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For everyone who makes my life in Melbourne gold AF.  

I almost moved to Bali this week.

I emailed my landlord, found a foster mother for Graham, and mentally parted with 90% of my possessions (the remaining 10% consisting of training gear and denim cut offs, obviously). I fantasized  about the semi-permanent holiday I would be embarking on, endless days of training, yoga, and enjoying the fuck outta my own company. Then I realized my passport had expired. I don’t understand why you aren’t given some kind of warning re: this, as they send you endless reminders about getting your teeth cleaned or vagina scraped (need to do both, FYI) but something like being trapped forever in another country doesn’t seem to be a concern. Anyway, this fortuitous spanner in the works made me stop planning my sell-all-of-my-things market stall and outfits that involved my new gold Nike slides and creatively ripped Hawaiian shirts, and actually take a second to think logically and take stock of my current situation.

In case you actually don’t know me at all and you’re a stranger who reads my blogs (thank you, you are amazing), following is the last almost seven years of my life in a concise three paragraphs.

I moved to Melbourne from Auckland on a whim, having never been here before but having some vague idea that running away from all the problems I had back home (a cunt boss/job, boys and too many parties) was obviously a good idea. (Spoiler alert: it was.) Despite being hell bent on leaving for greener pastures, I was terrified. My first day in Melbourne I lay on my friend’s floor which was to be my home for the next few weeks, and cried into the small pile of (hideous) clothes which was literally all I had to my name. Melbourne fucking SUCKED. It was somehow hot AND windy at once which was something I had literally never encountered before. Everyone dressed so much cooler than me and despite the fact I had only brought my Cool Clothes I felt like a total loser. It also hadn’t occurred to me to actually look into how much things actually cost here like bond and bills and I had no idea how to go about doing things like banking and living in another country. I couldn’t even find the supermarket and literally didn’t think they existed here for several weeks.

I left behind a boy I really fucking liked and friends who really got me, and even though the boy didn’t really like me back, and mostly all my friends and I did was get really really drunk all the time (which was awesome) and sometimes fuck each other (which was weird but often hilarious), I missed that. The first person I fucked here was a total dick hole, (and also really really tall which sticks in my mind for some reason) my first boss and job were bigger cunts than the ones I left behind, and seemingly everything, from the public transport system to Medicare, to coming to terms with the fact that beer didn’t come in dozen boxes and that tobacco was different, was just all really hard and terrible. So many times I was on the verge of packing it all in and going home to my boxes of Speights, double cheeseburger combos (as in two single cheeseburgers mashed together, obviously), and the boy who (still) didn’t really like me that much, because at least that misery was familiar.

I sorted my shit out though. Eventually. I found a house, I got a medicare card and new (in retrospect, still horrendous) clothes. I got over the weird weather, I started buying two six packs of beer because that equates to a dozen (genius) and found a suitable tobacco substitute. As I gradually pieced a new life together from Ikea furniture and the Dangerfield sales rack  (ew) I began to feel like I hadn’t potentially made the worst mistake in my life. I made friends I didn’t fuck and eventually stopped drinking and smoking my feelings. I stopped giving a shit about the boy back home and now, seven years, several unsuccessful relationships of varying commitment (from zero to marriage) and two cats later, I’m still here. I have friends I don’t get drunk with, I live with my new-ish cat and pay my bills and do grown up shit like health insurance, car services and laser hair removal. Guys are still dick holes but #standard, and I now just avoid them entirely because that seems easier than dealing with the relentless bread-crumbing / ghosting / generally tedious human behavior that is our current dating standard (see ‘Don’t be a dick’ for more on this topic). I have an actual sport and two jobs and although I live near Ikea I never go there (or to Dangerfield, I don’t think they should even let you in if you’re over 25 TBH).

So, in contemplating the second big move of a life I’m about a third of the way into, I was forced to look really closely at what I DO have here in Melbourne, as in things of actual value and importance (not just a shit tonne of gold stationary and an extensive skull collection), like my incredible network of amazing friends who inspire me to keep crushing the dick off every day, and the clients I would like to think I inspire to do the same. Things like my sport and my goals and the community I’m so grateful to be a part of, and the connections that have taken me so long to forge with people and businesses that align with my values. Staying the course is hard and it’s easy to not appreciate everything you do have, and think that the grass is greener, (or golder), when in reality it’s likely not and there’s cunts and dick holes everywhere, and running away will potentially just expose you to more of them.

Long story short, I re-emailed my landlord ‘LOLZ, jokes, you’re stuck with me’ , renewed my passport for future, short term travel, and started to get re-excited about my life here in my golden bubble, with Graham and my cabinet of skulls. I can still wear Hawaiian shirts and am less likely to get bombed or end up in a Balinese prison (which were my Dad’s initial thoughts and potential outcomes of my proposed venture). I didn’t come this far to only come this far, basically. You cunts are stuck with me and I am SO happy about it.

#straya