ‘thing’ was Surry Hills. And then after work it was the walk from Surry Hills to St Peters, to my street. It took an hour and it was great. Chippendale reminded me of parts of London I used to walk through and that part of my life always comforts me. London was new and fresh and scary and I was discovering stuff everyday. It was just different enough, I felt energetic there.
And now, in this part of my life, like today, being able to walk home from work made me really happy. It was new, a new start.
More than likely the result of having never owned a car and always taken public transport, when I get to walk places - that is, when it is not a huge inconvenience and use of time, I absolutely love it. There is so much more to see on the street.
You can really see houses and I love it when people leave their doors open and you can peer in. I always do. Sometimes they see me and look alarmed. Sometimes they don’t and I am free to see (as much as you can in split second) the way they have decorated their house.
3 years ago • Notes