If I Ever Feel Better

It’s nice to be wanted, for sure.  When you’re starting out in a career and questioning whether you make the grade, there’s little more flattering than being approached with job offers.  I think for a long time, I had enough doubts about my employability to think that you should never turn down an offer - at least not without another in hand.

Recently, I’ve reached a new conclusion - not an epiphany exactly, but a new clarity.  I actually have power over where my career takes me.  I don’t have to follow the random trail of opportunity, leaping ahead without any thought as to what’s the best.  I’m not a fortune teller and it’s hard to predict how a job will turn out.  But if I have misgivings or serious doubts?  I don’t have to ignore them.

Being a lobbyist is not an entirely evil career choice, despite what some will tell you, but it’s not a morally neutral one either.  There are good things to lobby for and bad things to lobby for.  There are neutral things to lobby for, but even they can lead to trade-offs and negative outcomes.  And the person who is paying your salary will have a lot of control over what you end up advocating.  The thing is, I can choose who that is.

My ego has been stroked this year by a number of job offers and inquiries.  Some have been easy to turn down, others much more attractive.  All would involve some compromises and consequences.  The process has been helpful, because it’s shown me what I want and what I don’t want.

So no matter how flattered I may feel, it’s time to start drawing some lines in the sand.  And maybe I’ll get to use my powers for goodness and niceness.

A month or so ago, I made a contribution to the fundraising campaign of the Burnside Writers’ Collective, to help out with their website redesign.  I was partly lured by the promise of free Don Miller merchandise, but also by an affection for the site and its irreverent, social-justicy approach to things.  If you don’t know the site, you should check it out - especially if you’re a lover of any of (a) Portland, Oregon (b) sarcasm (c) Jesus or (d) indie rock.  For me, it’s like a jackpot.

Anyway, it was nice today to receive a thankyou from the editor, which made me chuckle:

I wasn’t surprised to see an Australian address…I’ve long said Australians are like cooler version of American West-Coasters.

Word.  Good luck, guys.  You’re just lucky I donated before the Australian dollar crashed and burned.  I think you would have been doing well if I had covered the PayPal fee.

What with the discovery of Guitar Praise last week and the released of Rock Band in Australia, I’ve been thinking far more about video games than any guy without a video game console of any kind should.  But it’s an interesting topic, so humour me.

When we were at the pub the other week, I was chatting to a guy about Guitar Hero and he made the interesting comment that he plays a lot less actual guitar ever since getting the game. I guess he’s getting all his guitar-playing kicks these days from pressing those little buttons in the right order.

What will this do for the future of rock and roll?  Where will our next generation of guitar-slingers come from if teenage boys don’t need to pick up a real six-string to feel like a rock god?  Why would you bother working out some big guitar solo on steel strings that hurt your fingers and take way too much effort when there’s a game that does it for you?  Won’t somebody think of the children?

I really wrestled with this question yesterday, because clearly I have nothing better to think about.  But then I realised…of course teenage boys will still learn to play guitar.  At least at this point in time, no one has ever formed a band and scored chicks using Guitar Hero.

I thought I was being clever the other week with my post about a Christian version of Rock Band.  Little did I know, it actually exists - and it’s called Guitar Praise.  I guess no one ever went broke underestimating the need for crap Christian versions of mainstream products.

According to the testimonials, the best thing about it is that your kids won’t go singing those pesky secular song lyrics.  All that careful homeschooling won’t go to waste!

They also have a Christian version of Dance Dance Revolution.  I am not going to link to it to protect you.

Today in a Maroubra living room, we decided that it would be a good idea if we gave the Bay Hotel a wide berth for the next while - at least those of us who were directly involved in last Wednesday’s incident.

I’m torn about this.  Obviously the place cannot guarantee our safety and it’s possible that I’ll be remembered and possibly targeted, but it makes me feel so weak and powerless.  I’m filled with frustration that not only have I been prevented from going somewhere I enjoy - I’m staying away to avoid physical violence.

Obviously, no smart person deliberately walks into unsafe situations, but I feel the need to prove my own worth as a person - as someone who isn’t cowed or bullied.  I feel like I’ve been tested and I’ve failed.

A few weeks ago, I posted about an incident that happened during our regular Wednesday night trivia at the Maroubra Bay Hotel.  It made me wonder a little bit about some of the issues you hit once you step out of your own subculture and into another.  Tonight has only raised more questions.

It should have been our best night yet.  After turning up weekly since August, we finally made friends with some of the locals.  We sat at a table with a young guy called Dave, who turned out to be a bit of a trooper - and possibly the solution to our lack of sports trivia knowledge.  Later on, we were joined by group of three girls, who we had won over by sharing our bar tab with them.  We chatted and bonded and it made me feel far more connected than I have since moving to Sydney.  Is making new friends always as simple as this?

Then at 10:30, a drunk guy who had been heckling the trivia earlier came over and squirted a sauce bottle in Dave’s face.  Completely unprovoked.  He then proceeded to walk around spraying the rest of us with tomato.  As we were cleaning up, he came back for more, this time getting violent and pushing Dave around.  Having just met Dave, I was amazed at his composure - he was clearly fuming but he didn’t say a word and didn’t fight back.

Even as we gathered our things and hurried out, the guy threatened us and pushed us out.  He circled us as we stood on the pavement outside and went in for a swing at Dave, busting his lip, all the time shouting that he ran the place and that we’d better not come back ever again.

I don’t know what to think after this.  We reported the incident to the police, but I’m not confident it will make a difference.  The bar staff clearly tolerate this kind of behaviour - and there was no apparent security.  The woman running the trivia night cut it short by a round even prior to these dramas, simply because there were some patrons acting aggressively.  Whether the trivia night can even continue under these circumstances is a bit doubtful.

In the coming days, we’ll need to debrief.  We’ll need to see how the issue is handled by the pub and by the cops.  We’ll need to work out what kind of risks we’re willing to take in future.  Because tonight went bad very quickly - and it could have been a lot worse.

Getting back to Sydney in late January was a difficult time for me.  I’d managed to put some unpleasant things to the side while I lived it up for 7 weeks in the US - but on my return I was unemployed and living in a city in which I no longer felt I belonged.  I had moved to Sydney hoping to put down some new roots and nothing seemed to have played out the way I imagined.  I spent most of February watching DVDs on the couch and feeling sorry for myself.

I mention this because that time feels a lot longer ago than 9 months.

My instinct when things have been tough has been to leave, to try and find happiness and contentment somewhere else.  You know that already, if you’ve been a reader of my blogs for any length of time.  When I was jobless and uncertain, I felt like rebooting somewhere else - it was the first answer to any question.

Now I’m looking towards the future.  I have had a few companies approach me about potential jobs - one of which involves an interstate move.  I’m weighing things up, but I’m not keen to move, especially now that Nikki and I have finally settled on a country to spend the next little while.  My life isn’t perfect, for sure.  But for the first time in a long while, that doesn’t bother me much - and I know that changing cities yet again isn’t the answer.

I have a pretty simple life, and it’s a happy one.  I get stressed by some things, but so many things give me joy.  I have good friends here and other good friends scattered around the country and the world.  I have free time to do things that give me pleasure.  I read and I blog and I go to trivia and I dance and I sing karaoke and I play guitar and I spend hours on the phone to a girl in Canada.

I’m from a family of nomads and I’m marrying a girl from another country, so Sydney is unlikely to be the end of the line for me - but it’s nice to know that sometimes you don’t need to chase the good things and that they can surprise you where you are.

There’s a bit in one of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide books where a guy gives up on humanity when he sees instructions on a packet of toothpicks.  I knew exactly how he felt when I read the packet of my dental floss, which proclaims:

50m
2x as Much Floss*

*Than 25m packs

Thank you, Johnson & Johnson copywriters! Where would I have been without your handy calculation skills?

When Phil, a guy I know, got back from a trip overseas, during which he had proposed to his girlfriend, it was odd to notice that he was wearing something on his ring finger.  I asked my friend Andy about it afterward.  “Do guys get engagement rings?  Am I missing something?”

“I think Phil just likes rings,” he said.

Phil might have been on to something, because while my fiancée Nikki can announce her new status just by flashing her left hand, I have had to come up with ways of bringing it up in conversation.

I was talking about this when I ran into an old friend on the street recently.  We’d both seen each other’s status changes on Facebook (how did we ever find out these things before?) but hadn’t seen her since the happy event.  She showed me her bling and I just waved my hand and said “Here’s where my ring would be if I had one!”

“It’s so annoying that boys don’t have rings,” she said.  “Because I know that when I’m not around girls flirt with Michael.”

The other weekend, I was out with friends and it seemed like this one girl was trying it on with me.  It would have been a bit presumptuous to have said “I have a fiancée” apropos of nothing.  But a discreet gesture with your hand on the bar?  That might have worked a treat.

It’s been three times now that I’ve ventured out to Chatswood on a Friday night to join my friend Sally at the institution that is RSL karaoke.  I’m happy that it’s becoming a semi-regular part of my life.  Not only does it involve cheap drinks and the chance to get up and make a fool of myself, it’s a fascinating cross-section of society that goes there.

It’s a diverse crowd, to say the least.  There are uni students, bogans, suburban mums and people from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds.  There is also a large contingent of regulars that seem to have some intellectual disabilities.  And pretty much everyone has a go on the mic.

It’s the last group that is the most fascinating to watch.  Like the rest of the crowd, they’re divided between some amazing singers and some wretched ones - but they’re easily the most enthusiastic performers.  One guy has the voice of a young Elvis Presley and belts and croons out with impressive passion.  One guy has the voice of the Cookie Monster and can fill the dancefloor with his performance of “Yellow Submarine”.

What I like about it is that it’s a million miles removed from the mockery of TV talent shows like Idol.  No one is belittled or selected purely for the amusement of others.   Everyone is genuinely equal up on stage and we all get to be rock stars in our minds for a few minutes.