I don’t even remember anything that’s happened since the last time I wrote, man. I am never home and when I am home all I want to do is put my laundry in or make sure I have enough Greek yogurt for tomorrow’s lunch and to wash my face and brush my teeth and go to bed. I feel like I say I am super busy a lot, but I am super busy: with band practice, dinners, gigs, work, and this big party I’m having in a couple of days to celebrate five years living in Wellington.
I don’t know who all even reads this blog anymore, and if the last few of you who are still reading were around back in 2006 when I rolled up with my green backpack. I’m glad I was writing more often and at more length back then because it’s inconceivable, now, to imagine Wellington as a place where I don’t know anyone and of which I don’t feel a part. I guess that would have been true, for the first couple of days, when I didn’t know what to expect.
I didn’t expect any of what’s happened in the past five years, not one morsel of one shred of one bit of one piece of it. I never thought there would be someone to pick me up at Auckland airport or Wellington train station. I never thought I would just make a couple of calls on the strength of a recommendation of someone who read this blog and get the job that would introduce me to a new career. I didn’t know how soon I would feel like I lived here. I didn’t know if I would be able to stay, and I didn’t know if I would be able to come back. I didn’t know how anti-climactic coming back would be, and I certainly didn’t know how much Wellington and everyone in it would change over time. I didn’t know—I still don’t know—how I would change over time; how the decision to go away to New Zealand for a year, just a year, only a year, would not only become the best thing I have ever done as an adult, but also that pretty much everything in my life would be because of, or resulting from, or concomitant to that idea I had in 2005 or so about how maybe living abroad for a while would be sort of fun.
So it will be five years on Friday, and it is currently Wednesday, and I am sitting on the floor of my bedroom like I always do because I pretty much never go in the lounge anymore unless I have friends over; it’s too cold and I am too wary of my electric bill. I was supposed to have a production meeting for the song’s video that I’m shooting next month but it got canceled so it’s been all about fur-lined hoodies and domestic chores this evening and not so much about big thoughts about How Time Flies. I mean, I can think about 2006, and I can link to those old entries (and I can be jealous of how much I was writing and how much more of it didn’t suck, compared to what I’m writing now) and I can sort of recall when Espressoholic was on Courtenay Place and when I used to take the 14 or 5 buses, sometimes the 2, or when I spent a lot of time explaining that Americans don’t really drink much tea. I can think about all that stuff, but mostly I just don’t, anymore, not very often. I think about my commute and about the Sunday veggie market and about hilarious things I should text to people and about the internet and about politics and the economy and whether I should keep trying to grow my hair out or just give up and chop it again and about my friends and my family and everyone in between, just like everyone does. It’s my bedroom in my flat in my city, that’s all. I’m in it, completely.
Maybe that’s why I couldn’t expect any of this, any of my perfectly ordinary yet satisfying life here in the best city in the world, unless the expectation was: things will go as they go, and I will go with them.
Comments
11 responses to “Five Years”
you know I’ve been reading for a lot longer than even the top secret plans… but if you are not writing because you find life as it finds you now to be fulfilling and satisfying then I’m ok to not have anything to read. It makes me happy to know you are in a good, healthy place with a rich and varied life.
I’m still reading, and I kind of can’t believe it’s been five years. It’s life, you live it, and then these big numbers roll around and take us by surprise. And now I can’t imagine you anywhere else but Wellington.
Nooooooooooo! Don’t chop off your hair!
(That is all. You know the rest.)
Been reading for years and years. I rarely comment but here I am! Namaste
Wait, Espressoholic isn’t on Courtenay Place any more?
When I was in high school, it was on Willis Street, on a block that now has clothing shops of no particular consequence but once had a movie theatre. I saw The Empire Strikes Back there – the first movie I remember going to. Going to. I remember lining up. I don’t remember seeing it. Was Espressoholic _in_ the decommissioned theatre, or next to it? I can’t remember any more.
There were REALLY outlandish looking people in there late at night, to my teenage eyes at least. It felt beyond sophisticated to go in there and have a hot chocolate and be in the same room as so much cool.
I can’t believe it’s been that long! I remember when you were in Chicago waaaaay back in 2005 telling me all about your Top Secret Plans, and now you’ve been living them forver. Simply amazing.
I started reading right around the time you started talking about your Top Secret Plans; I can’t believe you’ve already been there for five years! I’m glad you’re in a life that’s good for you. If that means less writing, well, I don’t know about you, but I’d rather live a life than write about it, if I had to choose.
Still here, still reading, and I’m so happy for you, girl. Band practice! I love it.
Speaking of the Top Secret Plans, I was just thinking about MATH the other day. I had some random new/old house question (we just moved down to Illinois) and I had no idea whom to ask… and I was all like, “where is my forum when I need them?” Anyway.
Time is so funny. 5 years seems like such a long time, and yet, here we are, still so much the same.
I started reading your blog when you were going waiting for your visa and catching up is my Friday afternoon ritual.
The older I get, the faster time passes! Do keep writing, I love to read of your adventures!
Susan
Hmm, not sure how long before JournalCon I started reading you, but it’s been a long time. I remember sitting in a room at JournalCon and hearing you read an entry, and being blown away by it. I don’t remember which entry – I’m thinking it was about belly dancing, and I’ve been a regular reader since. Life stuff, that’s why I read journals, and you have that in abundance, and a turn of phrase that I am regularly struck by.
A.
I started reading after the break up but before the Top Secret Plans. You’re the reason that when I visited Seattle a couple of years ago and a friend picked me up in her car and told me where we were going I was able to say, “That’s where the good cupcakes are!”
Doesn’t seem nearly that long. But I guess it is.