Three years on...

Who said that writing a blog would be easy?

Well admitedly it has been because I wrote my first post and disapeared off into the sunset for three years :-) So what has happened. Well I am still loving this roller coaster ride that life has turned out to be since giving up the comfort and security of a 9-5 that stopped challenging me many years ago. I've discovered a passion for living that had been so absent in the robotic meandering from one day to the next very similar day.

The exhilaration and fear sometimes come in equal measures when you are not 100% sure exactly how you are going to fund your life and lifestyle. You see having been a pack runner for so long standing in isolation watching your herd shake their heads in disaproval has a way of undermining your confidence. Having done this now for 3 years (done what exactly?) has given me a steadfast belief that this is the right path and no amount of head shaking can change that.

So am I still travailing light?
Even more so now than ever. I have to admit that 3 years ago when I made my last entry in this blog I thought I would easily of made my first million by now. Though all those sensei-student conversations I've tuned into should have made it clear that it's the journey that counts not the destination. So this waypoint can't be measured in dollar signs but it has a feeling of something much deeper and much more abiding. Each step further is more rooted, more solid, each stride more confident each time I stop or retrace my footsteps I know that the building is still cumulative.

So the really big changes?
I am engaged
I am a father
I am content
I have a plan

First Post

Sitting here in the quiet of a Sydney apartment waiting for Mandy to finish her shift gives me a little time to reflect on the roller coaster that the last week has been. If you're reading this you probably know that I worked my last shift at Orange (well, hour or so) last Wednesday on a mad rush to finish the house and be seated on the 10pm to Sydney to meet with Mandy. The plan is to spend a month here for a bit of R&R in the middle of her 5 month stint. So here is my opportunity to reflect:

How does it feel no longer being part of Orange after 10 years?
Liberating! but not in the freedom from my chair, laptop, desk and obligations but in a much more ethereal way. You may have noticed the title of my blog - no its not a typo - travailing light and R&R are one and the same when you find the passion in the work that you're doing, and this is something that I have been rediscovering after my decision to do other things. I feel lighter and have a passion to work, I have more energy and my focus has returned. That said, Orange has been a blessing to me, it allowed me to grow personally and professionally and through Orange I have found loads of friends.

So what next?
Well, the delicatessen is what most people were expecting me to launch into after leaving. The deli was a great idea and I will be eternally grateful for it, because it was the idea that I held onto when deliberating over the decision to do something new. Right now I feel like I can see further horizons and more opportunities and the deli has given way to other things. I would like to create something completely new which is precisely what I am doing. The first of these is the ja2zz ( www.ja2zz.com Max and I will be publishing soon after I get home), which I will admit with some modesty to be the greatest step forwards in music education since plainsong ;-) There are a few others but a wise man once said "tell the world what you are going to do but show them first"

Goodbye Bristol - probably?
M and I have decided to get a place together in Birmingham when she comes home in September and my beautiful house is now on the market. Well I've had a long time to contemplate this decision (made over18 months ago)

This is an excerpt from one of my favourite poems:-

And tell me, people of Orphalese, what have you in these houses? And what is it you guard with fastened doors?
Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?
Have you remembrances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind?
Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?
Tell me, have you these in your houses?
Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master?
Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.
Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.
It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh.
It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels.
Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.

This is from Kahlil Gibran's Prophet you can read it all on : http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5484/Gibran.htm

This poem really resonates with me as I used find myself clinging to things like my house and my job instead of being more gutsy and really going all out for my dreams. the first verse 'the coming of the ship' is also incredibly inspiring.

So on to greater things.

Blue skies K.