January again

I've managed to delete a whole blog. It's taken me three days to start it again. Perhaps I'm losing faith in writing this. I'm not sure what I ever expected to achieve by doing it anyway. I suppose I'll be glad of having a 'record' of my year away. I hasn't made me happier though or set me on my way to becoming a writer.

Is it really the 20th January already?! Time is flying by now and soon, as we embark on yet more foreign adventures, Sydney will be just a cluster of memories. Most good, some less so. Just don't ask me if I am ready to leave!

Christmas seems a long time ago now - We've said goodbye to Ric's parents and I've been back at work for a fortnight already. I suspect the next three will fly by too. The first few days were so slow as most of the rest of Sydney seemed to be on their summer holidays still. It did afford me the opportunity to spend one whole afternoon chatting to Virginia, my office manager, about a wide range of subjects including American poetry, politics, women's roles in society, mental health, men and plenty more besides. I will never understand why people warm to me so much as my colleagues have and why I feel I can pour out my heart and soul to those who let me in to their lives just a little bit.

Virginia has been such a huge support to me over the past few months showing such solidarity, patience, good humour, care and even love and I'm going to miss her enormously when I go.
She has told me I can come back to them after New Zealand if I like which is very kind and to be honest, a very tempting offer.

Now the boss is back I hardly have time for a loo break let alone chit chat, so I'm back to my usual frantic paced days, which I actually prefer. I do feel very lucky to have a job now when soon I wont and can't say when I next will! I'm hearing a lot of bleak tales from the UK at the moment.

I met up with Ric in Melbourne last weekend at the end of his middle Australia trip, and saw a couple of old friends who live there. I like the place. It's very different from Sydney; smaller, cooler (in both a fashion and climate sense), more arts focused, alternative, grungy, dirty, plus I've never seen so many cafes! Dear Ebony collected me from the airport very early on Saturday and spent the whole weekend showing us round town. I also met up with an old university friend who is living out here for a couple of years. She made the point that I filled the time gap by writing this blog.

Ric is learning to be a great house husband and often has my dinner ready when I get back from work. He's filling his days by building games, rearranging furniture, killing cockroaches and working on new film ideas, including a possible adaptation of an interesting Kurt Vonnegut short story which was written in 1950 called EPICAC and which my friend Georgie told Ric she is trying to adapt. His idea is to bring this robot meets girl-falls in love-realises he can't ever be loved like a human-dies of a broken heart story to the 21st century where we have avatars, msn, facebook and other internet wonders at our fingertips. Think my friend's a bit miffed that Ric has gazumped her idea and come up with a slicker, more contemporary take on the plot. He has a tendency to do that, albeit unintentionally. I just wish I had more of a film-orientated mind to work on these ideas with him. I feel constantly inadequate and at the moment, uninspired.

I'm excited about seeing New Zealand though and then my mum and friends in London again but also so worried about the future. When will I have the opportunity to come back here? Where will I live? Should I be embarking on fresh travels instead of focusing on thrashing out my OCD and eating problems which I've battled with for so long? Am pretty sick of talking about change now, just need to do it.

Can't believe that I spent a whole morning worrying about the fact that I threw a tissue down the loo the 'wrong way'. People often ask me what I think will happen if I don't act on my intrusive thoughts. Well at the moment my fear is of losing Ric, of him dying because of something I have or haven't done. At this rate I'll lose him not because of cocking up in an OCD sense but because the OCD behaviour will drive him away.

And I think perhaps I need to stop including these gritty personal details on my blog. My friend Dave has some interesting thoughts on the subject of my obsessions and crazy thoughts...see the next instalment.

Right. Back to work.