3YP changes in Days of My Destiny

I didn’t achieve any of my goals for last year. I didn’t even learn how to tap dance, lol. I tried, but the shoes I am borrowing are half a size too small. This year I will buy myself my own tap shoes and they will be the right size. Gratitude… it’s there, it’s a lifelong process. It’s not something you ACHIEVE. It’s more a lifestyle that you work on. Though while The Teens were here, I did notice how far I’ve come since I left home 12 years ago. My younger brother called the art of gratefulness “new age stuff” in one of his stories about someone else. I was like...... whoa.........................

I was actually surprised at how bubble wrapped he is. I thought that perhaps travelling alone would’ve done him a world of good. Perhaps it would, if he travelled for longer and to a wider range of places. He read a book that was given to L for Christmas. It’s about a guy, Luke Kennedy, who used to be into graffiti and gang-related crap and then he turned his life around. He is now a personal trainer in Sydney and won a business award a couple of years ago. (the book is amazng). B was saying how surprised he was at how much violence is in Sydney compared to Brisbane. It’s like.... violence is everywhere…

Anyway. We are going camping tomorrow for eight days :) We are really looking forward to this. The last three to four weeks have felt really really slow for us. Not only because of the camping, but because L is really over his work. He’s over the politics there that he can’t seem to escape. He’s over the mentality of the people there. He’s over the monotonous work. He’s over how unfair things are due to the cheapskate nature of his bosses. He’s over the amount of wastage he sees. He’d love Out sooner but we have our plans (more on that later).

I am really annoyed though because I got my period today. Like, good one, ovaries. We’re going away for eight days and voila. SO annoying. We were really looking forward to making some lurrrrve on our time away. Alas.

So… you know how I’ve talked about our 3YP that was originally a 4YP......... well.... as of this year it would’ve been a 2YP except that we’ve decided to make it… a ONE YP!!!!! Yes!!!! We are moving home in ONE YEAR. We can’t wait :) :) :) :) :)

Basically… we are alone here, which we can handle, but what we can’t always handle is feeling lonely. These are two different things. We find that we haven’t REALLY made any friends here, at least not friends we can let our guard down with or REALLY express opinions with and so on. Not friends we feel completely comfortable around. There’s a lot of close-mindedness and ignorance here and it drives me nuts sometimes. I mean, get this… I have olive skin. Lately I’ve been asked if I ever get sunburnt. Like, really?? My closest friend here is someone who has always been a Bush Girl. And while I’ve learned lots from her stories and listened and been open about it and admired it and been humble about my own lack of experience in THAT lifestyle.... she hasn’t done the same for my own experience. She thinks that her life is the best and only way to go and she’s proud of that. I mean sure, be proud of who you are and the life you’ve lead… but not to the point where you put down the way others live. That’s just tiring.

L hasn’t made any friends. He’s always at work. And as his work is controversial, the guys he talks to that are locals tend to have a wall up. It took a long time for some of them to let their guard down. Even then, we will never be inside their bubble. They live in their own bubble, and we live a completely different lifestyle, but for some reason, that alone means that on their end of things, we will never be like them. One of my friends makes a point of reminding me of this time and again, without QUITE saying it the way I’ve written it here, but she definitely makes her point. And I tire of that too.

We get tired of going to social events and feeling like everyone else is family except us. Where’s our own family? Here we are, trying to socialise and have a life, and we always leave the social gathering with an almost-empty feeling. Like, “Yeah… that was that.” We never feel fulfilled. Sometimes it feels like we just wasted a chunk of our time at a social gathering trying to socialise and feel normal. It never feels the way it does with our friends from home, or our own family.

There was Zumba here a while ago. I went a couple of times. I stopped going because a) my own daughters started swimming lessons and it clashed with the class, but b) I also lost interest because at the end of each class, small groups of people would form and they’d chat and have a laugh. Most of these groups were actually people that were all related somehow… and I had nobody. One time I left there and just cried all the way home.

Sometimes we feel like true outsiders.

For the most part we don’t think about it because we tend to live a Home Life that we find fulfilling. But on the times that we DO feel like hanging out with someone… it never happens. We invite people over and nobody comes. Mostly it’s due to slackness. There are some people that ALWAYS say they’ll come. And they actually NEVER show up. It’s slack. And it makes us feel like shit. But hey, it’s happened enough times now that we don’t actually invite anyone over anymore. We invited our neighbours over a couple of times, for dinner and what not, and they always turned it around and made it so that we’d go to their house. So we don’t invite them over anymore, because we know that’s what they’ll do. And sometimes, we just want to host people in our own home!!!! What’s so hard about that??? (We’re offering a free meal for goodness’ sake.)

So in other words.. we have a great life here, we just have nobody to share it with.

This aside, we originally thought we’d be her for 3 years. We thought that in 3 years we could pay off our house back home. The fact is, that hasn’t happened. We spend way more fuel than we ever thought we would (due to where we are), we have other bills that we wouldn’t have if we’d never moved here (such as Landlords Insurance etc, things that add up) and so on. We’ve been here 3 years now. The last year has felt challenging - in terms of loneliness - and so… what are we even doing here if we’re not even meeting our financial goals and dreams?

The only person I have here who I COULD call a friend is boastful and arrogant and can be a real bitch sometimes. She’s the one who has always been a Bush Girl and thinks that anything else is less. Once she told me how little girls with blonde plaits look way cuter than little girls with dark-haired plaits. Well guess whose kids have the blonde hair and whose kids have the dark hair.....

Things like that. It’s all tiring.

In August we had my cousin and his fiancée here, as well as my sister and her husband and daughter. It felt like Home again. It felt how Life should be. (It always feels how Life SHOULD be when our family or real friends come to visit.) It was L who quietly came up to me and said, “Hey..... what do you think about us doing one more year here?” We’d recently decided we would do two more years instead of three, and I thought he was asking me if we should do one more year ON TOP OF our recently-decided two. I thought he was asking if we should go back to doing three more years instead of two. My eyes filled with tears and I told him outright I couldn’t do that. And then he clarified… and wow, a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders!

So… that’s it! One more year and we’re done. Today there is 351 days to go till we move. We’ve already set a date. L is working on starting his own business when we move home. We’ll spend this last year saving up for that. He’s already registered his business name and a domain name on the net. He’s doing some thorough research already and he’s figuring out how much money he will need to start up the business and so on. It’s so great to see him doing this. He has focus and drive again. And he will be GREAT at running his own business. He will be ethical and honest and humble and efficient and thorough. And sexy :)

M and Little L have always known that we won’t be here forever and some months back we were talking about it and I’d said that we might be here another two or three years. The other day M asked if we’ll move home next year or the year after? And then she said, “Nah, next year, hey?” I didn’t quite know what to say. Even though we have this 1YP, we don’t want her to outright know just yet because we know that she’ll tell her friends who will tell their parents and it’s a small town. We want to wait as long as possible. Ideally we would tell her at the start of Term 4 so that she has time to THEN tell her friends and so on. Last year, three weeks before the end of Term 4, she found out that one of her friends was leaving. And you know what? She wasn’t THAT affected at all. So I’m thinking that maybe a whole term would be enough time for everyone to adjust (her school is like one medium-sized extended family. There’s about 40 kids between Kindergarten and Year 6). Anyway, to answer her question the other day, I simply said that we need to have a family discussion about it and figure it out. I don’t want to lie to her - so I won’t - but I don’t want to be the only one to be talking about it with her, either. Her and Little L want to know, and I want my husband to be there when that discussion happens. My answer the other day stalled that discussion - for now, at least.

Last updated January 15, 2015