Fix You: Learning Lessons (the hard way)

I had one of 'those days' today. You know the type, everything seems to bit a little bit off, like milk on its use-by date; its not quite bad yet, but it doesn't taste good either.

Today I realised that the thing I want most in the world is going to hurt me, its going to work me to the ground, and I may not always be the best, hence the requirement for lots of hard work. This afternoon I copped the first major blow to my dream, it hurt. I got a mediocre reaction to a piece of work I really loved. I'd thought the story through and delved deeply into my emotions to pull out some touching moments and a lovely plot with worthy characters, it was good. I know it was good. It just wasn't good enough. I want to be a writer, it really is what I want most. However, I have a great problem in that I am not really good with criticism, I understand it and I can accept it, but I feel the negatives keenly. This afternoon I was told my piece was good, but I needed to work harder and for longer, to make it brilliant. I didn't see the good, I saw the not good enough.

I'd like to make myself better, to learn to be a great writer. I would like to feel the sting of criticism the way it is meant to be felt. I am going to liken that sting to a tatoo artist's needle, it stings and it burns a little, but if you wait it out, if you let the work go on, at the end of the painful process you could end up with a master piece. My experience of tattoos tells me that if you bail out just as it starts to hurt, you will end up with pointless marks that mean nothing. When I recieved my share of constructive criticism this afternoon (from a wise and valued source I might add) my frustration made me want to ditch my story, I didn't see a way to fix the flaws. But now I realise, my first instinct was right, it was good,  now I can see that if I work hard and wait out the painful confusing bits... it could be really brilliant.

As an endnote, I'm the sort of person that likes to have a bit of a soundtrack to my life, but today even that felt off there just wasn't that moment in my day when a tune would play somewhere near me and make my world seem ok. Fifteen minutes ago, in the last moments of today, I heard (purely by coincidence) the song that I have been waiting for all day, the one that makes the world sort of make sense a bit. I had one of 'those days' today, and by a grace that floats down in the last moments of a day sweeping away, it is just now starting to make sense.

Falling...
                ...asleep

Ten Years and Ten Days: Requiem 9/11

There was a moment, and the world changed.

I remember the moment I found out about the World Trade Centre terrorist attacks. I had woken up the same time as usual, I pulled my slippers on and went into my parent's bedroom to see if mum was already awake. I walked in and I saw both of my parents sitting up in bed watching the TV,  the volume was turned right down low. My mum's eyes were red and puffy: a combination of not sleeping all night and crying for half of it. My parents looked at me, and I didn't know it then but now I understand; they were realising that the world I would grow up in, the world my kids would grow up in, was different, angrier and harder than it had been before.

I'm writing this now, ten days after the tenth aniversary of the event, partially because on the day I really wasn't up to it, and partially because this year is the first in which I've taken the time to consider how the world has changed. Perhaps there is a moment for every generation that changes the world forever; I started out thinking that my generation was the first one to have to adjust to this new terror, but then I thought of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over two hundred thousand people died, and over half of those within a three day period. Those deaths were cause by a new technology, a new form of warfare.The first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th 1945. That moment changed the world too.

What about the moment automatic guns were invented? And the moment non-automatic guns were for that matter, what about the early war machines? Hundreds of moments that changed the world, every moment changes the world. But that moment in 2001 changed my world.

The day that morning turned into was pretty confusing for me, I was thirteen and global catastrophe wasn't exactly big on my comprehhension radar. Classes at school were largely dominated by radio news and TV watching. I spent a bit of my day feeling sorry for the people who had died, not much, just as much as I thought was enough and for a thirteen year old enough is really not much at all. I didn't understand loss then, not truly. I had never lost someone I had love, now I know better. This time when I thought about that day I could feel it in a way that I couldn't before. Feeling my own grief and knowing that thousands and thousands of people had the same ache because of that day: this time I understood.

Back in 2001 my sadness was not driven by sympathy, it was driven by fear. Hearing the media trumpet the fear-mongering circus of global politics heralding the new war on terror. A funny term to use, to me it looked like a war on the Middle East. Cynic though I am, the war on terror seemed to me, to be a whole new way of controlling the masses. Security became a social institution in itself, and I was taught to be afraid of people who looked different to me. I spent weeks just being terrified that a bomb would be dropped on Small Town South Coast, my brothers assured me that this little town wasn't important enough to bomb. I was relieved, I forgot that fear, but not the other.

Wealth Security Power

I have learned a lot in the last ten years. I have learned that some of the loveliest and most intelligent people I have ever met came from the nations of the Middle East, and none of those seem to be evil. I have learned that grief can cause anger and hurt and a need to assign blame, I've also learned that hatred really does rot the soul. I've learned that if you carry scissors in your bag in a French airport you're probably going to be searched, but the mean looking lady who's job it is to search you is just trying to make sure you stay safe. I've learned that people that look just like me can do really horrible things too.

 I've learned that wealth really isn't a matter of money, it is a matter for the heart, I am wealthy in friends, knowledge, faith and love. I've learned that security isn't always concerned with metal detectors, but is more about understanding who I am and who I should be, and who I want to be, and having a loving father who tells me that I'm doing Okay. And I've learned that power is not a matter of how many bombs I own (which is lucky cause I haven't got any), power is a matter of having the courage to stand for what I believe and what i believe in, and understanding the things that others can not take from me.

I remember the day the world changed



September 11, 2001

Four terrorist attacks occured in the U.S.A.; 2,977 people died as a direct result of those attacks. Thousands of volunteer workers suffer and have died from medical conditions as a result of the work they did to recover the lost and clear debris.

Jumping Off

I find, in most cases, that falling is easy, landing is painful and jumping off in the first place is the hardest part of the entire process. This pretty much applies to anything I've ventured an attempt at.

Here it is, the sitch as the kids are calling it these days. I was born on a farm in the wheat belt of Western Australia, my family moved to small town south coast when I was yet a baby. My upbringing was a fairytale... the sort with dragons and adventurers and magical trees. I was home-schooled for most of it, and my two older brothers were my fellow crusaders on our great childhood adventure (stories for another time). At the age of thirteen my parents packed up my brothers, myself and a big caravan and our new hulk of a toyota troop carrier for a new adventure. One year, all of Australia... my world changed, now I wanted to see everything, to hear it and taste it, all of it the whole world.

 Arriving home I was fourteen, tall, red-headed (still), and desperate for more of whatever I could get. Life was normal, but for the fact that I went to a small private school, which I battled with my parents for the right to leave and go to a public school. I did, then was TEE (last two years for getting into uni), and then school ended and I knew, now the world would be mine. Eight months working followed by seven months abroad which morphed into two years.

Now I am home, here in small town south coast, with twenty-three years of experience in jumping off and it still terrifies me. In fact I am more scared of that first step than I ever was before. I've been home for three years and I know that if I don't jump soon, I never will and that terrifies me even more.

So the decision is made, the preparations are under way. I am leaving home... again. The move is months away and the waiting is excruciating.

Passing time and still falling...