A Guiding Life

"In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny subliminal signal. This signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense of how far that being is from the place of his birth. On Earth it is never possible to be further than sixteen thousand miles from your birthplace, which really isn't very far, so such signals are too minute to be noticed. Ford Prefect was at this moment under great stress, and he was born 600 light years away in the near vicinity of Betelgeuse. "
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

HWMBO works away..................a lot.

He is often in Europe, that's fine it's a few days at a time, up to 4. Not enough to even notice in the normal blink of an eye. Time zones are irrelevent. It's fine.

He is often in America, up to 9 days or so as he tags weekends away onto the trips, he went to New York and also once tagged on Canada and baseball. It feels like he is 'away' when he is there, harder to get the times right to be able to talk.

But now he is in Australia, and that distance really hurts. From the moment he leaves I miss him. And oddly he says the same thing to me. I don't know whether it is about him going home without me or if it is the distance. It is almost impossible to have a conversation at all. Let alone a congruent one. He calls sleepily from his bed as he wakes when I am busy at work. Or when he is happy and relaxed in his day and wanting to talk, I am tired and going to bed. You can't maintain relationships over those sort of time zones. And he is away for much longer, a full 14 days this time.

It's a funny feeling. I don't like Australia much. Yes, it has a lot of coastline and sunshine but there is an over bearing culture that I did not align to whenever I was there and it has not left me pining to go back. But a holiday is a holiday and time spent apart when half of a couple is on holiday without you is hard. And he will be meeting up with friends I love spending time with.

So maybe I am a little jealous of his chauffeur journey to the airport, his business class flights and his 2 weeks in the sun but mostly, I just miss him. If he were in France right now I'd just be shrugging and saying "bring back cheese". But I don't want another (yes another) kangeroo scrotum pouch and vegemite, I just want HWMBO home.

It seems a long way away, but it's not really is it.

The short media clip "The Innovation of Loneliness" is very interesting.

I often wonder whether my time spent on social media is at the detriment of 'real life'. I am very guilty of using text instead of the phone to interact with people, it's almost like I'm moving real life friendships into the social media zone.

I'm not sure how I feel about his statement "We are faking experiences so we have something to share, so we can feel alive."

How is 'fake' defined? Does he mean just lying about what we are doing or have done or is he refering to generating experiences so we have something to share? Is generating experiences a bad thing?

There are many things I have done over the past few years that I wouldn't have done if I didn't have this blog. I am a home bird, I find doing 'new' stuff a bit of a challenge, we all do I guess, but some are more able to embrace the challenge than others.

Sometimes I have reluctantly embraced an opportunity whilst saying to myself "If nothing else, it will give me something to blog about". Usually I am so pleased I did it, the blog forces me to push myself a little harder to do a little more. I am generating experiences in order to share them.

Yes, it would be better to have the confidence to just go do stuff, but I've always needed a push, a little encouragement. If I can abseil whilst thinking "one for the blog" does it matter? I had the experience, exactly the same experience as the next person that walked down the wall, except they may have squealed slightly less!

I don't like spending a lot of time alone, I'm a chatter box, I like to talk to people about the experience I am having. But luckily I will talk to any Tom, Dick or Harry. When I visited Donna Nook, I spoke to many of the other visitors, some looked at me like I was the idiot on the bus, some were happy to talk.

I went to see a show in London alone once (I've done it a few times since), I found it quite strange not having someone to talk to about it. Problem soon solved, there was a lone lady behind me, I talked to her during the interval . These days, I wonder if I would still talk to her or would I talk to twitter? Would my need for company be as satiated by social media. I'm not sure truth be told.

Is the use of social media leaving me even less able to be alone with myself, less able to spend time listening to my own thoughts? It's definitely sucking up time I used to have doing other stuff, but is it less valuable?

Have a look, see what you think: