my life in numbers.: A momentary mind-f**k... but it's over now.

She loves him, she loves him more than she knew was possible, I can tell by the way she stares at him, as I sit watching from across the room. She holds him close, strokes his skin, tending to him at any hour, ready to do whatever is necessary to make him comfortable, happy... content. I wonder if I'll ever feel that way, if I will ever be ready to retire from being a hedonist who thrives in the counterculture that I am unapologetically drawn towards. She looks at him, her new born son, and sees perfection in it's purest form.

My best friend of eight years has just had her first Child, She called me at 6am to tell me she was having contractions. I raced to the airport and bought a ticket at the counter in an adrenaline fuelled attempt to make it to the birth as we had planned... he arrived into the world eight days early, I arrived to the hospital three hours late. He is beautiful, despite all the poo and crying, I love him.

The gorgeous, Tyler.

...It's strange though, I can feel an unwelcome tug-of-war happening inside me, one that is telling me in a delicate monotone not to get too caught up in the fairytale that is unfolding around me. After two weeks of wondering what this feeling is, I have realised that it's my subconscious telling me that if I allow myself to submerge below this ocean of love and wonderment, my life might change in an immeasurable way. This feeling isn't whispering warnings that are preventing me from caring for or loving this baby, but it is flashing red lights and screaming sirens of... and dare I say it aloud... "I want this too".

It's nothing new, the fact that I have had my unborn Children's names chosen since I was 15 in testament to the fact that I have always wanted Kids of my own. But over the past year the idea of having Children is something I have become more and more comfortable with. The problem is I have this phobia of not being able to do whatever I want, whenever I want. It's a luxury I have really grown to like.

These warning bells I can hear stem from a fear of giving up my freedom, I'm not yet completely ready to retire from being a bit of a maverick who finds a strange pleasure in writing "no fixed address" on important paperwork. But the fact that I am having these contradictory feelings is an inconvenient realisation that 'settling down' may not be too far off (by which I mean "years", which is still a lot sooner than I had thought it would be). It's a relief to know that the questions of "with who" and "settle where" are far from being answered, which means I have bought myself some time.

Now don't take this the wrong way, having Children, getting married and buying a house aren't things I turn my nose up at... there's nothing wrong with it at all, I mean 'everyone's doing it'! But for me, I can only describe the fact that I have become partial to the idea as a general mind-fuck. This isn't me at all. Before I have any of that happening in my life I had planned to partake in a mind-blowing whirlwind romance with a man I fall spectacularly in love with and who fills my heart with passion and desire (he's probably out there!), then we'd have a quickie wedding and a very very long honeymoon rambling the earth for a year or two before choosing a place to live and then we'd start making babies... And I don't plan to settle for anything less! That's what the warning bells are all about, they're saying "don't get caught up in this... you have other plans".

And those plans, aside from the above mentioned dream-man and our perfect blemish-free, happily-ever-after life, include travel, adventure and being a self sufficient woman who creates the life I want to live rather than a life that has been dictated by what society has deemed conventional. So put that in your suburban-brick-house-pipe and smoke it, world!

The way that Mel looks at her son is the way that I look at maps of the world. When I look at the outline of a continent I wonder what it will be like. I wonder if it will live up to my expectations and I know that even if it isn't what I wanted it to be, it will be something that I will love for some unexplainable reason anyway... It sounds corny, I know.

The only continent I haven't explored

While watching a few surf documentaries on the internet the other day I came across a three minute film starring Dave "Rasta" Rastavich, who was asked to finish the sentence "I surf because...", While I was watching I couldn't help but laugh as I recognised the well hidden frustration he was experiencing as he tried to explain the feeling he gets from something that is such a huge part of who he is he can almost feel it exploding from his pores, he tries so hard to make 'non-surfers' understand the fervor he has for the ocean, and if you pay close attention you can see that he is struggling to find words that are worthy enough, in his eyes, to describe the way it makes him feel, but he really wants us to understand. I knew exactly where he was coming from, because when I talk to people about travel I sound like a babbling idiot trying to get my point across with as much justification and as convincing as possible. I feel like I want to put them on a plane with me and take them somewhere because I know that no words are capable of transporting them into my frame of mind, I can't explain it to them because I can't completely understand it myself, how can I enjoy something this much???... It's frustrating, but it also feels good to know that I have discovered the one thing that makes me so happy that it leaves me lost for words. I'm so grateful that I have found my "passion". The video of Rasta is below, when you watch it change the words "surf" and "surfing" for "travel" and "traveling", and it'll give an indication of how it makes me feel.

I like to travel so much that I am studying to become a travel writer, whether I succeed or not is a completely different story. I figure though that if I can find a way to make a few extra dollars combining the two things I love, travel and writing, then I've created something that will make me pretty happy. Although I've been told by many people that I'm a good writer (and I'm not trying to boast here, but make a point) I have also been told by one person that basically, it's not going to happen. It's been frustrating me that although I have received a lot of praise for my efforts, It's that one negative opinion that I have taken to heart and has been digging away at me. But then today I bought a Hunter S Thompson book, as I walked out of the shop at the Mona Museum where I purchased it I flipped it open and happened to land on a page that had a big quote scrawled across it that read "As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I'm not sure that I'm going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says 'you are nothing', I will be a writer"... My instant reaction was "Fuck yeah Hunter, me too!".