My Home

I'm home.  Home being Sydney.  I've settled back into every day life, although it took a day or two.

I just reread a blog I wrote when I was down there (You Can Take the Girl Out of Tassie) and I cried.  Just a little. 

Never take your home for granted.  Never take what you have for granted.  And never beat yourself up for occasionally going back in time and wondering "what if".  Life is full of what if's (refer to another blog:  What If's - gosh I was way before my time with a lot of things I've written and thought over the last few years!).

All I can put all of these thoughts down to is getting older.  Let's call it more mature (it had to happen sooner or later, I am 39+3 soon to be 4).  You start to think about things more, evaluate your lot in life.  And you know what?  My lot is just fine.  And for that I am thankful.

You Can Take the Girl Out of Tassie...

I’m slowly coming to the realisation that you can take the girl out of Tasmania but you can’t take Tasmania out of the girl. 

I am lucky enough to have a job and a boss where I have flexibility.  So this week I find myself sitting in Tasmania having left my Sydney home for a week, working for the most part but being able to spend time with my family, which I haven’t really done in 25 years on a regular basis until recently, about the last 18 months.  (At this point I encourage you to read a previous blog from a few weeks ago:  Sweet Home Alabama - it ties in nicely with this blog.)

I hear some of you gasp in horror.  Hell, I gasp in horror when I think of how long I have been away from home and my family and the amount of times I have been here.  Having said that, I think it does somewhat come with the territory when you leave home.  Let me explain. 

I left my home state at 18, seemingly dying of a broken heart, as only an 18 year old can do dramatically and with such flair.  I needed to put as much distance between my home and the tumultuous final teenage years when I changed from a “Miss Goody Two Shoes” into, well quite frankly, a bloody nightmare.  I’d fallen madly in love with a boy, who it turns out was quite a bit older than me (I was very mature is my excuse).  Long story short, it didn’t last and my heart was broken.  I left and settled in Sydney and a whole big wide world awaited me.  For a while I hated everything Tasmania represented.

Fast forward 25 years and I have only just realised how much I love being home.  I was at lunch with some old school friends on this trip, people who I have connected with on Facebook over the years (without FB and social media this would probably be a very different blog, but I digress) and we were chatting about being parents (them) and career people (all of us).  I was saying how “easy” it is to be home.  They asked what was easier.  I thought about it and said: “I think I am a nicer and better person when I am here”.  Upon being called on to explain, I thought about it for a minute or two.  Those minutes gave me time to digest what I just said.  But in a nut shell I am not as stressed, I am not as busy thinking of 101 things and I take time to smell the roses.  I connect with my family.  I listen to people instead of trying to multi task.  I really listen.

This trip I visited some places I haven’t been to in a long time.  I took a photo of the house I grew up in.  I met up with some people who at some stage in my 18 years here meant a lot to me.  And as I write this I realise it has made me sad.  Sad that it is only now I don’t take where I grew up for granted.  Sad that I have to leave in 36 hours and return to the grindstone that is Sydney.  The 3 hour commute to work (16 km drive each way); the hard core job I have, the day to day responsibilities I have.

But I am not ungrateful for my life outside of my home state.  I realise I need to be thankful for my family and friends in Sydney who love me and the flexibility and salary my job provides me with.  While I am not quite at the CEO level I dreamed of at 21, if I had of stayed in Tassie in 1990 I’d be married with 5 kids and probably a couple of grandkids – at 42…  And that is okay.  But I don’t think it was ever going to be me.  And if it had of been me – would I have tired of it by now?

Who knows.  They are questions I will never know the answers to.  And I guess that’s okay.  While I can get on a plane and fly home whenever I choose, I can’t rewrite history.  But I can be thankful for my wonderful family and the freedom I have to be me, the overseas trips I take as I am not tied down by children and my great life.

Thanks mum and dad for making me the person I am.  I probably don’t tell you that enough.  Thank you Tasmania for being an awesome place to grow up in and most of all, thank you for the memories.  I’m going to start making new ones.  I don’t know what they quite look like yet.  I’ll just have to work that out as I go along.  I look forward to it.