About living with me:
It's like masturbation except you can do it in front of your own mother

If my memory serves me correctly, we went through this a couple of years ago. It’s people getting itchy feet and changing jobs or going overseas or both. It’s the couples merry-go-round. Either they’re splitting or consolidating. It’s buying property, moving out. Moving elsewhere. It’s buying cars or expensive toys. Or whatever.

It’s happened before.

I think it also happened again two years before that even. So that would make this the third round of quarter-life crises. I think, personally, I felt it most the first time round. Four years ago. After that, I’m just watching.

The cliché goes… there are two types of people in this world – there are doers and there are watchers.

I’ve always been more the watcher.

I guess that’s probably why I’m attracted to writing.

But I also guess that’s why I’ll probably never become a particularly good one.

Five years ago, I took a month-long trip-of-a-lifetime and came back to a deep malaise. And I plodded through it until I turned 24 and snapped. Snapping was a good thing, it turned out. Living at home was also a good thing. It meant I had quite a bit of money stashed away and a big big itch to scratch. So I became a doer for a while. And over the next year or two, things began to fall into place.

The trip had cultivated a renewed level of spirituality in my life, I had willed myself to face my fears and jump out of a plane, I bought a car that I loved (OK, so it was a car I was already driving anyway, but now it was mine!), I bought myself a home and moved into it, I explored (and was given opportunities to explore) possible career advancements and I met someone who I thought, at the time, could have been special.

(In that order.)

But then when things crashed, they crashed quite spectacularly. In a matter of months, I started to get screwed around at work, then was robbed and then dumped.

(Also in that order.)

So I regrouped. I moved back home, found a job that paid no more (but I needed it) and here, now, I’m watching again.

Just sitting. Watching.

While my friends now fret about their future (again), I’m strumming 4 chords and dreaming of becoming the next Jack White.

For far too long now I’ve been craving my own company above all others.

And I’m strangely content while feeling acutely disturbed by it.

If you’re reading this and you’re expecting me to finish off this entry with some sort of call to action, then I’m sorry to disappoint you but that’s just not on the cards right now. I don’t think I’m changing any time soon.

I’m also going on another big trip soon. Real soon But I don’t think this will be anywhere near as catalytic as my last one.

For one thing, I won’t be on my own this time.

Because God knows more time to myself would be the last thing I need right now.