Dancing in the Darkness

What a week or two. From being on a happy high for two months and as great as life is for me, the sunny times turned a little dark in my head. But I’m not here to bring you down, I’m much better now. I have more clarity and less baggage than before. I had expected another low eventually and turned it into a positive learning experience, though I did have my struggles at times.

I’m here to bring you photos of the great place that I now live, and cheer you – and me, UP! So … I hit the beach after dark, with the headphones on, my camera and no plan. Ended up walking 6km, and dancing my arse off like an idiot, without a care in the world. Sometimes I’ll post a song, but here’s a Spotify link to my new “Life’s a Beach” beach playlist. Don’t worry, it’s 6 hours of happy music and I hope your smiling .. its FREE 😀

I will also share a long post I put on Facebook today for my friends about my recent experience, and the re-kindled relationship I now have with my father. I have never opened up like this on Socials before and even after I typed it, I was so close to not sending it out, I’m a pretty private person. I’ve had really kind responses though and am now glad I did.

I know many of my Blog readers are or have been in worse situations and often open up. I hope this doesn’t trigger any negative thinking, rather, maybe someone else can get some benefit from my recent experience by perhaps me over-sharing 😉

But first, back to happiness … let’s dance!

There was no aurora when I hit the beach with my camera. I was dancing anyway (no formal training, lol), so I created my own light-show with a red torch, and then added my phone turned on, just for FUN, to help me get rid of my mind-funk. I wasn’t bought up in a dancing family, but now I just love it and don’t care.

Read into it what you will, just random dancing squiggles with no intent, except to lift my spirits. I had an absolute ball that night, not another soul around. I think. 😀

After some fun, I started walking – and dancing randomly along the beach, no plan except to enjoy life. I ended up around into the Carlton River sand flats. Below is looking back towards the rivermouth and the beach I had come from is around the point to the right in the distance.

So there’s me, walking/dancing along, and for some reason, looked down at my feet. It was incredible. Every time I put a foot down, bright Bioluminescence – or Sea Sparkle, spread out from my shoes about a foot then quickly disappeared. Magic!!! Like an electronic dance floor – I went nuts!!

I tried taking video and photos on my phone and camera, but unfortunately couldn’t pick up the bright but short lived glow. I took the above photo with my OM1 on LiveComp mode, walked and jumped and danced about 500 metres back along the waters edge and back, got a wierd ear selfie, and maybe a hint of sparkle – the few dots below my ear, so, I guess maybe it didn’t happen – but I did draw a love heart – wasn’t sure if it would work 😀

The sky down here is absolutely nuts, even without an aurora. I think the colour above is from forestry smoke with a faint green aurora – it look pretty, but yep, our government still burns beautiful native bush and replaces it with mono-culture tree farms.

Anyway, read on or not if you like, below is my quite personal post from Facebook. Thanks for visiting – you are awesome and I love YOU! (and ME!) Do things that make you happy, and bring joy to others and pass a smile around 😀

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This post is a little (long) insight into my relationship with my father, Roger.
If you know him and perhaps had a falling out, please read on, though I might ramble on a bit – he’s still alive and doing well for his age and in the same house 😀
Not even sure if I should post this here, it’s pretty personal and honest, but not in a negative way.
It’s also about me, and a little dark hole I fell down recently, but I’m OK – actually very much better for it now 😀

Dad and I had a bit of a falling out after my Mum passed away, likely over things we said to each other that were misunderstood – I won’t go into details. We didn’t contact each other for a few years, though I would make the odd effort at Christmas.
I remember Mum always saying to him “Think before you speak”, he was pretty quick with what the receiver often took as an insult – including me. Over the past year, I’ve been ringing him slowly more regularly, probably only once a month or so at first, putting up with typical comments like “Who are you … I have a son? “What the bloody hell do you want” and the like, and letting them slip by, cause that’s how he’s always been. I popped in for a visit maybe three months ago, and took out a video8 camera that I had, so he could watch some old tapes.

The first two months here in Carlton, I’ve been so f#cking happy, but I expected there would be more bad days to come. It started happening a bit over a week ago. I felt it coming on like a shadow, the old black dog tapping along, following behind me, that voice in my head began changing it’s story, self-doubt crept in, putting myself down, negative talk and the like. I kept smiling at work, as you do. At home, I immediately stopped drinking alcohol etc that I guess I’d been celebrating with, because I knew it would drag me down further. I also wanted to be clear headed so that I could really think and process my thoughts – and why that little f#cking voice that you sometimes have little control over, was doing this to me. I wanted to learn and grow from it.

I had been going pretty hard on the house with various projects, keeping me busy and my mind off lingering unresolved things – including my Dad. My motivation waned, I began not doing things on the house, it became overwhelming, so I gave myself permission to stop. I didn’t beat myself up about it, it was time to take time out to look after me. I still went to work with a smile, only told a few close friends, but really withdrew as much as I could – my way of dealing with sh!t on my own.

I also decided to use the break to look after myself physically – booked in a well overdue optometrist visit, and I could feel my body carrying so much tension that just wouldn’t let up, no matter how much I stretched and tried to relax. It was starting to affect my sleep too, so I found a Massage physiotherapist though Medibank preferred partners and it was quite cheap. It’s amazing what the simple touch from another human can do!
Anyway, back to Dad, oddly, he actually rang me up Friday week-ago. We chatted for over 3 hours, but I didn’t tell him what I was going through. It had started creeping in the Wednesday prior.

Last Sunday, after a lovely lunch with Tash (my ex), Jasmine (daughter) and some close mutual friends (hi) – at which I feel even then I was a bit withdrawn, still processing lingering stuff, I went and visited my Dad. I was only going to pop in for a quick hello, but I left 3 hours later. During that visit, in his usual put down style, he called me a dickhead, over something I’d done about 35 years ago. I said out loud, “There it is”, but Dad didn’t really catch it and I let it slide to avoid an argument, though it did stick in my head. Why say that?

Maybe that’s why my little voice puts me down, everytime I mess up – “you idiot”, cause that’s how I was bought up?

The next evening, I had dinner with my lovely new neighbours, Jim and Jenny. Jim is from country Ireland and was recounting some stories from his youth. Being rural, most people knew each other pretty well. He told me that they would find the biggest weakness in each other – and a nickname was then given for life.
It dawned on me, that the way my Dad is, and the way he insults people without seemingly realising it, perhaps thinking it’s funny is just habits from the way he was bought up. He was born in rural England and moved to Tasmania with my Grand-parents when he was 7. I know they moved a few times, so he would have had a tough time I guess forming new friends and especially keeping them through school. He left school in grade 8, but he is a very clever bastard. He can do almost anything that he puts his mind to (or could) and rarely asks for help (I inherited some of that attitude). Hands up who’s built a 36′ steel boat literally by yourself from scratch with no plans except the hull in your front yard? Not me, but that’s an awesome achievement by my Dad! It dawned on me a few years ago – and I told him, that he didn’t fail school, school failed him.

He rang me up again last night around 7.30. I wandered outside with a beer, it wasn’t too cold or windy and decided to light a fire while we chatted. We talked … for more than 7 hours! I get it now.

Anyway, my point of all this rambling, aside from processing things and clearing my head by writing it down, is to reach out to you. If you’ve known my Dad and haven’t seen him for a while, maybe because he said something to you that hurt you or your partner, he probably thought he was being funny but sometimes he took it too far – and didn’t think before he spoke. I hope this brings a bit of understanding.  I used to do it too – not sure if it was out of habit from him or to push people away, maybe a bit of both – but I became aware of it and try not to put people down anymore (sorry Evan, and thanks).

Dad doesn’t have the internet, but he’s got the same phone number and still lives in the same house. He didn’t ask me to do this either. If you’re up for it and passing by, maybe drop in and say hi. Sure, get ready to cop an insult or two, either brush it off now that I hope you understand, or have a few ready to throw back at him. Maybe beat him to it and kick off with one, grumpy old bastard 😉

If you don’t know my Dad and you read this anyway, thanks, maybe it might help you in some way. Lucky my down-time only lasted a few days and I got a whole heap of good out of it.

If you’re having trouble and you can’t work it out yourself, reach out to someone, or one of the many counselling services or me if you like. I’m happy to have a stroll along the beach, sit around a fire and say nothing, or talk shit and give a hug if that’s what you need. Stay safe and look after yourself.

My thinking is I either post this now, or read it at Dad’s funeral – in which case it would be too late to be any good. So here it is, visit him or don’t. Tell him I said hi and tell him how awesome I am – lol. Life is too short to hold grudges.

Anyway, enough thinking and typing, I have a house to work on. Happy Saturday, spread joy 😀

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