Stepping Stones

[morsla]

I need to get out of the office & lab... fortunately, I have a week's holiday about to start. Life is stilted, stagnant... suffocating, right at the moment. I've been locked up in this box for far too long, but my wings have started to grow back.

aeliel and I are off to Tasmania tomorrow night. If I'd thought about things before booking the flight we could have saved on a night's accomodation and flown out Saturday morning - however, it means I can get out that little bit sooner, which will do wonders for my health and sanity. We're off to Launceston, and flying back next week from Hobart - leaving a few days to slowly make our way down the island.

I need to climb around on rocks. It's been more than eight years since I last went to Cradle Mountain, and I think I left a bit of myself up a cliff face there. Sometimes, those fragments come back to me when I'm climbing through thick scrub or standing on the side of a mountain. Those glimpses never last long enough though - I'd like to live out there, where I feel back in my element. I need a job where I can work outside on my own two feet, climbing over rocks. I need to go back to Earth Science.

I knew chemistry wasn't my path long before I finished my course, but I've worked as a chemist ever since. I rediscovered fieldwork and geology, completed a degree in it... but I'm still working as a chemist. It's taken me a long time to open my eyes and see why I never really fit in around here. It should have been a lot more obvious.

I'm researching my options - actually, I've been doing it for much longer than I had realised. Over the next month I'll be asking many questions to a great many people, and this winter I'll make a decision that will change the rest of my life, one way or another. Every option I'm looking at has such long-term effects that I've hidden from them until now, but change is on the wind. I want to be challenged. I want to be pushed harder than this. I want to learn. I want to find out how far I can go, and I'm tired of saving my strength for a half-hearted return trip.

I want to put everything I have into something - to crash, or crash through. This comfort zone has become uncomfortable, and I want to learn how to fly.

and God created Man
and Man Created Machine
and Machine... Machine created Music
and the Machine saw everything it had made, and behold
it was good
- apop, Kathy's Song