homesick

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Dahna:

Homesickness:

Symptoms: feeling isolated, dis-connected, alien, unknown, invisible and lonely. Perhaps slight anxiety and just a sense of a general anti-climax. It can make you become strangely and uncharacteristically patriotic and start to think warmly of things that you would formerly have ridiculed, or atleast not even given a thought to.

Causes: perpetual itchy feet that lead one to foreign destinations likely to trigger the illness. If the affected person happens to like hot climates, he or she is more likely to suffer the illness if he or she travels to a cold destination, and visa versa.

Treatment: mmm… any suggestions, other than going home?


OK - I admit it. I AM HOMESICK.

Maybe it is because of the staying put and the rain... but it occurs to me that maybe it is also because I am getting... old??? ARrrrrrrrrrggggggggg

But seriously, I have travelled for long periods of time before and not felt homesick, so why now? Why?

mmm... while I go and ponder this, I am uploading some photo's from home of friends and family and typical Australian type things like beaches, sheep, sun (SUN!), beer...

POST (and still) PONDERING:
... it is an odd thing, homesickness.

I have totally succumbed to indulging the sickness today. This is probably helped by the fact that Jono has accidentally taken both our house keys with him to work, so I can not even leave the house.

This homesick illness has been present for quite some time, but I am constantly pushing it to the background. I am here now, and I want to enjoy it and experience it in its full. I don’t want to whinge about a situation that I have chosen to place myself in. I am sure it will pass, or at least get less severe. But, GOD DAMN IT, I AM HOMESICK. Maybe admitting it, and wallowing in it a little bit, will make it recede to the far back regions of my brain. But this is really starting to get serious. I mean, I am looking at dusty water-starved paddocks full of hungry sheep with misty fondness! Wow. What has become of me?

And why have I travelled for long periods of time before and not felt homesick?

I guess the last time I travelled for an extended period (umm… about 9 -11 months, I think) I was moving around all the time. I didn’t really stay in any one place for much more than a few weeks at the most. This time, I am staying in the one flat (quite literally today), in the one city so there is not that same constant stimulation. And I guess it is intensified by the whole looking for work scene, which is never much fun. But it does make me wonder what it was that drove me to come here in the first place.

I guess I was about to turn 30, and I had always had the idea of getting one of those work visa’s available to people under 30 and living and working in a different country for a while. It was one of those manyana concepts. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Lots of tomorrows made lots of years, and suddenly it was deadline time. I always have been a last minute person! Problem is, by deadline time, I guess I was getting pretty comfortable with myself and where I was. There were invisible strange things like roots that I did not realise I had till I came over here and severed them. Now they want to re-attach, but it is too cold and wet here for them. But the point is, they are still there, wanting to get established. Damn it. I don’t want them there right now. I want freedom. Carelessness. Independence.

But, to balance all of this, I am very very scared of monotony and I rebel against comfort zones. So, I guess that is what this trip is about. It is punctuating my life and stopping it from becoming a meaningless ramble. It is taking me out of my comfort zone so that I can grow in new ways, not grow roots so much as branches.

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Photos

waves
Marty actually took this one, hope he doesn't mind me posting it - but it feeds the homesickness very nicely

my sista
(Don't we look alike?)

the beach
in the background, can you see it? White sand, sunny blue sky, water that doesn't freeze you to death...

and more sheep
they do fit the Aussie stereotype well