From Monday to Wednesday

As the wind relentlessly pounds its fists against my bedroom window tonight, I'm thinking about more important things. Like how my Mac charger is in my bag in my car outside in this filthy, gnarly weather and how we're sitting alone in bed together on 38%. Both of us are on 38%. 

After waking up at 5, driving to my grandmother's at 7 and driving back to Newcastle at 9, dropping in at the airport and finally arriving home at around 2 in time to start my three thousand word essay due the following day (which, by the way, I smashed in 5 hours -go me), I am on 38%. You'd think I'd be on 3% after the hectic day I've had. But here I am, amped and ready for the next fight, revved and agitated and fidgety. 

It's because when my body is tired, my mind is on all cylinders. It's thinking about yesterday, today, right now, you, that other person, the future, the dream I had last night where I kept on ending up at Target wearing no clothing. The usual kind of stuff that the mind mulls over. It is grossly in overdrive and I am grossly over it. To sleep, perchance to dream. I'd like to utilise the fresh, crisply clean sheets I have crawled into as a means to drift off with a smile on my face and without a care in the world. Ha. Ha ha.

I wrote that two nights ago. After a cyclone twirled its way through our area the last two days, I'm thinking to myself:

First world problems. With everything I have, I have bouts of unhappiness. And for what? Because my freshly washed sheets aren't helping me get to sleep? Pathetic.

I was squashed on a couch against another person sleeping more peacefully last night in a blackout than I did alone the night before. I would like it much more to be able to cast away the "things" in my life. Toss what doesn't work. Do I need two lamps? Nope. I actually do not. That set of Harry Potter books that I (regrettably) haven't read in 4 years ? I actually do not need those, either.

And I don't need the collection of Yen Mag and Frankie in my bedroom which I have hauled from house to house for the last 6 years and never touch again. Dumb. Dumb dumb dumb.

With the category 3 cyclone that ripped through Newcastle and the surrounding areas the last couple of days, I'm thinking about friends in Vanuatu that only weeks ago experienced the category 5 cyclone tear their houses and families apart. I am glad, in this moment, that my family and friends are safe here. It's just one of those situations where in the face of misfortune, you realise how fortunate you are. 

When the winds swing through and harass the homes, when trees groan, where windows shudder and where doors creak and slam, when everything is picked up and thrown around, including me, I feel the most grounded. And it is perhaps because I am not holding on to anything else that I can hold onto the earth a bit more. What a wonderful concept.