Tuesday 10 May 2011

The year of big

With both a tied grand final and federal election 2010 was tagged the year for indecision.
It was clear pretty early on that 2011 would be the year of big things. 
It started (and has continued) with the weather and has very quickly spread out from there. 
In no particular order the still quite young year of big things has so far led to:
One girlfriend buying a house
One girlfriend breaking up with her partner
One girlfriend getting engaged
Friends announcing they are having twins
One friend deciding to up and leave his job to go and teach English in Indonesia
My turning 30
Oh and my full time job turning into no job at all, leading to my moving out of the house I lived in for seven years and into a caravan park in East Gippsland.

Each of these big things has exploded outward to cause other big things. Many of them have had impacts on me, but for the purpose of this blog I will only expand on my jobless state.
Losing my job left two options for a soon to be Flamingo explorer:  dump or delay the trip while I find another job or dump or delay the whole work thing and go Flamingo exploring... 

After about fifteen minutes of soul searching my little two month jaunt to see Flamingos became something of an extended trip.  

Being ever the early bird at the point of discovering I was without a job I had already locked in some elements of my trip- which left me with a two month gap between finishing work and heading off. So I did what every self respecting 30 year old would do and I moved back in with my mum. And she just happens to own a very cute caravan park in Nowa Nowa.


In case anybody is uncertain about this point let me state very clearly that there are no Flamingos in East Gippsland.  There is much birdlife, tourism is encouraged and anyone interested should check out nowanowa.com as a great starting point: BUT THERE ARE NO FLAMINGOS HERE.

                                                      not a flamingo at Lake Tyres Beach

Some years (like 2010) life ticks quietly along as quietly as a digital watch, and sure if you take a microscope to your diary you can find this and that noteworthy event, but on the whole things stayed in their same old pattern. And then...



Everything changes around you. 
Job loss can be a traumatic experience, but for me it has meant time and space to actually ponder all those big questions:
Whats important?
What am I excited about?
What else is out there?
What do I want to do with my life?

So as I pack my backpack I say thank you to the year of big things for the chance to search out some answers.

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