Another day is slipping on by, but today I’m going to do my best to make sure that I don’t waste it. There is a lot to do, of course, but there always is.

Today is going to be a day of a lot of crap writing, but it’s only happening as there is something that I’ve been meaning to try and do for a while, and unless I get it done now, I won’t get it done. It’s sort of a “now or never” thing. I could reattempt tomorrow, but I’d rather today. I’d rather not keep putting it off, and if today goes the way that I hope it does, then tomorrow might just also.

So I’m sitting here. I’ve done all my work and I still have quite a few hours to defeat. I don’t know what to do from here, other than the things I’d normally do if I was not working, so that’s what I am doing. I am doing this and that, and then I’m doing the other things that follow. And I’ll get them done. I’ll knock them all down.

I know this place has been a massive roller coaster when it comes to quality and emotional expression, and I’m not feeling great right now. I’ve felt better. But I’m gonna be back on the road soon. I’m going to get back up and keep walking. I’m gonna keep moving. I can only push onward and get to the end of this and everything else that comes. I’m quite behind where I was hoping to be. I was hoping to be much further along, but life and other things. Plans don’t work all the time, or even half the time. Maybe some of the time, but really it’s none of the time. But that’s okay because you just keep on going. You push onward and look for a new day. A new down, a new tomorrow and you try again. I hope I do the same.

There’s so much pressing down on everyone right now. So much uncertainty about whether we have a tomorrow or not. Genuinely scary times. I feel that, however, now really is the time to live. Now is the time to be alive and live defiantly in the face of the sheer uncertainty that we face.

Now is the time to walk and travel and keep moving, and experience the world. Now is the time to look after each other, and uplift those around us. Now is the time to strengthen community and understanding and outreach, and now is the time to embrace what is around us with care and love. All this fucking hate won’t get us anywhere, and it’s failing to do any good as far as I can see.

Tomorrow comes, but if we do not rise to the occasion, then how can we claim we did anything? Joy as an act of resistance, but joy for the sake of our hearts and souls, and mental health too. We keep pushing on and we keep on living.

In a few weeks I’ll be on the road again and I’ll be heading down south. I’ll be heading away from New South Wales for the first time in far too long, and it will be a necessary trip. It will be one that’ll be good for my soul. Give me time for thinking. Give me time for rest. Allow me to recuperate a bit, and maybe sleep.

I’m looking forward to being on empty roads and getting brief glimpses of the landscape that I won’t be able to hold. That I won’t be able to touch, but I’ll stop and get out of the car and look at it all, and take it all in. I’ll experience the world around me, and I’ll find myself spreading across and becoming one with the landscape. It won’t be transformative, but it will be soothing. It will help me relax and unwind, and that is something I need to do more of.

Everything is pressing down, but my back won’t break, and neither will yours. We don’t have to necessarily push back, but we do need to understand that the weight does not have to crush us. We can choose to bear it, and we can choose to put it down temporarily. Or at least, when we have the right tools and structures in place we can. If need be, we might have to choose to walk away, and that’s a good choice to make in a lot of instances. It’s not one enough people make, and I know that I’m one of them.

I can almost feel the road calling. I can almost feel it rolling underneath me as I move along it, through open, empty spaces full of everything, and I can almost feel it as it winds through mountainous passes. Long straights across an old country, following bends and curves through tall, enclosed regions. And I’ll drive and drive on, and drive some more and I’ll keep going, looking for something. Looking for something that speaks to me in a way that I haven’t been spoken to in a long time. And I’ll bring it back with me and share it around, because life is too short and there isn’t enough movement and freedom given to people. There isn’t enough, and we need it more than ever before.

Where did we go so wrong? At what part did we send ourselves off of a good path to something better? To something that allowed us to breathe? I wish I could say, but I don’t know. But it seems to me that a lot of things are really wrong with how we’re going about life, and that worries me quite a lot. It worries me as we’re just going on and on, and we’re not allowed the time or space, and so we have to make it for ourselves and others. But we can have it, and we should.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 13:23:96

Good speed, but looks like I’m reattempting tomorrow. The day got away.

Written at work.