Okay, so it has been
awhile. You are not the only one who has noticed. There has been a gaping hole
where at least one, possibly two posts should have been. I hear you. I have
been lax. But only on this front, I promise. I have otherwise been entirely
over-productive. Wired into the corporate pulse of my current employer like a
human pacemaker.
In the past month or
so, I have travelled to not one, but three, faraway places: Sydney, Singapore, Shanghai,
in consecutive order. For a creature of methodical and well-articulated routine
this presents a challenge of a personal nature.
Of course it’s
exciting to travel, it’s food for the brain and the soul. It beats sitting at
your desk, wondering out the same window, day-in and day-out. And clichéd as it
may be to say so; it takes you out of your comfort zone. Sure.
But I have been
carefully balancing two distinct sides of my professional life for some time
now. So when the seesaw swings downward in such a dramatic fashion, somebody or
something clearly has to get off. The electric fence around my creative time was
disconnected, as my raison d’être swung entirely in favour of ‘working for the
man’.
Since the beginning of
the year, I have been waking up a half hour earlier. Each day, before breakfast,
before showering, before another thought can even enter my mind, I sit at my
desk with the first streams of morning light and allow whatever is on my mind
to spill out onto the hungry pages. Thoughts in freefall, notebook after
notebook filled with superfluous, semi-conscious mind matter.
About a week before I
left for Sydney, this seemingly well-formed habit began to erode. My mind
worked overtime on the details of the trip, the requirements for when I was
away and when I got back. I did not take a dedicated notebook with me. I did
not take my dedication with me. I just took my mission...and my baggage.
Overseas, I assessed venues
and nurtured relationships to bear future fruit. I felt like an enormous crane
had lifted me by the scruff of my neck and put me down into Bob Dylan's Complete Unknown.
It took me days to converge, to be one and the same again. Like Shanghai
itself, where Western consumerism has crashed down around the old town to
create a space that is more confused than Confucius, I was two completely
separate people; one lost and one searching.
Only this weekend, do I
feel whole and home.
It is clear that my
flexibility is not made from rubber. More stretch is required before all
of the elements that make up my life can co-exist and flow like the Huangpu River.
I have come to realise
that true grit is not necessarily an immovable object applied with ultimate
force. Real determination might actually involve less indomitable spirit and more quiet acceptance.
