Homeward bound

When you plan to leave home, reactions are always mixed: excitement from friends, concern from parents, and, for the less geographically-inclined, puzzlement (or perhaps the last only applies when you move to Belgium; I had some questions about it too… like where it is). People ask if you’re nervous, if you’re worried about moving away, leaving family and friends, contending with another language and a new place. They’re full of tips on how to meet new people and how to ensure that you ‘really experience the culture’, all the while confiding different methods that will enable you to preserve a little bit of home. It’s all welcome, and provides a discordant medley to distract from that moment when the airport gates close, when you know that it’s going to be an awfully long time until you hear those voices again, face to face. With only two weeks to go, however, and excited about coming home, I suppose I’m also in a bit of a quandary. No-one dishes out tips on what to do when you return.

Looking back on the last year or so, I perhaps feel like I’ve been living in a bit of a vacuum. With ailing grandparents and other upheavals stemming from Melbourne-ways, all of a sudden my Belgian swaddling cloths are about to be, if not willingly shed, then well and truly stripped from me in about two weeks. Personally and professionally, life in rural Flanders was always going to be the equivalent of a rather bucolic black hole, and now, in my last port of call, Indonesia, the reality that this point in my life has ended is starting to hit: I’m going home. I don’t have a house. I don’t have a job. I don’t exactly, at the age of almost 26, have a discernible direction.

I also don’t have an excuse any more.

I know I want to write, but I’m not sure what, or for whom, or if anyone would take ‘what I do’, whatever that is. This blog was always a testing place, a space outside the academic context I’d been operating in for so long where I could produce work that I’m perhaps not rigorously able to defend, work that, being an anal, obsessive drafter, I’m frequently unhappy with, yet work that needs to stand up and, at the very least, be readable. I take comfort in cliches and tell myself ‘it’s all about the process’, all the while trying not to fiddle with posts too much, despite the fact that I find some incredibly flip, poorly expressed, or just, to be an articulate self-critic, plain dumb.

I realise this is a lot of angst to fit between beachside meanderings, but it’s the first time in the last few months that I’ve had time to think, and for the reality of home to be somewhat tangible. I’m here with one of my closest friends and we’re having a fabulous time, catching up, sounding things out, beaching, eating and drinking. But at the same time, it’s made me realise that while it’s true that nothing ever changes, equally apt is the notion that life goes on. My friends all have jobs, homes, and partners, whereas I feel almost like I’ll be setting up in a new place again, despite the fact that Melbourne contains so many of the people and places that I love.

So what to do? Find some form of gainful employ, a roof, and hopefully write, one would presume. But how will other things pan out? Will this blog have run its use-by date? Would I be better off channelling my energies into finding publications that will accept my miscellaneous wordy stuff? Shouldn’t I be working on a folio, gathering some examples of my communication skills that don’t involve a cocktail glass and a raised eyebrow? I just don’t know; it’s all a bit too hard.

Perhaps I’ll just work on getting out of my banana lounge first.

So it's come to this

I’m springing this on you a little, but tonight is actually my last night in Belgium. I’ve finished up my contract, and am heading off for 2 or 3 months of travel, gadding about Europe, and then Indonesia on the way home; I'll keep you updated on my adventures as they come to pass. However, I have to admit, it’s come as a bit of a shock to finally be leaving. When I first got here, in the depths of a European winter in a very small town, I thought it would never end. I had already had serious misgivings before I came, and when I first arrived I spent a lot of time looking for the escape hatch.

Truly, I never saw sunshine, and those evenings … long doesn’t quite cover it. I read a lot, and I wrote, and when nothing I was writing turned out to be fit for human consumption, I started to blog. I read a lovely quote early on, funnily enough, on another blog, where the author said that he was in danger of becoming ‘less a struggling writer, than someone struggling to write’; perhaps I hope that when everything else has been mired in the tarmac of my brain, this blog has, thus far, kept me on a bit of an even keel, creativity wise. Perhaps.

One thing I haven’t done on this blog, however, is paid my dues to the people I’ve met here. Now, very few of them know I write this, and I’m fairly sure that none of them check it, but I think that even under the cloak of anonymity, they are owed. After my time here, I’ve realised that you never understand how important the basics are until you're physically divorced from everything that is 'yours'. See, believe it or not, no-one actually has to be nice to you. They don’t. They can be pleasant enough, they can be actively un-nice, or, they can just try and do whatever they have to do in order for their own lives to go on untrammelled. And this is all fair enough; we all have our own courses to run.

But none of this is what I’ve experienced here. I’m not sure if it’s a small town thing, or a Belgian thing, but whatever it was I will always be eternally grateful. See, people weren’t just nice, they were welcoming, they were kind, and they were generous. And for no real reason except for the fact that I was alone, and I was new. It’s an incredibly humbling experience. I feel so very privileged to have met so many kind souls who really just wanted to make sure that I was happy, surviving, and not just living on canned soup. I will always be thankful that, in a time when I could have been utterly isolated, I lived and worked in a place where it wasn’t an issue for people to say good morning, ask about your day, and perhaps grab a beer with after work.

It really is the simple things.

Well, hot diggity!

It’s good news, folks, good news! If you’ve been feeling a bit directionless, or just a smidge aimless, don’t worry: I’m here to help. You can trust me; I’m qualified. See, the word is out, and apparently, I’m a Master. Well, almost. On condition of some small changes and alterations, my thesis has been passed. Hurrah! Master H.O.T., not bad, eh?

Although I can’t help thinking that, combined with the funny hat, this title isn’t quite as snazzy as I’d like it to be. Now, you know I’ll always fight in the femullet corner, but I think this is one of those times where non-gender-specification has really been a bit of a downer. Wouldn’t it be more fun to be a Mistress of the Arts and Humanities? It’s certainly less starchy-British public school, less gay-little-hobbits, and more kind of delectably-dominatrixy and a wee bit fun (and that’s wee as in ‘small’, you sick, sad, people). They could create a whole new graduation ensemble that would make the hours of sitting in the grand hall waiting for your moment infinitely more interesting. On the other hand, however, the Humanities already gets such a whipping in public, it probably doesn’t need to shell out for it in private too.

Yet truly, I am very excited about this. As with every extended project, it was a long, occasionally gruelling affair, and it’s nice to know that I’ve acquitted myself with relative grace and that my marks are good (and yes, in case you hadn’t already realised, I am one of those grade me! grade me! types. A scratch-and-sniff sticker can still make me swoon). Despite this, however, I’ve currently put myself in the ‘time out’ corner, academia-wise; I was completely burnt by the time the MA was submitted, so am now going to take a little time to explore a world that doesn’t revolve entirely around the reference section.

In line with this, and as my time in Belgium is rapidly winding to a close, I have begun applying for jobs. I have no illusions regarding my prospects, and I know I’m heading for entry-level territory; the kind of job where you look at your first pay cheque, add up how many years you’ve been at university, times that by your HECS debt, gurgle a little, and then wish like Christ that you’d become a tradie. Last time I tried to do this, i.e. actually looking for careerish type work, I spent a couple of months on the dole before dealing with it in the typical Aussie fashion and going backpacking for six months. However, I still recall my favourite job ad that I have seen reposted again and again in the last four years.

It was an ed assist position at a publishing house of what I would consider to be not-very-interesting-books. After detailing a multitude of achingly boring office tasks for extortionately low pay, it closed so: *MUST HAVE A POSITIVE ATTITUDE TO DATA ENTRY*. Naturally, at this I laughed. A lot. What are they thinking? No one has a positive attitude to data entry. It’s data entry. I mean, I think I’m a moderately optimistic kind of person, but the idea of spending my life entering ISBNs for books that no-one will read leaves me feeling about as perky as Tori Spelling’s left boob.

I’ve seen it re-advertised on and off since then, and always in exactly the same way. Clearly there’s a lack of well-trained lobotomees around, and perhaps every other applicant has only had the good sense to feel sunny about such employ for the split second before they shoved two pencils up their nostrils and banged their face down on the desk.

It’s always good to have something to aim for, however, and I’m sure it’ll be re-advertised in 3 months or so when I get home. Perhaps if times are truly dire, I can apply for it myself.

I’ll just make sure I pack a good sharpener.