walk like a man

Well here we are in downtown Rockhampton. It's a cool evening and out on the balcony the evening breeze is soft and gentle.

In here it's a little more airless - one of the next things I'll have to do is buy a fan so I can bring the breezes in without having to put the aircom on. The Everly Borthers are doing Wake up Little Suzie, but it's a guest spot on the Simon and Garfunkel Old Friends DVD. Hot damn but it's great fun, though.

Tomorrow night there is a fireworks show to which the aforementioned balcony will afford good views, so a few of the people from the office are coming around with their families. That will be good.

Because I'm not much one for my own company. Why take the job, then? Well, it's part of the journey of self-examination and doing different things, testing how well I can work in different environments and against new challenges. Of which I have a few.

I reckon a lot of other people do it far more than I am - or have in the past, for sure - but sooner or later the urge comes on you (or you just wake up a bit about how the world works).

Something I've noticed over the last few years is how much blokes my age actually are talking about this sort of thing. I always used to think it wasn't done - to admit you have insecurities was a sign of weakness, if you said you had ambitions or similar, you were a self-promoting wanker. Now it seems we - all us ageing blokes - find ourselves in similar situations, we are not in competition, we really don't have a lot to lose but we have a lot to gain amongst which is the comradeship of shared experiences.

I've had this sort of conversation in different ways twice this week already. Inclduing one bloke who rang me about 15 minutes after we'd finished and he'd left, to give me his biggest insight gained from some recent decisions he had made. That in particular really blew me away, it's a form of honesty and a way of extending support that I don't think I've ever really run across before.

I'm typing this on a laptop while sitting at a kitchen tables, the angles are all wrong and my neck is starting to hurt like crazy so I'll stop now. This has been a far more personal post than usual, but the world has changed in both big and smaller ways and it's only appropriate that Pied a Terre VVB respond in kind.

Take care you all.