Don't Go For The Job

I got an email from the locum agency, about a potential job in Launceston. I got awfully excited - go back to Tasmania, earn some money, gain valuable skills. I emailed back, asking for more information. Then I got thinking... My year out travelling has been a phenomenal opportunity - taking time out, not having to clock-in to my job 5 days/week, seeing and experiencing amazing landscapes. Over the course of this year, a bit of a dream has blossomed - to pursue my creative potential in earnest. Each week, each day, this dream has grown arms and legs. I find I'm more enthusiastic, confident, with more conviction and direction and passion than ever before. Vague daydreamy notions are gaining sharper edges, they're clearer, and more possible. The ideas in my head are coming easier and easier, in rich and thrilling detail, and connections are fizzing up in front of my eyes left, right and centre. It's an incredible journey.

It also has to be said that a lot of this wonderous stuff has bubbled up out of bored and frustrated periods. The meat and the content and the inspiration all come out of the people I've met and the things I've seen and done - in Tasmania, on the Great Ocean Road, across the Northern Territory. But buckling down and doing something with it... Making the space - in time, in my head, in my journals - to sit down and see what emerges from a blank page. That has come from being skint, physically knackered, and bored silly in a youth hostel in Melbourne or a friend's house in Adelaide. If I was out working, none of this thrillling stuff would be happening in my head or in my journals....

Maybe I need to be conscious of the trade-off. Being skint and less than fully engaged in employment, may be a pre-requisite to success in creative or other self-directed endeavours.

I don't go for the job in Launceston.