If I Ever Feel Better

“You’re not blogging anymore,” said my friend the other day, someone I hadn’t seen in a few years.

“No, I haven’t really had the time.”

“I guess the angst is all gone too,” she said.  “You’re married, you’ve got a good job.”

Maybe.  I certainly don’t feel the same way I did when I was 24 and starting blogging.  As I said in my last, very self-referential post, maybe this site wouldn’t work if I ever did feel better.  But that’s not entirely it too.

Mostly I think I just got tired of the sound of my own voice.  The same tone, the same kind of thoughts about the universe.  It started to feel like I wasn’t writing anything that I would want to read if it was by someone else.  Has that changed?  I hope so.  Maybe I need to try a few new things - throw some ideas out there and see if they work.  Experiment a little.

Standing up the front at Phoenix’s Sydney show this month, Nikki turned to me during the opening bars of “If I Ever Feel Better” and said “I just realised where your blog gets it’s name.” This coming from a massive Phoenix fan.  So much for flaunting my hipster cred in my blog title.

It occurred to me that if you don’t know the song then I’m not sure how you’d interpret my title.  To be honest, it probably just sounds emo.  But the song is far from emo - it’s resigned, but hopeful.  It feels like better times are just around the corner.  I guess that’s where I was going two and a half years ago when I moved to Sydney and re-named my blog.

When I moved to Sydney, I couldn’t have expected what would happen within a year: that I’d meet my future wife, lose my job, go travelling, find another, get engaged.  But as it happens, I do feel better than in early 2007, thanks for asking.

A decade isn’t a long time, but it’s apparently enough to trigger some heavy nostalgia among movie critics.  Not only did Popmatters run a gushing feature earlier in the year about all the brilliant films of 1999, now the Guardian is declaring 1999 “a cinematic goldmine“.  I’m tempted to agree.  I contributed to the Popmatters series and it made me realise how well some late century movies are standing the test of time.  But it’s hard for me to assess how good it really was, when it was also the year that I turned 18, moved to the big city, and spent every moment not in class or the pub in a darkened movie theatre.  I lived and breathed movies that year and maybe - just maybe - I’m a bit nostalgic about it.

But what’s going on with the rest of the people writing these articles?  We can’t have all reached adulthood and embraced film-nerdery at the same time.  Have 28 year olds taken over the internet?

My introduction to post-honeymoon married life was a little bit bumpy.  A stressful time at work, a pulled muscle and a bad head cold all left me a touch grouchy and irritable.  Luckily none of that outweighed the sheer joy I get out of coming home to find Nikki here, rather than thousands of miles away.

I always pictured marriage as being a synonym for “maturity”.  Married people had responsibilities and commitments and children and didn’t goof around.  My dozen or so young married friends have taught me otherwise, but I still saw them as being a little more serious.  Getting engaged to Nikki, I knew that there was no way a marriage certificate was going to make us anything close to “grown-up”.

I get reminded of this when I come home to find that Nikki has bought a decorative metal tree to hang all her earrings (and a metal elephant for her rings) and has spent the afternoon dancing to Passion Pit in a style I can’t possibly describe.  I’ll post a video one day, I promise. Anyway, it delights me and makes me do a little dance myself.

I’ve spent too much of the last ten years wanting to be old and now I’m savouring the feeling of being impossibly young.

It was 38 degrees (that’s 100 in American) and we nearly died in the attempt, but on July 4, Nikki and I tied the knot.  It was a quick ceremony - 11 minutes according to someone with a stopwatch and a sporting bent - but beautiful.

And now we’re married people, with whatever that entails.  So far, it’s mostly entailed being the laziest two humans in the world, eating delicious things and snorkeling with tropical fish.  Normal life resumes tomorrow, but with Nikki now properly around, it won’t be boring.

Moving to the North Shore has its definite positives.  I can afford a place bigger than a shoebox.  I don’t find empty syringes or condom wrappers on my doorstep in the morning.  I can walk up the street to get coffee without smelling urine once.  It’s just so frigging…nice.  There are trees and people have washed and my neighbours are nice and I am realising that I have always been a bourgeois yuppy on the inside.

There are dangers too.  Naturally, the overwhelming upper-middle-classness of it all could mean that I forget that there are poor people out there.  I could start to believe that absolutely everyone drives a BMW or a Lexus and that a Honda Jazz really is no car at all.  I could start talking about my stock portfolio.  I could have a stock portfolio.  The possibilities are endless.

Another risk that Nikki and I observed when scoping out the area is that, like a number of other harbourside neighbourhoods, this suburb has recently experienced a “baby boom”.  It seems as if everyone around here is aged between 25 and 40 and pushing a pram.  It’s clearly the place you go when you want to buy a unit, do some renovations and have yourself a kid or two.

“Everyone’s nesting,” said my fiancée on seeing the young families dotting the park we were in.

“The worst thing is that they make it look kind of appealling!” I commented, guiltily.

“I didn’t want to come out and say it, but yeah…”

If you intend to stay young and footloose, you can’t be too careful where you live.

Today I was about to do another post about atheism when I realised that it was probably time for a change of approach.  It dawned on me, as it does very occasionally, that there are people out there who don’t have regular updates on my life and are actually interested in what’s happening.  Since I don’t use Twitter, rarely update Facebook (although I lurk pretty often) and don’t have time to verbally update everyone in my life, I guess this little blog is a good a place to spread the word.

So 2009 is quite the year.  Just over a month ago, I started another job - possibly the most challenging yet and a strangely exhilirating one.  This weekend, I move across town to a new and unfamiliar neighbourhood.  In a matter of weeks, I’ll turn 28 and get married to the most beautiful, funny, ridiculous girl I’ve ever known.  Out of that list, only turning 28 doesn’t feature in the rankings of “biggest causes of stress” - and yet I feel strangely calm.

Perhaps it’s watching all my fears at the beginning of the year turn out to be baseless that has given me a new assurance.  There were a lot of fears and absolutely every single one failed to materialise.  There’s a lesson in there about always assuming the worst, but it’s one that I’m learning only slowly.

Everyone I know says that they keep expecting their life to simplify and it never does.  I think I now know that too - and that the secret is in learning to enjoy yourself and find fulfilment in the spaces between the busyness.  They’re not always easy to find, but they are there.  A piece of unremarkable wisdom, sure, but one I’ve seen others realise far later in life.

I’ve been taking a blogging break over the last few months while I try and get a better balance in my life.  But it occurs to me now that I still have a lot of thoughts bouncing round in my head that I need an outlet for - and 2009 is going to be a year I’d like to document.  So let’s see what happens.

Talk to a guy in the lead-up to his wedding and he’ll most likely express horror at the amount of effort that goes into planning the thing.  In all likelihood, he’ll tell you that he’d rather get married at the beach with 5 close friends and what the hell are “wedding favours” anyway?  I used to wonder whether this was gender expectations - an Aussie bloke isn’t supposed to get excited about this kind of thing.  But on the other hand, the way some brides carry on, fatigue and apathy from the groom-to-be are just natural reactions.

Even marrying the most fantastically down-to-earth girl imaginable, there is still a lot to be organised. I’m off the hook for almost all the planning, by virtue of being unable to inspect locations or talk to local providers.  In a lot of ways, it’s a typical guy’s dream: just turn up and marry the girl you love.  What could be simpler?  I’m realising that I’m just like all the other guys.

I helped a photographer friend shoot a wedding yesterday and for the first time noticed the details and elements that go into making the day happen - because, let’s be honest, all I’ve ever done at previous weddings is play Bridal Bingo and check out the bridesmaids.  The lesson?  It’s a BIG job.  My heart went out to Nikki and I just wanted to find a way to make it all magically happen.  Is there someone you can pay to do it who isn’t Martin Short or J-Lo?

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.