kate’s adventure

there’s a new reality in my life, that i’m having trouble dealing with. well, i’m told it’s a reality; i have yet to see the evidence, but it’s giving me trouble regardless. i’m usually open and honest about what’s going on in my life, but this i feel plenty of people won’t understand. i’m having to assess even my closest friends, choosing whether, when and how to out myself. so now i’m putting it out there, so i can get it settled in my mind, talk to the next person like it’s not a big deal, and get on with not having secrets.

so the big deal is, that when i spend my saturdays looking at open houses, it’s to buy, not to rent. everyone who knows i’ve moved home keeps telling me about their friends who need flatmates – only $150, $170, $200 per week… i turn them down, i couldn’t afford that much, i moved out of my last house when my room went up to about $130. not only was it an insulting increase considering the state of the place and the circumstances, but i don’t consider it to be reasonable to spend half one’s income on rent. i earn $270 per week. it’s not much more than the dole, but i’m comfortable with the lifestyle.

yet here i am, looking to spend $300,000 in one hit. or something.

i just took a look at the list of goals i wrote here a year ago. i never finished the list, mine are alway longer than that, but it has the big ticket items. and on that, i’m doing pretty well. with one year left of my twenties, i’m in the middle of getting goals met, whatever it looks like right now.

i have a job. i’ve had it for five months, and though there are issues, it’s puttering along, businesslike. i’ve lived in newtown, in the heart of things. i’ve spent eighteen months living in a big well known share house, pretty good though it’s not a co-op, and i’m looking to get my own place, which, it seems, will actually happen. i’m also looking at getting my car all fixed up, it takes money and i seem to have it. i’ve learnt a bit about it and helped fix the brakes, and i’ve learnt the basics of welding.

i’m being useful with my family, which has become more important recently. i’ve had a reasonable number of relationships, enough of them with girls, enough to learn about myself and the world, and be happy being single again. i have made good friends and learnt to open up and to be touched. i feel comfortable that living here, i’m going to find out who my real friends are and who aren’t.

i have sold my creative work, though i really should do more of it sometime. i finished my escritoire! i have learnt tango and rumba and swing a bit, though i must do more, and to lead a bit, though there’s a long way to go with that, too. i have cooked up a tap dance with a friend, and had regular practice. it’s on hiatus while she’s overseas, but i have high hopes we’ll perform it. there’s another performance on the boil with someone else, too.

i’ve been around the world – not everywhere, and nowhere recently, but enough to be travelled. and not just easy travelling, either. russia, morocco, turkey. i’ve lived there. and of course, i’ve hitchhiked. all over europe, a bit in turkey, and even at home.

i’ve gotten a degree, and a million other interesting qualifications and skills. i’m nearly finished a diploma in mechanical engineering. i’ve also taught many subjects in many settings. although i’m not teaching regular classes at the moment, i’m still teaching fairly frequently. maybe i do need to do cert four in workplace training and assessment.

i’ve put my ideals where my mouth is. lately i’m creating queer community at NewQ, making atheism important and interesting and radical again with Sydney Atheist Action Group, changing education with the Student Association of the biggest tafe in the country, and everywhere they’re letting me go.

well, nearly. i went in to centrelink today, to get off austudy. they tried hard to convince me to go back on the dole, and look for work, and chuck in my two day a week carreer for any old full time job they can throw at me. for half as much money as they’d give me if i weren’t bothering to work.

i have been waiting a while for that moment, but they managed to ruin even that; there is still the possibility that a fuss will be made that because someone thinks i should’ve taken myself off payments in december. the facts are in my favour, but the possibility of dispute hanging over my head defeats the purpose of refusing money so that i can walk away triumphantly. because of course, with centrelink the facts aren’t the important thing.

whatever happens now, howard is gone! in the first federal election that i haven’t been registered to vote against him in bennelong.

that’s cause for celebration. tears, actual tears alone in front of the tv, then revelry at the hub, talking to people and watching the abc projected on the wall. jumping up and down while shouting down the phone over the cheering. then back home to study for the six exams i have next week. rotten timing, but that’s ok.

my whole adult life howard has been in office and things have been going steadily downhill. i learn about cycles but don’t see them. now the trajectory, one way or another, will change. maybe we’ll even see the other side of the cycle… my expectations aren’t really very high, my hopes aren’t focussed any higher than the raft of changes and rollbacks rudd’s flagged for the next hundred days. if we get a bunch of them, things will be more bearable. a few of them may affect me directly, but even more than that it might make space in my brain for the strange concept that change can be a good thing! i hope he doesn’t disappoint us too soon.

someone who is still very dear to me has been looking after me through my latest dramas. now she may need some care herself, but is about to leave the country. last time she left sydney she cut off contact at about this time, hopefully she won’t again but there are worse ways to disappear than with a text message, in duplicate no less, that says Love you. i may or may not find out what she means.

otherwise, two more dear friends spent an evening complaining to me about their bad new jobs, and are obviously, radiantly, so much happier than i’ve seen either of them in a long, long time.

last night i was up till three talking sexuality and queer politics with new friends who, though straight, can ask refreshingly intelligent questions. even though i was the one kept talking all night, by someone who, in the most affectionate terms, never shuts up, i learnt something. chosen family is a beautiful concept i’m learning to live more fully, but it is not revolutionary. i inherited it from my father, who often expressed a sense of awe at how brilliant and interesting and generally wonderful his friends are. they are my older generation of family, the people i really shouldn’t neglect, unlike my biological family who i sometimes feel affection for but i’m sure i’ll be guilted into seeing often enough. this felt particularly pertinent as my father went into hospital this morning to get a cancer on the end of his nose dealt with. by the afternoon he was home and chirpy enough to regale me with details of real estate viewings, as he likes to do these days.

over the last decade or so i have chosen for myself a brilliant and interesting and generally wonderful family. i worry at how scarred so many are, from alchohol, psychological trouble and abuse, but i appreciate them all the more as i have recently learnt to ask for help and so many people have come through for me, often drawing their support and wonderfulness from the very things that are problematic in their own lives. this support is actually a new thing for me. maybe those people who were only ever there when they felt like it are the ones who are friends but not family. it’s one way to demarcate. maybe i just needed to ask. maybe sometimes… still, i am aware of the effect that even people who are keeping their distance have on my life, and right now i’m seeing them all as benevolent forces. it’s nice.

it feels like the weekend on tuesday, and tuesday on the weekend. it’s now past midnight, saturday morning, and i can’t pretend i have anything more important to do than study for my many impending exams, except for going to sleep. but ella is playing and sensual rain keeps falling heavily on the other side of the wall, and i feel like being quiet and honest and making something curvy, pulling it from my brain with only the dark glittering world for extra material. the physics might be urgent but this is important.