The whole point is that you’re here to be YOU. F*ck everything else. Sure, gather some tips, refine and get to know the you-ness, temper the rough edges _IF_ you feel a need but remember the rough edges are also the unique part. Mick Jagger didn’t get famous for behaving on stage like everyone else, Kate Bush didn’t become Kate Bush for sounding like everyone else,  Fernando Alonso isn’t #1 in the Grand Prix because he sticks to the speed limit.  Captain Paul Watson didn't start Sea Shepherd because he thought that someone else was already taking care of things.  

Hack through the tangled jungle of other people's ideas with a machete of pride and self-determination, light your way in shadowed valleys with the flaming torch of your desires; use your inspired vision to seek out a path of identity as you go through the indistinguishable undergrowth...and travel along the engineered, floodlit highways of expectation with reckless abandon.

I've taken up the piano again. It's been a while.  My hands miss Brahms, Liszt, Mozart, Beethoven, Billy Joel

Guitar, synth; you're next.  Unimaginable crush, like blushing teenage crush, on my guitar teacher.

I think I fell in love with someone last year. ("think"...?!) Not the guitar teacher. It's a strange feeling. Like when you are walking up stairs and you think there is one more step but there isn't, and for a moment your foot swings groundlessly through thin air.  Or you suddenly step into quicksand, or the puddle is much, much deeper than you thought.  Mild panic

He doesn't know.  Doubt has crept into my heart ('was that real?') like summer moths that eat little holes in your beloved, carefully stored woollen jumpers.

Dogs and horses. They get you out in the world. (But you need an adventurous dog.) There's no going back once you taste adventure with a fearless, furry partner in crime.  Cats: free fuzz therapy on every street corner.  Beautiful, misunderstood: snakes.  Frogs - unassuming amphibians who stare at you with eyes that can probably see through time.  I've learnt the value of fleece, holeproof explorers, cotton drill trousers, flannel shirts, a decent water bottle, head-torch.

I miss my panoramic ocean views and storms pelting me with surprisingly warm rain on the endless beach; salty pools left in a long swale after high tide and decorated with a delicate, drifting flock of little terns, or birds that that look like them. The full moon rising over the ocean at twilight in April.  Balmy ocean temperatures, driving up rocky backroads, salt drying on my arms and legs, sand crunching under my feet in the foot well, the scent of coastal rainforest or ti-tree swamps permeating my existence. Boardshorts, bikini, wetsuit... naked.

For the moment I have taken respite from the world around me and I choose my moments carefully.  For someone who gets cabin fever like nothing else, I am taking a perverse pleasure in my inner life.  Now, in the city, few people are making it through the filter.

When the mood takes me I shake the tree in my mind to see what falls out.  I open my eyes on each day with a clean-slate sense of neutral expectation.  Mental cookies deleted.  My small (adventurous) dog's joyous wriggling: It's Awake Time!! 


Time seems to be waiting for me with an outstretched hand...but time doesn't look the way that I was expecting it to. It's uneven and sticky like hand-spun raw silk.  It twists back on itself, irregular like beginner's knitting.

What's next?