One down, two to go. Winter, that is. June has somehow just whizzed by amazingly quickly. Perhaps it was the busyness at work in particular. It was maybe also the other events – kiddo’s entrance exams for Mac Robertson High, our 15^th anniversary. Whatever the cause(s), the feeling has been that I have had very little time to just take things in. I feel like I have been rushed and swept by the tides around me. While I much prefer this to sitting around waiting for things to happen, it also feels like I am not charting my own direction. I guess I’m experiencing the perennial challenge to find meaning in the midst of the hustle and bustle of activities which constitute living. In as much as I have enjoyed the activities of the past 3 months or so, they have affected the life I live in ways which I don’t necessarily like.

For example, I have had to spend a lot of time dealing with trains and trams. I spend a great deal of the start of each morning working towards getting on that 6:48, 6:59 or 7:11 at the Mount Waverley station, or 3 minutes earlier at Syndal, where the gym is. This morning for example, I had to cut my run down to just 30 minutes and rushed through my showers with the sole aim of getting on that 6:56 at Syndal. I missed it so caught the 7:08 which meant I didn’t catch 7:10 or 7:16 tram at Glen Iris, no matter how fast I huffed and puffed my way up the 200m stretch to the tram stop, which meant I got in close to 30 minutes later than I would have liked. My mornings are ruled by this insane preoccupation with catching that train or that tram. All that, because of the other insane race against time – that of getting my work done.

Maybe that’s it – the endless chasing and meeting of deadlines means you lose sight of what is important to you and where you want to go, especially if these deadlines are not your own. Meeting such deadlines is a cold achievement devoid of any real thrill of making a difference, or should it? I know, I know – work ethics demand we do the work to the best of our ability without any regard for personal agenda. I’m not saying I don’t get any satisfaction from doing my job. I’m just saying the rush, the zipping by of the hours and days this process involve, robs me of a sense of “that’s what I want”. At the end of it all, it’s cold and means little.

Yet, I plough on and when my eyes and mind tire late in the day and I long to go home, another round of rushing kicks in. This time it’s the reversed trend of catching the right tram so that I don’t miss the 7:25 train at Glen Iris to go back to either Mount Waverley or Syndal. If I do, the always erratic 7:40 would see me arriving home after 8, which is always a bummer. Yarra Tram has a tram tracker hotline which you can call to find out what time a tram is arriving and if I hurry, I can just about hang up the phone, undock my notebook, pack up and make a quick dash for a tram which is due to arrive in 3 minutes. However, if the boss is still in, it’s good form to just nick in and say good bye for the day. If this was the case, it has to be the next tram, whenever that is. At times, I have had to sprint from my cubicle to the lift, get down to the lobby, sprint across the hall to the glass door (which seem to know my rush and so open at a glacial pace) and do an Asafa Powell to the tram stop. I would then spend the next 5 minutes catching my breath and hoping my heart holds out, and also hoping Theresa wouldn’t pick that moment to telephone, lest the heavy breathing suggests it wasn’t my workload in the office requiring her to keep my dinner in the oven.

Assuming I manage to get on the tram on time, arrival at Glen Iris some 20 minutes later signals another assault on the cardio respiratory system. Often, the tram stops, the passengers get off and the shuffles last only about 2 seconds before they turn into trots across the road. If the rail crossing bells start to signal, the trots escalate into an almighty stampede. This time, the distance is more than double that between my glacial glass door and the tram stop. The route also involves a 30m ramp going up, towards the station platform so while I still often manage catch the 7:25, the recovery can take the whole of the 12 minutes from Glen Iris to Mount Waverley. God forbid that Theresa should call then. I’m certain I looked absolutely pale on those occasions as I sit panting and rubbing my chest. Like Detective Murtaugh liked to say, I’m getting too old for this (expletive deleted).

On arrival home, it’s another round of rushed activities. I’d put my gym clothes in a bucket to soak away the 12-hour old perspiration, get out of my coat, jacket and shirt, pack my clothes for the next day, and go downstairs for dinner. It’d be way past 8 by then. After all the washing up, and if I pack lunch for the next day, it’d be close to 9pm. We start thinking about bed around 9.30pm. So you see there is precious little time to talk or just think about the day. This goes on for a whole week and come weekend, the cycle of house cleaning, shopping, cooking, ferrying kiddo to her activities and church on Sunday, would leave us so little time. The rush goes on. The cycles are endless. Yet this mouse prefers spinning away, chasing endlessly, on that little treadmill in the little cage, more than having no wheel to climb onto at all. It may be tiring and challenging and raises all sorts of questions but it also makes for a full life. Now for the remaining 2 months…