secret: contemplating the alternative

i've been visitng my brother in brisbane. i love to go and sneak into people's lives and live in them a little while, see what i like about them, see how they fit. i like to know ever after the parts of my loved ones daily routines, like breakfast at Pear, or chilling on a comfy couch soaking up some tv, or sneaky/not so sneaky pints at Archive.

i've just got to the point at the end of this visit (i leave tomorrow) where i feel like there is really something missing from my life. well, besides the aaron-shaped thing. i met some cool brisbane peeps tonight, and what makes them so are the minutae of their lives. the sweet bits (afore-mentioned tasty foods and drinks) and the semi-sweet bits like work or uni, and the many other-flavoured bits like gigs, family, love triangles, housemates who have noisy sex... everything you might think of.

i still have this feeling like i'm taking a holiday from my life, and i don't think i want that anymore. but my life here hasn't taken a shape yet, and so i'm in the wonderfully terrifying position of a white middle-class australian of being able to choose the mould to which i form it. from there i start to thing about all the things that could have happened, and i get to enjoy screen-saver style scenarios (my friend thea called it this once, where you sit staring at one thing for long enough and the screen-saver in your mind kicks in, showing you something interesting and most likely pretty, that you can watch repetitively) of the many alternate universes in which i might live.

i could write a whole novel about the alternate universes of the life of helen taylor. and what a novel it would be, glamorous and intruiging and the whatnot. but honestly, i'm here now, and there's a very simple shopping list of things required to make this holiday of mine a proper life:

• one aaron, including all the added extras that come with, not the least of which is the way he sometimes laughs at my jokes, when they're funny enough anyway.
• a job that brings me money but doesn't make me lose my will to live
• inspiration for writings of a very high calibre (instead of simply writing a frilly version of a first-world-problems-style whine about the fact i miss my boyfriend and don't know what i want to be when i grow up).
• the mental willpower to learn and retain useful parts of the german language.
• a puppy.
• the confidence to drive a manual car.
• an electric blanket. 

i think that's it for now. i endeavour to fill my life with real stuff, to stop and move away from the holiday.

not that i have anything against holidays.