Here's a thought

Homesick for Somewhere Else.

It is possible, you know. To be homesick for a place that isn’t your home. The heart finds home in many places. Mostly when we’re not even looking.

4 short weeks of my last year were spent in New Zealand. It has been 9 months, 2 weeks and 5 days since my return home, and I still miss it. It seems a disproportionate amount of ‘homesickness’ for the time I spent there, but when have feelings ever been proportionate?


There is nowhere on Earth that looks like New Zealand does. The greens are greener there. The water is an other-worldly turqoise. God is not supposed to play favourites, but I think He tipped his hand in this case. You only have to go for a drive along the Coromandel, take a walk up Mount Maunganui, or squish your feet in Piha Beach’s black sand to fall in love with the place. I certainly did.

And I haven’t even been to the South Island yet. Deprecating North-Islanders tell me that that’s where it is really beautiful – as if the North Island were just the South’s homely, less-popular younger sister. Sitting atop my Travel To-Do List, the Abel Tasman National Park still waits for me patiently; Queenstown, Mt. Cook, and the Doubtful Sound all shove and clamour over each other to grab my attention next.

Kiwis are an odd lot. They’d be the first to admit to it, too. Their humour is cheeky, their outlook optimistic, and their thirst for adventure is dangerously infectious. They’re just not quite like any other people. I don’t think they would really fit in anywhere else. Sure, there are a lot of New Zealanders who leave their own shores to see the rest of the world – their spirit of exploration wouldn’t leave them alone if they didn’t – but I think they usually end up returning to Aotearoa. Something eventually pulls them home.

You only have to ask a Kiwi a simple question about his country to watch the pride creep into his eyes, and listen to the endlessly appealing accent describe all the sights there are to see. I think New Zealanders are all in on a secret – they’ve known that their country is the best one in the world for quite a while now, and they’re just surprised the rest of us haven’t caught on.





You’d have thought, being an Australian, that I’d catch quite a bit of flack for venturing across the pond. I was prepared to be the butt of the joke wherever I went, with my strange accent, climate-inappropriate clothing, and lack of appreciation for L&P. I know that Aussies are more than willing to have a go at our friends over the Tasman. But instead I found I was welcomed with open arms by almost everyone I met. People were so friendly and helpful. They even put up with my mangled attempts at Māori place names (“Et’s Phung-a-ma-tah!” they’d laugh at me, “Not Whan-ga-madda!”).





And really, breath-taking geography aside, it’s the people that you love about a place. Anywhere you go on either island, you could find views to put the most stunning desktop wallpaper to shame, but what really sets New Zealand apart from the rest of the world is their indomitable spirit. The way that they know they can take anything head on. Of course Edmund Hillary was a Kiwi. He had to be. I think that’s what I really love most about New Zealand. Where Aussies will see a beautiful-looking rock formation, and create a beautiful National Park around it, Kiwis will find as many ways to jump off it as they can.

Yes, I only spent a month there. I saw less than a percent of it. But it instantly became one of my homes, and it has been with me ever since.


Like I said, it is possible to be homesick for somewhere else, to have more than one ‘home’. Aeoteroa will always be one of mine.

Change is in the air…

Here I sit, keeping myself very busy NOT packing for my flight tomorrow morning.

I have been asked to spend a week and a half in Sydney, working with a studio or two there, and testing out the working relationship, to see what will come of it. They are pretty great people, and they’re doing work with international aid organizations, and some global projects that I am interested in. I’m pretty excited to see where it will all lead. It would be fun to have a solid job at the moment, save some money up, and also to work on projects I can really believe in. Sort of an ideal situation in a lot of ways.

We’ll see. We’ll see if it’s the right thing, and the right time.

I will be an awfully big adventure. Not that Sydney is a distant star, or that 10 days is a two-year journey. But it might as well be, because my flight tomorrow, and the next week and half, will have quite an effect on the direction of my life’s next season. It might mean a different city, different job, different group of people, a very different year ahead of me.

I’m excited. And uncertain. As every adventurer should be.

But then I look at it, and think – “Is tomorrow really any different?” Does a plane trip have any more significance in the broad panorama of my life than a walk to the post office, or a phone call? Aren’t I choosing paths and deciding on directions each day, in every accomplishment of a routine task, or short interaction with a friend? I never think about my ‘normal’ life this way, but the truth is that every day I have opportunities to affect my destiny just as much as on those days when I feel I am being presented with more important opportunities. I guess I take those moments for-granted, waiting for something big to come along, and change things.

But Change is good at challenging the way we look at things. It challenges us to think of our lives from a different perspective. A navigator always has to take note of where he has come from, and where he is going, before he can determine if he is changing his course or not.

It’s funny how Change… well, changes our perspectives. A change of scenery. Change of pace, of place. Of heart, of mind. A change of thought. Change of address. Key changes. Changes in the wind, in season.

Change makes things different. Sometimes better or worse (depending on where you stand) but always different. I like Change. I am one of Change’s greatest admirers. It’s always excited me to see what things will look like – what I will look like – on the other side of it.

I experience that when I returned from my time away last year, and came back to my ‘normal life’. That the changes I had made in myself caused me to view things so differently when I got back into my old environment. And others had changed, too – which sparked off new actions and reactions that further changed me.

Change can be scary, too. Think of the changeable sea, with its tides. A sudden change in the weather, or in the mood of a wild animal. A change of traffic lights. An unforeseen change of plan. The quick change of direction in a dance. Or on a roller-coaster. That is the beauty of change - it is the catalyst between the expected and the unexpected. It’s a risk you take. A gamble. It’s always a surprise what comes on the other side of the exchange. That’s what makes it so exhilarating!

It’s never a smooth ride, either. My 10-day trip to Sydney won’t be without its share of missteps and stumbles along the way. But it’s a lesser-travelled trail worth taking, if I want to return a different man than when I set out. To tread the path home and arrive from another direction all together.

It is the first day of Winter. Change is in the air, and I am breathing it in with great relish. I have no idea what the next few days hold in store, or how they will alter the days that follow them. But it will be something new, and it will be an adventure. I love Change. I need it, for me to feel alive. For, even with all its unpredictability and danger, it is an essential part of life. All of nature would be a well-preserved still-life without it.

I have had the privilege of spending a great deal of time in the company of Change in this last year, and I have grown attached to it. Some might say we hang out too often. But I love it.

And I wouldn’t change a thing.

An open letter to the Ocean.

dearmeat.me:

Dear Ocean,

Are you coming or going?
Stop being so damned asinine and decide, already.

Typographic Inspiration

upscale typography recently posted a list of inspirational typographic artworks. I’ve reposted them below, hoping they make your day what they made mine.

By Like Minded Studio

By patrycja

By Engin Korkmaz

By greg_papagrigoriou

By dadoqueiroz

By mil3n

By durandrud

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light –
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

– Billy Collins