It’s been a while since I blogged and my stated goal when I started this gig of never letting a week go by without an entry has certainly fallen by the wayside. My writing seems to be drifting into the usual standard of mediocrity which blights my life on a day to day basis and the wherewithal to compose is seeping out of my pores and leaving me a vacant, vision-less husk of a man, just adding to the pack fodder in this race of life.
I started back at work last week and my first day was surprisingly easy and enjoyable but I quickly slipped into the mire of boredom once again and my tenuous mood was not helped by the cold I contracted which had me out on my feet by the final whistle on Friday. I was glad to struggle home and into bed but yesterday was spent battling dizziness and light-headedness although I have taken a turn for the better today. Just in time to return to work!
Work. What am I going to do about it? One gets the feeling we are all tied to a skid hurtling with great velocity down a slide of perpendicular acclivity, toward an obvious, death defying, unavoidable drop into oblivion. I may be stuck fast, riding the wreck to the bottom where I will be at the mercy of the vultures who will pick my bones and squeeze every last willing breath from me and do with me as they please. Not a future which is particularly appealing.
I have some ideas of where I want to go in my working life and staying put is not something which takes my fancy but as I am skill-less and somewhat clueless most of the time and with age beginning to shape as an enemy I appear to be heading toward a battle-axe block from which there is no escape.
I should skill up. At the very least get some administrative skills which would see me capable of attending a crude sort of office job somewhere which at the very least would be something different and one would hope, refreshing. There are online courses which would see such a scheme to fruition but I would need to be serious about it. The training doesn’t come cheap! I need to push myself for the first time in many years.
Of course my working world is only a small part of the universe I inhabit (thank God!) and much of the rest of my life is free and easy, like riding the gravy train with all it’s fun and frivolity although the occasional drifting wave of depression which strikes out of the blue does sometimes turn my soul and personality inward, forcing me to mark time when I should be taking life by the scruff of the neck. An area I will seek to improve on as the year winds down.
One light which is shining brightly as I speak is my football team, the Richmond Tigers who, from the depths of the League ladder have won their last seven matches to be knocking on the door of a finals berth. Richmond, for those who have no interest in the Australian game is a particularly old club from the inner suburbs of Melbourne with a ferocious and sometimes pernicious crowd base whose glory days are far behind them and who have been groping for success for some years without managing to achieve any.
I am not a fanatical supporter of Aussie Rules football but I have followed Richmond my entire life and can’t help but get caught up in the excitement as the Tiger army gets in behind it’s team and wills it on towards a spot in the final eight. Following your football team is one of the great traditions of Australian life and for the first time I am letting my self go, getting involved and finding myself passionately enthralled by the road my team is travelling.
They are infuriating, heart-wrenching and sometimes disappointing but following such a team can also make you feel alive when they get it right. Who needs the clean, clinical approach of championship clubs when you can have the fumbling earthiness of Richmond instead?
The Tiger surge has livened up a somewhat predictable run toward the final series and although it may all end in tears I have but one warning for all those foes and detractors who seem to know it all and wish us ill at Tigerland. We are coming!
Have a nice night.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 