byluke.com

It’s a shame. I think I’ve lost faith in the magic. Countless first dates, relationships with short fuses, gift horses with agendas. I’m tired and I’ve stopped believing. I’ve grown up and somewhere there is a fairy dying. So there Peter Pan complex!

Two and a half years ago I ended my relationship with one of my best friends. For everything we had we worked better as best friends, not partners. Ending that relationship shook my life to the core, changing my hopes, dreams and ambitions. By 21 I’d had a job in my own studio and I was a great Mac trainer. I’d pretty much crossed off everything on the to-do list. I remember our first (and only) work Christmas party. I was asked by the wife of our investor who my heroes were. Who I looked up to. I didn’t have an answer for her and I still don’t have an answer today. I know my life has purpose, I just don’t know what it is (yet).

It (life) has all just become too mechanical. Too constructed. To quote Aladdin "Gotta eat to live, gotta steal to eat". Well I don’t steal, but I have countless hours stolen from me. I allow it under the guise of gaining new skills, but I really strive somewhere between self-created bedlam and bureaucracy. Too much of one or the other and the scales will tip. I’m striving to find balance, and I’m yet to give up hope that I can find balance and peace regardless of my environs, I just need to accept that these will be internal balance and peace. It’s not always possible to create that externally too, at least to the extent I’d consider reasonable.

I meet new people every day. Some of them come into my store at work, some of them I chat to online and we opt to have a coffee. And yet for all the people I meet, I’ve come to a degree of acceptance I’m not going to find what I’m looking for. In fact I’ve managed to obfuscate what I’m looking for to such an extent that not even I remember what I’m searching for. So I accept it. I won’t find what I’m looking for. I’m not ready to settle down. I’m only 23. But in doing that am I cutting things short? Am I sentencing myself to a life devoid of commitment? Perhaps I am.

I had a magical dream about 3 weeks ago. I was living in this house at the bottom of a shallow valley, surrounded by undulating hills. On closer inspection the house was made of grass, growing in and out, forming the walls like a hedge, but grass. I was exploring the house and there was a really big room for me and each of my flatmates. As I continued to explore I found a old door, which opened to an old world style study. Gorgeous windows, an entire wall of books and an amazing desk. I awoke shortly thereafter but ever since have felt empty, questioning why I can’t find such a warm, inviting, productive space. I hope to not always need the physical construct but until I can learn how to put myself in the zone, it no doubt helps.

And so I sit here. Typing. Chatting. Thinking. Listening to Staind tell me that "It’s been a little while since I could look at myself straight… hold my head up high". One of my new friends has just told me that I need to allow myself to be spoiled a bit. Allow myself to have someone surprise me with coffee, plans for the evening, or something little to make me smile.

A lot has changed in a relatively short space of time. I’m more outgoing. I don’t shrink away when I catch my reflection. I like (most) of my body. And yet I sit back and look at all the areas I can improve on. It’s relentless. I see everything as some sort of list I need to check things off of. And I’m tired. Tired of dreaming up new things to write on it.

I need this story to write itself. I need to know why I’m here. Because the world isn’t enough.

ED: Apologies… there isn’t much sense in this consciousness stream despite my efforts to edit it.

A memorable moment in recent cinema (for me at least) was in the remake of The Italian Job. During one moment in the film the female lead describes herself as F.I.N.E. that is, Freaked out; Insecure; Neurotic and Emotional. I’d like to let you all know that I’m also fine.

Let’s recap. I’m not making time for my friends, I’m working insane hours at the new job and everyone remotely close to me is overseas or interstate (or planning to be) with increasing regularity. My world is in a spin and I’m left trying to micro manage the impossible.

New job you say? Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. I have been asked to manage one of our city stores. It has an impossible track record since the take over, writing off thousands of dollars of stock each month. I’ve been charged with fixing it, and boy am I feeling out of my depth. For once in my life I’d like to have a chat to Hitler to get some tips on how to manage the situation (hopefully it wouldn’t include murdering the Jewish staff members). That was a bit callous. My bad.

So I’m riding the rollercoaster again and I’m in a desperate need of a realignment in the personal side of my life. Work is so busy on my days off I’ll be trying madly to catch up with those I care about. No rest for the wicked they say.

There are some noticeable distances that are forming in my personal relationships and it really saddens me. It should really motivate me to the point of action, but I suppose some of these things are two way streets. Strange coincidences have been happening in decisions though, as if motivated subconsciously. I bought and wrote on a card to give to the boy I am seeing at the moment. I didn’t know his address off the top, so I thought to drop it in his letter box. I inadvertently left the card on my desk at work… meanwhile a password I chose at random today has a correlation to an ex-flame (which I didn’t realise till later). I wish I knew what it all meant.

Bottom line. I’m doing ok, but attending to whatever is making the most noise. It’s not remotely close to an ideal way to run my life, but in realising that I suppose there is a degree of empowerment.

Watch this space. 

I have spent most of the day in bed. The jobs are piling up and while my distractions are few I seem to create them so I can avoid everything. Right now I don’t want to go to bed, I don’t want to do any work, I don’t want to return calls, do my washing, be accountable, or really communicate. Do I want to exsit? Well I don’t want to not exist, so sure.

I feel the sharp pangs of contrast at the moment. My entire life has hopped back on the roller coaster of highs and lows and I’m not even sure I remember how to ride it so that I have fun along the way.

I was talking to Dan earlier this evening and commented that like he, I felt very much like I was treading water. His reply came swiftly… 

D: “But you’ve got the place, the job and the boy?” 

L: “… and I don’t even feel close to complete”

D: “Does anyone ever?”

I really really hope that there is more to life than this. Despite “doing well” for myself I feel so hollow at the moment and I really can’t put my finger on the driving factor behind it.

Moving out of home has been a big step for me. I love my family to bits, as they me, but at some point you have to stretch out (or so society would have you believe). My stretching has been eventual but now finds me sleeping in (typing to you from) my first queen-size bed in a quaint suburb I know little about. I love the new place, so far the rapport with the flat mates has been stellar and yesterday we warmed the house (though the recent cold-snap has me believing otherwise).

Perhaps I’m just feeling way outside my comfort zone (which is a good thing), but something tells me there’s more to it than that. Right now I just want reassurance that I’m doing ok with my life, my job, etc. But that reassurance isn’t coming from any extrinsic sources anymore. At long last, Luke (me) has to look within and find his core, his centre, his intrinsic drive that he (my life) is worth waking up for, taking notice of and steering in a direction (wherever the wind takes me).

I’m hoping to find some passion quick and fast because this emptiness is killing me softly. And yet, there is poetry there, for what was there before the Big Bang? Emptiness. 

I’m purging. And I don’t think I’m quite done yet… 

When I’m thinking about what my epitaph would say the following occasionally comes to mind:

"Luke… he could justify anything"

The other night I managed to surprise myself… I managed to justify flying to see the upcoming Cirque Du Soleil in Sydney in June with Jac (instead of waiting till November) because there’s an acrobatic class she’s trying to talk me into and she will also have finished working on Big Brother by then, so we have something to celebrate!

Shortly after, my iPod headphones finally gave up from the abuse they’ve copped from me since I started full time work in Brissy about 6 weeks ago. Music is a crucial part of my public-transport filled day, so I’ll need new ones. But seriously? My Blackberry message to Jac read:

"My iPod headphones just broke. Is that reason enough to buy a new iPod Nano?"

I’m also busy trying to justify a trip to Canada while I still owe thousands, and a MacBook Air because my MacBook Pro is just getting too heavy to lug around on the train every day.

Does that make me a master salesman, or just an optimist trying to put a "Glass is half-full" spin on things? Perhaps it’s a blend of both and I’m sure there are still plenty of things I’d have trouble justifying… like taking a day off work because I didn’t feel like it, or pushing a cat off a balcony to see if it bounced. I’m just glad I have good friends and family to help keep the inner justifier in check!

Lash out in the comments… what have you managed to justify (to yourself or others)… ?

Earlier this week I was dismayed when I was told by the third person in as many days that I looked like I was 26. I was dismayed by this for two reasons… the shock realisation that in 6 months I celebrate my 23rd birthday, so I am very quickly becoming twenty something; and that I was sure I didn’t look THAT old! (Disclaimer: not that 26 is old, but, well, I’m not 26).

As I walked home across the Green Bridge yesterday evening that dismay was replaced with a greater understanding of what that means and how it can actually be A Good Thing™.

In the eyes of customers and those I work with and for it can’t be a bad thing to be seen (from a distance) as a little older (and more responsible). I am quite possibly the youngest sales manager that Next Byte has on staff, so looking a little older must go some way to increasing my credibility, excluding my insanely broad knowledge of things Mac. That said, anyone who actually knows me knows that, well, I’m not 26 and I still have quite a few things to learn, but hey don’t we all.

So with that I will relish in being twenty something! I might even phase talking about my age out of conversation and let people construct me as they see fit. Which is very new thinking. For me.

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Typed on my BlackBerry® from Optus while driving on the M1

My musings are always bought on by something I’ve seen, been told, or realised. In the case of my last post it was two things. One was an awesome idea I saw on a profile on a dating website I use infrequently, where in the “What I’m Looking for” section, the guy had a quiz with points… if you scored more than 100 he suggested you should message him. I thought it was an awesome concept, which sent me into the “Why can’t I come up with those anymore” tailspin… ideas that is…

The other is an amazing video Dan emailed me earlier today – MGMT’s Time to Pretend. I’ve linked the YouTube video below, but if you’re keen check out the Hi-Res version and their album on iTunes.  By all accounts, Rolling Stone has put them on their 2008 “Artists to Watch” list!

For the record, I scored 132 out of 177. Whatever that means!

I used to have a lot of ideas, to some extent I still do. Once I came up with the concept of Lego for the blind. The bricks would have braille on them, so blind children would be able to share the same simple pleasures of building Lego.

I still have ideas, but instead of things to help the planet, these days they seem to be more focussed on ways to do a better job. What would be a good flyer to design, what would be a good procedure to implement, boring by comparison. I’ve become one of those people who wake up early just to do the morning commute.

I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with that either… but I wonder where it’s all heading. I now look forward to the weekend break from the 9-5 (or if you include travel and overtime, the 7-9). Emails are going unanswered, old friends are calling to check if I’m still alive and my blog has barely been touched for weeks.

Bottom line… I need to make some adjustments. I’ve just spent a lovely afternoon lazing on a couch where there was no pressure to do anything. I’ve been tired for too long and haven’t changed enough to deal better with everything I must. I mean, work offered me a work laptop the other day and I turned them down, so I could keep everything together incase I needed to work from home, or home from work.

Being the person I am I very much doubt I will ever achieve work-home separation, so I must willingly invite them both to encroach on each other to achieve a degree of balance. That said, I still miss the ideas.

At work, it seems I have been tasked with finding ways to better promote the store to the university populace. I’ve since found out that student code of conduct means the university can kick me out if I try to get up and self-promote in front of lectures, so I’m at a loss to know how to connect. Once I would have had a dozen ideas I could try, now I’m so busy with my day-to-day, I don’t have the space to be creative.

I must find that and soon, or I risk my sanity.

Why is it that you always remember things with such fondness, and yet when you’re forced to remember the facts, or at the very least look at things the way they are now, things look different.

This entire line of thinking was bought on by an old flame who recently added me to Facebook. You know, you remember how someone looked 3 years ago, when you were busy lusting after them, and now you look through their current photos and realise that your tastes have either changed, or they have, or both (in this case, it’s a bit of both).

I don’t really have much more to offer on the subject, and I’ve probably already lost half my audience to Facebook because you’re busy trying to work out some back story you’re unlikely to hear, but I still feel conflicted about the whole topic.

Someone once told me that whoever wins the wars writes the history books, and while I guess this holds true for older histories, in 2008 we have the internet, and everyone has an outlet for expression, and for some, a way to record what is happening around them. Everyone is writing their personal history, which means the accuracy of things on a personal level is heightened, but that further fragments the shared history. What sort of affect this may have in the years to come can’t be foreseen, but it certainly makes these interesting times to be living in!

The mind (and mine in particular) can be a strange beast. I still want what I remember. What is there now isn’t anywhere near as appealing as it was two years ago when I couldn’t have it. There isn’t much else to do really but sigh and move on (again). I’m just left wondering what else do I remember that isn’t as rosy……

It seems like I’m waging a bit of a battle on a number of fronts at the moment. That said, viewing it in such a way constructs it rather negatively, so I am left wondering if there is a way I can construct everything I’m doing in a more positive light…

The new position at work seems to be quite self driven, I’m not sure if I expected it to be as direct support-less as it has been. There are plenty of reasons that it is the case, some excusable, some not. Regardless I’m presented with a set of circumstances and I can either work with them, or not. I’m choosing to work with them and smile along the way! I just hope Apple gets its act together soon and releases new laptops so I have stock to sell… even if I don’t have an internet connection, printer or proper chairs (we have however upgraded from the camp stools. Thankfully!)

Outside from the store, the traffic each morning seems to be a bit of a battle, and at the moment I seem to be a little scatty, so remembering everything I have to do in a given day is proving challenging, forgetting to charge my phone should have acted as the canary in the coal mine for me, but alas, I wasn’t listening. Unfortunately today I was back in my old “launching from one thing (read: minor disaster) to the next” mode. But how to grow up and prioritise.

I start back at uni this week. As I sit here typing this I realise that I have yet to check my timetable and I might even need to swap a class or two if it doesn’t work in with my work schedule.

I think the big thing for me at the moment is having things to rely on… or rather, lacking things to rely on. Perhaps nothing has changed and I am simply passing the buck, but I genuinely feel that I have turned a corner in the way I work, but at these formative stages I still need a little help (or at least a reliable internet connection), which seems to be lacking.

At this reflective point I look back to my path in this life. For those not in the know, my three names (Luke Rohin Martin) combine to mean a Light Bearer/Warrior journeying on the upward path. Interestingly while I’ve never struggled with the meaning of Luke Rohin, it is the Martin / Warlike quality that has always seemed at odds with me. Perhaps it is the Martin that I need to spend some more time getting to know, and the third leg to my personality that while inactive is getting in the way of me and my potential (which everyone assures me I have plenty of, and I have only recently come to accept).

Interesting times most certainly ahead. I’ll keep you posted (and blog more in the meantime).

There is a certain degree of currency to the thoughts and things that I seem to post up here, so when a thought pops in and I don’t have time to write about it, it will languish until I have moved on from it and it is not half as relevant as it was when it first popped in.

I just wanted to mention this! Until they invent a way to dump a consciousness stream directly into a blog there will always be a lag, and some topics that I just don’t get around to!

This I do need to say. There are a lot of things working well at the moment. Working on Campus is a fantastic vibe to be surrounded by, and I’m looking forward to starting lectures again, when I work out when they’re on (this week some time!)

I had some big wins last week, with a fairly successful Market Day in O-Week, actually making it into work on time even though I missed the train and needed to drive, having a great last training session at the Gold Coast store and a phenomenal Sunday on the Broadwater with some great friends.

I’ll try to include some of what’s right in future, instead of simply what it wrong (next post excluded… I’ve already written it but for some reason it seemed apt for this one to come first!)

Turn it up!